Page 82 of Confounding Oaths
Mr. Caesar’s gaze drifted forlornly back to his drink. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”
Grinning, Callaghan leaned in and put an arm around Mr.Caesar’s shoulder. “You’re not among the gentry anymore. Prying is encouraged.”
“Encouraged byyou,perhaps.” Kumar shot Callaghan a stern look. “Some of us do like to show atouchmore circumspection. But in this case”—he turned to Mr. Caesar—“there is no need for apology. I could have remained silent had I wished.”
“Thank you then,” Mr. Caesar tried. “For your perspective. All of you.”
Barryson leaned forwards. “You want to thank us,” he suggested, “mebbes get the next round of drinks in.”
This much, at least, Mr. Caesar felt able to do. I followed him back to the bar where he ordered another of whatever everybody had just had, plus something for the barmaid and something for himself. And there he hovered awhile, wondering a hundred and seven different things all at once.
But, reader, I am not here to watch mortals wonder. Any contemplation Mr. Caesar wished to do in this moment he was more than welcome to do without my observation. Besides, I had other matters to attend to, for his sisters were both still players in this little drama, and it would have been remiss of me to go too long without checking in on them.
I returned, therefore, to the Caesar home where I slid into Miss Caesar’s chamber and adopted the role of Ferdinand the puppy. There is, I should stress, nothing unusual about this. It is the kind of merry jape my people play all the time. It certainly bespeaks no undue partiality on my own account. It is no concern of mine if a young woman’s choices lead her down a path of heartbreak. Certainly I am not in the business ofcomfortingmortals. That would be beneath me.
I nuzzled against Miss Caesar’s ankles, and she stooped to pick me up and, in stooping, saw that the cracks were, by now, stretching all the way to her knees.
She remained hard for me to read, being glass and light and hope wrapped in enchantment and the memories of a different girl, but in this I needed few of my ordinary senses to perceive her mood. She carried me to her bed and sat down.
“I feel nothing,” she told me.
Iruffed again.
“I think perhaps I should?” Carefully, she ran her fingertips over the spiderwebbing tracery of weakness that was spreading slowly but surely up her body. There was beauty in it still, as there is always beauty in destruction, but now she was looking, she could see how her every movement exacerbated the problem. Not, of course, by any great amount; infinitesimally, but observably.
She was not afraid. Fear is a product of biology, a wash of adrenaline secreted from little mounds of flesh that squat atop your kidneys and tell you that your horrible mortal bodies are worth preserving. When one of my kind takes an interest in one of yours, the capacity for that particular emotion is the first thing we look for ways to circumvent. Still, the new development was concerning to her, and she needed to think. Stretching herself out on the bed and holding as still as possible, she shut her eyes.
“I have not slept,” she told me.
“Ruff.”
“I used to have such dreams. I would go to so many places and do so many things.”
I curled up next to her. She was cold, which a mortal would have found strange but I found merely … atypical. “Ruff.”
“I suppose … I suppose I hoped I would not have to do them alone.”
Having only one syllable with which to communicate and being prohibited by strict laws from actually advising her in any way, Iruffed once more.
A glass tear slipped from her eye and fell, perfectly preserved, onto the sheets.
And then I sensed a movement in the air and although I was nowhere near the window, I was certain that a star had fallen. I rose to my feet and growled.
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic, Ferdinand,” said the Lady, rebuke in her voice and malice in her eye. Or perhaps it was the other way around. “It’s only me.”
Unable to make an intelligible reply, I left her free to address Miss Caesar at her leisure.
“Why do you weep, child?” she asked once more. “Have I not given you all you asked for?”
A properly brought-up young lady, Miss Caesar could not bring herself to receive a guest—even an unnatural guest—while supine. She sat up and swung herself into a sitting position, wincing slightly at the thought of what the motion was doing to her ankles. “You have,” she admitted—never admit this, reader, it’s the equivalent of saying sorry after a car accident. “But I find that I am”—she looked at her legs and hoped that the Lady would understand what she meant—“this was not what I expected.”
“Beauty is fragile,” the Lady replied. “Had you wished for strength, I would have given it to you.”
“Then I wish for strength?” Miss Caesar tried.
And the Lady laughed. I have described her laughter many times before, but I shall do so again now. We are a laughing people. Everything you need know about us, you can learn from how we laugh, and when we laugh, and what we laughat.
What I was hearing—what you would be hearing were youpresent, though you may trust that my words conjure the sensation quite precisely if you let them—was theendinglaugh. A laugh like water just themomentit falls over the edge of the waterfall. A laugh like a flash flood. A laugh like moonlight on broken glass.
