clairvoyantist’s perspective. He inclines his head and shrugs, as if to say, Well, I reckon that’s what I am.
Is that what he is? He thinks, strangely enough, of sitting on a couch in soft lamplight, speaking of Mantel, of Ezeudo and fumimancy, of all manner of things he had not, then, understood. Drink brings such ghosts swimming about the mind; the melancholy is deep, and he can swim rather than drowning.
They drift down the gallery, at the far edge of the throng. Asked, she says, then stops. It’s a stop on the edge of something, he feels; he looks over at her, and now he raises his eyebrows, because he’s never known Niccolette Ibutatu to search for a better word than she’s already spoken, not in Estuan nor Monite.
Demanded, she says. He glances over, raises an eyebrow. He watches, then, as she raises a hand to her face; it’s a small motion – she might’ve been scratching her lip – but he remembers, shock-vivid, snow melting and evaporating and falling again, a terrible heat, the smell of burnt flesh.
“Giving and asking – demanding,” he corrects himself, with a little smile. “Giving and demanding, then giving more.”
She backlashed then, he knows; she has said she did not regret it. Did Tsabiyi? He won’t bring it up, but he thinks of it: he can’t remember a single reference to backlash in all of Tsabiyi’s work. He has to have, he thinks, but the path never split for him, and he suspects it’s never split for Niccolette Ibutatu, either.
He thinks of where the path split for ada’na Utula. He thinks of projection, of the merging of minds, of untethering, and blood in all of it. “I suppose,” he starts; he walks slow, deliberate, beside her, his heel clicking silently on the ballroom floor, “I suppose I don’t – a clairvoyantist wouldn’t see it as giving, or asking, or demanding. More… reaching deeper, or – or becoming—”
I challenge you!
He starts, even if she doesn’t. He turns with her, to where the crowd has scattered round what appears to be a hell of a scene.
He looks over at her, one brow raised. “Auspicious or inauspicious.” He turns back, looks over the heads. There is silence where there was music; he can’t think when it stopped. “Speak of the hatcher, and he’ll find you.”
“Are you all right, my dear?”
Heloise Delacroix is quite pale, more pale than Diana has ever seen her. Her hair has come loose, and a few tangled strands hang about her face. Diana brushes them out of the way, tucks them behind her ear, and cups her cheek.
“Quite all right, Mrs. Vauquelin,” she says, with a tremble in her voice.
“Oh, darling.”
Two fields flare hot at the edges of theirs, pressing against one another, flexing their perceptive and living mona broadly. “Name them, then,” barks a young man’s voice, breathless. “Name your terms.”
Alain Delacroix is a member of the assembly, Diana knows, and recently ascended. He is man of roughly forty-five, with the narrow, freckled features and the thick red hair of an Anaxi. He is as well-dressed as any of the other gentlemen at the party; the pattern of his cravat matches his wife’s dress, simple but elegant in black and white. He is standing very straight-backed, and his lips are pressed very thin.
The young man opposite him, with the living ramscott, she knows now as Marcel Winthrop. A year returned from Drekkur, she understands, and roughly Heloise’s age. They went to Brunnhold together, the girl was telling her just an hour ago, introducing her to the bright-eyed, blond-haired young man, whose engagement ring still gleams on one hand.
The floor is a scatter of broken glass and a spreading pool of champagne. Diana has not had much tonight, and now, the smell rather turns her stomach.
“A duel at the second level will be sufficient,” Mr. Delacroix says, clipped. “Mrs. Vauquelin—”
“No,” breathes Heloise.
“Mr. Delacroix,” says Diana, one hand still on Heloise’s shoulder. “Do reconsider. It is Clock’s Eve, the eve of the new year; it is a night meant for—”
“I said that I accepted, Mrs. Vauquelin,” he says smoothly. His eyes never leave the young man’s. There is color in his cheeks. “Do the Vauquelins agree to host?”
We cannot refuse, Diana thinks, and holds back a heavy hearted sigh. She does not yet look across the crowd for her husband’s face, though he must by now have seen it; she cannot bear to. “We do,” she says quietly. “The atrium is suitable for the purposes.”
Only now does Mr. Delacroix turn and bow deeply to the hostess. Mr. Winthrop, still breathless, turns and bows his blond head dizzyingly fast. “My thanks, madam,” he says.
A ripple of a snicker goes through the crowd. No music; nothing but held breath.
Diana rests her hand a moment more on Heloise’s silk shoulder, giving the girl a smile. There is color in her cheeks as well, underneath the freckles.
“I shall fetch the doctor,” she says softly. “Come with me, please – you can retire until a carriage is made ready…”
Heloise looks as if she is about to protest, but nods quietly instead.
Eugenia Favroulet moves in, as if on cue, a flash of white silk. She takes the poor girl by the shoulders, tutting softly, fixing her hair.
Diana is thinking so quickly she cannot think. Heloise has been looking so well; earlier, she was laughing on Alain’s arm, cradling the slight swell at her stomach which she no longer cares to hide.
When she turns, steeling herself, it is as if the upkeep of a spell is let go. The duelists begin moving toward the far end of the hall, toward the stairs; the crowd drifts after them, Clock’s Eve dresses and neat tuxedos, glasses of champagne and brandy and glittering new years’ cocktails.
Diana recognizes her husband, standing over by one of the tall dark windows. She moves; she has lost her own glass somewhere, she does not know where.
She can tell by the way he is standing, by the expression on his face, that he is deep in his cups already. Curious, how different it is now; but she has begun to know these new faces of Anatole’s, too. His eyebrows are raised; he is saying something in a low voice to a dark-haired woman beside him, a woman she does not recognize.
“...speak of the hatcher, and he’ll find you,” he is saying.
“Anatole,” she says, and then, when she has gotten close enough to caprise, a little breathless, bows deeply to the woman. She reaches out to the living mona with her own perceptive – pauses – raises up from her bow, and smoothes out a slightly surprised expression.
“Diana,” says Anatole, in his new, practiced way. There is nothing in his eyes when he looks at her; his smile does not change. “May I introduce Niccolette Ibutatu? Mrs. Ibutatu, this is my wife, Diana Vauquelin.”
“You must forgive us for this – disruption, Mrs. Ibutatu,” says Diana. “Anatole, I’m afraid we’ve been called to host a duel. I’m afraid – unless…” She pauses, then takes a deep breath; her field is indectal and smooth around her.
There’s a flicker of something – irritation? Worry? – on her face, when she looks again at the young Bastian. Then, she smiles, a strange glint in her eyes. “Do you wish to join us on the balcony, Mrs. Ibutatu?”