The Left Hand of Memory (Redlisted)

by Sara Beaman

  “You hit me,” she says. She states the words simply, without emotion.

  I shrug.

  “You are foolish,” she says just as flatly.

  “Were you watching my dream just now?”

  “Child,” she says, “it’s safe to assume I watch everything.”

  My lips curl in distaste.

  “Mirabel appears to view you as her personal problem,” Mnemosyne says.

  “You don’t say.” I sit up, look around. “Where’s Julian?”

  “He’s waiting upstairs. He wanted to be alone.”

  She pulls up a chair and sits down with her legs crossed primly at the ankle. “I wish to… how might you put it? Level with you.”

  “All right…”

  “Mirabel is right to be nervous about you,” she says, smiling in a feral way that makes me nervous. “She realizes her mistake in altering you the way she did. In doing so, she effectively rendered herself obsolete.”

  “How do you figure?” I ask, frowning. “It’s not like I have her powers or anything.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Mnemosyne says. “What you need to know, you can learn.”

  “What do I need to know?”

  “Well, first of all, you must learn to adopt her persona. Her affect.”

  “Right. To make it through Chicago,” I say. “You told me.”

  “Not just for this one mission,” Mnemosyne says. “It seems she has all but abandoned her company. SpiraCom is adrift. Leaderless. Stories are beginning to leak into public consciousness. Stories of revenants.”

  “So? Isn’t that a good thing?”

  Mnemosyne laughs. “Yes. For you and I, it is. For the moment.”

  “So you want me to take over SpiraCom?” I ask, having trouble with the thought. “To be the new Mirabel?”

  Mnemosyne nods.

  “Won’t the Wardens know I’m a fake?”

  “If we play our cards right, it won’t matter.”

  I shake my head no. “Whatever. I won’t do it. I hate SpiraCom. I hate everything they do.”

  “You hate what Mirabel does with them,” Mnemosyne says.

  “You can’t tell me you’d run things any differently.”

  Mnemosyne leans back in her chair. “Who says I’d be running things?”

  I laugh. “You mean I’d be in charge?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sure. Right.”

  “You have autonomy now, do you not?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Up until I try to exercise it.”

  “You are young,” she says. “You need guidance.”

  “So what you’re saying is I could run the company as long as I ran it your way,” I say.

  “Exactly.”

  “So really, when you think about it, I wouldn’t be in charge at all.”

  “What does it really matter?”

  I blink. “Excuse me?”

  “Aside from this situation with Adam, what disagreements do we have?” she asks.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I say. “How about the whole question of whether or not humans are capable of governing themselves?”

  “Katherine, I promise, if you assume the helm of the company, your opinion will have weight,” she says. “You can speak for the humans so long as their cause pulls at your heartstrings.”

  I fight with myself not to roll my eyes.

  “These are details we can finalize at a later time,” she says. “But that is what I intend for you. You will replace Mirabel. You already occupy her office, after all.”

  “Sure,” I say, laying the apathy on thick. “Whatever.”

  “Now to discuss a more pressing matter,” she says. “Adam.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You really do care for him, don’t you?”

  Alarm bells go off in my head. Red lights flash.

  “I mean, I don’t want him to die,” I say, trying to make myself feel as apathetic as possible. “That’s all.”

  “Oh?”

  “I owe him. You know. For not letting me bleed out in the SpiraCom subbasement that one time.”

  “After he shot you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Right,” she says. “Well, Katherine, if you cooperate with me—if you do as you’re told without any more unflattering outbursts—I will see to it personally that Adam escapes from Romania alive.”

  “How?” I frown. “He could already be dead, for all we know.”

  “Trust me.”

  Longing sets in, an ache right beneath my solar plexus. If she thinks he’s alive…

  “Whatever,” I say, shoving the feeling down. “We’ll see.”

  She smiles wryly and stands up.

  “I said we’ll see! I haven’t agreed to anything!”

  “Whatever,” she says mockingly. “You’ll do as you’re told.”

  I don’t bother to lie about that.

  “Before you leave,” she says, “we should see to your finishing.”

  Proxy

  I follow Mnemosyne out of the front door of Markham’s brownstone and back into the stone labyrinth. She leads me down several narrow passageways to another wall, where once again she passes through with no hesitation at all, like a shopper expecting automatic doors to part. I step through the wall and find myself in a perfectly circular room lined floor to ceiling with deep shelves, each one crammed with random bric-a-brac, artifacts and curiosities, some run-of-the-mill, some gory and hideous. Floppy disks and shoe horns rest next to severed hands and human scalps. The effect is overwhelming.

  I scrunch up my nose. “What is all this stuff?”

  “My index,” Mnemosyne says.

  “Huh?”

  “You see, I remember not only my own life, which has continued for millenia, but the lives of many, many others. Some in part, some in their entirety. My memory is so vast, it requires an indexing system. Each of these items is an entry point into a stream of memory—some that were given freely, some of which I came across at random, and some of which I stole.”

  “‘Stole’?” I ask. “If you wanted to read someone’s memory, couldn’t you just do it? It seems like you can read mine just by looking at me.”

