The second report was worse than the first.
Guillaume set it down beside its predecessor and looked at both of them. The first ship had simply not arrived; that happened, in winter, on a coast like this. The second had been found drifting two leagues off the headland with its rigging intact and its crew gone, which made the first report a different report.
He had sent for the harbourmaster at noon. The restriction he proposed (non-essential traffic docked until further notice) normally produced argument; harbourmasters had careers to protect and merchants to disappoint at their own pace. This one had agreed without argument, which was the third thing that concerned him.
His office window faced the water. He had not moved far from it since.
The smell reached him before the mist did: brine, but not the brine of the harbour, something older and colder underneath it, the smell of water that had not seen light. He looked up from the reports. The sixth hour, and what was coming in from the open sea was not fog.
Coastal fog rose from the shallows. This came from somewhere else, at the pace of something that had decided to arrive, and it was already at the harbour mouth before he had finished understanding what he was looking at. It swallowed the quay whole. The mooring posts went. The Sainte-Marguerite, the Anguille, the Trois Frères: the hulls disappeared in sequence, the running lights guttering down to orange and then nothing.
Thirty seconds, perhaps, before he heard the sound from the docks. It began as a shout.
He was still at the window when the blood hit the glass.
He crossed the office, turned the lock, and stepped back.
The shapes in the mist were large. He registered that and did not look further. He stood in the middle of the room with his coin moving between his fingers and the clock on the desk and waited.
The sounds did not last long.
He counted eleven minutes before the mist began to withdraw (not to dissipate, but to withdraw), back toward open water at the same deliberate pace it had come, uncovering the harbour in reverse: the mouth first, then the dark water, then the mooring posts bare, then the quay.
Guillaume unlocked the door and went out.
He did not look at the quay for long.
He looked instead at the horizon: a storm front building to the northwest, larger and faster than the season warranted, its upper edge already reaching into the high cloud. It was moving southeast.
He turned his coin over once.
Pharelle was southeast.
He went back inside and began to write.
? The first duty of any official who survives something is paperwork. This is not, as it is sometimes characterised, callousness. It is the only form of action available to a man whose window now needs cleaning.
The evening had been cold for an hour before Wylan admitted he was waiting.
He stood on the manor steps with his back against the balustrade, breath misting in the cold. When Augustine came out of the dark, he arrived precisely when he intended to.
“Out here alone?” His tone was light. “I almost thought you’d forgotten about me.”
“Hardly,” Wylan said. “I’ve been thinking about us.”
Augustine’s smile widened. “That sounds promising.”
The words sat in the cold air between them. Wylan took a step closer, his gloved hand brushing Augustine’s. “Do you ever wonder what this is?”
“I think it’s whatever we decide it to be.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Augustine studied him with the attention Wylan had always mistaken for understanding.
“Something’s troubling you.”
“Mirembe is dead,” Wylan said. “I heard this morning.”
“I know.” Augustine’s expression settled, becoming measured and sympathetic. “A difficult thing.”
Wylan watched him. Augustine held the silence with perfect ease, and the ease itself told him nothing.
“Aurora is barely three,” Wylan said. “She won’t even remember her.”
Augustine tilted his head. “I thought you hated her.”
“Hate is too strong,” Wylan said. “She was the mother of my niece. She lived with us for two years.” He thought of hate as a child’s emotion, requiring you to care very much about someone. Augustine had reached for it first.
“She was a problem,” Augustine said. “Now she isn’t.”
“She was still a person.”
“And now she isn’t.”
Wylan kept his expression even.
“I saw in a report,” he said, after a moment, “that they didn’t even find a body.”
Augustine met his gaze. “I know.”
Wylan looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“Come with me,” Augustine said. “There’s something I want you to see.”
Wylan followed him through the grounds. The estate was quiet at this hour, the gravel paths silver under a cold moon, the garden running to dark at its edges. Augustine walked with his hands clasped behind him. He was, apparently, a man taking an evening constitutional.
Wylan kept pace and did not ask where they were going. He was not sure he wanted to know.
They reached the far edge of the property where the kitchen garden gave way to older ground, untended for years, ivy spreading unchecked across the outbuildings. Augustine stopped at the shed. He found the rusted latch without searching for it, and lifted it.
“After you,” he said.
Wylan stepped inside.
The shed smelled of damp wood and cold earth. Broken tools hung from the walls; overturned pots lined the floor. It had been neglected long enough to develop strong opinions about it. He scanned the dim interior and saw nothing, and then his eyes adjusted and he did.
She stood in the far corner, still. Her posture was wrong: a slight forward lean that would have cost a living person effort. The moonlight from the doorway fell across her face and she did not turn toward it.
Wylan did not move.
He had known. Somewhere between I know and the latch lifting, he had known. It did not help.
“Mirembe,” he said, barely above a whisper.
Behind him, Augustine spoke. His tone was warm with satisfaction. “I thought it might mean something to you. Given everything she put your family through.” A pause. “Consider it a gift.” A pause. “Think of it as an introduction to what we can accomplish together. What our alliance can accomplish.”
