Page 123 of Confounding Oaths
Mr. Caesar was about to say that he’d take his victories where he could, especially where Jackson was concerned, when the door to the Folly opened and a woman entered. She was tall, dark-skinned, and wearing a dress of cheap, fairy-woven cloth in shadesof red and blue. Her hair was wound into a series of tight buns close to her head that looked, from any given angle, like a crown. Without her headdress and her ritual garb, it took Mr. Caesar a moment to place her.
“Amenirdis?”
She nodded.
Captain James looked up at her onlyslightlychallenging. “Back to the old stomping grounds?”
“Paying my respects,” she replied.
“Didn’t know you knew him.”
“I knowyou.”
“It was good of you to come,” Mr. Caesar told her. It wasn’t entirely his place, but the division of labour between him and the captain gave him a certain amount of leeway in social situations. “I suspect Mary will want to see you.”
Miss Caesar was sitting with her mother and sister, talking politely with Boy William, who seemed to have grown very attached to the ladies, and Kumar, who was taking advantage of slightly more refined company. When Amenirdis approached her, she rose, bid a courteous farewell to her companions, and went to speak with her.
“I feel I should thank you,” she said. “Although I confess I am unsure what you actually did.”
Although she was no longer dressed in the aspect of a priestess, Amenirdis gave a smile so enigmatic she may as well have been. “That is how the best magic works.”
They sat down together in a corner of the Folly and Miss Caesar cast about for something appropriate to say.
“Do you miss it?” Amenirdis asked. She didn’t need to say whatitwas.
Miss Caesar shook her head. “It’s like you said. It wasn’t reallyanything. A fairy trick. I just wish I hadn’t caused so much trouble.”
Laying a hand on Miss Caesar’s arm, Amenirdis shook her head. “You did not. Trouble came to you. And it will come to you again.”
A stillness fell over Miss Caesar and she felt momentarily cold. “That sounds like a prophecy.”
“Just a guess. This is a hard world for a young woman.”
They fell silent again, just a moment. And then Miss Caesar looked up. “Would you teach me—”
“No.”
“You don’t know what I was going to ask.”
“The same thing everybody asks,” said Amenirdis. “I am a witch. You want me to teach you witchcraft. I will not, it is a difficult life. I would rather you went on to be happy.”
Miss Caesar smiled like she’d won a bet. “Actually, I was going to ask if you could teach me to do my hair like yours.”
Ordinarily, witches are outwitted even less often than my kind, although when they are it is usually by children. At any rate the novelty was enough to make Amenirdis laugh. “Did you never learn?”
“Who would I have learned from? I know no women who look like me.”
“True. And yes, that much I will teach you.”
And so the evening wore on, and to my great disappointment no fights began and no gates were opened into otherworlds. Funerals, in my experience, have a tendency to go one way or the other, something about grief either brings mortals together or tears them apart. I had of course been hoping for tearing, but I was, on this occasion, disappointed.
There are disadvantages, reader, to my reliance on stories that are in no way made up or embellished. In an artificial narrative I could easily arrange for events to tie up neatly at the end, for every thread of the story to weave together like some great and perfect tapestry. Reality, however, has the awkward habit of playing Penelope and unpicking that which a narrator would sooner have left intact.
Worse, mortals have no innate sense of pacing.
The elder Mr. Caesar, along with Lady Mary, left the wake early and took their daughters with them. Respect for the dead was all well and good, but St. Giles was not without its dangers, especially for young women. Even young women who enjoyed the goodwill of a small band of armed bastards. The younger Mr. Caesar, on the other hand, remained behind. A funeral, after all, was a time to be with family, and in that moment, in that exact context, the family that mattered were the Irregulars.
It would be neater if all my principals had come together for some manner of curtain call, but, alas, they thwarted me. And so I found myself for the last time having to divide my attention between goings-on on opposite sides of the city.