  “Some revenants have ways of making that difficult for me,” Mnemosyne says. “Mirabel, for example. She is an enduring frustration. Not only were her memories a challenge to acquire, they are all damaged in one way or another. Warped.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All other revenants of my blood remember things with uncompromising accuracy,” she says. “In other words, looking back, we can’t lie to ourselves about what happened. We remember things as they actually occurred, detail for painstaking detail.”

  “But Mirabel is different?”

  Mnemosyne nods. “I believe she has gone mad.”

  “I don’t have any problem believing that,” I say.

  “I tell you this because I am about to share with you some of her memories,” Mnemosyne says. “You must be aware that they are suspect. Don’t expect them to accurately portray past events. You should seek to glean from them no more than the cadence of her voice, her stride, the way she holds her hands.”

  “Okay. I get it.”

  “We do not have time to make you a flawless double like those she makes for herself—not for this mission, at least,” Mnemosyne says. “But, lucky for us both, the Wardens have learned to expect the unexpected when it comes to Mirabel. They shouldn’t notice slight irregularities in her affect, since her affect is generally quite irregular.”

  “All right,” I say, “but it’s not like I should have to actually talk to any Wardens. Will I?”

  “Are you asking me to predict the future?”

  “Point taken.”

  “I will give you three memories in total,” Mnemosyne says. “The first you will experience here. It will help you with her persona. Her affect. The other two I will send to you on your journey, in dreams.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you have any questi
ons?” she asks.

  “These memories are, like… first person?” I ask. “I’ll have to be Mirabel?”

  Mnemosyne gives me a flat look.

  “All right,” I say. “Stupid question. Let’s get this over with.”

  Mnemosyne walks to a shelf, pulls a fork out from behind a fishbowl full of human hair, and extends it to me. I grab the pronged end, and then—

  ***

  The chauffeur pulls through the circular drive around the sundial and stops the car in front of Julian’s front door. I wait in the back seat as he gets out, walks around the front of the vehicle, opens my door for me and offers his hand to help me out. I take it gingerly, wondering about his hygiene, and swing my feet out onto the white pavement.

  Someone opens the front door for me. Someone else gathers my luggage. I stand still for a moment, inhaling the humid night air, extending my senses. Beyond the doorway, a few paces into the foyer, Julian waits, fidgeting with the hem of his jacket, trying to brush wrinkles out of his shirt. Beyond the foyer, servants mill about in the ballroom, chopping radishes, decanting wine, arranging sunflowers in oversized vases. I reach out still further, combing the premises for a particular sort of individual, one without breath or pulse. Has Julian initiated yet another young death this year—an overdose or a motorcycle accident or a drowning? Or will we dine alone tonight?

  There. Down in the bowels of the labyrinth, in a four-room suite, lying in bed and staring at the ceiling is a revenant. This one is a girl—a young one, it seems, looking at her face. Flawless skin. Thick, wavy black hair. Bright blue eyes, slightly glassy. A spark of recognition ignites my memory. I recall snippets of overheard conversations in Chicago, whispers about the raid on Zenas Markham’s estate, the initiate they rescued from his basement. A petite, doll-like girl with black hair. What was her name? Mariah. I met her once, years and years ago, back when she was still among the living. They must have sent her to live with Julian after all.

  I put on a smile and walk inside to meet Julian. The pleasantries we exchange are so familiar, so regular, they’ve achieved a kind of ritual status in my mind. I can run myself through them like a computer might run a program. Julian leads me toward the ballroom, where we will share a meal and some recollections of times so long past their meaning has long since faded for me. Neither of us will mention the only memories which still hold potency for both of us—those of Lucien Verlinden. I don’t know why Julian never speaks of him, nor why he dodges the issue any time I bring him up. I have learned not to care.

  Meanwhile, my mind, my attention, my senses wander. I check in elsewhere. One of my proxies is attending a charity benefit in Washington, DC, chatting with corporate executives. Another proxy sits in a red-walled bedroom in Chicago, looking out at the night sky, waiting to meet with Christopher Carlyle. Still another is back in Atlanta, tutoring a new recruit, a fledgling. Voice training.

  I follow Julian further into the estate, into the ritual. The conversation is always the same; the meal is always different. He usually favors French cuisine, but tonight the scent from the kitchen is heavier, almost like a curry. Every year the decorations change, though there are always sunflowers. This year, in the ballroom, tiny lights are strung up everywhere, and the usual massive dining table has been replaced with little cast-iron cafe tables. On its own, the tableau might look deserted, but Julian has created an illusory chorus of phantom guests that fill the space, eating at other tables, milling around the room, looking out at the garden through the open windows. The murmur of voices speaking in French and Italian fills the air.

  Julian and I sit across from one another at a table set for three. I cross my legs at the ankle and wait to be served, still running through lines. He asks me about my work; I throw him inconsequential anecdotes just to placate him. He does not want real answers to his questions any more than I wish to give them.

  Julian’s servants bring us wine, bread, and salads. The proxy in DC is about to be served a third glass of champagne; I have her cover her glass with her hand and shake her head with a polite smile. The proxy in Chicago checks her makeup in a mirror, re-applies lipstick. The proxy in Atlanta sits across from her fledgling counterpart at a folding table and waits patiently for her to finish crying.

