The Fall of Ventaris

by Neil McGarry

  “Clearly not. Still, all’s well that ends well.” Tremaine smiled, clearly satisfied with herself.

  Duchess blinked. “Are you mad? How can you be so calm at a time like this?”

  Tremaine laughed. “You’re never pleased, are you? The battle’s over, and we are quite clearly the victors.”

  Duchess could hold it in no longer. “And the war is about to begin,” she hissed.

  Tremaine’s smile did not falter. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “Before today, the cult of Ventaris was ascendant. When the empress left that dais, she said — and I quote — No one may say what the gods have in store for us.”

  Tremaine nodded. “Her first proclamation in an age. Clearly, she does not intend to declare her preference as to which faith may replace Ventaris at court.”

  “And how will they decide that? When the keepers struggled to select their leader it ended in murder. What will they do if preeminence at court is at stake?”

  Tremaine shrugged. “We’ve not seen such a conflict for eight years or more.”

  “During the War of the Quills,” Duchess finished, her heart sinking. “If the empress decides Ventaris’ fall is our fault, she could have both our heads on pikes.”

  Tremaine shook her head. “You’re overreacting,” she replied. “Violana said many things, but she never mentioned you, nor the Atropi, nor Jadis. You’re in the heart of Garden District, surrounded by Whites. If the empress wanted your head she’d have taken it.” Their carriage finally appeared at the end of the line. “Still, you should not be too hard on yourself. For a Shallows girl this was a surprisingly subtle piece of work. You have potential, even if you still have much to learn.”

  Duchess pinched her nose against worry and weariness. “Such as?”

  Her ill humor touched Tremaine not at all. “That you are not half as clever as you think you are. You do realize that pitiful drawing you gave me did not fool me for an instant, yes?” Duchess gaped, but the guildmaster merely smiled. “I knew quite well the dress was no longer in the Atropi’s shop, but what I did not know was whether you would have the nerve to actually try to find it.”

  “How did you know I was ever there at all?” Duchess countered, trying to hold steady although the world was falling away beneath her.

  “The colors you named were consistent with what Rebecca had already told me.” Duchess blinked. “I know Rebecca spies for the Atropi, but unlike them I don’t rely on my birth to get what I want. Rebecca knows that, as guildmaster, I can do far more for her than a trio of nattering old women, so her true loyalties are not hard to secure. She feeds them information about me, of course, but in the final balance, I end up ahead.”

  “Then why send me at all?”

  Tremaine’s mask of cool contempt dropped for a moment. She looked at Duchess plainly as their carriage slowly approached. “In Rodaas, the likes of us do not thrive without sacrifice. It is more than merely hard work, it is a certain — numbing, a coldness required to stand against our foes and triumph. Your work at the shop, and your willingness to lie to me when you did not succeed, showed me that you were beginning to learn that lesson.”

  Duchess was spared the need to reply by the arrival of their carriage. Tremaine accepted a hand up from the coachman and Duchess climbed in after her. It seemed that she was not the most skilled player in this game, not by far. Both Jadis and Tremaine had outmaneuvered her.

  “So what happens now?” she asked.

  Tremaine looked out the window as the carriage lurched into motion. “Now you and your friend will run your business, I shall move to fill the void left by the Atropi, and the cults will fight for supremacy.” Tremaine turned to her, a wicked gleam in her eye. “Yes. I believe that my first act shall be to order my guild brothers and sisters to produce as much roughspun cotton as we can manage,” she said at last. “After all, with war coming, someone will have to weave the shrouds.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: What she left behind

  From the comfort of Tremaine’s carriage Duchess watched the beauty of the Garden District pass, but the wonder around her could not displace the tumult in her mind.

