by Alexis Hall
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’s different 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.
What brings you to this moment, Lady Eirene Viola Delhali?
I did not know. “Have I been here before?”
A thousand times, a thousand ways, in a thousand worlds.
“I’ve destroyed the only person I ever loved.” Saying it aloud almost killed me. I almost wanted it to.
Love is meaningless.
“That is the least true thing I’ve ever heard.”
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.”
You have already made this bargain.
Dimly, I remembered. “Then what can I do? I can’t live like this.”
Your life does not matter.
“I know.”
So it does not matter if i
t is undone.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
The Conclusion
“And the rest,” the elder Mrs. Viola said, “you know. I came out of a portal in Keeper’s Shallows some twenty years in my past, I made my way to the surface, and I wrote the first letter. I knew it would hurt you both, but not nearly so much as a life together would.”
Miss Viola put her fingers to her temples, murmuring in a despairing tone, “I knew I was messed up. I didn’t know I was quite this messed up.”
“Messed up,” agreed Ms. Haas, “but terribly, terribly interesting. I’m starting to remember why I was quite so taken with you. I assume”—she turned to the elder lady, who I shall henceforth refer to as Mrs. Viola to distinguish her from the younger Miss Viola—“that was you on the train?”
“I knew Ilona was still out there, and I couldn’t be certain you’d stop her.”
“So were you trying to save us, or did you think that you and Cora were still on board?” enquired Ms. Haas, apparently far more interested in the finer points of time travel than in the possible ruination of two women’s lives. “I’m not really sure how memory works when you come from a future that no longer exists.”
“It’s fuzzy. I remember a lot of things, and I know that some of them are true, and some of them aren’t anymore.”
Ms. Haas seemed quite unacceptably enthusiastic. “Well, isn’t that fascinating? I have so much to ask you.”
“Excuse me,” interrupted Miss Beck, “can the quinquagenarians in the party focus on the fact that Eirene and I spend the next twenty years systematically destroying each other?”
“I’m sorry.” The elder lady approached her and took her by the hand, but Miss Beck wrenched herself free.
“Don’t you touch me. Don’t you ever touch me.”
Mrs. Viola swallowed, her voice hoarse with unshed tears. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ve never wanted to hurt you.”
“There’s no point apologising to me. You haven’t done anything yet. Maybe you should have had this conversation with the woman you cheated on for ten years.”
“I tried. It was just too hard.”
Miss Beck stormed over to the Lake of Stars and stared furiously into the water. “It was too hard for you to talk to your ——ing wife. But it wasn’t too hard to rewrite the universe?”
“Oh, come on,” interjected Ms. Haas. “Do you not think it’s just a little bit romantic?”
“You are not helping, Shaharazad,” shouted Mrs. and Miss Viola in unison.
“But that’s the exact problem, isn’t it?” Miss Beck whirled back round. “All of you, except maybe the boring man with the buckles, secretly, deep down thinks it’s a little bit romantic.”
“Actually,” I offered, “I do think the gesture has a certain peculiar honour to it.”
“You know what I think has a peculiar honour to it? Telling the truth and making a ——ing effort.” Miss Beck looked somewhat confusedly between the two Eirene Violas. “Has it never occurred to you, Eirene, that I know who you are? I mean, I didn’t know about the vampire or the jewellery heists or the man you fed to a mad god, but that’s just details. You don’t fall in love with a woman like you and expect her to be happy with dinner parties and weekends in Aviens.”
Mrs. Viola folded her arms. “Actually, Cora, that’s exactly what you expected.”
“Did you ever ask me? Or did you just assume and start ——ing opera dancers?”
It was at this moment that Miss Viola burst extravagantly into tears.
“Oh, for pity’s sake,” growled Mrs. Viola, “now look what you’ve made me do.”
Miss Viola glared at her future self. “Shut up, Eirene. I can’t believe you’ve managed to ruin my life in two universes. And now you’re arguing with my fiancée because you were too much of a coward to talk to your wife.”
Miss Beck looked quite gratified by this. “Well said.”
“And you’re just as bad. You haven’t even let me speak to myself. All you care about is how this affects your life and your career and your future and how this reflects on you.”
Mrs. Viola let out a long breath. “I’ve wanted to say that for twenty years.”
Miss Beck opened her mouth but closed it again immediately. And then a strange silence fell upon our strange company.
Finally, Miss Viola, having regained some of her composure, spread her hands in helpless despair. “So we’re bad for each other? In multiple worlds, across multiple realities. What happens now?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” replied Mrs. Viola. “You do what I’ve been trying to get you to do for the past month. You walk away.”
