Turning Darkness into Light

by Marie Brennan

  His final speech from the podium denied all wrongdoing on his part or his wife’s, dismissing the allegations as “preposterous” and “politically motivated.” Following Mr. Kefford’s removal and the ratification of Mr. Rupert Storrs as his successor, Mr. Edward Deering read out a communication received from the Akhian government, condemning the deceptions practiced by Marcus Fitzarthur, Lord Gleinleigh, who is rumoured to have faked his recent discovery in the Qajr. Mr. Deering then brought a motion to censure Lord Gleinleigh, which passed with a fifty-five percent majority.

  Mrs. Kefford remains unavailable for comment. She is believed to have retired to her family’s estate in Rill, following her release on bail.

  FROM THE DIARY OF AUDREY CAMHERST

  12 Acinis

  I have been avoiding this for days. But that is cowardice, so today I went to the prison to see Aaron Mornett.

  In my defense, I have pages of diary entries to prove that I have been very busy since the nonsense at the warehouse. Back and forth from the police station to the Tomphries to Carrigdon and Rudge, making sure the broken tablets are properly cared for instead of vanishing into an evidence room, halting the translation, giving more testimony about everything under the sun, arranging for Cora to stay indefinitely at Clarton Square, and oh yes, dealing with an avalanche of family very determined to confirm that I have not broken the Camherst tradition of inexplicably surviving my own bad decisions.

  And today I had particular reasons for being busy, since Mrs. Kefford has finally broken down and confessed. It’s almost a formality, really, since Dorak wasted no time in turning on her and pouring out the whole sordid mess, but we learned a few things we didn’t know before—like the fact that she didn’t actually send Hallman to bomb the annex. To destroy the tablets, yes; but he’s the one who decided a bomb was a good way to do that, using the information Gleinleigh had passed along. He might still be alive if he hadn’t, because he wouldn’t have pushed her into such a panic that she sent him to Fibula Street with instructions for Dorak to “take care of him.” She claims that she meant for Dorak to get him out of the country (which is what Hallman seems to have expected), but I don’t think anybody believes her except for Mrs. Kefford herself. She couldn’t quite bring herself to say “kill him” at the time, so now she’s persuaded herself that isn’t what she meant.

  Gleinleigh appears to have been very much Mrs. Kefford’s tool. She only recruited him after it became apparent that the tablets she bought from Dorak could be turned to her own ends; she judged, quite correctly, that he would be a more trustworthy face for the whole enterprise than she could be. Had she tried to hire me or Kudshayn herself, she never would have gotten anywhere. I can take some vindictive satisfaction in Gleinleigh being at least part of her undoing: as I noted months ago, he is the sort of person who can’t resist “improving” on everyone else’s plans, and at several turns (the extra tablets in the cache, the airfield confrontation) his elaborations left openings for us to figure out the truth.

  I don’t know yet what will happen to all of them. Dorak’s warehouse proved to be full of illegal antiquities—not just Draconean, but from many parts of the world—so between that and all of them energetically pointing fingers at each other, there’s no question whether they will be found guilty of at least some of their crimes. Mr. Kefford’s party has removed him from his position, so the scandal has already done some good in undermining their credibility, regardless of the legal outcome.

  But I was going to write down what happened when I went to see Aaron Mornett.

  (I keep vacillating as to how I should write his name. Looking back at the things I’ve written lately, I see that I’ve been wildly inconsistent—because after everything that’s happened, it’s hard to feel distant from him. But at the same time, I don’t exactly feel friendly, either. I called him Aaron to his face; that will have to do.)

  He is being held in prison until trial, because he doesn’t have the money for bail and nobody cares to help him with that. But since he isn’t suspected of being involved in Hallman’s murder, they allowed me into his cell . . . leaving me unsure which was more awkward, conversing with him through the bars, or being forced by geometry to stand only a few feet away.

  “Please,” he said, gesturing with ironic courtesy at his cot, “have a seat.”