The word ‘together’ was what Wylan had to keep his face steady through.
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Augustine watched him with an attention Wylan had once found compelling; now it read him, and waited.
He kept his face very still.
“What is she?” he said.
“A ghoul. Barely intelligent—she responds to light and simple commands, nothing more.” Augustine sounded pleased with himself. “The process is considerably more difficult than it appears.”
“And she’s dead?”
Augustine smiled. “Problem solved.” He tilted his head. “This is power, Wylan. The ability to shape the world as you see fit.”
“This is desecration,” Wylan said.
“It’s both.”
Wylan held that for a moment. He turned back to the revenant and looked at her; studying her, or performing the study of her. He had seen a ghoul before. Not the same. Not the same at all. What he felt now was something the memory of his grandfather had not prepared him for.
“I need to look at her properly,” he said. “Alone. To take it in.”
A pause. Wylan did not turn around.
“Of course,” Augustine said. The warmth in his voice said: I knew you’d understand. “Until another night.”
The latch settled.
Wylan stood perfectly still and counted his own breaths until he was certain the dark outside was empty.
He turned back to her.
She stood as she had stood before, with that slight forward lean, still turned toward the moonlight she had not moved toward. She would not react to her name. She was dead and responding to light and simple commands and nothing more.
Wylan sat down on an overturned crate. He had not decided to.
He had been so certain he was being seen. It was more than performance and charm; he had felt seen. He had built something on that certainty, and he had been so careful about it, so deliberate, telling himself he was going in with his eyes open.
He had said, the night before, in the courtyard: something will need to be done about her. He had said it to Callion and Augustine both, and Augustine had said I have a very good one in mind with precisely the warmth he had used just now, walking away through the dark.
She had held Aurora. She had argued with Lambert about theology and been wrong about most of it and occasionally, infuriatingly right. She had betrayed them, left her daughter, testified against the family in open court. He had imagined, once or twice, what he would say to her if he had the chance. Making her understand what she had done to all of them. That possibility was ash now too.
None of it was this.
“I’m sorry,” he said. The words went nowhere.
The estate chapel was small and cold and entirely without ornament. Lambert was kneeling when Wylan found him; not in prayer exactly, or not in any sense Wylan had a word for. His eyes were open, his hands resting on his knees: he looked like a man reviewing evidence.
He looked up when Wylan entered but did not rise.
“Sit down,” he said. “You look terrible.”
Wylan sat beside him on the stone floor. The silence of the chapel was a different quality of silence from the shed. He was grateful for it.
“I have to tell you something,” he said. “About Mirembe.”
Lambert listened without interrupting. Wylan told it in order: the courtyard conversation, the words he had said, Augustine’s response, the walk across the grounds, the shed. When he reached the part where Augustine said consider it a gift, he stopped.
Lambert waited.
Wylan finished.
“You said something will need to be done about her.” Lambert’s voice was even. “In Augustine’s presence.”
“Yes.”
“And Augustine said I have a very good one in mind.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t ask what he meant.”
“No.”
Lambert rose from his knees and moved to stand behind the altar, and turned to face the empty chapel.
“Why not?”
Wylan opened his mouth and closed it. The honest answer was that he had not wanted to know, and he had known he did not want to know, and he had let that stand as a reason.
“I think,” he said, “I was afraid of what the answer would be.”
“Why did you come to me first?”
Wylan looked at him. “I don’t know. Who else would I go to?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I wanted to know if I did wrong.”
Lambert looked at him steadily. “Are you asking me to tell you whether you did wrong?”
“Didn’t I?”
“So you came to plead your innocence.”
“I don’t know. Not plead, as such.” Wylan looked at his hands. “You’re an Inquisitor. This is what you do. You tell people when they’ve done something wrong.”
“In fact, I do not,” Lambert said. “My function as an Inquisitor is to determine who is in the wrong. That is substantially different.”
“That’s not a judgement?”
“I am not going to judge you.” He brought his hands down in a sharp rap against the altar.
Wylan stared at him. “You did it before. In the Court of Reason.”
“The Court of Reason has a specific task.” He held out his right hand in gesture. “On the one hand, it must determine who has reason on their side.” Then he held out his left in mirrored image. “And on the other it must deliver a verdict upon guilt.” He brought his hands together. “It cannot find one innocent. It can only find one not guilty.”
“What am I supposed to think?”
Lambert said nothing for a moment. Then, stepping down from the altar to sit beside Wylan: “What do you think you owe?”
Wylan looked at the floor. “I don’t know. Something.”
“To whom?”
“To Mirembe.”
“She’s beyond remedy,” Lambert said. “Who else?”
“Aurora. She has no mother now, and part of that is—” He stopped.
“Part of that is what?”
“Part of that is me.”
Lambert said nothing.
“Max,” he said. “The family.”
“And what do you owe them?”
“I need to make sure the family know what Augustine is.” He paused.
“That’s what you need to do,” Lambert said. “That isn’t what I asked.”
“I don’t know if there’s anything more than that.”
“Isn’t there? The question is what do you owe? What obligations have your actions created?”
