“What kind of animal is this?”
Cassandra spun around. Max was pointing at the tapestry with the wine goblet in his hand. Cassandra’s hands clenched again, and she closed her teeth on the curse that rose, heated and furious, through her throat. How could he stand there admiring the artwork when everything had gone so radically wrong? Without another thought, Cassandra stalked over to his side of the room, grabbed a double handful of cloth, and yanked with all her strength.
Max leaped backward as yard upon yard of heavy fabric pulled loose and collapsed into a pile at their feet.
Cassandra froze, her hands still gripping fabric, her frustration-fueled rage draining away, replaced by a shiver as understanding dawned. She stared at the lines of onyx and darkmetal, some of them as fine as hairs, some as thick as her wrists, which a great use of dra’aj had blasted into the walls behind the arras. She pulled down more of the material, though she knew what she would find.
“Wow. Look at this workmanship—why would anyone cover this?” Max’s fingertips were centimeters from the darkmetal when Cassandra came out of her trance.
“Don’t touch it,” she said, knocking his hand up. “The room is Signed.”
“Which means what, exactly?”
Cassandra pushed her hair out of her face, longing for an elastic or even a piece of string to tie it back, avoiding Max’s eye as far as she was able. She was acutely aware that she had just lost her temper in a violent and embarrassing way in front of a man she was supposed to be protecting. And she was more than a little irritated to find that now that there really was nothing she could do, she could relax.
“A Signed room,” she said, trying for the steady voice she used to teach the youngest students, “falls from the mind, everyone’s mind, except the one whose dra’aj,” she waved her hand in the air to beckon the words to her, “powers it.” She couldn’t think of another way to put it. “I’ve never been in such a room, though I have heard of them.” The Songs told of all things, her father used to say, back when he still cared for such things as the Songs told of. “There’s an old Song that tells of two lovers—or they may have been rebels—who were sealed into a Signed Room. The Rider who had sealed them, so the Song goes, was killed on her way to report the deed to her Prince.” Cassandra shivered as she reached out and touched the stone wall between the lines of onyx and darkmetal. The stone was warm. “As a child I used to wake up in the middle of the night, wondering how long they had chosen to live, those two. Or if they were still alive, somewhere, waiting for the Signs to be opened.”
Max merely nodded, rubbing at the back of his neck and said, “Now I know what Schrödinger’s cat felt like.”
“Then why are you smiling?” Now that her frustration was fading, Cassandra found her irritation disappearing as well.
Max pulled out one of the chairs at the table and sat down, shifting over until he could put his feet up on another chair, ankles crossed. His black cowboy boots were dusty, and there was a bright smear of blood on the pointed toe of the left one.
“I know I should be terrified,” he said, “but I find it strangely reassuring to learn that you can lose your temper. That’s maybe the third time a normal, feeling person has shown through that yeoman-of-the-guard shell you’re wearing, and I’m glad to see her. Which one is the real you?”
Cassandra pulled out another chair and sat down, one leg folded under her. “Both, I suppose.” She frowned at him, hiding a yawn with her hand. How was it he managed not to look out of place, even dressed in his torn shirt, old jeans, and cowboy boots? He had slapped most of the dust and dirt from his clothes, but there were smudges on his face and hands that only soap and water would remove, and the Hound’s blood still glittered wetly where it had spattered him. He looked tired, too, no matter how lively his voice or his questions; his face was a stark white, even the silvered strands in his hair seeming whiter somehow among the black, as if everything about him was tired and drawn thin. Only his green eyes retained their sharp focus and bright jade color.
“When did you sleep last?”
Cassandra jerked upright in surprise.
Max let his feet down with a thump. He indicated the layers of tapestries with a jerk of his head. “Want to stretch out?”
Cassandra looked over at where the thick pile of fabric beckoned. Her eyes were scratchy. “More than anything in the world.”
“But?”
“I said I would give you all my answers.” Cassandra pulled the platter of food toward her, tore off a piece of the bread, and broke off a slab of cheese to go with it. “This may be our only opportunity.”
Max poured some wine into the second goblet and passed it to her. “I wish you hadn’t said that.”
“We certainly don’t appear to be in any immediate danger,” she said, finding herself reluctant to begin.
Max picked a fruit from the bowl between them that looked like an apple but smelled like a ripe peach. Now that she was about to give him “all the answers she had,” he found he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear them. Though her gray eyes glittered, Cassandra’s face was drawn with exhaustion, the delicate bones more prominent, adding for the first time an alien cast to her beauty.
If her ears were pointed, he thought, she’d look like a Tolkien elf.
“Tell me something,” he said. “Why do I annoy you so much?”
“I beg your pardon?” Her chocolate voice rumbled, almost too low to hear. She’d looked up, but not quite enough to look him in the eye.
“Look,” he said, leaning forward on his elbows and turning the fruit around in his fingers, “the person you’re pissed with, that’s not me. You’ve got me confused with someone else—you must have.”
