[PM to Join] Of the Visages of Things

[moralhazard]

Evening, 32 Intas, 2720
The Fasquelle's Ballroom, Uptown

Amaryllis quite understood the importance of focusing.

The trouble was Phileander, and the way his pale blond hair curled, just a little, at the back of his head. The trouble was the sudden giggle he had let slip that morning, when he thought he had managed to take a bit of chocolate without her noticing, still sticky-fingered and with the remains smeared at the corner of his mouth. The trouble was the little jam prints that had covered the skirt of her third best day dress, and the vigorous, wailing, full-throated tantrum he had thrown when Amaryllis had snatched the worm from his hands seconds before it was about to enter his mouth.

The problem was the way his long, thick eyelashes fluttered against his cheek when he was going down for a nap - even, Amaryllis thought ruefully, when said eyes were red and swollen - and the nightmare he’d had two days ago, and how he’d only fallen back asleep in her arms, sucking on his thumb, coughing a little. She knew she ought to be sterner about the habit - Mrs. Merrymore has written quite confidently it would lead to his teeth growing in crooked - but she had pretended, just that once, not to see.

”Yes,” Amaryllis said with an easy smile, resisting the urge to reach a hand up to touch the braids woven across her head, ”and an exciting year it promises to be - and how is your little Delphine?”

“Oh,” Lucinda Jaquemonte laughed. “Fine, I’m sure. I had thought having children would be so difficult, but we have been quite fortunate with our nursemaids; they really need very little supervision. And - your boy...? Good Lady, he must be two now?”

”Three,” Amaryllis said, smiling, thinking of the little party they had had for his birthday. A growed up party, Phileander had called it; the color had been back in his cheeks by then, and he had been coughing only a little. Horace had gotten him the most wonderful little train set and Amaryllis rather thought she could have watched them play on the floor together for hours. ”He’s well, thank you.”

Amaryllis had had rather a more difficult time on the subject of nursemaids. The first had not paid nearly enough attention to Phil, including a worrying loose swaddle. The second had had the audacity to tell her she should keep herself out of the nursery for the sake of the baby - Amaryllis had fired her on the spot and wept that night for several hours, to the point that Horace had actually called Dr. Wellingstone. Thankfully they had a lovely woman now, Mrs. Pike, who had been with them since his first year, and had proven herself most capable in the worst hours; Amaryllis could quite confidently leave Phileander to her care, even if she couldn’t quite seem to leave the thoughts of him behind.

She said none of this to Lucinda, who had already moved on to a discussion of this season’s fashions.

”A most skilled tailor,” Amaryllis agreed. She hoped Mrs. Pike had read Orleans and the Airship to Phileander before bed; it was the loveliest story of a little mouse and his adventures aboard an airship, and Phileander liked it so. Mrs. DeMontemarcy has written that repetition was, in fact, beneficial for children when it came to stories, for the encouragement of the development of the memory. Amaryllis hoped that was the case; she had read the story to him so many times, when he had been abed, that she had it memorized herself.

It was not that it wasn’t a lovely party. Mrs. Fasquelle had a wonderful ballroom, and an exquisite new chandelier in the latest style from Bastia. The string quartet was excellent, and the dancing had been superb; waltzing with Horace had been the high point of the evening, but naturally one could not dance only with one’s husband. The house for dancing had passed, though, and Amaryllis had to admit her new shoes - fashionable though they were - had started to pinch her feet a bit. She did not quite look away from Lucinda, who was detailing the mess her latest tailor had made of a commission, but she snuck a peak over the woman’s shoulder.

Horace was still deep in conversation with Dannunzio. That was, Amaryllis thought, quite good; he had needed to speak with the man, and they had hoped this party would provide an opportunity to set up a meeting. Horace had offered to stay home; Amaryllis had insisted they come, the both of them. As she not-quite-watched, Horace grinned in that way he had after making a joke, and Dannunzio laughed and stroked his mustache.

“Your husband is - er - still involved with the railroad...? I understand he was quite instrumental in the Vienda-Brunnhold line,” Lucinda was asking, wide-eyed, bright with curiosity; a little flutter of it streaked through her bastly perceptive field.

”Yes,” Amaryllis said, smiling, not quite bothering to hide the pride in it. Her own field of static mona warmed, just perceptibly, and then settled once more. ”It’s quite the undertaking! I’m sure I don’t understand half of it,” she glanced down at the mostly full cocktail in her hand, thinking rapidly.

“Oh yes,” Lucinda giggled. “Men and their toys.”

Amaryllis laughed, and her heart lifted and ached all at once at the memory of Horace and Phileander on the floor together. ”You know,” she murmured. ”I really shouldn’t tell you this,” she lifted her gaze slightly.

Lucinda’s bright gold eyes were glowing wide. “Oh,” she laughed. “I won’t tell a soul.”

