Turning Darkness into Light

by Marie Brennan

  Assuming I can persuade Dr. Pinfell to believe me.

  I envy Cora. Gleinleigh doesn’t care whether she has a social life or not, so he isn’t dragging her to this gala; he would have left her behind at Stokesley if I hadn’t insisted on her coming to shepherd the tablets to the annex (really so she’ll be available if Dr. Pinfell wants to talk to her, and so we can get her away from Gleinleigh when he finds out what we’re up to). When I left to get dressed she was still at the annex, talking to Simeon—I hope he remembers that he has to get dressed, too.

  Speaking of which. I’d better tumble up if I don’t want to be late.

  From: Audrey Camherst

  To: Isabella, Lady Trent

  1 Acinis

  #3 Clarton Square

  Dear Grandmama,

  I think I understand now what you meant in the letter you sent back in Caloris. Or if I do not . . . I still wouldn’t change a single decision I made today, which I suppose amounts to the same thing. I won’t claim my actions were perfect—you’d be right to call them downright stupid—but, well, it’s inconceivable that I could have done anything else.

  I imagine this is what it’s like to be you.

  But a scientist should provide all the data, and a philologist should know how little sense the text makes when half of it is missing. So I will start at the beginning.

  You know what the benefactors’ gala is like; you’ve been to enough of them yourself. It was the same salon, the same caterers, probably even the same band providing the music. And very much the same people, too—though I was glad to see that Alan Preston was there, looking more than a little weathered by his time fruitlessly scouring the Qajr for artifacts that were never there in the first place.

  (How much has Lotte told you? I know she’s the one who let fly about my foolishness lately. I am going to assume she’s told you everything, because otherwise this letter will be so long they’ll need a lorry to transport it.)

  Kudshayn and I were both there as guests of Lord Gleinleigh. We’re still under orders to say nothing about the tablets, but I think it’s more pro forma now than anything else; the manuscript for the translation is at the publisher’s, so there isn’t much need for secrecy anymore. So far as he knows, there isn’t much we can do to spike his guns at this point.

  We were going to do our best, though. It’s just that nothing went according to plan.

  Starting with my attempt to corner Dr. Pinfell for a private conversation. Oh, I could talk to him—for a whole two minutes, all of them very public, before he went off to greet someone else. I can’t really fault him; as Simeon says, the job of a museum director is four-fifths public relations and only one-fifth museum work, and that’s if he’s lucky. But I had expected your name to pull a little more weight with him than it did. (And I would apologize for leaning on that name without asking you first, except I know you’d be only too delighted to help expose Gleinleigh’s fraud in any way you can.)

  My fruitless efforts at chasing Pinfell left Kudshayn on his own. He mostly stood with Simeon and Alan and looked very awkward, but Simeon had to do his own share of glad-handing, and couldn’t be expected to stay with Kudshayn the entire night. When I gave up on Pinfell for the time being, I turned around to see Kudshayn alone—and Mrs. Kefford bearing down on him.

  I don’t think it’s possible to discreetly hurl yourself across a salon, but I did my best, and fetched up at Kudshayn’s side before Mrs. Kefford had gotten past the opening pleasantries. She affected to be surprised by my appearance, though she had to have spotted me coming. “My dear, how delightful to see you. I hear you are to be congratulated, with your work on its way to press now.”

  She looked like a cat that has dipped a canary in cream and is savouring each sadistic lick. “What a pity I can’t say the same,” I told her.

  I was rewarded with a slight flicker of confusion. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Congratulations,” I said. “I cannot offer you any. Ordinarily I would commend you on your husband being named Dissenting Speaker in the Synedrion—but I hear he received his post on the strength of a promise that the caeliger base will remain in the Sanctuary, and Kudshayn’s people will remain a protectorate of Scirland. Now, I am not very well versed in politics . . . but I understand that politicians tend to suffer at the hands of their own party when they fail to deliver on promises.”