Wylan looked at him. “I owe something to Mirembe. I led Augustine to her, or put him on her path.”
“You owe the dead nothing.”
“To Aurora, then. She has no mother, and part of that is because of me—”
“Perhaps,” Lambert said. “But she won’t understand that obligation for years to come, and you cannot fulfil an obligation free of meaning.”
“Then to Max.” Wylan looked at his hands. “He had a right to know what happened to her. I kept it from him for a day, and that day was mine to take, not mine to give.”
“Then that is what you owe right now.”
“That,” he said, “is not a verdict. But it is somewhere to stand.”
He was still for a moment. He had sat through Mirembe’s testimony at Notre Reine. He said nothing about that, and Wylan did not ask.
“What do we do now?”
“Well, for one, I am going to have to apologise to Laila. And probably Isabella.”
Wylan looked at him. “You? Why?”
“Because this alliance with the vampire court was my idea,” Lambert said. “And so I am going to have to take responsibility for my role in this.”
“Does that mean you’re going to break the alliance?”
“Indeed. It cannot continue.”
“And what should I do?”
Lambert looked at him. “Haven’t I just shown you what to do?”
Wylan groaned. “I’m going to have to speak to Maximilian, aren’t I?”
Maximilian was at his desk when Wylan knocked, his broken arm resting on the surface beside the papers he was sorting one-handed. He looked up.
“Wylan.”
“I need to tell you something,” Wylan said. “About Mirembe. It’s not easy to explain, and I think I need to show you.”
Maximilian put down the papers. “Then tell me.”
Wylan told him. He kept it short. Max listened without interrupting, and the fire on his good hand built as he did: a thread at first, then a steady flame, small and unconscious and growing.
When Wylan finished, Max did not speak at once.
“Where is she?”
“The garden shed. Augustine brought her here.”
The fire flared. “He brought her here.”
Max looked at his desk. “Why should I care what happened to her? She betrayed us. She left Aurora. Why does any of this matter now?”
Wylan crossed the room and took his brother’s hands.
The gesture startled Max; the fire went out and his attention snapped up.
“Fire comes naturally to you,” Wylan said. “As easy as breathing. And it comes with your anger.”
“She made her choices,” Max said. “She walked away from this family. Left Aurora. Stood in that courtroom and called us monsters.” The fire was at his wrist now. “She made herself into someone I don’t recognise.”
“She did,” Wylan said. “And none of those choices are what I’m asking you to forgive.”
“Then what are you asking?”
“She called Aurora monstrous. She meant it. But she had never faced a real monster in her life, Max.”
“She faced us.”
“She faced things she was afraid of. That’s not the same thing.” A pause. “And some of those things were worth being afraid of. But she didn’t know the difference. She never had to learn it.”
The fire at Max’s wrist dimmed slightly.
“I’m asking you to feel something that is not this,” Wylan said. “Because this is exactly what she was afraid of.”
The room was quiet, the air still carrying the faint scent of char.
“There’s something else,” Wylan said. “I think I put Augustine on her path. I said something in front of him: that something would need to be done about her. I didn’t ask what he meant by it, and I should have.”
The fire dropped. Max looked at him. “You know you wouldn’t be the first man to make a foolish choice because he fell for someone. You wouldn’t even be the first de Vaillant.”
“Not even the first one of this generation,” Wylan said, weakly.
“Don’t push it.”
A pause. “Your arm—how bad is it? Is the potion helping?”
“It itches,” Max said. “And it’s hell trying to conjure anything except a small flame.”
Max was very still for a moment. Then his shoulders dropped. “You want me to see her.”
“I think you should.”
They walked through the estate in silence. Wylan did not fill it. The estate, for its part, kept its own counsel: gravel paths, dark garden, the cold doing its patient work.
At the shed door his steps slowed. He reached for the latch and Max moved past him and opened it himself.
Max called a flame to his good hand. Then he stepped inside.
The fire caught her face first: the cheekbones, the brow, the closed line of her mouth. She stood where Wylan had left her, that slight forward lean, and she did not turn toward the warmth. The light moved across her without response.
Max looked at her.
“She betrayed us,” he said. “Betrayed me, betrayed Aurora.” His free hand hovered near her, embers at the fingertips. “What do you want me to feel?”
“I dare you,” Wylan said, “to name someone in our family who hasn’t made compromising choices.”
Max’s expression closed. “You want me to feel pity.”
“I want you to feel something that is not anger.”
Max stood over her and said nothing. The fire in his raised hand threw her shadow long across the wall behind her. Wylan watched him. His face was not Wylan’s to read.
When Max finally spoke, his voice was low and steady. “Is she aware? Does she feel pain?”
“I don’t think she feels anything,” Wylan said.
Max was still for a moment. Then he lowered his raised hand to her and the fire embraced her.
She burned without moving. Within moments there was nothing left but ash on the floor of the shed, and Max’s fire the only light remaining.
Max looked at it.
Wylan looked at it too. He had brought Max here to do something he could not do himself, and he was not sure whether that was wisdom or cowardice. Possibly both.
“I hope,” he said, “mercy counts as something other than anger.”