Amaryllis smiled. ”They’ve just crossed the border into Anaxas,” she said proudly, ”laying down the tracks. I understand the stage on the other side was most delicate.”

“Oh, how exciting!” Lucinda murmured. “Do you think we’ll really be able to ride a train to Florne within the year?”

”Yes,” Amaryllis said, smiling; she took the tiniest sip of her drink, ”if all goes well. But please,” she murmured, ”don’t tell anyone I told you. Horace is so private about his work.”

“Quiet as a moon church mouse,” Lucinda promised. “Oh - oh, there is Alyssina Kirkland. It’s been ages - goodness, what an interesting color for a dress! - I simply must. You don’t mind, do you darling?”

”Not at all,” Amaryllis promised. They said their farewells, and Lucinda bustled off, almost brimming over. Amaryllis waited, just long enough, and let her breath out in a careful sigh. She looked down at her Starfly and the pale periwinkle silk of her dress beneath - unadorned, Amaryllis thought regretfully, by sticky fingers - and then settled her smile on her face once more.

Once they got home, Amaryllis thought, she would look in just briefly in Phileander. It was so important for him to sleep now that he could do so undisturbed - he was doing much better, now, really, one would scarcely have known, and he so rarely coughed in the night anymore - but she just wanted to see him, and perhaps to touch her lips to his forehead to check for fever. Mrs. Pike would let her know, Amaryllis promised herself, if there was the faintest hint of anything to worry about. She could, as Horace had put it, try to relax.

Still smiling, Amaryllis looked out over the ballroom.

[Graf]

Evening, 32 Intas, 2720
The Fasquelle’s Ballroom

I

don’t know,” she said softly, pressing her lips together. The sounds of the party trickled down the corridor and beneath the door to the retiring room; muffled, she could hear laughter, the clinking of glasses. There was music, distant, which her ears caught but her mind could not quite hold onto. She thought she had the melody, now, and now she lost it.

Behind her, in the mirror, Blandine beamed. “My darling,” she said, “my darling, you are so – you have always – you look marvelous.”

Diana met her eyes in the mirror and, taking a deep breath, smiled. There was a slight flush in her cheeks, a faint slush to her consonants.

Blandine Charbonneau was only two years Diana’s senior. She remembered, still with perfect clarity, when they had been best friends in school – how Blandie had taken her under her wing, when she was still a frightened little girl from Brayde County, teased for her accent and her unruly towhead. She had thought Blandine so beautiful, then, on those nights spent giggling in her dorm; the first time she let down her thick, wavy red hair, Diana’s breath had caught.

She remembered clinging to every second of their friendship, then, coveting every moment spent helping her unswaddle herself drunkenly from the ridiculous dresses they all wore back in the twenty-sevens. As if a breeze could whisk it away, as if one day Blandine would look up and realize that the poor country girl was not enough.

It shuddered up in her chest again. “Do you think he ever,” she began, thought she knew better, by now.

“Diana, my darling. Men,” she slurred, raising both her eyebrows, “are all the same.”

He had slurred, too, when he had told her he felt ill and wished to retire, before the dancing had even started; she had not offered to accompany him home, this time. She did not think she wished to go home at all, tonight.

Blandine was shaking her head, waving a glittering plump hand. “Casimir was just the same, before he returned to the Cycle,” she said flippantly, as if she were discussing someone else’s husband. “I don’t understand it; I should think no woman does.”

“Blandine, my dear.”

“They burn out, you know. Whence?” She fluttered her hand again. “All that ambition? I shall be High Judge someday; then, I shall be Low Judge, someday; then, my dear, why Bellington? There’s an adorable house in Jeddering Gate, overlooking the…”

There was not a hint of redness in the skin around her eyes, she noted with more than a little satisfaction, and the flush in her cheeks was swiftly fading. “Perhaps I shall go,” she said, trying her smile again – a politician’s wife’s smile, she thought dully – straight white teeth, and only the faintest few lines around her eyes. “Perhaps I will not.”

She shrugged her shoulders in her high-collared, russet silk dress, and raised her brows, suddenly all nonchalant Tivian bride.

“That’s the spirit!” laughed Blandine. “Perhaps you shall have some fun of your own in Thul Ka.”

“Perhaps I shall,” Diana said, keeping the look on her face, though she felt as if the shrug had not suited her very well at all. As she began to put her kohl and her lip color back in her handbag, Blandine, behind her, was still laughing, her nose very red and a bit swollen.

A half-hour later, fresh-faced, she was back under the Fasquelles’ dreadfully elaborate new chandelier, chatting with the deputy whip’s wife.

“I’m not even sure what to call it, to be perfectly honest,” she drawled, voice very low, into another sip of her delicate purple cocktail. “Certainly an interesting choice, though I wonder what Mr. Kirkland has to say about it.”

Diana’s eyes were wandering; she was beginning to wonder if, in fact, it would have been best to leave early. Suddenly, fleetingly, she caught sight of a familiar face. She frowned and shifted to get a better look. “Why, is that Horace Braithwaite?”