  All of that was spontaneous bravado. What I really longed to do was wave her own letter in her face, the one she sent to Gleinleigh before he sailed off to Akhia. As satisfying as it would have been to watch her try and explain that away, though, I knew better than to go off half-cocked. But the whole reason they’ve gone through this rigmarole with the fake discovery is to influence the congress, so at least I could bluster about their inevitable failure.

  Mrs. Kefford gave a silky laugh. “Oh, my dear. You are right about one thing, at least—you are not well versed in politics.”

  “And you,” Kudshayn said, “do not know my people. You have readied yourself to fight creatures of your own imagining, and against them, you might win. But contend against the truth, and you will lose.”

  (Kudshayn is much better at coded allusions than I am.)

  “Will you be at the congress?” Mrs. Kefford asked.

  The question was blatantly aimed at me. She’d gone over to speak to Kudshayn—I presume to gloat—but my presence meant she could instead make a point of snubbing him, addressing me like he wasn’t even there. On a sudden inspiration, I turned to Kudshayn and said, “Notice how she didn’t respond to what you said. I think that’s because she doesn’t have a good answer.”

  “It may be,” he said thoughtfully. “And that suggests your earlier point was correct, as well. If she cannot even rebut me, I do not see how others like her hope to stand up against the elders of the Sanctuary. They are far more eloquent than I am.”

  In my peripheral vision, I could see Mrs. Kefford opening her mouth to say something, but I didn’t give her the chance to interrupt. “Well, she isn’t quite old enough yet to be counted as an elder. But perhaps in a few more years?”

  Grandmama, we routed her. Not by engaging directly—our sniping at her social and political acumen notwithstanding, she’s far too good at that sort of thing—but by making her play audience to our willful defamation. She couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Kudshayn and I kept improvising new, barely veiled insults until she finally gave up. It was that or shout over us.

  Kudshayn’s wings rattled with laughter as she stalked off. When he sobered a moment later, I thought it was because the reality of our situation had come crashing down again—until I heard a voice behind me say, “Miss Camherst. May I have the honour of this dance?”

  Of course Aaron Mornett was there. I’d even half expected it. But I didn’t expect him to come up behind me without warning. It took me so much by surprise that I couldn’t even compose the refusal he deserved; whatever incoherence I stammered out, he took it as a yes, leading me out onto the floor for a waltz.

  I shot a pleading look at Kudshayn, but by then it was too late, unless Kudshayn wanted to make a scene. Mornett and I squared up, holding each other like two bombs about to go off, and then the flow of the dance carried us away.

  Is it wrong that I briefly wondered if he had somehow managed to take credit for some other man’s dancing skill? He’s gotten a good deal better since the last time we danced, during my disastrous Season. I am still as bad as ever, of course. It should be much easier to dance well with a skilled lead, but that only works if the follow is willing to relax and be guided, which I wasn’t at all.

  Mornett could feel it, too. He said, “I would compliment you on your dress, but somehow I suspect you don’t want to hear such things from me.”

  I think my riposte was some brilliant piece of original wit like “How can you tell?”

  He sighed. “Audrey . . . Miss Camherst. Would you believe me if I said I regret our falling-out?”

  “Our falling-out,” I repe
ated, my voice flat. “But not what you did to cause it.”

  “I would like to start over,” he said. It’s good he kept to the basic waltz step, not trying anything complicated, because I would have tripped over him if he had. “Do you think that’s possible?”

  My nerves would have liked me to go on staring fixedly at his bow tie—but that would have been cowardly. The last time he and I had spoken, I’d spent nearly an hour planning what to say to him; it’s much easier for me to simply open my mouth and let words fall out. I lifted my chin and met his gaze, saying, “That would require you to be honest with me, and every piece of available evidence says you aren’t capable of it.”

  I took some satisfaction in him stumbling, losing the smooth pattern of the waltz before regaining it. “You truly think so little of me?”

