My hem rustled through them as I moved on.
A part of me wanted to wander into the rooms that lay in dormant seclusion behind closed doors, up here, but I had gleaned what I'd come for. After extending my investigation of the encircling landing, I turned to return downstairs.
Tanen was waiting a little anxiously for me, but, seeing me in one piece, visibly relaxed.
“Fear not, Tanen, I told you it was no dark spirit,” I said, plunking back down on ground-level turf.
Then what the hell is it, I could see his eyes asking, but he refrained from pushing the matter, at least then and there, and simply turned to bring up the rear in the act of departure with less humor than what he had showed coming in.
And of course – dark spirit or not, it was still no laughing matter for those of us who could attest to the true nature that it did bear.
T h I r t y - S e v e n –
A Dark Secret of Two Kinds
We left the Baltane Mansion and knocked on the door of the Capers' equally as garish home. A slave opened the door, and went to fetch one of the Masters for us. Mrs. Caper responded to the call, having been the one to motivate the paper to showcase her desperate plea.
Though it seemed I didn't have to, I explained why we were there.
“So it's true, then?” she asked, a deep grimace kept just shy of horror creasing her face. “The house, it – swallowed them. Our dear Baltanes.”
“Yes, I'm...afraid so,” I confirmed, not sure how best to go about these kinds of exchanges. I was no expert socialite.
“How do you know? How can you tell?”
I could sense Tanen's ears perking up behind me, wanting very much to know the same.
“Alas, I am not here to divulge my secrets, Mrs. Caper,” I lamented (though admittedly without much lamentation). “Only to shed what light I am able and authorized.”
“Do you know why?” she pressed from a different angle, for indeed that would be a dire question for her to have answered. Preventing a like fate from befalling her and hers was, after all, the driving motive behind calling for help in the first place. “What can be done to ensure my own family isn't likewise...” She choked on the specifics, unable to voice the thought, and of course I could not blame her. It was something else that was ripe for blame, if indeed she had cause to fear for her family's lives.
I was not ready to clue Tanen in to the specifics yet, however, not this way – and so I stepped closer to the door and leaned across the threshold to whisper a single piece of advice in her ear. As I drew away she looked at me, her grimace less horrified in light of a fresh bemusement, and I left her there to contemplate what path she might take as a result of the little guidance I could offer.
*
It was probably unwise to head back to Manor Dorn so late in the day, because we didn't make it back by nightfall. It had not occurred to me to beg hospitality from either one of the mansions we had contacted, however, and so it was that we were still traipsing across the rubble when the sun sank below the horizon and pulled all edges of light down with it.
A chill swept over the land.
I paused atop a slab of debris to survey the darkening countryside, hands resting on my hips in a more casual stance than I might have used in the past.
“What do you see out there, Avante of Manor Dorn?” Tanen inquired, his tone very slightly patronizing.
“A dark land,” I replied matter-of-factly, not caving to his probe. “And rubble.”
“Well, I guess we've narrowed down that it's not your eyes that possess anything special.”
I stepped down from the pedestal, beginning again. “Guessing games will get you nowhere. And the only place we need to get, right now, is home.”
“Where you'll hold a conference and spill your secrets? Is that what you want? They didn't ask, Vant. I did. It doesn't have to be some great exploited thing.”
“You'd rather just be the privileged one of the bunch,” I surmised wryly.
“That's how you're going to translate that?”
“Why not?”
“Because I thought I was giving you the more desirable option.”
“Is that what you're doing? Giving me something?” I challenged, but it was good-naturedly enough. I was not incensed yet, just set in my secretive ways, for the time being. “I got the impression you were asking something of me.”
“You can't know things about what's happening to our land and not share them with anyone, Siren. Surely you have to realize that.”
“Have you never heard of discretion, Cathwade?”
“If you can respond to a desperate plea in the paper and flock to the aid of strangers who need answers, surely you can do the same for anyone you choose. Why would you exclude some, if you have the power to deliver?”
His tone was growing a little more challenging than I felt keen to receive. If he only knew what I was trying to do for him, he would never challenge me in such a way. And if only I could tell him: I did not suppose it was as simple as what I had done for the Capers. I had done little more than satisfy my own curiosity with the Baltane Mansion and whisper a tentative starting point in Mrs. Caper's ear. It was all time had allowed me. I wanted to do infinitely – and meticulously – more on Tanen's behalf.
“I would watch my tone, if I were you, Tanen – only the one who knows a thing can be counted on to practice the appropriate discretion pertaining to it.”
“That's being awfully presumptuous on behalf of a great many people, isn't it?”
“It's being factual.” How was I supposed to get him to stand down? The fool didn't know what he was talking about.
"Being the only one to tally discretion where a nation's livelihood is concerned is not a burden fit for one soul. You aren't Queen, Vant."
"I am not trying to fix the whole nation."
"Then who gave you the right to pick and choose?"
"You have no idea what I know."