“The gentleman speaking to Mr. Dannunzio?” Mrs. Auvray raised one manicured eyebrow, shrugging her shoulders. “Why, I’m quite sure I don’t know him.”

Before a couple of young ladies in pink and gold dresses drifted in front of them, she saw Horace grin – distinctive; her smile softened, no longer quite the politician’s wife – and the gentleman with him let out a sharp laugh.

“Is Mr. Braithwaite a friend of yours, Mrs. Vauquelin?” Mrs. Auvray asked, voice edged with incredulousness; and, perhaps, underneath it, something crueler.

Diana smiled back at Mrs. Auvrey. “His wife is a relation. I wasn’t aware they were here; if you’ll excuse me, I should really hate to miss them…”

Mrs. Auvray shrugged her shoulders again, her eyes drifting away. “Of course. It was a pleasure speaking to you, Mrs. Vauquelin; I am sorry to have missed your husband.”

As, thought Diana, am I. But as she turned away and brushed through the crowd, skimming it with her eyes – she had known even at Brunnhold there were advantages to being a tall girl – she felt a strange weight off her heart; she felt a strange fluttering buoyance, paired with an even stranger sense of urgency. If you find her, she asked herself, what will you say? It has been months –

It had been so busy, she thought, with the turning of the Symvoulio, with Anatole, with everything; she had heard from cousin Benoît about little Phil, whom she had scarce seen in the last few years, but they had been so busy, with Dorhaven and then with…

She recognized her at once, standing alone in a dress the loveliest shade of blue, looking down at the starfly in her hand.

There was a pressure on her heart, for a moment; then she stepped close enough to caprise. “Amaryllis,” she said. “What a lovely surprise!”

[moralhazard]

Evening, 32 Intas, 2720
The Fasquelle's Ballroom, Uptown

Amaryllis felt the brush of an indectal perceptive field at the edge of her senses, one of the many that swept the room in a crowd like this. It caprised hers with a gentle touch, and Amaryllis returned the caprise even as she turned, lifting her chin with a smile.

Sometimes, in sillier moments, Amaryllis wondered whether anyone could tell what sort of spells she cast, these days. At Brunnhold, she – and all her classmates – had learned to cool fire to ice, to pull water from the air, to shatter a rock, to generate electricity with a few words and a flick of the fingers. Those days seemed strange and distant, ill-fitting, like trying to wear a dress from when she was twenty. If she cast at all, these days, it was in stolen peaceful moments in the kitchen, quickly extinguishing a cooking fire or checking the temperature in the oven to find uneven spots.

“Diana!” Amaryllis’s eyes widened, and the smile that broke over her face was broad and unexpected; it lifted her spirits, and the odd little pinch of loneliness that had assailed her in the midst of so much finery, the strange fierce longing for the soft dark quiet of the nursery. “Oh,” Amaryllis said, warm; her caprise deepened, though stayed politely. She bowed, deeply, and rose up, and came a little closer to her older cousin.

“I didn’t know you were here tonight,” Amaryllis said. “I’m so glad to see you,” she smiled.

Amaryllis had sent a note, of course, when she had heard about Incumbent Vauquelin’s collapse outside the opera house. It had been Diana she had worried for; Anatole had always been kind, and he had been encouraging and supportive of Horace those difficult first few years in Vienda, as Horace had worked at growing his government contracts. In truth, though, Amaryllis had never quite liked her cousin’s husband; she couldn’t have said why. There was often something cold in the look of his smile, Amaryllis had thought, and she was never quite easy around him.

All the same, she had been heart-broken for Diana and poor little Eleanor – much too young to lose her father so – and Cerise, too. Amaryllis did not know the older girl very well, but she knew a good deal of what it was like to lose a parent at the girl’s age. And then, of course – Anatole had recovered, by all accounts, if a bit – strangely. Horace had come home uneasy, one day, and told her a bit hesitantly of some odd rumors floating about Stainthorpe. But – by all accounts he was fully recovered now, himself once more.

Amaryllis had not, she thought, seen Diana since – well, since before the stroke. She had sent and received cards, of course; Amaryllis kept a neat list of birthdays in her planner, and of course she had sent cards for Clock’s Eve as well. It had been rather difficult, this year, finding something to say to everyone; Chrysanthe did not usually help, and of course she was so very busy these days, but she’d stayed with them a week during the worst of it, and she had read the cards over for Amaryllis, and made several very helpful suggestions.

Amaryllis couldn’t quite have put words to it; there was something about Diana – not in her field, of course, which was perfectly indectal, nor in her hair or on her make up – she looked flawless, as always – but she felt rather deeply that she wanted to take Diana’s hand, or even embrace her. She didn’t; it would have been inappropriate to the point of embarrassing them both, in a setting like this one, but Amaryllis was aware of something softening on her face.

