Vienda - In Chancery, later in Wisteria Lane
The morning of 12th of Hamis 2719
The morning of 12th of Hamis 2719
N
ine days. Nine days and no one has passed the office door. Nine days without a single document. Nine days of silence, of stillness. Nine days since the old man’s death. Nothing moves in the darkened space, save for motes of dust and the ghosts of unfinished business. It is the morning of the tenth day. The business will be attended to by someone else.
Levesque’s office, small and old and neat like the man himself. Everything just so. Levesque will not. No. Levesque would not, have had it any other way. Blotting pad marshalled two fingers’ breadth from the near edge of the worn walnut desk, ink stand canted a perfect sixty degrees just to the upper left of the blotting pat. Sand tray full, fine and pale, pen knife sharpened and gleaming. All ready for use. The seal in its stand, the focal point of the desk. Antique jadeite, the color of skimmed milk. A few faint cracks in the surface. The official red ink has stained them, made them stand out, thing and crimson. Like wisps of rising mist. Like veins. The seal looks alive. Expectant. What can it expect now?
How long has he stood here, silent, abstracted in the doorway, looking at the workings of a dead man? He can check his watch. The brilliant instrument sits comfortably in the front pocket of his waistcoat. It is a beatiful device. Pull it out, read the hour, watch the passing of the hands, hear the steady ticking of its workings. It will tell him every detail of the passing of time. It will tell him nothing about how long he has stood here.
There is little motion in this corridor. It has always been a backwater. A place where the facts and figures of governance are tabulated, noted, set down, corrected. There is no one to see him slide into the silent gloom, into the space and soul of an old man. An old man dead before his time.
A creak as he sits himself down upon a chair. Not Levesque’s chair, that ancient seat it too well oiled to make even the slightest sound. No. He sits where he always has in this place. The visitor’s chair. Forteen years, three months, seventeen days, the 35th day of Ophus 2705, that was the first time he sat in this chair, heard it creak. Today will be the last. He is sure of that.
Surety is a rare commodity. One not to be taken lightly.
“Well old man,” the room is silent, still, yet he can almost hear the old man’s voice. Chiding him. “This was not the day either of us wanted. You least of all.” He shakes his head. A foolish move. It will only worsen the headache. He has had this one for nine days, now ten. It has become an old enemy. Another surety. He rises, the chair creaking as he does. Behind the desk, the small safe. Unassuming, solid, secure. He still knows the combination. He never told Levesque he knew it. The old man must have known. Anticlockwise, clockwise, and anticlockwise again. Backward. Still awkward even after all this time. The door swings open on silent hinges. The rattle of glass barely audible.
Two glasses now, and the best bottle of sherry, he draws out. Pours for the ghost of the dead man and for himself. It is too early for sherry. It is precisely the time for sherry. He raises his glass. Watches the feeble light play through the liquid. An old sherry, mellow and red brown. The smell of ancient wood, spices, and dried fruit. A sip. Long and slow and deep. The heat of the drink fills him. The aroma fills his nostrils. He has drunk this only once before, on the occasion of his own departure from this place. It seems right that he should send the old man off in the same way. It will be a more proper parting.
Dorehaven. The name sits ill with him now. Before, he never considered it. And why should he? It is not his place, his city. Now, it fills all the crevices of his mind. Unnatural. Uncomfortable. A byword for chaos. The bombing was inexpert, inept. The bombing accomplished everything it needed. Eyes in the streets seem harder now, filled with distrust. His own have hardened. He has vicious thoughts and bloody dreams. Dreams of Dorehaven, of the sound of explosions, of screaming. Of the smell of fire and of death.
Levesque deserved a gentler death, and home, decades from now, surrounded by family and friends. A quiet and an orderly fading away. Not this, crassness. No one deserves so ghastly a fate. Who had the old man ever harmed? What evil could Levesque have done to deserve his fate? He was an old man, gentle and kind. An old man with failing joints who lived with his pain, endured it. And when he went to Dorehaven to take the waters, to try and find respite, comfort. What was his reward? Fire and death.
He scans the room with those hardened eyes, sees the Circle mandala, small and well tended in its niche by the door. All the gods. Levesque had been a pious man. Under his breath, against wisdom and piety, Shrikeweed curses, first in Estuan and then in what Monite he can muster. Are you satisfied, you feckless thugs, to kill an old man thus? To kill your faithful servant who did neither wrong nor harm? I see you now, staring blind and useless at me. You pretend protection. You offer none. Did he offend you? Or did you require some guiltless sacrifice? How many did you need? A towns-worth? And how long will that appease you? He digs his fingernails into the flesh of his palms. Pain blooms. Sharp and quick as blasphemy. Rage builds, mounting, white-hot and razor-sharp. Sharp. He feels his nails pierce his skin. Feels the barest trickle of blood. His mind slows, calms. It will not do. It will have to do.