"I know you know something. Excuse me if I'm one of those who doesn't want to settle for carrying blindly onward in this condemning heap of a world, if I have a choice."
"You don't have a choice," I said, rounding on him. "I'm not giving you one." I stood on higher ground as we came to a halt, and he gazed up at me with penetrating resignation. Resigned only because I was being a stingy vixen.
He was beautiful in the dawning moonlight, with distress and defiance tingling in his eyes.
"And who gave you the right to play God?" he asked evenly.
The Angel of Death! I wanted to snap, but didn't.
"Because that's what you're doing, you realize? When people are dying everywhere and you know something that could deliver them from this madness. Why are you withholding what you know?"
"Discretion, Tanen. I told you. Leave it alone."
"I'm not going to leave it alone. You don't have the right. If anyone has a right to anything, here, it's the people that have the right to know what's happening to them, to the ones they love. No truth can be worse than already living in fear – dying in fear. Most of them expect that end, now, anyway. There's no hope out there, Avante. Just destruction and dark mischief that has every soul already anticipating the likelihood of a dark and terrible end."
"And yet there is still something to be said about biding one's time," I maintained.
"Whose time? Yours or theirs? People are dying as we speak."
"It's not them I'm trying to protect." Hadn't he just said himself being responsible for so many was too big a job for one soul? There was only so much I could do.
"Who, then? Who are you trying to protect?"
You...
"How does staying silent shelter anyone from what's befalling them?" he pressed.
"Some people aren't ready to be saved."
"Well some of them are."
"It's not a simple thing, Tanen. Digging for truths sometimes uncovers more than what you're looking for."
"I'm just looking for straight answers; I don't care what they hold.
"
"You might if you knew."
"Knew what?" he demanded, growing exasperated. Not wanting to give him further opportunity to rise up against the stance I had taken, I turned and started off again. He took up the chase, striding after me.
"You're going to draw the Wardogs," I said instead of answering him, for surely if there were any in the vicinity they could hear the raised voices flitting over the rubble.
"Look, Vant, I'm sure there's a lot out there that could be classified as something that I might not want to know, but people have been hoping for deliverance, for insight, for the means to get some kind of grasp – any kind of grasp – on this age, for years. There isn't a one of them who wouldn't kill for answers."
"It is not killers I would in good conscience reward."
"Then who is worthy of sharing the insights you've been dabbling in?"
"I don't presume to claim who's worthy and who isn't." I just presume to change it, in what cases I might be allowed.
"Then pray tell what your discretion is based on."
"Did it ever occur to you that it may be something that cannot just be said? Are visions so readily meant to be put into words where you come from?"
"That's what it is? Visions?"
"And maybe I know things I shouldn't even know," I suggested in addition.
"Who's judging? It's a free-for-all out here, Vant."
"You might not feel that way in hindsight, if I told you what I know."
"I'm willing to take the risk."
"I'm not."
"You can't just keep something like this to yourself."
"Stop digging, Tanen."
"Am I supposed to do that? Just take everything at face-value when someone close to me knows more?"
"Isn't face-value all you're interested in?" I asked bitingly before I could stop myself – provoked to snide remarks from being pushed.
"What?"
"Stop digging." Just stop.
But it wasn't to be.
"No," he refused, finally rising to a peak that brooked no argument. "No, I'm not going to stop digging. I don't believe that's something that should be expected of me, or anyone, to lay down and stop asking questions if there's something tangible to sink their claws into. How can you demand that? We've been huddled in our corners scraping together an existence for too long – those of us that do survive. The few of us that are left deserve the chance to rise above this age, and, by the gods, if you know something, you're going to share it."
"Why can't you just leave–"
"Why can't you just spit it out?"
"Because you're Serbaen!" I caved vehemently, thrashing around. He drew up short to avoid a collision, to absorb that smack in the face. At first it didn't register, going completely over his head. Then he frowned, not understanding.
"What?"
My shoulders slumped, the stubbornness unraveling now that the secret was out. I looked at him wearily, having carried the secret – keeping it even from him – for the seeming eternity that I had. It was that thing that complicated this whole mess, that little spark I had picked up on the first time I had run my hands over his secret-keeping body, scouring his soul with my enhanced awareness. It could help or hurt the situation – but who was I to assume which? I hadn't a clue how to break it to him, how to handle its significance.
But, well, it was out now, wasn't it? For better or worse, which very well may have been the only way about it.
"You're Serbaen," I repeated more calmly, with only a bit of lingering dismay. "I didn't want to tell you yet. I didn't think you were ready to know."
His frown deepened, and he shook his head slightly, his lips trying to form words. The word he seemed to be wanting to form was 'ready?'. But instead he said this: "How could you know something like that?"
"It's the visions, Tanen," I admitted. "I see things when I...touch things. It's how I've been learning about things. Weeks ago, I cut my finger – and some spider from the wall came out to bind it with web. Since then...the essence of things seems to stick to my touch."
I could not say what he was thinking, but his eyes had taken on a bit of a dangerous hue, brooding over some implication or other.