“How are you?” Amaryllis asked, smiling. There was a softness to the question, amidst all the odd sharpness of the party: the bright, brittle laughter – someone’s sharp snort – the odd tinkling of too many glasses, and little forks and spoons against delicate china plates – the brush of one indectal field after another.

[Graf]

Evening, 32 Intas, 2720
The Fasquelles’ Ballroom

A
ll of your lovely cards, she wanted to say. All of them, even when I did not – could not – reply. Might she have written? She remembered that once she had found the card among the avalanche of damp mail, with the return address not stamped or printed but written in a familiar hand; it had been near the start of the rainy season, and she had, upon seeing it, let out an enormous sigh.

That was when she had received the invitation to the grand opening of the Myrtle Coquelin Museum from Mrs. Leblanc – the wife of Casimir Leblanc, Lord Chancellor Leblanc – and to reply promptly had been urgent; and when she’d found it in the mail, she’d been halfway out the door to the fundraiser Mrs. Chevalier had been throwing for the Riboulet Ladies’ Society’s upcoming donation to the SCLR. That week had been utterly swamped; the party on the ninth, alone, had required some elaborate and not inexpensive modifications to the long gallery, as Mrs. Leblanc would be in attendance, and Mrs. Leblanc was herself known for her impeccable, lavish-yet-tasteful parties in the Leblancs’ Ro Hill mansion…

Diana had bowed deeply at almost the same moment Amaryllis did. Her young cousin’s caprise was polite, but friendly. Diana found herself, as was her habit, holding the mona in her field indectal and a little apart, pleasant but cool; after a moment, the mona in her field drifted deeper into Amaryllis’.

“Nor did I.” She was still smiling. “It would have sorely upset me to miss you. I’m so very glad – why, I was just in conversation with Mrs. Auvray, Mr. Albert Auvray’s wife,” she added, as if an afterthought, “when I happened to see Horace.”

She slowed, paused; there was something in the name Horace, when it came out of her mouth, which she had not intended.

She had not forgotten the caprise of Amaryllis’ field. It was no ramscott, though those were not so common Uptown. It was neither the sort of static ramscott you saw on aeroship captains – she remembered fondly the air chief marshall at the Low Judge’s dinner last Ophus – nor the soft, slinking perceptive fields of Anaxi’s secular political world. She did not think Amaryllis cast very often, but for all its weakness, her field hung around her with singular intent, and a great deal of warmth.

It had been stronger all those years ago, when she had first come to Vienda as a newlywed. At first, Diana recalled, she had not been altogether sure how to feel about Horace; she remembered long arguments with Anatole, who had never had much faith in the young man’s abilities.

But she had always loved her cousin – and she felt oddly as if she wanted, even now, to take both her hands or kiss her brow, or pull her into an embrace, as she might have done when Amaryllis was a girl.

There was something about the way Amaryllis asked after her. She could not have put her finger on it. “We are very well, my dear,” she replied. She swallowed thickly; she took a sip of her Galkan Blue, her wedding ring clicking on the glass.

“The year will be what it will be,” she said, as if it were light and easy. “Anatole is preparing for the move to Mugroba in Loshis; it’s terribly busy, and showing no signs of letting up. Flood season, as they say.”

She laughed, and found the sound a little too sharp. She smiled at Amaryllis, and searched her cousin’s face, her lovely blue dress, her blond hair in its delicate updo.

“But please...” She had sent her well wishes, even if Rosmilda had penned them. “How is little Phileander? And – Chrysanthe?” She tilted her head slightly. Chrysanthe’s name had been on all of Amaryllis’ cards, though she rather knew better. She had always had a special fondness for the girl.

[moralhazard]

Evening, 32 Intas, 2720
The Fasquelle's Ballroom, Uptown

Very well, my dear, Diana said, and took a sip of her Galkan Blue; her lips twitched, as if the drink were too sour, and smoothed out evenly into a smile once more.

Amaryllis found she was not quite sure how to say that she had not thought Anatole would go Mugroba. It seemed a funny thing to have assumed, now that she put words to it. Anatole was an incumbent, still; of course he would have to go to Mugroba. She wanted to say something – that she was thinking of him – but she found the words oddly uneasy on her lips, and she could not quite have said why.

Amaryllis smiled instead, nodding lightly.

She could never think of Diana without remembering her first year at Brunnhold – far from home, and far from Chrysanthe too, the five-years-younger baby sister who Amaryllis had loved unstintingly from the first moment she had laid eyes on her. Her parents, Amaryllis remembered, had not cried when Amaryllis left for Brunnhold – Chrysanthe had, and Amaryllis had too, although it had been more for Chrysanthe than anything else.

Diana had been almost finished at Brunnhold by then; to Amaryllis she had seemed the pinnacle of womanhood, although in retrospect – thinking of herself at nineteen – Amaryllis thought wryly that she could only imagine what Diana had gone through. There had been no reason, particularly, that Diana should have sought out her younger, distant cousin; she had. Amaryllis had felt lost at Brunnhold, utterly lost, and Diana’s kindnesses were a treasured memory.