Cassandra slowly chewed a mouthful of cheese and washed it down with a swallow of wine. When it became apparent that she wasn’t going to say anything, Max tried again.
“I know who I am. I’m Max Ravenhill. I’ve never met any of you people,” he held his hands up as she opened her mouth. “I know, I know, you say I don’t remember. But that’s just it. I do remember. Look, history’s my field and we’re talking about my history. And I remember all of it. No blackouts, no time unaccounted for. No amnesia. You see what I’m getting at?”
Cassandra looked away from him, her lower lip between her teeth. Finally she seemed to come to a decision.
“Max Ravenhill is a construct,” she said, “a fiction. Your memories, everything before the last fifteen years, are fake.”
“Impossible.” Max smiled, feeling the weight fall away in relief. This was the wildest thing yet, no one could expect him to believe this.
“More impossible than the Hound? The Portal? Check the level of the wine, has it gone down? Are there fewer pieces of fruit in the basket? More impossible than that? Than this?” Cassandra Moved suddenly to the Signed wall and by the time his eyes had shifted to her, startled, she stood behind him, hands on his shoulders. When he flinched, she removed her hands and was once more facing him from her seat across the table, the air faintly cracking around her.
“That doesn’t mean—” he began, with the feeling of a drowning man clutching at a piece of floating wreckage.
“Think of a memory,” she said, tucking the curling strands of her hair behind her ears, “something no one else could know.”
Max licked his lips. He didn’t need to think very long. He wasn’t kidding when he said that he knew his own history. Forget it and you’re doomed to repeat it, that’s what Santayana said, and if there was anything Max didn’t want, it was to repeat his own history. And of all the events of his life, there was one that even now Max could barely bring himself to think about, let alone say aloud. But he had to be sure, and this was the one incident Cassandra couldn’t possibly know. Max had been the only one there, and he had never been able to tell anyone, not the police, not his friends, not the grief counselor.
He found he could not look at her when he finally spoke.
“What was Franny singing?”
he asked, his eyes flicking to Cassandra’s face, pale as ivory, even as he willed them away. She had shut her eyes, but not before he’d seen the light in them change, not before he’d seen a depth of sorrow in them that shook him. Max began to tremble.
“ ‘Someone to Watch Over Me,’ ” she told him, in her voice like melted chocolate, her eyes still closed, as if she could not face him.
Max turned away, raising his hands to a face suddenly numb with cold, even as he was shaking his head in useless denial. As if he were watching a scene in a play from his seat in the audience, he saw himself falling forward from his chair, hands over his face; saw Cassandra in front of him, her hands out to catch him; felt her fingers biting into the rigid muscles of his upper arms.
“No.” His voice was so hoarse it seemed to come from someone else. “You can’t know this. You can’t.”
“I do know. I was there when we gave you the memory, that one and many others.”
He pushed her hands away and stood up. Cassandra remained on her knees for only an instant before she got slowly to her feet. Max had raised his arms to ward her off when he realized that she wasn’t reaching out for him.
“You gave them to me? How could you do this? What kind of sadists are you?” His lips trembled, his throat closed on a sob. How could they have given him the sight of Franny in the bathtub, her veins open?
“I could tell you that they are human memories, no better and no worse than those of other humans. It would not be a lie, but it would not be the whole truth.”
“Oh, by all means, let’s have the whole truth!” He threw himself back in his chair, fighting to take an even breath, and glared at her.
Cassandra sat slowly down in her own chair, an expression of weariness and, Max thought, regret, on her face. Good, he thought, gripping his chair arms fiercely. He didn’t, he couldn’t believe her, but that she could even pretend what she was saying was the truth . . .
Cassandra picked up her glass and drained it. Max concentrated on the movement of her throat as she swallowed.
“We learned we couldn’t make things easy for you,” she said at last, replacing her goblet on the edge of the table. “You weren’t a man to whom ease could be given. You accepted it only if it was hard won, and at your own hand.”
“How convenient.”
“I make no excuses,” she said, her storm cloud eyes focused on the goblet. “I tell you only what is true, whether you like it or not. When the Banishment began, and we Wardens arrived here to accept your custody, we found you had no memory—a side effect, we thought of the Chant of Binding that made the Banishment possible. We told you who you were—why not? Your dra’aj had been bound, but you’d be sure to notice that you didn’t age and die like humans. It was the simplest way to explain what we were, and why we were with you. But after time passed, you began to forget what you’d been told, forget who we were; you began to act . . . erratically, as if your mind was being erased.”
“Alzheimer’s?” Intrigued despite himself, Max leaned forward.
“Not exactly, but . . .” she shrugged. “We thought it must be because you were separated from the Lands, and from your dra’aj. You’re the Guardian, after all; who could know what effect leaving the Lands could have on you? When we realized what was happening, we—well, we gave you a set of memories to replace the ones you were losing. It seemed to be the only thing that would help. We couldn’t give you your life, but giving you a whole life—as if you were human—that worked. But the pattern repeated, and after the passage of time, the memories would fade, the . . . erratic—” Max had the feeling Cassandra was using that word as a substitute for something much worse that she didn’t want to say aloud, “—behavior resurfaced, and we would give you a new life again.”
