I do not breathe. She tastes cold and a little salt, almost metallic, but not unpleasant. Her tongue moves and I recoil then, pull away, and she is looking at me solemnly with her flat silver eyes. There is something reptilian about them, and I look away. No one in the tea-house has taken any notice, or they pretend not to.
Beside me, the aberrant gets to her feet in silence. From within the black and buckled coat she withdraws the folded document. Almost I had forgotten it. She smiles at me now. “I have a message I must bring.” She taps the edge of the document on the edge of the table and turns on her heel, toward the stairs and rooms above.
Three steps gone, she hesitates, turns back and fixes me with the empty gaze again. “Tharil,” she says. “Do one final thing for me.”
I nod at her, the silver coins cold and heavy in my hand. She smiles. “When I am gone, look to see what your cards will tell you of your own fortune.”
And then she is gone. I watch her go.
There is a weight of stone on my chest, a weight of drowning water. I do not want to do the thing she has asked of me. I arrange the three silver coins before me on the tabletop in a line, one beneath each of her chosen cards. The Serpent, the Sea, and the Star. Each coin bears identically the imprinted seal of the Citadel, tower and flame, the mark the aberrant herself must wear etched in her white skin beneath her gloves. I count the coins and I know I will do it. I will read my own cards.
When she is gone. She is not really gone yet, I tell myself. She is upstairs on her business. There is time yet for tea.
I arrange the coins again, stack one upon the other, and reach for my tea-cup.
There is a clamor of raised voices, urgency. Around the tea-house the black knights exchange looks. Four of them are on their feet; one wears emblazoned on his surcoat the white flame of a Vigilant. They make for the stairs and commotion from above. It is only then that I realize why they are all here, what they are doing. There is someone upstairs, someone important. Some unseen master of the Citadel. I sink back into my corner, gather my cards and silk before me, and watch the stairs. Boots rattle and echo above, men’s voices call back and forth. The rest of the ranked Ordained at their benches sit silent and rod-straight and watch the stairs as I am watching.
There comes the tread of boots descending, and then figures emerge into lamplight and space. There are two of the Ordained. One of them is the one wearing the white mark of a Vigilant and the other one I do not recognize; he has not been one of those seated here. Between them they are half-leading, half-dragging the aberrant. My soulless with the complicated future. The side of her face is a swelling bloom, and as they haul her past my table, toward the door, she lifts her head and smiles at me and her teeth are limned in blood. Blood smears her chin, a slash of crimson on the winter-white skin.
She raises a black-gloved hand to me, the colorless girl, in a kind of strange salute, and it is then I see the other slash of scarlet she wears. Twined among and around her gloved fingers, she is wearing a red cord. I reach reflexively and touch my neck and my own naked fingers meet with nothing. There is nothing there. She has untied my mother’s soul.
She laughs at me, the bloodied creature, to see the look on my face, and one of the men bearing her shakes her a little and her head lolls away and she is not looking at me any longer, and then they are taking her through the tea-house door in a low chiming of bells, and out into the night. The ranks of men at the tables do not move.
I touch my naked throat again. It is a thing I have never felt before. I touch my throat and feel naked and I do not know what comes next. I reach for the cards, and I turn the top one over.
It is blank. So is the next, and the one below it. They are all blank as new leaves.
I will give you a gift, fortune-teller, she said. And she took mine away.
Copyright © 2011 Wren Wallis
Read Comments on this Story in the BCS Forums
Wren Wallis lives in eastern Massachusetts with a cat named George Mouse, a dog named Jack Riddle, and a man who had his own name when she found him. She is at work on a novel set in the Westreth Ordinary, the world of “The Red Cord,” and is an attorney in her spare time. On Twitter she is known as @invisibleinkie.
Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies
COVER ART
“New Lands,” by Rado Javor
Rado Javor is a Slovak artist who splits his time between Bratislava and the UK. His favorite subjects include gothic Colonial America, WWI aircraft, dark science-fiction, and Napoleonic naval engagements, many of which were featured in the game Empire: Total War. See more of his work at http://radojavor.com/.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
ISSN: 1946-1046
Published by Firkin Press,
a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization
Copyright © 2011 Firkin Press
This file is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 U.S. license. You may copy and share the file so long as you retain the attribution to the authors, but you may not sell it and you may not alter it or partition it or transcribe it.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies #82 Page 6