Diana had been beautiful before her post-graduate work at Anastou, Amaryllis thought, but Bastia had polished her, somehow, until she shone; she remembered sitting with Chrysanthe at Diana’s wedding to Anatole – Good Lady, so many years ago, now – and being quite sure her cousin was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. She did not, particularly, remember what Anatole had looked like on Diana’s wedding day.

Afterwards, too – she had seen Diana at her parents’ funeral, although in truth she remembered very little of that day. She could not, really, have said what had passed between them; she only knew that Diana had been there because she must have been there. But afterwards, after her marriage to Horace and the move to Vienda, Diana had been terribly kind once again – far kinder than the ties of cousinship could ever have obligated.

“Quite well,” Amaryllis said, her eyes brightening at the mention of Phileander; something inside her that had been like a dam burst, and she rather felt as if she had come spilling out. “I’m sure you remember from when Eleanor was the same age, but he’s – he’s gotten so big! I swear he’ll have grown another inch by the time I get home.” She swallowed through the lump in her throat.

Amaryllis hesitated; she was not sure whether Diana knew, and she – it did not seem terribly appropriate to discuss Phileander’s recent illness in such company. That, Amaryllis thought wryly, and she did not entirely trust herself to keep from crying; the thought of having missed an inch of height was hitting her rather hard, tonight.

You’re welcome to come over, she would have liked very much to add, to see him – he has Horace’s lovely golden eyes, not my blue ones, although he’s as blonde as I am – but she didn’t quite dare. It wasn’t that she felt the invitation would embarrass her, or Diana; it was only that it… terribly busy, Diana had said. Amaryllis smiled instead.

“Chrysanthe is quite well,” Amaryllis added, pleased. “I – perhaps you recall…? She’s taken on a management position at Pargeter and Sons, the float glass producers,” her posture straightened, the tiniest bit, although she had never come near slouching; a proud smile gleamed on her face. “She’s been with the company two years now, although the promotion is more recent.”

“And - Eleanor? She's doing well at Brunnhold?” Amaryllis asked. She remembered Diana’s awkward little daughter with a fond smile; she thought to say that Phileander was perhaps of an age to appreciate her insect collection, if he could be induced not to attempt to eat them, but again it felt – like overstepping, Amaryllis thought, more than a little sadly.

[Graf]

Evening, 32 Intas, 2720
The Fasquelles’ Ballroom

A
h, yes,” said Diana warmly, “I do remember.”

Did she? She couldn’t quite remember. It had come and gone. Her late twenties, she recalled, had been like an exhale; she had gotten her foot in the door, so to speak, with the Pendulum wives, and Anatole’s practice had been doing marvelously, and they’d had a decent cushion. Little Cerise had been off to Brunnhold, and it felt as if a great deal of weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

And so she remembered Eleanor at six, seven, eight, with those wide, brilliant blue eyes, her blond hair coming in curly like her father’s and a little strawberry-tinged. That was when they had moved into the house on Willow. They’d taken little El on the walk-through, and she had barreled straight into the atrium, startling the gardener who was tending the hydrangeas – and begged her father, teary-eyed, who had laughed his lovely humming laugh and made an offer right then.

She could not remember Eleanor before that, as a child of two or three. She remembered Eleanor as a baby; she certainly remembered having her dresses let out, and the first kick, and Anatole tiring her out at the opera, insisting (as he had with Cerise, once, a long time ago) she be exposed to all of the Hessean classics in utero, as if there were any doubt she would inherit a songbird’s voice from her father.

But she could not remember the times between when Eleanor was a baby and when she was a little girl. She supposed there were nurses, then. It had been so busy.

Diana hesitated, smiling at Amaryllis. “It has been – such a very long time since I have seen little Phil,” she began, and was not quite sure where to go with it, though she thought there was something she wanted very badly to ask. She remembered Phileander as a little baby with just a dusting of hair, all chubby grasping hands and squinting eyes and tenderness; she could not quite picture him at two or three.

Amaryllis had hesitated; she thought if Phil were still sick, she would have told her, surely. Diana smiled smoothly and took another sip of her Galkan.

“Pargeter and sons,” repeated Diana, eyes widening. “She was always so – well-inclined toward the static conversation. Why, I’m quite sure I don’t know the first thing about it, but I happen to have been speaking to Mrs. Pargeter just recently; I understand there’s a great deal of innovation in window glass manufacture at the moment.”

She had thought, strangely, that Chrysanthe would go into – she wasn’t sure what. When the girl was still in school, study abroad opportunities in Frecksat were somewhat limited, but there were many good opportunities for postgraduate work in the static conversation elsewhere – particularly in Gior, whose static department was the second-best in the kingdoms. She had half-wondered if the girl would go into politics; she seemed most ambitious.