  Even if I’d been on friendly terms with him, I wouldn’t have been very eager to sit on that thing. “I don’t mind standing.”

  Although the blood on the side of his head was long gone, in some ways he looked worse than he had that night at the warehouse. I felt absolutely no urge to gloat or rub his nose in what had happened: he slumped back onto the cot with the posture of a man who already knows exactly how badly he has wrecked everything.

  My intent had been to open with some smaller talk, but instead I asked, “Why did you do it?”

  His gaze remained fixed on the concrete wall behind me. “Which part?”

  “Let’s start at the end,” I said. “The poem. Were you expecting to be kidnapped and taken to the warehouse?” I did not say, was that your way of asking for rescue? If so, it was a remarkably poor method.

  Aaron’s breath huffed out. “No. I thought, if I was going to leave the country, I might as well set you on Dorak before I went. I knew you’d enjoy flushing him out for the police.” One hand drifted up to touch the bruise on the side of his head, partially hidden by his hair. “Only his thugs got to me before I could finish.”

  I bit down on the urge to point out that he might have gotten away free and clear if he’d written his message in plain language, instead of getting clever about it. We both knew why he’d chosen that approach.

  With irony so dry it burned, he added, “I do appreciate the rescue, though.”

  “What about the rest of it?” I asked. The question was sitting in my throat like a knot; better out with it than in. “Why did you forge the last three tablets?”

  “Mrs. Kefford offered me a lot of money.”

  I didn’t believe his answer for a moment. She was the one who paid for him to live at the Selwright—a much better place than he could have afforded on his own—but even if living on her largesse was his reward, it couldn’t have been his motivation. “Answer me honestly, or I will stop wasting my time here.”

  His mouth twisted, bitter as gall. “Because I wanted to see if I could.”

  That, I do believe. The sheer intellectual challenge of it: assembling not only the ideas but the words, testing his knowledge of the ancient tongue by composing in it, just as he’d done with the poem. And the physical details, too, making sure he had the right kinds of clay, the right size stylus, practicing the scribe’s handwriting until he could mimic it perfectly. I’d examined the broken Sacrifice Tablet: there were even faintly scaled marks on the edges, where he must have donned some kind of glove to avoid leaving human fingerprints in the clay.

  “I knew you would get involved,” he added, with a faint laugh. “There was no chance you’d stay away. I wanted to know if I could fool even you.”

  If he meant that to be a compliment, it was a damned backhanded one. My tone sharpened as I said, “And your behaviour toward me. Helping me in the annex, and leaving me that tablet. Before that, too—not pressing charges when I broke into your hotel room. And that whole business with the cylinder seal—” I stopped before my voice could get too plaintive.

  His gaze flickered briefly to mine, before skittering away again. “You know why,” he said softly.

  “If you cared so much for my feelings and my good opinion, you would not have done all the other things you did.”

  The silence lasted long enough that I began to think he wasn’t going to reply. But then I saw him start to speak—more than once—and so I waited until his chin dipped low and the words came out. “‘I have no use for you,’” he quoted. “That’s what you said, outside the Selwright. It . . . you have no idea how far under my skin that got. I know you don’t want to hear this, Audrey, but I never
lied about my affection, or my respect for you.” He smiled a little, as if against his will. “That fragment Lepperton had—I never made the connection. But you did. You . . . you’re the only one who understands. Who feels the same passions I do, and has a mind that can challenge my own.”

  I’d known it must come to this, if I went to visit him; I had only myself to blame for winding up in this conversation. And I went through with it because it was necessary: because five years of sweeping everything under the rug has gotten me nowhere. I have to face the fact that there is a mutual attraction there, a genuine bond that sprang up that afternoon in the Colloquium.

  It just isn’t strong enough to overcome everything else.