“How . . . ?” Max found he couldn’t complete his question.
But she knew what he was not asking her, and that told him more than he wanted to acknowledge about how much truth she was sharing.
“Thirty times at least,” she said, “maybe more. And we tried, many times, to give you memories of happiness and contentment. We were never successful, they wouldn’t take. These memories—like Max Ravenhill’s memories—painful and soul-searing as they may be, are no more than the echoes and shadows of your own true struggles. We found we could not change your fundamental nature, but must reproduce it as best we could. You can be happy and content, but only if you do it yourself.” She looked across at him. “Tell me, would you have wanted your life different?”
Max opened his mouth to say of course he would. But then he found himself closing his mouth, the words unspoken, as if, having heard the truth from her, he could give her nothing less than the truth himself. What would he change, exactly, about his life? Which memories to save and which to trade in? Would he choose to keep Franny alive, knowing how hard life was for her, knowing that it wasn’t what she wanted herself? This was by no means the first time he’d thought about this, not even the first time someone had asked him the question. Everyone who ever examined their own lives considered these questions eventually. They were fairly easy to answer when there was no way to relive your life.
But this woman was telling him it might have been different. That they—whoever “they” were—might have given him a different life, had they been able to change his “fundamental nature.” Today’s Max Ravenhill might never have existed. He’d always said, glibly he now realized, that no one would knowingly choose the life he’d had—but he’d always acknowledged that his past, even Franny’s suicide, had helped to make him the person he now was. And dammit, he liked that person. He couldn’t imagine being someone else. He didn’t want to be someone else. And he’d fight to prevent becoming someone else.
Shit! he thought. I’m acting like I believe her!
He sank his head into his hands. His skull felt as if it would explode. It was impossible, but . . . no, a world in which Franny didn’t die was a world in which she’d never existed.
Max jerked his arm out of the reach of Cassandra’s hand.
“Why don’t you get some rest,” he told her, forcing the words out through the tightness in his chest and throat. “I don’t think I want to hear any more of your truth just now.”
Chapter Four
PEACE AT DAWN BRUSHED a spot of dust from the sleeve of his new shirt with a careful hand. He had dressed with great attention for this watch, and for the first time in the magenta of the Basilisk Prince. He was not sure if he was frustrated or relieved that his newly forged darkmetal glaive, blade still un-blooded, was not likely to be needed. Guarding the Solitary had not turned out to be quite as formidable a task as Peace at Dawn had half hoped. Tricky they were, so all the Songs told, but this one, a Troll, looked to have had all its trickiness beaten out of it. Peace had long suspected that the Solitaries’ reputation for being keep-both-hands-in-sight clever was highly overrated, if not a thing of Song only. Peace hadn’t met many Solitaries—there were none in the Garden yet—but he had always thought that they could not be so very dangerous.
Like the Basilisk Prince, Peace at Dawn was a Sunward Rider, and he believed the rumor that Sunwards were able to resist the tricks and machinations of even the wiliest of Solitaries much better than Riders of the Star or Moon. He’d also heard the rumors that the Basilisk Prince favored those of his own Ward over others, and while it would not do to say so aloud, Peace himself was sure of it. It only made sense, as the Basilisk Prince himself had said, that you trusted your own first. The very fact that he had been given the task of guarding the Troll proved that Peace had been noticed, and was therefore in line for important things.
The Troll was bound. The way he was caught—Peace did not like to think about the Hunt; none of the guards did. No matter that they came only to the Basilisk Prince’s call. When the rumors first flew that the Basilisk Prince was using the Hunt, many had simply not believed them. Indeed, many still did not. Peace himself took care with whom he discussed such matters; only the truly trustworthy coul
d know. Not all could see that it was necessary to use the right tool to achieve the right end, and the Hunt was clearly the right tool in this matter. Why, Peace had heard that even the Exile had been found, when everyone knew that son-of-Solitaries, Peace carefully spat into a corner, had been successfully evading capture for years, after he’d treacherously tricked and killed his Wardens. Probably with the help of the very Solitary Peace at Dawn was guarding. Brought from the Shadowlands, they’d said, and what could a Solitary have been doing there?
Peace stiffened as he heard a noise behind him like a throat clearing. He knew a trick or two himself, he thought, his lips twisting into a smile. This Solitary wasn’t going to find him easy to take in. Slowly he reached into the tiny inside pocket of his purple leather waistcoat and took out a small mirror, held it up near his right eye, and adjusted the angle of reflection until he could clearly see the Solitary behind him. Everything possible had been done to prevent the Troll’s escape. The chamber itself was large, the walls easily ten spans to a side and almost as tall, made by the Basilisk Prince himself of some smooth unjointed stone. The Child of Earth was suspended in the middle of the chamber, his limbs spread by the chains fixed to each wrist, each ankle, so that no part of his body touched the stone of the walls or floor, or anything that had come from the earth, and might therefore aid him.
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