Page 76 of The Affair of the Mysterious Letter
“When have I ever wanted that?”
“Well, I shall give it to you regardless. Your best bet is to take a staggeringly large quantity of drugs, hire an obscenely expensive courtesan, and try to forget everything, starting with your name and working from there.”
I very much wanted to throw the paperweight, but I very much did not want to give her the satisfaction. Digging my nails into my palms, I said, “I don’t know why I expected you to understand.” And, with that, I left her to her drugs, her sorcery, and her bitterness.
Before the door had even closed behind me, I knew what I had to do. Dealing with the necromancers would be more straightforward, but if it went wrong it was likely that the consequences would fall on Cora’s spirit instead of mine, and I couldn’t risk that. So instead I sought an audience with Walking Upwards Unmaking.
People often think that it is difficult to meet with an Eternal Lord, but those people don’t understand the difference between difficult and dangerous. I had lived in Ven for some while, and several of my former associates were able to put the right words into the right ears. And so, two days later, I was standing at the top of a coral stair before a throne of silver and jade.
My recollection of what happened next is disjointed—as, to some extent, are my memories of everything that I’ve told you already. After all, none of these things really happened. I made certain they didn’t. But I do remember what Walking Upwards Unmaking asked of me and what I asked of her.
What brings you to this moment, Lady Eirene Viola Delhali?It’s hard to describe what it’s like to talk with an Eternal Lord of Ven. She spoke but she did not speak, and her voice echoed not in my mind but in my past.
“The woman I love is dead,” I told her.
Death is meaningless.
“Not to me.”
That is your limitation.
It was useless to be angry at a being so alien. You might as well be angry at the sky or the sea or time itself. But I’ve worked with limitations all my life, and I had no intention of being turned away. “And your tower is yours.”
You are bold for so transient a being.
“I have no reason not to be. I’ve lost everything.” I didn’t know if I was begging her or defying her. “Help me. You can name your price.”
What can you offer an Eternal Lord of Ven?
“You need agents. I can be a very good agent.”
Your lover’s death does not matter.
“Stop saying that. It matters to me.”
So it does not matter if it is undone.
To this day, I’m not sure why she chose to help me. If there’s a timeline where she has need of my services, it’s not one I’ve yet inhabited, but I don’t doubt that day will come.
Walking Upwards Unmaking directed me to a narrow chink in a ruined wall in the depths of Ven. When I passed through it and returned to the surface, I found that I had arrived a few days before Cora’s trip to the salt mines. I wasted no time in tracking down a supply of Carcosan bullets and then, since my past self provided an unbreakable alibi, I stole a winged horse from the Hippocrene and flew to Aturvash. I arrived a full day before Cora, which gave me plenty of time to make enquiries and scout the roads.
I knew that Ilona would be laying an ambush, and that she would have to be lurking by day somewhere out of sunlight. A lonely road along the cliffside was the perfect place to waylay a traveller, and a cave a little way from the road the perfect place to hide. And, sure enough, there she was, asleep in a coffin full of soil. Vampires are terrifying creatures if they can fight you on their own terms. If they can’t, they aren’t. I shot her in the head and the heart without hesitation or remorse.
On my journey back to Khelathra-Ven I began to experience something strange—flashes of a different life, like the hazy recollection of a dream. I remembered Cora’s return from Aturvash. The restaurant we had visited to celebrate her successful deal with the salt merchants. The night we shared afterwards. In that moment, I truly believed I had changed everything. And I had, everything except myself.
When I returned through the portal, by some Vennish magic I did not understand, I was reunited physically and mentally with the version of myself who had lived in the timeline I had created where Cora was alive. I suppose, in a way, I became her, and the memories of my other life—the life where Cora had died, where I had struck a bargain with an Eternal Lord and killed a woman I used to care for—began slowly to fade. It was hardest at the beginning. I still loved Cora with all my heart, but I also vividly remembered mourning for her. These shadows never entirely left me and it would be comforting if I could blame them for everything that happened afterwards. But I can’t.
Cora and I married the following spring and, for a while, we were happy. Somehow I had convinced myself, or allowed Cora to convince me, that I could play the part of a company wife. That I could smile and make polite conversation at balls. That I could live respectably but frugally. That I would be content to wait through late meetings and long absences. I’ve always been an excellent actress, but it’sdifferent when you can’t leave the stage. We began to argue, over small things at first, like curtains for the dining room—my tastes were too exotic for the Ubiquitous Company of Fishers—and then larger ones, like money, like the way I spoke to her colleagues, like whether we would have children. Eventually, we fought about everything. And, later, we stopped talking altogether.
I began my first affair a little after our ninth anniversary, an occasion we had both remembered but pretended we hadn’t. For a while it helped. It made me feel free again and desired again. Like myself again. But none of it lasted, and afterwards it was worse. I was sure Cora knew, that I had confirmed all her fears and her parents’ predictions about Carcosan women. Yet still she said nothing.
She said nothing about the next affair or the next. I lost count of the lovers I took. I felt little. They meant less. And now I hardly saw Cora at all. She was always working and usually travelling, while I was trapped in the shell of the life we’d made together. Out of loneliness, or resentment, or a mixture of the two, I began to invite strangers into our home. Even after fifteen years of marriage, I wasn’t so cut off from my past that I couldn’t surround myself with colour and chaos if I wanted to. And at last Cora took notice. But only because the Ubiquitous Company of Fishers did. A companywoman’s wife could be as miserable as she pleased, but she could not be scandalous.
We fought terribly after that. Still, it was better than the silence and, in some strange way, we were closer than we had been for years. But spite is like any other stimulant—the more you depend on it, the larger the dose needs to be. And so my indiscretions grew ever more excessive, my excesses ever more indiscreet. Cora’s progression within the company stalled as customers and trading partners began to shy away from her. She had a chance to redeem herself when, in our eighteenth year of marriage, she secured consideration from one of the most powerful trade clans in Seravia. Their khan came to Khelathra-Ven himself to finalise the terms of the deal. And then I seduced his wife.
The Ubiquitous Company of Fishers lost an opportunity worth four hundred full Seravic chants of commerce, and Cora was branded a liability and expelled. I had expected her to be angry at me, to rage and to scream and to curse me by every god and power in the multiverse. Instead she sat at the foot of the bed we had not shared in years and wept.
I left the next day. I took rooms in Ven and hid myself away from the world. And then unbidden dreams and buried memories led me back to the top of a coral stair and a throne of silver and jade.