  “We don’t feel the same passions, though,” I said. He wasn’t looking at me; I edged one surreptitious half step backward, so the wall could help steady me. “Some of them, yes. For languages—the Draconean language in particular—and for history. For intellectual pursuits. But I don’t just care about the past, Aaron; I care about the future. Their future. You’ve never understood that, or them. And that is why I do not love you.”

  His shoulders twitched, even though he must have been bracing himself. There’s no way he didn’t anticipate what I would say. All the same, it struck home.

  I waited, letting him sit with the shock of my declaration until the initial sting of it faded. I might not love him . . . but it still mattered a great deal to me what he said in response.

  “Do you think it’s possible?” he asked, directing the question at the floor.

  “Is what possible?”

  I expected him to say for you to love me. If he had said that, I would have walked out the door with a clean conscience, and I truly do believe I would never have concerned myself with him again. Because it would have been the final proof that we did not share as much as I once dreamed—that in the end, his own self-centeredness was too great to overcome.

  “Peace,” Aaron said. “Between us and them.”

  Humans and Draconeans. “Yes,” I said. “Not easily, and not without stumbles along the way—but yes.”

  Aaron shifted on the cot, propping his feet on the edge and leaning his head against the wall. “The epic talks about it. But . . . I think it’s a myth. I don’t think we ever co-existed in harmony, whatever the story says. It’s been one side enslaving or destroying the other ever since we began.”

  My throat tightened up. The epic.

  A precious relic of the past. But as Kudshayn had reminded me, it was only a relic.

  “Maybe it isn’t true,” I said. “Maybe you’re right about the past. But the stories we choose to tell—those matter. It’s important that the Anevrai told a story about harmony, that they went to the effort of writing it on finely made tablets with gold at their heart. Sacred tablets. That says it was an ideal. And even when we fall short of ideals, that doesn’t mean we should give up striving for them.”

  He closed his eyes. This time I was the one who broke the silence. “Where are they, Aaron?”

  The missing pieces. He laughed quietly, bitterly. “They weren’t just my insurance against Mrs. Kefford, you know. I hid them as insurance against you, too.”

  “I can’t give you your freedom,” I said, looking around at the iron bars, the concrete walls. “But it doesn’t matter. I know where you put them.”

  That brought him upright, his eyes open. I’m sure he thought it was bravado. But I was perfectly sincere: in that moment, I realized there was only one place he could put them and trust that his secret would be safe. Or at least, only one place he would think of.

  I went to the door of the cell and called for the warden to come let me out. While I waited, I turned to face Aaron one last time. He was staring at me, wide-eyed. Frustrated that his attempt to bargain had failed, uncertain whether I had guessed correctly . . . and hoping that I had. That I understood him well enough to know.

  “I hope I see you again someday,” I said. “Not soon. Years from now. When you’ve had time to think about all of this. I hope I hear about the work you’ve done in the interim—not even grand work, some tremendous discovery that makes you as famous as you want to be, but the simple bricks that build the temple of our understanding. I hope you come to understand what it is you claim to love so much, the good as well as the bad. I hope you learn to live with the Draconeans. Because if that happens . . . you will finally be the man I once thought you were.”

  The warden unlocked the door then, letting me escape before Aaron could respond—if he was even going to. I don’t know whether it’s possible that he might reform, but I know that if he does, it won’t be an overnight event. At least now I can put him . . . not from my mind; it would be a lie to say I will never think about him again. But from my attention.

  Once we have found what he hid, of course. I have just heard Kudshayn come in downstairs; it is time for us to go find the true ending of the story.

  later

  I had all kinds of lies, threats, and other forms of leverage I could have used against the doorman, but in the end I wound up not trying any of them. I just said, “This is Kudshayn, a scholar and a friend. I believe some property has been hidden here that belongs to his people. Can you tell me when the last time was that Aaron Mornett visited the premises?”