  Her scheme had worked, and with some good fruning she would soon prove to the Grey that anyone who struck at her had better be prepared for what followed. Yet for all her careful planning things had all spun so very far out of control. Somehow, her revenge had managed to touch every level of the city, from the Deeps all the way up to the imperial palace itself. She’d cozened Darley, befriended Finn, blackmailed Preceptor Amabilis, and yet Jadis had proven an even more clever manipulator than she. She could not blame him — he did what anyone else would have done, her included — and in fact felt a certain grudging admiration. His talk of faith had not been mere words. When she’d come to him for help ruining the dress, he had handed her a solution without knowing how it would benefit him.

  Faith is the ability to live comfortably in not knowing.

  And there was so much she did not know. She thought of Jana and her cards. She thought of the hollow voice that had called her fool. Of He Who Devours, watching from afar. Of Margueritte lost in the mirrored surface of Anassa’s mask. Of her brother Justin and what he could have given her. She sighed and lay her head against the carriage window as the crumbling grandeur of the ancient Domae rolled past.

  A litany. What I know. And what I should fear.

  And, oh, there was so very much to fear. Beyond the prospect of war amongst the cults was the uncertainty of herself. She’d told Terence, had told the facet, that the girl they sought was dead. Yet like Castor, struggling to be Pollux, she could not leave what she had been behind. Nothing was safe, nothing was known. Jadis would laugh to hear it.

  A thread is added, leading to unknown glories.

  Yet Anassa had promised her victories to come. She’d matched wits with the best the city had to offer and had won. She’d started a business that, with the empress’ own endorsement, looked more than promising. She’d found a new friend with whom to share that venture. Lysander was still healthy and at her side. And as her work at the Fall would demonstrate, she was a player in the city and not just a pawn.

  An errant mote, flitting about the wheel.

  She found the coin in her hand before realizing she’d fetched it from the pocket where it had been secreted. She kept it at her side, always, the mark that had begun all of this. The mark that had pointed Hector at the dagger that was Mayu’s Key. The mark that had led her to the Grey.

  A tattered figure dancing in the ruins...the end of light and life, of self and sin, all of it eaten up by the mists.

  She held the piece of brass, the snake and the letter P barely visible in the dim lamplight. She ran her thumb over its surface again and again, as if seeking some clue in the pattern. Suddenly she was back in Minette’s office, after the dagger’s theft, when the Vermillion’s mistress had told her of the game she followed, and the players involved. Of the pattern of stagnation and upheaval, laid out like so many tiles across the whole history of the edunae, and perhaps back to when the Domae laid claim to the great hill. They had both looked at Minette’s own mark, the one that had once belonged to Gelda. The one that had safely ensconced Duchess in Noam’s bakery. “Some might wonder if the coins bring the storms, or if they simply herald them,” as she herself had put it.

  They call me many things. But none of these are my name.

  Her stomach twisted and she lay her head once more against the window. Perhaps P had gotten his mark’s worth in the end. Battle was about to break out amongst the faiths, a conflict to rival the War of the Quills. That storm had fallen at the behest of her father, and had ended with his death, and that of his House. And now another storm was about to begin, and the only source she could see was herself.

  A change is come.

  She had told Savant Terence that Marina had died that night, that she was now Duchess and no other. Yet it seemed that no matter what she said, what she did, what she pretended to be, it m
attered not. Whether Marina or Duchess, Silk or Steel, player of the game or fool of the gods, one thing was clear.

  She was her father’s daughter after all.

  About the Authors

  Neil McGarry and Daniel Ravipinto are, collectively, a computer programmer, afraid of heights, a former technical writer, a rabid Go-Go's fan, a board-game designer, a founding member of the Alan Turing Fan Club, an award-winning interactive-fiction author, a native Philadelphian, an ex-drummer, one heck of a party thrower, a pianist, from New Jersey, the holder of three degrees, an avid role-player, an improvisational actor, an uncle, a stand-up comedian, not particularly fond of flying, a video gamer, a lover of Halloween, a story-game/RPG developer, and an Ultimate Frisbee enthusiast. They are currently hard at work on the next installment of Duchess' story, The Ruling Mask.