Page 38 of A Theory of Dreaming
Thirteen
The blood remains within your veins,
Your lashes pale upon your cheeks, as dead wheat on the plain.
How sad it is, to see a maid so shackled to her form!
—from “The Garden in Stone,” by Laurence Ardor, Lord of Landevale, 82 AD
“Aloyaltypledge?”
Preston stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk. They had been wandering along the street that lined Lake Bala, warming themselves with cups of coffee, trying to ignore the menacing bite of the wind. Preston was doing a better job of that than Effy. But when they’d passed by a newsstand where that day’s issue of thePosthung front and center beneath the awning, Preston had frozen in his tracks like a deer.
Effy grimaced. She had not wanted to admit that she had been at Dean Fogg’s office, that she had fed Finisterre the tip. It all felt very slimy. And, she suspected, it would only add to Preston’s neuroses if he knew she was engaging in these sorts of perilous and underhanded tactics.
DEAN FOGG TAKING ORDERS FROM WEALTHY BENEFACTORS—WHOREALLYCONTROLS THE UNIVERSITY OF CAER-ISEL?
Below, there was an inked drawing of Dean Fogg with exaggerated proportions—including an enormous white hairpiece—suspended limply on strings like a puppet. Holding the strings was a cackling, maniacal-looking figure, wearing a gargantuan brocade robe and powdered wig, cartoonishly representing the outdated dress of the aristocracy. A bit on the nose, Effy thought, but it certainly got the point across.
The first paragraph read:Lord Benedict Byron Southey, 8th Baron of Margetson, has been discovered pressuring Dean Fogg to institute conservative reforms at the university, in exchange for a generous endowment. One of these proposed reforms is a university-wide pledge of loyalty, which all students will be instructed to sign, demonstrating their unflinching fealty to Llyr in the face of its ongoing war with Argant.
Preston looked so baldly outraged that, for a moment, Effy didn’t dare speak. Choosing her words deliberately, she said, “It’s good he’s been caught. I hope he and Dean Fogg are both humiliated.”
“A loyalty pledge is just tyrannical and primitive,” Preston said. “We’re university students, not political agitators, not soldiers. ‘Swear fealty to no cause but knowledge,’ indeed.” He gave a disgusted shake of his head. “Finisterre is trickier than I imagined. How do you think he found out?”
In the end, she could not bring herself to lie so openly and so elaborately. And so, with a pit in her stomach, Effy confessed all. Preston watched her with increasing horror as she spoke.
“Effy, why?” he asked in dismay when she had finished. “You shouldn’t be getting involved with a reporter like Finisterre. He can’t be trusted.”
“Don’t you think I know that? I didn’t have much of a choice.”
With great reluctance, she finally mentioned the posters. By this point, Preston’s face was white.
“You should have told me,” he said in a quiet voice. “I could have helped. I could have done something—”
“No,” she said gently. “You couldn’t have. This is rather beyond the purview of a college legate.”
Preston’s face fell and instantly Effy felt remorse. She hadn’t meant it to sound so dismissive, and she opened her mouth to correct herself, but then—
“Still,” Preston said. His fingers clenched and unclenched at his sides. “Don’t hide things like this from me, all right?”
“All right,” she agreed. “But it’s fine now, isn’t it? Finisterre has been satiated, and Dean Fogg can’t implement the loyalty pledge without embarrassing himself. It’s over. I killed two birds with one stone.”
“I hope it’s that simple,” Preston said. He drew a breath and glanced out over the water. Through the wreaths of mist that hovered over the lake, and into the distance, where the black peaks of Argant’s mountains could just barely be seen, hardly clearer than a charcoal smudge on a windowpane. Effy sensed the feeling of lossradiating from him. The grief. She reached out and took his faintly trembling hand.
“Everything will be all right,” she said, with a conviction she didn’t quite feel herself. Her teeth were starting to chatter.
“Maybe.”
Preston’s expression didn’t shift, even as a gelid wind blew past them, making the flaps of his open coat whip and judder. His hair, always a bit mussed even in the best of times, was beginning to reach new heights of unruliness, which, admittedly, Effy found rather charming.
Now she frowned. “Aren’t you freezing?”
“No,” he replied, turning back to her. “In Argant this time of year everything would be slicked in ice. In the north, where my grandparents live, there are only a few hours of daylight. Just this shy creeping of yellow over the mountains.” His voice took on a scratchy quality. “My brother and I would sled down the hill outside their cottage, while my mother would be makingchocolat chaud—hot chocolate—inside. We’d come in and peel off our snowsuits and warm up, then go back out again, until the sky was black and we were exhausted. And my father—”
He broke off, looking away from her again. Effy held his hand and waited.
“My father would be doing the crossword. He could fill in the entire grid in a matter of minutes. And then, after dinner, he’d try and lure people into playing chess. My grandfather would always say,Riwan, stop looking for victims, because nobody could ever beat him. But I would always try. I stalemated him once, and I was proud of that.”