The glass in his hand again, smooth and cool and comforting. He turns it, clockwise, anticlockwise, and clockwise again. More calm, more tranquility. He raises the glass, and drinks one last toast. “Anton Montague Levesque, hail and farewell.”
A knock at the door. Wiggins hovering in the corridor, Cecelia Thurlowe and Henrietta Glazebrook close behind. “It’s time sir.”
“So soon, Wiggins?”
“It’s been two hours sir. It was all the time we could give you.”
He nods. There is no point in delaying matters further. It is the tenth day. The official mourning must cease. The business of the dead man must be carried on. Carried on by others. One man does not matter. The dead man must be retired. It is the custom of the Service. It is necessary. And so he rises, leaves his unfinished glass upon the desk that was once Levesque’s, leaves the other untouched. He takes up the old man’s seal, and follows Wiggins, Cecelia, and Henrietta, out into the Chancery.
Others join them. Josiah Caseby of course, Hornbeck and Linton, Petheridge and West, Ravenscroft and Lattimer, and finally Sempronia Fortesque herself, director of Policy Analysis. No one says a word. No one needs to. They have all done this before. They will all do it again. It does not make it any easier.
Slower than he likes, they make their way to the Authentications Department. Nine minutes. Two minutes longer than it should take. Nine minutes for nine days. Perhaps that is right. No. Another minute. This is the morning of the tenth day. Third floor of the Chancery, and rather grander than the convolution of anonymous corridors he has haunted most of his career. The grand pillars, the black and white marble floor; it puts him in mind of Stainthorpe Hall, of his new existence. Of the Incumbent.
Old life and new. A change in station. A change in being. ‘Him’ and ‘I’. Perhaps this is what the Incumbent means. A change of habit, a change in all one’s surroundings and rhythms. No. That is part of it, necessary. But it is not sufficient. The Incumbent’s position has not changed. The patterns of his life have not altered. The man is altered. Shrikeweed is still Shrikeweed. Gods about him, he hopes he is the same man. Here, in this place, with these others, his colleagues of years, he is the man he knows. It is not the man he is becoming. Not quite.
Fortesque now, addressing the Authentications staff in her calm, assured manner. “The Ledger of the Seals, if you please.” The ancient servator who mans the desk nods, grumbles, and trundles off. “Shrikeweed. Levesque was your mentor, your patron. The ritual is yours, if you wish it.”
“Thank you, Director. It is an honor.” More than an honor, it is correct. Levesque inducted him into the Service, taught him the nature of the machine. A formidable patron, a master of bureaucracy. A master from a long line of masters. It seems there had always been a Levesque in the service. The old man took pride in that, pride in knowing he carried on a family tradition, a family calling. And even when Shrikeweed rose above him in station, he could never consider the old man beneath him. It would have been an insult. It would have been incorrect, unsound.
The Authentications clerk appears again, bowed and bent under the weight of the book he carries. Pale grey leather with plain simple capitals reading Ledger of the Seals, K-L. Another ritual now, and a necessary one. He lays the book open on a high table, leafs though pages upon pages of official seals. Every one of them has their seal in a book like this. A book that makes their actions official, a means of tracing their actions. Every seal unique. Every seal recorded. And now, the seal of Anton Montague Levesque. His name, his number, the seal of his department, all there upon the page in vermillion ink, blood bright even after decades.
Shrikeweed cradles the seal itself in his hand, compared it to the image on the page. He knows it matches. Still, the ritual requires that he pass to the Authentications clerk. The man examines it for a moment, then coughs an official cough, and hands it back. Another seal appears upon the high table along with a pad of ink the color of the midnight sky. A seal in hard and polished alabaster and ironwood. He reaches for the seal, cannot quite will his fingers to grasp it. A failure of his duties. That cannot disrupt the ritual. The ritual must go on.