  That was all. Nothing about how my father and mother and grandfather and grandmother are all Fellows, how they’d hear of it if he refused me entrance—much less a bogus story about being asked to bring Kudshayn for a tour. I just verified that Aaron had been there on the afternoon of the second, the day after the fire; then I asked if we could search the library, and the doorman let us into the Colloquium. Even though neither of us had any right to be there.

  I’m fairly certain this is how Grandmama gets away with things. She’s just so convinced of what she’s doing that she convinces other people, too, like a planetary body with its own gravity.

  Mind you, the library was a guess. I was fairly sure Aaron would have hidden the ending at the Colloquium; neither Gleinleigh nor Mrs. Kefford could get in the door, and it’s one of the few places he feels at home. (Though not for long—I imagine they’re going to revoke his Fellowship because of the forgery.) But he could have chosen any one of the thousand nooks and crannies that place has to offer. I went to the library because of what he’d said about it being insurance against me. That ought to have meant he would hide it somewhere I’d never think to look . . . but I had a hunch he’d done the opposite.

  That day five years ago is pretty well engraved in my memory. The aisle I was standing in when we met is nowhere significant; it holds back volumes of the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Philosophers’ Colloquium. I’d simply been wandering, enjoying the ambiance of the library. In hindsight, I think Aaron must have seen me and followed, expressly to strike up a conversation—otherwise he had no reason to be there at all.

  But that is why it makes for a good hiding place. Nobody particularly cares what got said at the annual meeting ninety-three years ago.

  Kudshayn and I peered at and between the shelves while the doorman watched, mystified. Then my fingers touched a volume on a top shelf and it slid back. “Kudshayn,” I said, keeping my voice low out of reflexive respect for the library. “You’re taller than I am.”

  The entire row of bound volumes on that shelf stood a little closer to the edge than their fellows down below—as if making room for something behind. Kudshayn lifted them down carefully and I piled them in a neat stack on the floor. Then he lunged with one hand to catch something unseen, which tried to fall flat when the books in front of it were removed.

  With all the care one might show to a newborn infant, he brought down a small packet of cloth, tied with brown string. I cradled it in my hands as Kudshayn undid the string and folded back the outer wrapping, revealing paper inside. Of course Aaron would know to be careful: the cloth’s fibers might get caught in the clay. Paper was cleaner.

  Inside the packet were two tablets, side by side.
And we’d stared at their brothers often enough to know at a glance that they matched.

  Kudshayn turned one of the tablets over, studying it. “Eleven,” I said, pointing at one upper corner. He flipped it again, and we looked at the bottom of the second column. “Thirteen,” he said. The other tablet had a twelve on one side, and at the end of the other . . .

  No number at all. Just a phrase I recognized, from that night in early Pluvis when I sat up late to read the invocation. I met Kudshayn’s gaze, and he nodded.

  We have the ending, in its entirety.

  Now to find out what it says.

  Tablet XII: “The Starvation Tablet”

  translated by Audrey Camherst and Kudshayn

  After darkness, after descent, after loss, after return, the three came together, the three called Samšin, Nahri, and Imalkit, the three called the leaders of the people.

  They looked around at the world. The hunger of the star demons had ravaged it, as locusts ravage a field. Everywhere things were dead. Everywhere the creatures of the sky and land and waters starved, save those that feed on the flesh of the dead. Those who broke their shells and spread their wings found nothing to eat except the sorrowful cries of their mothers. Warmth had gone out of the air; life had gone out of the earth. The Light of the World reigned in the sky once more, but the Ever-Standing and the Ever-Moving were weakened by their long grief.

  The sisters said to each other, “How are we to live? Our people are tired and weak. They lack the strength to till the fields as Nahri has taught them; they lack the will to shape metal as Imalkit has taught them; they lack the hope to follow the precepts Samšin has set for them. If we stay as we are, we fear our people will come to an end. We cannot send our people down to meet the Crown of the Abyss, to follow that path before their time.”

  Imalkit spread her wings and said, “We must find a new way, even if its cost is high.”