  “Just now I reminded you that what happened five years ago wasn’t some accident or inevitable occurrence; it was the result of your own actions. You had a chance to admit your guilt, but instead you dodged—just as you have always done. You say you want to start over with me, but you seem to think we can just shovel dirt over the past and roses will grow.” My fingers were digging into his shoulder, harder with every step we took. “That may be your habit, but it isn’t mine. And you’re relying on that, aren’t you? I don’t know how you think I could ignore the truth in my personal life, and at the same time make plans that rely on me to—”

  (I said it’s easier for me to let words fall out. I didn’t say the results are any better when they do.)

  “Rely on you to what?” he said.

  And then we drifted to a halt, right there in the middle of the floor, as he realized. I hadn’t said it . . . but Mornett, damn him, does know me. In some ways, he understands me like no one else does.

  As you always say, Grandmama: hanged for a fleece, hanged for a yak. “We know,” I told him, my voice low.

  You’ve met the man; you know how smooth-spoken he is. For the first time, I saw him at an utter loss for words. All he managed to get out was a stuttering “How?”

  “A mistake on Gleinleigh’s part,” I said, “or more than one—certainly he underestimated his niece’s intelligence. She recognized one of the tablets in his so-called cache.”

  Mornett shaped a soundless curse. “That vainglorious fool. We told him the epic would be enough. But no, he had to make a grand discovery of it, throwing in every tablet he could get his hands on—”

  I realized, very much to my surprise, that Mornett was a little drunk. He wasn’t much for that sort of thing back when I knew him, and I don’t know whether he’s changed . . . or whether he resorted to some liquid courage before approaching me. Given where he’d tried to start the conversation, I have to admit the latter is possible.

  “Did he buy out Dorak’s whole stock?” I said.

  That was supposed to be a sour joke, but Mornett said, “Yes. And had to be talked out of staging an entire fake temple or library; he didn’t understand that people would have spotted that immediately.”

  I can believe it. Gleinleigh likes to buy the fruits of archaeologists’ labours—or rather, the things stolen out from under their noses—but has no particular interest in or respect for the science of it.

  The next part, I didn’t want to ask . . . but whether it was because of the drink or how I’d needled him about honesty, I had Mornett talking. I couldn’t let my own bruised feelings get in the way of exploiting that. “How long ago was it found, really?” I asked. Then, before Mornett could answer that, the real question tore its way out of me: “How long ago did you read the epic?”

  Just then Lady Cossimere whirled past and snapped at us to leave the floor if we weren’t going to dance anymore. If she’d prevented Mornett from answering, I swear I would have torn her ridiculous wig off. But as it happens, I can’t pin the blame on her, because something else interrupted us much more thoroughly: a sudden boom, loud enough and close enough that it rattled the crystals in the chandelier.

  The band stopped playing, and the dancers all drifted to a halt. Dr. Pinfell got up at the front of the room and told us all it was nothing, that we should go back to enjoying ourselves, but of course he had no more idea what was going on than the rest of us did, so nobody listened to him. People went to the windows and peered outside, trying to see what had caused the noise, but the Whitsea Salon is on the wrong side of the Tomphries for that. Alan had just made up his mind to go into the street and inquire when the door swung open and Cora came rushing in, hair wild and face streaked with soot.

  She isn’t one to soften things even under ordinary circumstances. Her gaze raked the crowd until she found me, and then she shrieked, “Someone has blown up the annex!”

  I don’t remember much of what followed. My mind just went white with shock. I know I ran for the door, and half the room ran with me; Simeon told me afterward that Pinfell just fainted dead away. We all stampeded outside and around to the back of the Tomphries, and at that point even people who didn’t know the museum had an annex could see where to go, because there was a sinister glow coming from Hemminge Street.

  Cora’s words meant I expected to find the entire building in rubble. It wasn’t that bad—but it was more than bad enough. I heard later that somebody threw a grenade through an upstairs window. At the time, I only saw that there was glass everywhere in the street, and then smoke billowing out of the northeast corner of the second floor.

  The very same room where, just that afternoon, we had placed the tablets of the epic for safekeeping.