“Mr Wiggins.” The younger man turns his head, bird-swift and near as jarring. “Take the seal. Recall Mr Levesque. His years of good service.” A pause. The younger man takes up this second seal, presses it to the ink pad. “Strike his seal from the record.” Wiggins hesitates, the striking seal held aloft. “Mr Wiggins,” Shrikeweed says again, trying to keep his voice level. Trying and failing. It breaks as it has not in years. “Strike his seal from the record.” The seal comes down, one long smooth arc, and Anton Montague Levesque is retired from the Service.
Nearly silent now, only the slow sound of distant shuffling feet to hide the solemn breathing. No one has spoken a word. There is nothing to say. Levesque is well and truly gone. His body destroyed at Dorehaven, his soul voided here.
And his seal? He would take the seal, deliver it. It was right and proper. It was the immemorial custom of the Service.
Wisteria Lane and the day still bright and clear. Cabs in the street and ladies and gentlemen going about their mid-morning business. A builder’s cart stops and two men with brick-hods get down. Big men, burly men. A house on this side of the street is being repaired. The brick-men join their fellows, laughing corse and good-natured laughs. Bastards, he thinks, your fellows have done this, brought this chaos. Do you know their names? Do you care what has been done? No, the men likely do not care. They have work to do. They have nothing to do with the bombing. Leave them. It will do no good to find conspirators in every laborer and tradesman. It will do more harm. And yet he cannot take his eyes from them. Their faces he measures with studied practice and own sorceries. Their faces he will remember. It is meaningless. Let it go. He cannot let it go, not today. Not with a dead man’s seal wrapped in cloth in his satchel.
There is no real way around the laborers, not unless he wishes to wager his life against the skill of cabbies and carriage drivers. So he passed through the little knot of laborers. “Steady on lads,” cries one, perhaps their foreman, as a barrel of bricks is raised. “Handomly now, handsomely!” The forman back up, still looking up, not minding the street. The big man backs into Shrikeweed. His heart races, his palms clinch, his jaw sets, his field swirls around him like razor leaves on an autumn wind. “Oh, sorry squire,” says the big man, doffing his cap. Proper, respectful, civilized. Shrikeweed cannot return the gesture, nothing in him will move. Nothing but his legs. He dashes off, down the street, down Wisteria Lane.
Levesque’s door, wine red and glossy with good quality paint. A solid door for a solid man. With a breath, he raises his hand, raises it toward the bell. There is not opportunity to ring. The door opens, and there is Kate. Kate whom he has known since she was a girl of nine. The younger of Levesque’s granddaughters.
“Mr Shirkeweed?” she looks at him, not quite quizzical, but with dark owlish eyes. Dark eyes rimmed in red. “You look rattled.”
He is rattled. Of course he is. He is not here for his own comfort, or to be comforted. He is here to perform a duty, to satisfy a ritual. “I will be fine, Kate. Never mind me. Are you and Arabella both at home?”
“Of course we are. Where else would we be? Please, come in.” She ushers him in, away from the street, away from its own chaos. Stillness within. Stillness like the old man’s office. Only the ticking of the grandfather clock in the sitting room and the faint sounds of someone occasionally picking at a harp. It is slightly flat. Only a moment and it could be tuned. No. Not today. The flat harp is correct, dull and discordant.
“Arabella?” Kate has brought him to the sitting room, a small, comfortable space. In a small chair by the window, is is the elder granddaughter who is picking abstracted sounds from the harp. Arabella looks up. Her eyes are harder, even darker that her sister’s. There are only the distant ghosts of tears in her eyes. “Shrikeweed? Has it already been ten days?”
“Today is the morning of the tenth day, yes. I come to pay my proper condolences. And to bring you this.” He reaches into his satchel and takes out the heavy jadite seal, still wrapped in a scrap of velvet he purloined somewhere. He does not remember where. He will not be able to return it. One small act of thievery, a private chaos. He thinks he can live with it.
Arabella stops the desultory picking of the harp, rises. She is nearly Shrikeweed’s own height. Tall for a woman. The height suits her, lends her due gravitas. Pale hands outstretched she takes the seal, cradles it, feels the weight of it. The seal has more color, more life than those pale hands. She stands stock still, unmoving. Not unmoved. Can she complete the ritual? It is unlikely. She is frozen. He cannot complete it. It would be wrong, incorrect, unsound. Now Kate crosses over, knowing the task is hers, and runs her own hand over the seal, over her sister’s hands.
“Thank you Mr Shrikeweed.” Kate even tries for a wan sort of smile. He breathes in, then out, then in again, suppressing his own twisting sorrow. Here and now are not places for his own private grief. “It is good of you to bring it. Grandfather would want to be home, at least in some manner, to be among family.” She wraps her hands around the seal, taking it. Another wan almost smile. “Come, grandfather, your family is waiting for you.”