Miss Beck fixed the future version of her future wife with a hard stare. “No offence, Eirene, but you are clearly a massive liability. There’s no way I’m going to you for advice.”
“But she’s me.” Miss Viola produced a handkerchief from some delicate recess and began dabbing at her face. “If you don’t want to deal with her, you don’t want to deal with either of us.”
“No, she’s not. She’s you after twenty years in a failed marriage. You’re you right now, and I’m in love with you.”
This caused Miss Viola to shed fresh tears. “Don’t be absurd. We’re destined to hurt each other.”
“Destiny”—Ms. Haas lit her pipe—“can go hang itself.” She did not say “hang.” “And, in my experience, everybody hurts everybody. The trick is picking the kind of hurt you want to live with.”
Miss Viola reached for Miss Beck’s hand. “You don’t want my kind of hurt. You’ve seen what I’ll do to you. You shouldn’t have to go through that.”
“So don’t make me. All I’ve seen is what you’ll do to me if you spend our whole life together thinking you’ve got to hide who you are.”
“I’m afraid,” said Miss Viola very softly, “you won’t like who I am.”
“I know who you are. And I love you.”
“But what about your career? You can’t be mistress of the Ubiquitous Company of Fishers before you’re fifty if your wife attends Marvosi sex parties and steals paintings.”
“Oh, blow my career.” Miss Beck did not say “blow.” “I don’t want my position to come on the back of your sacrifices.”
“And I don’t want to take away everything you’ve worked for.”
Miss Beck curled her fingers through a lock of hair that had made its escape from her fiancée’s convoluted coiffure. “Most of what I’ve worked for has been making my family proud and other people rich, and I want to get the rewards of that one day, but until I met you, I didn’t realise how much more there was in the world.”
“Who could possibly have imagined”—Ms. Haas blew a contemptuous smoke ring in the direction of the ambiguously happy couple—“that there would be more to life than the price of halibut in Pesh.”
“I’m beginning to think,” said Miss Beck, “that we should continue this conversation in private. And by the way, Ms. Haas, it’s one and two-eighths forints a pound.”
Mrs. Viola stared at her younger self in open incredulity. “Are you seriously going to go through with this, despite everything I’ve done and everything I’ve told you?”
Miss Viola and Miss Beck exchanged a long, intensely private look.
“Yes.” Miss Viola drew her fiancée’s arm through her own. “I rather think that we are.”
“Isn’t young love grand?” remarked Ms. Haas. “And look at it this way, future Eirene, you’ll have a lovely surprise, or at the very least a surprise, waiting for you when you go back through the portal. Now come along, Wyndham. We’re done.”
And we were, for thus concluded the affair of the mysterious letter.
EPILOGUE
Although we were well into the small hours of the morning by the time we returned to 221b Martyrs Walk and although I had work the following day, I was far too excited b
y the culmination of our recent adventure to retire immediately. I settled into the wingback chair, eager to reminiscence with my companion about the remarkable experience we had just shared.
“May I take this moment,” I said, “to congratulate you on the truly extraordinary feats of deductive reasoning that allowed you to penetrate this seemingly impossible mystery?”
Ms. Haas did not even stir from her supine position on the chaise. “You may not.”
“But however did you realise that the blackmailer was none other than Miss Viola herself?”
“My dear Wyndham, nothing could have been more . . .” She waved an apathetic hand. “What’s the word?”
“Elementary?”
“Gods, no. Ghastly turn of phrase. Obvious. I think that’s what I’m looking for.”
I considered this. “You must think me very foolish, but I fail to see what was so very obvious about it.”
“Crime is always tawdry and the criminal is usually someone close to the victim and, really, who could have been closer? Or, for that matter”—Ms. Haas’s lips twisted into something resembling a smile—“more tawdry.”
“I thought her behaviour showed a commendable affection for Miss Beck.”
“It showed a commendable affection for drama.”
It would have been more politic to let this slide but, buoyed by our recent success, I spoke up. “Ms. Haas, during only this escapade you fought a necromancer at a company ball, were arrested twice, conjured unspeakable blasphemies in a street brawl, rode into Vedunia on a storm, made a scene of yourself at a literary salon, and, most recently, arranged for the resolution of our investigation to be played out at the stroke of midnight beside a magic puddle.”
“As I said: commendable.”
We were silent a little. “Madam,” I remarked with some concern, “if you will forgive the observation, you do not seem very happy.”