  It wasn’t coincidence, either. A painted message was splashed across the pavement in front of the annex: BURN THEIR HISTORY BEFORE THEY BURN OUR CHILDREN.

  I don’t have any proof. But I guarantee you that if Zachary Hallman didn’t throw that grenade himself, he handed it to the man who did. A Hadamist slogan, and a bomb thrown into the room where the epic was held: they were trying to destroy the evidence. Without the tablets, all our accusations of smuggling would be worth less than bone dust.

  Kudshayn screamed. Even I forget sometimes that he’s related to dragons; he has wings and scales and claws, but he’s a kind and intelligent creature, better than most of the humans I know. The sound he made, though . . . it raised all the hairs on the back of my neck, a high-pitched, raw-edged keen no human throat could ever make. He lunged toward the building, wings spread, but even out there we could feel the heat; the air was hazed with smoke. It drove him back, coughing and staggering, and he fell to his knees in defeat.

  And I—

  I can tell you my reasoning, but I don’t think I consciously went through it at the time. It was like . . . sometimes, when I am translating, I get far enough into the rhythm and patterns and logic of the Draconean language that it doesn’t even feel like I am translating. I just understand the text, as if I can see it all at once. Last night I saw, in my mind’s eye, the entire situation.

  The night watchman at the street corner, cranking the call box for all he was worth, summoning the fire brigade.

  Cora shrieking at her uncle, slapping Gleinleigh’s hands away as he tried to reach for her.

  The tablets. They’re fired clay; they don’t mind a little extra flame.

  But they do mind being broken. By grenades, by collapsing ceilings, by the water used to fight the fire.

  The world seemed incredibly sharp, and at once both very close and very far away. I looked up at the smoke surging out of the broken windows, and I knew that if anything remained, I had to save it.

  Only one person there knew me well enough to guess my thoughts, and was close enough to intervene. Aaron Mornett grabbed me by the arm, hard enough to leave five perfect bruises. “Audrey, you can’t! It isn’t safe!”

  I got out of his grip and put him in a wrist lock for good measure, dropping him to one knee. My own voice sounded like a stranger’s, and strangely calm. “You may be a liar and a thief, but I thought you at least had enough integrity not to destroy artifacts. Apparently I was wrong.”

>   Then I let go of him and ran toward the annex.

  The downstairs wasn’t so bad. There weren’t many lights on, because it was night and no one had been there when the explosion happened except the watchman and Cora, but the air seemed fairly clear. I could feel it change around me as I ran up the stairs, though, growing palpably hotter, and I damned the two of them for not trying to put out the fire before it got so large.

  My momentum faltered as I reached the upstairs hallway. The air was substantially hotter, and I could taste smoke on the air. The lights here had gone out, but I could see the door I wanted by the glow coming from around its edges.

  I was about to push on when I heard footsteps behind me.

  You would think a joint lock and the most crushing condemnation I’m capable of delivering would be enough to deter a man from running into a burning building after a woman who hates him, but apparently not.

  Mornett stopped a few steps below me, holding something out like a peace offering. After a moment I realized it was his dinner jacket, sopping wet—he’d soaked it in a horse trough outside. “Put this over your head,” he said. “It may help.”

  I gaped at it like a landed fish.

  With the only real light coming from below him, I couldn’t see his face, but his shoulders were rigid. “I didn’t know she was going to do this,” he said, his voice almost too low to hear. “You have to believe me.”

  Under any other circumstances I would have tried for a smart response. Instead I took his jacket, draped it over my head and shoulders, and advanced down the hallway.

  Mornett stuck to my heels like a limpet. When I reached for the door handle, it was hot to the touch, but I was braced for that; after all, there was a fire on the other side. But I didn’t fully realize what that meant.

  Aaron did. He suddenly lunged for me and dragged me to the floor, just as the door swung open.

  A searing wind passed over our heads, as the cooler air of the hallway got sucked into the room and the heat of the fire blasted out above. If Aaron hadn’t pulled me down, I would have taken that full in the face.