It had been quite some time since she had seen Chrysanthe, too. She had heard, of course, about the troubles in twenty-seven fifteen, but she wasn’t sure what had come of it; it, too, had been a busy year, with the Reformists in a position to make either an enormous win or a devastating loss in the assembly. Either way, such things seemed inevitable. She supposed she was grateful that her own misfortunes had stayed in Anastou.

At the mention of Eleanor, she brightened, too. “Very well. Would you know, she seems quite set on entomology,” she said, smiling, looking somewhat mystified; she shook her head and laughed softly. “Anatole used to say she would grow out of it, but to be quite frank, she is making excellent marks in all her courses, secular and arcane. Whenever I see her, she’s always on about this or that genus or species or subspecies of insect; I simply can’t keep track of them, but it’s fascinating. As long as she doesn’t bring it to the dining table –”

Diana broke off suddenly and laughed. She wasn’t quite sure why; perhaps she had had a little too much to drink, tonight. She had never made a habit of it, but she hadn’t thought it would hurt, just for tonight. And there was something terribly refreshing about a giggle.

“Oh, how long has it been since you’ve seen her, Amaryllis? She’s such a clever girl,” she added, and, smiling more warmly, “though I’ve never known our girls to be otherwise.”

[moralhazard]

Evening, 32 Intas, 2720
The Fasquelle's Ballroom, Uptown

Mrs. Pargeter is an impressive woman,” Amaryllis said, smiling neutrally.

Amaryllis understood, she supposed; a woman in Mrs. Pargeter’s position had to look out for her sons. Chrysanthe had been staying with them, then, two years ago, and had come home furious, all pale skin and high bright red spots in her cheeks; there was an iciness to her eyes, a paleness, and they had flashed bright with unshed tears. She had cut Horace outright when he had asked how her day had gone, and snapped at Amaryllis when she suggested she come down for dinner.

Amaryllis had found her in the nursery, she remembered, watching Phileander sleep; those had been the days when he was still baby-soft and chubby. He was all long quick limbs, now; he still had a sweet roundness to his cheeks, but he moved so fast – like a darting little hummingbird, and always about to put something in his mouth. Amaryllis had hovered at the door, and Chrysanthe had turned to look at her, and burst into tears.

“How is it,” Chrysanthe had asked, rather rhetorically, “that men can begin life so sweet, and become such – such – brutes?”

Amaryllis had known better than to be offended. Horace had offered to intercede; she had told him no, that Chrysanthe needed to find the way on her own, if she was to be satisfied with the outcome.

“Chrysanthe has become rather knowledgeable on the subject,” Amaryllis added, warm still. “I understand some of their newest innovations owe a great deal to her ingenuity.” It had all, she thought, with a painful ache in her chest, worked out in the end.

Amaryllis could not help the warming of her own smile at Diana’s brightening at the mention of Eleanor. “Oh, wonderful,” she said, softly. She giggled with Diana; it was, unfortunately, not terribly hard to imagine lovely, awkward little Eleanor sitting at the table with a magnifying glass and some rather large beetle.

“Perhaps,” Amaryllis shook her head lightly. “I couldn’t say.” She remembered Eleanor at her own wedding, of course; she had had such lovely curls as a little girl. Cerise had been – it was a difficult age, Amaryllis thought, although she was a lovely girl, very Bastian in her looks. She could picture Eleanor clearly enough as a teen, or perhaps a pre-teen, in that spotty stage that some girls looked so charming during, for all that they hated it at the time. An entomologist, Amaryllis thought, smiling. She found it splendid.

Amaryllis hesitated; her hand shifted on the glass. She did not quite glance around, but she was altogether too aware of the bustle of the party around them. She found that her other hand had lifted, slightly, and she lowered it, and tucked it discretely against a fold of her skirt.

“I thought of her,” Amaryllis said, gently, “and you, and Cerise as well, very often this last year and a half.” She could not go further; she had the oddest sense of already being overbalanced. It was a bit like casting, Amaryllis thought, with the funniest sort of twinge; she felt as if she were on the edge of backlash of some familiar spell, one she had cast a dozen times before without issue and now, suddenly, the air around her had gone thin and tight.

She had never quite known how to handle such instances; it was one of the reasons she had never quite been a sufficient caster. She had asked Chrysanthe, once, what she did, at the factory, if a spell seemed to be going wrong. Chrysanthe had lifted her eyebrows, as slim and straight as the rest of her, sitting – as she always seemed to, to Amaryllis, immovable – “Push through,” Chrysanthe had said, firmly.

“It’s really very good to see you,” Amaryllis found she could manage, after all. She did not ask about Anatole; something told her better. She thought, too, that there was nothing wrong with silence; that it, too, mattered.