He watches, silent, and she places the seal upon the mantle, along with all the others.
Levesque’s office, small and old and neat like the man himself. Everything just so. Levesque will not. No. Levesque would not, have had it any other way. Blotting pad marshalled two fingers’ breadth from the near edge of the worn walnut desk, ink stand canted a perfect sixty degrees just to the upper left of the blotting pat. Sand tray full, fine and pale, pen knife sharpened and gleaming. All ready for use. The seal in its stand, the focal point of the desk. Antique jadeite, the color of skimmed milk. A few faint cracks in the surface. The official red ink has stained them, made them stand out, thing and crimson. Like wisps of rising mist. Like veins. The seal looks alive. Expectant. What can it expect now?
How long has he stood here, silent, abstracted in the doorway, looking at the workings of a dead man? He can check his watch. The brilliant instrument sits comfortably in the front pocket of his waistcoat. It is a beatiful device. Pull it out, read the hour, watch the passing of the hands, hear the steady ticking of its workings. It will tell him every detail of the passing of time. It will tell him nothing about how long he has stood here.
There is little motion in this corridor. It has always been a backwater. A place where the facts and figures of governance are tabulated, noted, set down, corrected. There is no one to see him slide into the silent gloom, into the space and soul of an old man. An old man dead before his time.
A creak as he sits himself down upon a chair. Not Levesque’s chair, that ancient seat it too well oiled to make even the slightest sound. No. He sits where he always has in this place. The visitor’s chair. Forteen years, three months, seventeen days, the 35th day of Ophus 2705, that was the first time he sat in this chair, heard it creak. Today will be the last. He is sure of that.
Surety is a rare commodity. One not to be taken lightly.
“Well old man,” the room is silent, still, yet he can almost hear the old man’s voice. Chiding him. “This was not the day either of us wanted. You least of all.” He shakes his head. A foolish move. It will only worsen the headache. He has had this one for nine days, now ten. It has become an old enemy. Another surety. He rises, the chair creaking as he does. Behind the desk, the small safe. Unassuming, solid, secure. He still knows the combination. He never told Levesque he knew it. The old man must have known. Anticlockwise, clockwise, and anticlockwise again. Backward. Still awkward even after all this time. The door swings open on silent hinges. The rattle of glass barely audible.
Two glasses now, and the best bottle of sherry, he draws out. Pours for the ghost of the dead man and for himself. It is too early for sherry. It is precisely the time for sherry. He raises his glass. Watches the feeble light play through the liquid. An old sherry, mellow and red brown. The smell of ancient wood, spices, and dried fruit. A sip. Long and slow and deep. The heat of the drink fills him. The aroma fills his nostrils. He has drunk this only once before, on the occasion of his own departure from this place. It seems right that he should send the old man off in the same way. It will be a more proper parting.
Dorehaven. The name sits ill with him now. Before, he never considered it. And why should he? It is not his place, his city. Now, it fills all the crevices of his mind. Unnatural. Uncomfortable. A byword for chaos. The bombing was inexpert, inept. The bombing accomplished everything it needed. Eyes in the streets seem harder now, filled with distrust. His own have hardened. He has vicious thoughts and bloody dreams. Dreams of Dorehaven, of the sound of explosions, of screaming. Of the smell of fire and of death.
Levesque deserved a gentler death, and home, decades from now, surrounded by family and friends. A quiet and an orderly fading away. Not this, crassness. No one deserves so ghastly a fate. Who had the old man ever harmed? What evil could Levesque have done to deserve his fate? He was an old man, gentle and kind. An old man with failing joints who lived with his pain, endured it. And when he went to Dorehaven to take the waters, to try and find respite, comfort. What was his reward? Fire and death.
He scans the room with those hardened eyes, sees the Circle mandala, small and well tended in its niche by the door. All the gods. Levesque had been a pious man. Under his breath, against wisdom and piety, Shrikeweed curses, first in Estuan and then in what Monite he can muster. Are you satisfied, you feckless thugs, to kill an old man thus? To kill your faithful servant who did neither wrong nor harm? I see you now, staring blind and useless at me. You pretend protection. You offer none. Did he offend you? Or did you require some guiltless sacrifice? How many did you need? A towns-worth? And how long will that appease you? He digs his fingernails into the flesh of his palms. Pain blooms. Sharp and quick as blasphemy. Rage builds, mounting, white-hot and razor-sharp. Sharp. He feels his nails pierce his skin. Feels the barest trickle of blood. His mind slows, calms. It will not do. It will have to do.