"It's a little bit obscure and hard to trace, but when I touched you, I felt it. I saw it," I explained. I was not sure quite what to expect from him, revealing this about him, but it wasn't what he said next;
"You touched me that way...just to exploit my secrets?" he asked in the quietest voice he'd used yet during the exchange. The quietest, and decidedly the most dangerous. And that's when I saw it; a new kind of blame, and bitterness, begin to root out in his eyes.
The first traces of a very ill feeling drained into my stomach, as I realized the angle of this that he was taking to heart. An angle I had not foreseen. Oh. Gods... It was an unfortunate angle indeed. One I could not wish to own up to, and indeed one I did not wish to hurt him with, and yet one I could make no excuses for.
So I stood there, caught off-guard by the unexpected grave I had dug, and the look in his eyes burned darker with understanding. I saw him absorb it, and close himself to me, and a regretful sense of dread continued to sicken me for how the situation had derailed. Had I just lost him? Had I just lost what tentative chance I had been granted with him?
The thought was too critical to consider.
"Tanen..." I began lamely, when I retrieved the presence of mind to say something. Completely out of my element, I spoke the first thing I could think of in the hopes of salvaging some piece of what I was wrecking, here; "The second time was–"
But he stopped me. "I don't want to know," he said, "what you got out of me the second time."
And with a disdain that was surely equal to what I had treated him to upon his erstwhile arrival at Manor Dorn, he brushed by me in cold dismissal and trudged off into the dark. Rubble shifted beneath his feet, as if grinding our bond into the crumbled decay in his wake.
Not a lot had hurt me, in my time, but that did.
And now I had to salvage the shattered makings of a relationship before I could think again about salvaging his soul.
T h I r t y - E I g h t –
Deathly Taunts
“Did you find what you were looking for?” Letta asked me the following morning, after I'd suffered a restless night's sleep and risen early to start my chores. I'd been at it an hour already, all by my lonesome, and the others were just starting to rise and join the living.
I cast her a sleep-deprived glance and leaned back into my work. “To one end, anyway.”
“Tanen hasn't said a word this morning,” she mentioned.
Dismay rippled through me, but I tried not to let it show. “He will do and say as he pleases,” I dismissed, not knowing what else to tell her.
“Perhaps I should have sent someone else along with you?”
“No, Letta – it was nothing you did,” I assured her. It was me. All me. And now I hadn't a clue where to pick things back up again.
But I had to do something. It was not an option to leave the grudge to fester. I'd spent all morning, while I was scrubbing and sweeping and cooking by myself, trying to conjure up some solution. Some place to start. Anything.
“It is not an age for making enemies,” Letta reminded me, once again in her infuriatingly kind manner. “Keep that in mind, minda, as I'm sure you are.” And of course she was as right as any of the other reasons that I knew I had to try to smooth things over where I had botched them. No one wanted to make any more enemies than they had to, in this day and time. Those who were potential allies ought to be nurtured as such, sustained in our good graces as much as possible.
I nodded my understanding, and she left it alone. But oh how I wished, for once, she could stick her nose in further than was her business, and really, truly help me.
*
When I went out to dump our bucket of compost, that evening, I rounded the house and slew the stuff into the pile and found Tanen there, the first time I'd seen him all day, stac
king wood on the wood pile. He and Dashsund had discovered a cache of young trees, recently, and had been hard at work chopping them into firewood and hauling them back to the house.
His eyes flicked to me, a brief acknowledgment, but there was no welcome in them, and he slung another log onto the pile. It clattered into place, ringing with his strength.
I let the bucket dangle limply at my side, lingering where I stood, trying to conjure something to say. But this was never the issue I had anticipated having to deal with. I had expected some sort of consternation pertaining to the fact that he had Serbaen in him, but to have him angry with me for insincere affections... I didn't know what to do with that.
And was he right to be angry with me? Well – in hindsight, perhaps so. I had not thought better of my actions until faced with the consequences, because there had been more dire issues at hand. But now...now it seemed I had surely made a mess of things.
And that was what happened, when a mere mortal bartered with celestial forces to try her hand at saving a lost soul. I was out of my element, floundering around, simply smearing the mess that already existed, adding my aspiring two cents.
“I have not been the best of souls to you, Tanen,” I said when I found nothing else to say. “And for that I am sorry.”
Another plank of wood, launched atop the others.
“This thing, with my fingers... It's... It's like being a child all over again, wanting to learn things, to feel things, to taste things. Hungry for it all.”
One more piece of wood. No response.
“It's consuming,” I pressed – halfway between insisting and confessing. I was not sure if I really expected excuses to get me anywhere, but I had to start somewhere, and what I said was true.
He paused to face me then, and I timidly searched his face. Never had I felt inclined to tread so carefully around someone, to seek some delicate, desired response. I was the Albino of the family – the one who went out, and took, and fought, and...
A Mischief in the Woodwork Page 28