  “You might be wondering why our table has a third setting,” Julian says, and for the first time since my arrival I pay attention to his words.

  “Mm?”

  “I’m not sure you’ve heard,” he says.

  “Heard what?”

  “The Wardens have given me a charge,” he says. “Zenas Markham’s initiate.”

  I feign surprise. “Really.”

  He nods and takes a bite of his salad.

  “Why on earth did they give her to you?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “Jennifer had something to do with it.”

  Jennifer Schuster. The Watcher of Atlanta. I hate her.

  “How long has she been here?” I ask.

  “A week.”

  “This is the same girl he had back in his place in Chicago eons ago? With the braids?”

  Julian shrugs. “I suppose so.”

  “The girl with the huge blue eyes?” I ask. “You stayed with her in that row house Markham had, waiting for him to arrive, right up until… well, everything with Mnemosyne.”

  “So I did,” he says, looking down at his plate.

  “It must be comforting for her to be staying with someone she knows,” I say.

  “She doesn’t remember me,” Julian says. “It seems that Markham did some terrible damage to her mind, her ego. She doesn’t remember much of anything before being locked in his basement all that time. She behaves like a child.”

  “I’ve met other childhood initiates who never quite matured into adults,” I say, thinking of Jennifer Schuster.

  “It’s more than that, I should think,” Julian says. “She appears physically to be an adolescent, but she has the manner of someone much younger than that.”

  We both pick at our salads. In Chicago I hear the sound of a key turning in a lock. Carlyle. I put my lipstick in my purse, smack my lips, brush a few strands of hair out of my eyes. I wonder what he thinks of this business with Markham.

  “Do you imagine she’ll be joining us tonight?” I ask Julian.

  “Perhaps,” he says.

  In Atlanta my fledgling finally composes herself. I hand her an open pamphlet across the table and request that she start reading aloud.

  In Washington someone taps their glass with a fork, sending several sour-note chimes through the air.

  In Savannah Julian’s ward wanders into the ballroom through a side door, dressed only in white underwear. She looks around, alternating between a squinting frown and wide-eyed staring. Julian chokes on a swallow of wine, coughs and sputters. Suddenly the girl seems to be clothed in a modest shift dress, blue with white Swiss dots.

  “This isn’t the first time,” he tells me in an undertone. He stands, waves, and beckons the girl to our table. She weaves between phantom guests, approaching at a snail’s pace, looking at the ceiling, at the floor, at the windows—anywhere but at us.

  “Mariah,” Julian says as she sits down in the empty chair, “this is my daughter, Mirabel Radcliffe. Mirabel, this is Mariah Markham.”

  For a long moment the girl says nothing.

  “Mariah?” Julian says.

  “Aya,” she says.

  “Pardon?” says Julian.

  “My name’s not Mariah,” she says, scratching her chest through illusory fabric. “It’s Aya.”

  Julian raises both eyebrows.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Aya,” I say.

  She glances at me for an instant, then looks away. Something about her face is off. Something I didn’t notice until she looked directly at me. She’s highly reminiscent of the other girl, the one at Markham’s estate—perhaps similar enough to be her twin—but she is not the same person.

  Some servants come and take our plates aw
ay, leaving a salad for the girl.

  “What is this for?” she asks.

  Julian blinks. “It’s food.”

  The girl brings a hand to her sternum and rubs her chest. She stares at her salad without making any indication that she plans to eat it.

  In Chicago, Carlyle enters the room and looks at me with heavy-lidded eyes.

  In Washington, I pretend to listen to a balding oil tycoon making a speech I don’t care about.

  In Atlanta, my fledgeling wipes her nose with her bare wrist.

  “Look at me, child,” I command the girl.

  She flinches slightly and turns her face towards mine. An expert copy of Zenas Markham’s Mariah. But not her. Of this I am certain.

  In Chicago, I ask Carlyle, “Did you ever find Zenas Markham? I heard there was an exchange at his estate.”

  He laughs. “It’s always business with you.” He grabs my waist, pulls me toward him, and reaches up the back of my skirt.

  In Savannah I laugh.

  “You don’t fool me,” I tell the girl.

  Julian makes a tight-sounding laugh. “Uh, Mirabel?”

  “I have a photographic memory,” I tell him. “Nothing I see degrades over time. Moreover, as an illusionist, you taught me to see things as they really look. To look at the object, not at my impressions or preconceptions.”

  “What are you getting at?” he asks.

  “This face is based on someone’s memory. A good memory, but not a perfect one. This is a copy of Mariah Markham.”

  The girl says nothing.

  “I’d guess this ward of yours is none other than Zenas Markham himself,” I say. “Playing a game with the Wardens.”

  “Are you serious?” Julian asks.

  The girl stands up, shaking her head. “It isn’t true! It isn’t! I don’t remember much but I’m not—I’m not that man.”

  Julian brings a hand to his mouth.

  “I’m not!” the girl insists, tears pooling in her eyes. “Maybe he made me look like that girl. I don’t know! He did terrible things…”

  I laugh. “You’re a poor actor, for a Thalian.”