The glass in his hand again, smooth and cool and comforting. He turns it, clockwise, anticlockwise, and clockwise again. More calm, more tranquility. He raises the glass, and drinks one last toast. “Anton Montague Levesque, hail and farewell.”
A knock at the door. Wiggins hovering in the corridor, Cecelia Thurlowe and Henrietta Glazebrook close behind. “It’s time sir.”
“So soon, Wiggins?”
“It’s been two hours sir. It was all the time we could give you.”
He nods. There is no point in delaying matters further. It is the tenth day. The official mourning must cease. The business of the dead man must be carried on. Carried on by others. One man does not matter. The dead man must be retired. It is the custom of the Service. It is necessary. And so he rises, leaves his unfinished glass upon the desk that was once Levesque’s, leaves the other untouched. He takes up the old man’s seal, and follows Wiggins, Cecelia, and Henrietta, out into the Chancery.
Others join them. Josiah Caseby of course, Hornbeck and Linton, Petheridge and West, Ravenscroft and Lattimer, and finally Sempronia Fortesque herself, director of Policy Analysis. No one says a word. No one needs to. They have all done this before. They will all do it again. It does not make it any easier.
Slower than he likes, they make their way to the Authentications Department. Nine minutes. Two minutes longer than it should take. Nine minutes for nine days. Perhaps that is right. No. Another minute. This is the morning of the tenth day. Third floor of the Chancery, and rather grander than the convolution of anonymous corridors he has haunted most of his career. The grand pillars, the black and white marble floor; it puts him in mind of Stainthorpe Hall, of his new existence. Of the Incumbent.
Old life and new. A change in station. A change in being. ‘Him’ and ‘I’. Perhaps this is what the Incumbent means. A change of habit, a change in all one’s surroundings and rhythms. No. That is part of it, necessary. But it is not sufficient. The Incumbent’s position has not changed. The patterns of his life have not altered. The man is altered. Shrikeweed is still Shrikeweed. Gods about him, he hopes he is the same man. Here, in this place, with these others, his colleagues of years, he is the man he knows. It is not the man he is becoming. Not quite.
Fortesque now, addressing the Authentications staff in her calm, assured manner. “The Ledger of the Seals, if you please.” The ancient servator who mans the desk nods, grumbles, and trundles off. “Shrikeweed. Levesque was your mentor, your patron. The ritual is yours, if you wish it.”
“Thank you, Director. It is an honor.” More than an honor, it is correct. Levesque inducted him into the Service, taught him the nature of the machine. A formidable patron, a master of bureaucracy. A master from a long line of masters. It seems there had always been a Levesque in the service. The old man took pride in that, pride in knowing he carried on a family tradition, a family calling. And even when Shrikeweed rose above him in station, he could never consider the old man beneath him. It would have been an insult. It would have been incorrect, unsound.
The Authentications clerk appears again, bowed and bent under the weight of the book he carries. Pale grey leather with plain simple capitals reading Ledger of the Seals, K-L. Another ritual now, and a necessary one. He lays the book open on a high table, leafs though pages upon pages of official seals. Every one of them has their seal in a book like this. A book that makes their actions official, a means of tracing their actions. Every seal unique. Every seal recorded. And now, the seal of Anton Montague Levesque. His name, his number, the seal of his department, all there upon the page in vermillion ink, blood bright even after decades.
Shrikeweed cradles the seal itself in his hand, compared it to the image on the page. He knows it matches. Still, the ritual requires that he pass to the Authentications clerk. The man examines it for a moment, then coughs an official cough, and hands it back. Another seal appears upon the high table along with a pad of ink the color of the midnight sky. A seal in hard and polished alabaster and ironwood. He reaches for the seal, cannot quite will his fingers to grasp it. A failure of his duties. That cannot disrupt the ritual. The ritual must go on.
“Mr Wiggins.” The younger man turns his head, bird-swift and near as jarring. “Take the seal. Recall Mr Levesque. His years of good service.” A pause. The younger man takes up this second seal, presses it to the ink pad. “Strike his seal from the record.” Wiggins hesitates, the striking seal held aloft. “Mr Wiggins,” Shrikeweed says again, trying to keep his voice level. Trying and failing. It breaks as it has not in years. “Strike his seal from the record.” The seal comes down, one long smooth arc, and Anton Montague Levesque is retired from the Service.