[Graf]

Evening, 32 Intas, 2720
The Fasquelles’ Ballroom

S
he was still a-glow with her laughter; it would have been terribly easy simply to say it. She wanted, terribly, to say it. Oh, I want to see her, and she can tell me about it herself, she wanted to say. Her mind nearly ran away with the fancy, for a few moments: you and I, and Chrysanthe, and Eleanor, if she can spare the time, and perhaps even Cerise, why don’t we all have a little get-together? Not a party, I don’t want to throw a party; I’m very tired of throwing parties. Let’s get together for tea, just as we did in the winter of ‘sixteen, only his time, Chrysanthe is in Anaxas, and…

It was a silly fancy, she thought. She wasn’t quite sure why, or when it had happened. She thought perhaps she had let one too many months, or years, pass; she thought perhaps nothing would, could, be the same.

“I’m so very pleased to hear of it,” she said, taking another sip of her cloudy blue cocktail. Something had changed in her expression; she smiled, a smile which did not pinch the edges of her eyes, and looked away toward the Fasquelles’ rather grandiose light fixture.

She supposed she had been happy with it, for a time. Seeing her cousins at the big events – the weddings, the baby showers – receiving letters she sometimes penned responses to herself, and sometimes left for the secretary.

She had had many little get-togethers, since, and had been introduced to such elegant names as Guevremont and Leblanc, Auvray, Trevisani, Vaillancourt; she was not without friends. She did not think she could call what she felt tonight loneliness. Anatole had taken somewhat less of an interest in Horace in the past few years, and some of the Pendulum ladies had begun chattering a bit about the company she kept, and she had thought that, well – at a certain point, one’s company reflected one’s status.

There was always family, of course, with whom one corresponded and whose most joyous moments one never (or very seldom) missed, but how was a woman to balance these things? She was no longer a Brayde County Poulain; there were things one left behind.

When she looked back at Amaryllis, there was something in the woman’s carriage that she could not quite place, something about the way she smoothed a fold of her skirt, or held her glass. She tilted her head, smiling pleasantly, not altogether certain what to say.

It was terribly girlish of her – she felt terribly girlish tonight – but she almost wanted to compliment her cousin, to tell her how lovely her pale, fine hair looked, braided up on her head like bands of white-gold, and how well her dress brought out the soft periwinkle of her eyes.

How well that silly, pretty little creature she had helped unpack at Brunnhold had grown into her strong, fair features, and how well motherhood had become her. She had always seemed so vibrant, so alive, and so very kind, and every inch of her glowed with it.

She blinked when her cousin spoke again, though neither her expression nor her indectal field changed.

She shifted her own glass in her hand; she didn’t look away from Amaryllis, but she looked down, at her lips, at the starfly, and then back up to her eyes. “I’m very glad I did not miss you tonight, Amaryllis,” she said quietly, one hand reaching up idly to fiddle with the pearl necklace at her collarbones.

She paused, feeling as if she were about to take a step forward with her eyes shut. She supposed it had been much the same before the journey to Anastou, and much the same with – him.

“I would like to see him,” she said suddenly, “perhaps – whenever he is well enough.” She hadn’t meant to allude to it, but she would not falter; a lady did not stutter. “Little Phileander, that is. It has been ages, and I should think he must have forgotten his cousin Di.” Her smile softened; her hand dropped from her pearls and smoothed her own skirt.

[moralhazard]

Evening, 32 Intas, 2720
The Fasquelle's Ballroom, Uptown

Amaryllis smiled; it was not the polite, careful practiced smile of parties and balls, one of the ones which she had learned from a young age at Brunnhold, one of the smiles which meant deportment – the ones she had seen on her mother’s face, even towards her own daughters, even though her parents’ circumstances had meant there were very few parties and balls to attend, in those days.

It was a smile, instead, like childhood; it was the sort of smile she might have offered her beautiful older cousin as a little girl – at ten, even, finding her way through Brunnhold, not quite yet old enough to be too self-conscious; not quite, Amaryllis knew, old enough to be self-conscious even in one’s happier moments. She was, secretly, rather glad she had never quite mastered the knack of being self-conscious even in one’s happiest.

“Yes,” Amaryllis said, firmly. “That would be lovely. He’s really quite recovered; he naps a bit more, perhaps, than he did, but he’s – ” she was smiling, but there was something tight behind it in her eyes; Amaryllis found her breath caught, and although she did not stutter, and no tears glinted in her eyes, she was conscious of a certain heavy tightness in her chest, "- well."

It was hard; it was very hard. It had been all she had thought about for some weeks; in the midst of that time, afraid and uncertain, she had found herself very nearly unable to talk about anything else. Silence had been a blessing, then; Horace knew how she felt, and she knew, too, that he had felt the same, and they had shared the burden between them without needing to confine it by words.


It was hard, still; she woke up, sometimes, and went to check on him, just in case. It was hard, still, tonight, knowing he slept sound asleep, but unable to go and see as she liked. It was not the sort of hard which would be made better by the dwelling, Amaryllis knew; her son was happy and healthy and whole, and her heart was too, and time would mend the last of these hurts. Diana’s concern, too, carefully articulated, she found more soothing, like a cool balm.

