Wed May 17, 2006 11:02 am
"Rats plagued my father's House," she began, some time after Cloak left her room that evening. "All Dauntless winters are bad, but in even the very worst, the rats survived. Our children died, and they lived on and on, to spread their filth and squander the grain. When there were scraps to spare for bait, we set traps for them, and they'd struggle against the metal until my mother came for them with the hammer. She, a Sera of her own House, was not too proud for such work, you see? She would come with the hammer to crush their heads, and they'd fall still when they saw her; they would stare, and even as a child I reckoned they must have learned fear at her hands on those days.
That is what I wished: to trap those koltists, to teach them fear before they were crushed."
This is not the whole truth. If Ariane Emory had had her way, walls would have crumbled away at her approach, windows shattered as she neared them, whole homes not daring to stand between her and the men she'd see murdered. If she'd had her truest wish, they'd have fallen to their knees for fear of her, would have wept their sorrow and cut the life out of their own wicked flesh, and the skies would have blackened with grief at her sister's passing --
'You cannot imagine what I wish,' she'd said to young Agnieszka, weeks before. That had been the truth.
"He will never forgive me Sera Kanaya," she continued after a time. "Why would he? I liked her myself -- " And for a short time, speech becomes impossible. Instead, her fingers work their way back and forth across the smooth curve of this makeshift confessional; both Quincy and Vornheim had taught her the appeal of making such admissions, but neither are here now, and so she must use what is conveniently at hand. When her throat has loosened a little, she can conclude: "Nor will I forgive him the deceit that led me to her. Is that what he meant to teach me? That Belief will kill a woman who Truth claims is innocent?"
Perhaps. Or perhaps this is only a facet of the lesson; perhaps this is only one of the many masks that it wears. 'They are of two minds', Nightshade had said, of the Order's members -- or something much like that, in any case. That they lived out lives as good and rotten and mundane as everyone else's, save for those times that they became koltists, murderous and insane. That was their nature, he'd said without saying: that they wear their masks without realising it. That is what separates them from Cloak, for instance, who is a mask worn by a Duke when he yearns for freedom --
"But that, too, is a mask," she explains, to a confessional that does not hear. "He must wear it in order to rule."
Unlike the guise of courtesy that Vornheim had donned quite purposely, when in the presence of those he disliked; unlike the face Quincy had once worn, to briefly escape her life; unlike the intricate scars that have so transformed the face of Altias Bromn that at first, even she had hardly recognised him. 'Okulari', he'd introduced himself: a scholar come recently from Derry, schooled in history and art, and rather scornful of Duke Bromn's errant son. He'd clung stubbornly to this tale, wounded and furious when she'd tried to sway him against it; this 'Okulari' was his newfound mask -- or perhaps Bromn was Okulari's, for the matter was so confused that it was impossible in the end to tell which was the man, and which his disguise.
"I didn't mean to hit him," she murmurs, to porcelain that is cool beneath her touch, placid before her furies; unlike Kerrak, however, she does not imagine that it answers. And in any case, it's a lie: of course she'd meant to hit him -- and would have kept hitting him, if he hadn't stopped babbling those terrible words; just as she'd meant to kill Bea Kanaya, until she'd realised that horrific deception -- 'Shocked', the Duke had said, breaking open her heart with a touch of his hand, and now, only now, does she follow the advice he'd given her after that.
When she sleeps, hours later, it's with swollen eyes and a dampened pillow -- but with a mind at ease, as well, and the porcelain mask set carefully aside.