Page 111 of Confounding Oaths
Miss Caesar raised her fragmenting hand, almost as though seeing it for the first time. “This is not beauty.”
Enthroned on silver and enrobed in starlight, the Queen of Light and Wonder leaned forwards. “The world disagrees.”
“The world—” And at this she stumbled. The world, at least the world she had been wont to move in for most of her sixteen years, had always called her unworthy. Always overlooked her. Always dangled riches in front of her and then told hernot for you.“The world …” she said again, “does not matter.”
An edge of amusement was creeping into the queen’s voice like a fox creeping into a nursery. “And who are you to speak so boldly?”
If my people have one weakness, it is that we cannot resist a challenge. And I might almost have believed that the queen was baiting the child to defy her. We so seldom taste defeat that it becomes a dish that some of us perversely savour.
For a long moment or a short age, Miss Caesar considered the question, and in the end gave the only response she could. “I am Mary Caesar.”
Titania, however, was not impressed. “That is no answer at all.”
“It is the only answer I can give. It is the only one I care for. I bargained for beauty, but you do not get to tell me whether I received it.”
“Inconstant creature.” The Queen of Twelve Winters spoke with a new contempt. As though she had hoped for more. “You were rewarded amply, and you took that reward freely.”
“I no longer want it.”
“Then,” said the queen with a glimmer in her eye like a dying star, “you may give it back.”
I thought, at first, that Miss Caesar’s failure to respond at this juncture came because she was, in the depths of the heart she no longer had, still tempted by the power of the Beauty Incomparable. It was, after all, an objectively wondrous thing whose power she had barely begun to draw upon.
I thought incorrectly.
The mask that Miss Caesar now wore protruded just fractionally from the edges of her head, although since it was contiguous with the structure of her body this delineation was purely cosmetic. Still, it was enough for her to dig in her fingertips. And to pull.
It began with a sound like a finger on a wineglass, a high, keening noise that set teeth on edge and sent sympathetic vibrations resonating through the other dancers. Then came the cracking, the sound of glass in pain. A sharp, jagged fissure spread from MissCaesar’s forehead to her chin and at last she screamed. Her voice began sharp and otherworldly, but as she pulled her tone softened and grew more natural, more human.
With a decisive snap, a long, wide shard of glass came away and beneath it was skin, fresh, deep brown, and living. On her hands as well, flakes and fragments were falling away, revealing mortal flesh, as weak as glass in its own way, but held together with sinew and hope and will.
Half-mortal now, Miss Caesar found that the glass cut as she pulled it away, blood running from her forehead and slicking her palms as she ripped herself free of that vitreous cocoon.
Looking back, in possession now of a physical body, I have more sympathy with the way that so many of the mortals present looked away. Even Miss Bickle, who ordinarily had a strong stomach for disquieting magic, averted her eyes as Miss Caesar’s bloody work progressed from her face and throat and head to the rest of her body. Only her brother and the captain watched the entire transformation. I could not say why they did. Duty perhaps. Or love.
As she had torn and fought and bled, Miss Caesar had been walking slowly forwards until at last she stood at the foot of the dais, staring up at Titania with fury. Her gown was ragged where the glass had pierced it. Her skin was cut in a hundred places. Her hair curled free about her head, and her eyes blazed.
I could not help, in that moment, finding her just a little majestic. For a human.
“You gave me nothing,” she said, “and I have returned it. You have no more hold over me.”
The Queen of Here and Nowhere held Miss Caesar’s gaze. “Pretty words. But suppose I were to keep you here. What would you do?”
“I am not alone.”
Behind her, the Irregulars formed up into a slightly shabby rank.
“A half dozen human soldiers?” Titania’s smile shifted once again, wry and unforgiving. “Do you truly think I fear swords or bullets?”
“I think,” Miss Caesar said, “that I am not alone.”
Captain James began drawing his sword, but Mr. Caesar checked him. At the four o’clock position of the circle, one of the dancers had raised her hands to her mask and was beginning to tear.
Titania froze. “These aremine.”
“They are their own. As am I.”
Once more the singing-glass sound filled the air.