Amaryllis paused; she smiled, and she collected herself. “Any time,” Amaryllis said, lightly. Her hand reached out, delicately, from the fabric of her skirt; her fingers just brushed Diana’s hand and withdrew, and the same warmth echoed through her field. “If you can let me know in advance, I shall see whether Chrysanthe can join us as well; I know she would be glad to see you too.”

She did not think it necessary to say that Phileander had, very likely, forgotten his cousin Di. He was a friendly little boy. He was not the sort to rush up to strangers and greet them, thankfully; there was a bit too much of Horace in him for that, Amaryllis thought, fondly. But he had a credible enough little bow, now, very dear, which he liked to practice because it made her laugh. Just the day before, on a walk around the neighborhood, he had stopped very solemnly and bowed to one of their neighbors, and she and Amaryllis both had been absolutely helpless with laughter, the entirely inappropriate kind which had left Amaryllis glad the street had been quiet that day, glad even as she glowed with the warmth of it for some hours afterwards.

“And I hope,” Amaryllis added, carefully, “to see Eleanor again soon, as well; I should be very glad to learn a bit more of entomology, if she would like a willing audience. I can vouch for Phileander’s interest in bugs, although I’m not yet sure about science,” she had mastered the smile – her face was politely social once more – but she let a little more fondness creep back into it, an easy, genuine warmth which she had so sorely missed this evening.

[Graf]

Evening, 32 Intas, 2720
The Fasquelles’ Ballroom

H
e’s fortunate to have you and Horace,” Diana said. The strange tightness had not left her chest; there was something relieving and frightening both about the warmth in Amaryllis’ voice. She felt the brush of her cousin’s hand, a whisper of warmth in her field, echo all through her, like casting in chorus. “I shall be certain to,” she said, and reached out herself to touch Amaryllis’ shoulder.

She remembered that smile – it was one of the smiles Amaryllis had given her during the wedding, one of the smiles that had prompted Anatole to say, later, What sweet girls, your cousins, one of the smiles she remembered fondly from when her mother took her to visit her sister’s family. It was the sort of smile that was beloved in a little girl; Diana was not sure she had ever had the knack for it.

She wanted so much to see Chrysanthe again, too. She hadn’t realized until now how dreadful the last year had been, how very much it had seemed like stepping through a mirror and into an Ever slightly worse than the one she had grown up in. But this was hers, not the Pendulum’s or Anatole’s; she had missed them all so much.

She laughed softly again. “Oh, he’s at that age, isn’t he?” she replied, still half-laughing.

She wondered if Eleanor’s fascination with bugs had begun much the same way. Cerise, she remembered, at least, at four or five, seemed wont to do everything her father told her not to; she couldn’t remember – Lady, such a long time ago – most of Cerise’s childhood slipped this way and that when she tried to hold onto it, swallowed up by flustered nurses and then helpless governesses.

Twenty-two, in retrospect, was not the best of ages to be saddled with the concerns of someone else’s three-year-old. But what she did remember was Anatole as he was then, in Tiv, tipsy and sleepy after a glass and a half of some Tessalonian white, scolding a scowling toddler with unruly dark hair until he couldn’t anymore, and then laughing and laughing and hugging her.

“Do take care; her knowledge is quite encyclopedic,” Diana said gravely. She laughed and took another sip of her Blue. She thought herself foolish for indulging, but she couldn’t seem to help – “When she came to stay the weekend in mid-Achtus, she was telling me about the giant beetles they have in Mugroba – did you know? I asked her if she wanted to come with us during the Vyrdag, and she looked quite as if I’d told her I had one already in the wine cellar.”

The thought of a giant Mugrobi beetle in the wine cellar was amusing enough. She thought of what Phileander might do at the sight of such a thing and laughed again, a little less elegantly, and passed a hand over her brow.

There was much she couldn’t say; there was much she needed to, though she was afraid that saying it would somehow imbue it with life. She was worried about Eleanor in the rainy season, worried about – it was almost unspeakable; why should she be worried? But she was worried nonetheless. She studied her cousin’s face and swallowed a sudden lump in her throat.

Perhaps – she thought quickly. It would be a great deal to coordinate, she understood, and now of all times; she already had to juggle the schedules of half a dozen assembly members’ and Mugrobi diplomats’ wives for the next Riboulet meeting, and her time was precious and fleeting.

“Perhaps,” she said anyway, putting a bright smile on her face, as if she had suddenly thought of it, “perhaps we could all of us girls get together soon, for tea. If it were a nine or a ten, I think Eleanor and perhaps even Cerise could be induced to join us; and I should very much…”

She paused, feeling as if she were taking another step in the dark. “I should be delighted to be introduced to any of your friends, as well,” she added, thinking of all the times she had invited her cousins to her own sort of party – and, more ruefully, all the times she had not.