Nearly silent now, only the slow sound of distant shuffling feet to hide the solemn breathing. No one has spoken a word. There is nothing to say. Levesque is well and truly gone. His body destroyed at Dorehaven, his soul voided here.
And his seal? He would take the seal, deliver it. It was right and proper. It was the immemorial custom of the Service.
***
Wisteria Lane and the day still bright and clear. Cabs in the street and ladies and gentlemen going about their mid-morning business. A builder’s cart stops and two men with brick-hods get down. Big men, burly men. A house on this side of the street is being repaired. The brick-men join their fellows, laughing corse and good-natured laughs. Bastards, he thinks, your fellows have done this, brought this chaos. Do you know their names? Do you care what has been done? No, the men likely do not care. They have work to do. They have nothing to do with the bombing. Leave them. It will do no good to find conspirators in every laborer and tradesman. It will do more harm. And yet he cannot take his eyes from them. Their faces he measures with studied practice and own sorceries. Their faces he will remember. It is meaningless. Let it go. He cannot let it go, not today. Not with a dead man’s seal wrapped in cloth in his satchel.
There is no real way around the laborers, not unless he wishes to wager his life against the skill of cabbies and carriage drivers. So he passed through the little knot of laborers. “Steady on lads,” cries one, perhaps their foreman, as a barrel of bricks is raised. “Handomly now, handsomely!” The forman back up, still looking up, not minding the street. The big man backs into Shrikeweed. His heart races, his palms clinch, his jaw sets, his field swirls around him like razor leaves on an autumn wind. “Oh, sorry squire,” says the big man, doffing his cap. Proper, respectful, civilized. Shrikeweed cannot return the gesture, nothing in him will move. Nothing but his legs. He dashes off, down the street, down Wisteria Lane.
Levesque’s door, wine red and glossy with good quality paint. A solid door for a solid man. With a breath, he raises his hand, raises it toward the bell. There is not opportunity to ring. The door opens, and there is Kate. Kate whom he has known since she was a girl of nine. The younger of Levesque’s granddaughters.
“Mr Shirkeweed?” she looks at him, not quite quizzical, but with dark owlish eyes. Dark eyes rimmed in red. “You look rattled.”
He is rattled. Of course he is. He is not here for his own comfort, or to be comforted. He is here to perform a duty, to satisfy a ritual. “I will be fine, Kate. Never mind me. Are you and Arabella both at home?”
“Of course we are. Where else would we be? Please, come in.” She ushers him in, away from the street, away from its own chaos. Stillness within. Stillness like the old man’s office. Only the ticking of the grandfather clock in the sitting room and the faint sounds of someone occasionally picking at a harp. It is slightly flat. Only a moment and it could be tuned. No. Not today. The flat harp is correct, dull and discordant.
“Arabella?” Kate has brought him to the sitting room, a small, comfortable space. In a small chair by the window, is is the elder granddaughter who is picking abstracted sounds from the harp. Arabella looks up. Her eyes are harder, even darker that her sister’s. There are only the distant ghosts of tears in her eyes. “Shrikeweed? Has it already been ten days?”
“Today is the morning of the tenth day, yes. I come to pay my proper condolences. And to bring you this.” He reaches into his satchel and takes out the heavy jadite seal, still wrapped in a scrap of velvet he purloined somewhere. He does not remember where. He will not be able to return it. One small act of thievery, a private chaos. He thinks he can live with it.
Arabella stops the desultory picking of the harp, rises. She is nearly Shrikeweed’s own height. Tall for a woman. The height suits her, lends her due gravitas. Pale hands outstretched she takes the seal, cradles it, feels the weight of it. The seal has more color, more life than those pale hands. She stands stock still, unmoving. Not unmoved. Can she complete the ritual? It is unlikely. She is frozen. He cannot complete it. It would be wrong, incorrect, unsound. Now Kate crosses over, knowing the task is hers, and runs her own hand over the seal, over her sister’s hands.
“Thank you Mr Shrikeweed.” Kate even tries for a wan sort of smile. He breathes in, then out, then in again, suppressing his own twisting sorrow. Here and now are not places for his own private grief. “It is good of you to bring it. Grandfather would want to be home, at least in some manner, to be among family.” She wraps her hands around the seal, taking it. Another wan almost smile. “Come, grandfather, your family is waiting for you.”
He watches, silent, and she places the seal upon the mantle, along with all the others.
