The superintendent’s office is at the end of a hall whose walls are of sculpted dark basalt, lined with bronze light fixtures and red-tinted windows. There is night once again outside, but here in Ravenheart, streetlamps do well to light the streets, which see pedestrians and traffic even after winter’s early sunsets.
There’s a brass plaque on the rosewood door, and the name on it is strange to Red: Harriet Blanche. Perhaps Blanche-Hildegard was too much a mouthful. Perhaps she really did want to forget about the girl.
But I have not forgotten about you. She stops in her tracks, staring down the door. In the lacquered surface, her eyes make bright yellow reflections like another pair of lights in the hallway.
Harriet must’ve truly moved on. But that’s good, she thinks. Her legs are locked now, and she can’t tear her eyes away from the door. Roots of old memories keep her boots anchored on the ground, and if it wasn’t for the agent, she could imagine herself standing here, staring wide-eyed for hours on end without stepping in. She feels a gloved hand pushing her along, whether she likes it or not.
The door opens, she is ushered in, and it closes. He waits outside. The office smells not just of cigarette smoke, but of other scents, unfamiliar to Lwenn. There are three incense sticks burning in a small holder on a bookshelf, and the whole room is bathed in this low reddish light like a sunless dusk from the gaslamp just outside the crimson window. The decorations are ornate. The wallpaper is a dark blue, fading into mauve in the light. When she runs out of things to look at besides her, she resolves to fix her eyes to the ground and the tips of her mud-slaked boots, and the blackened shoeprints trekked across a dark red carpet.
But Harriet won’t speak first. And, ultimately, Red must look.
Superintendent Blanche looms like a longcase clock over a dark oak desk. She looks better now than Red remembers. Less bandages. In the vague lighting, she almost looks normal, but there’s the sound of raspy breathing, of blood running through metal tubing, of leather bellows stretching and contracting under an artificial iron diaphragm. Their eyes lock.
“Hello,” the superintendent brings herself to say. Her voice echoes as if spoken through a brass instrument, through the grate of a once-mouth.
Red’s mouth goes dry at the worst moment, and any semblance of a word shrivels up on her tongue. The last time she saw her, Harriet was a half-corpse. Now, a decade later, the superintendent sucks in a deep breath, and through the bronze tube that is her new throat she produces a sound that scrapes against the false teeth of a brass jaw, and Red sees that she’s half-machine.
“I…” Harriet continues. “I did not want this to be the way we had to meet again, little Red.” Her voice is much like someone speaking through a copper pipe: melodious, but human only by proxy.
“You and me both.” The lady looks to the side. She blinks.
“I know. I… know,” Harriet says. “It’s been a very long time, Red. But we have this to deal with first, and then…”
“And then what?” she asks. “And then I walk off, and we’re strangers again? Fine. Fine, that’s alright by me. That’s… alright by me.”
Harriet’s eyes, cloudy as faded opals, soften. But she says nothing as Red drags a chair closer and sits herself down in front of the desk. The lady’s movements are slow, her arms lie wrapped around herself, and her eyes focus more on the ground than on the superintendent. She takes a seat herself.
“That’s not what I was going to say.”
“It’s what you were thinking, I know,” Red answers. “You don’t have to pretend, Harriet. You really don’t. Dad’s not around anymore for you to have to.” Every other word feels like it scrapes through her teeth.
“You know it wasn’t like that, Red.” Harriet straightens up in her own seat, and the old leather cracks underneath her. Metal knuckles flex as her fingers grab into the armrest.
“Oh, I’m sure it wasn’t!” the Lady snaps. She throws her hands up in the air, exasperation flows through her words. Her hair flies wildly behind her. “I’m sure when you said you’d be back, you truly meant it! When you said you’d remember me, you truly meant it! And that’s why it’s been ten years without a trace of you at the estate! Ten years, waiting for you, without a letter, without so much as an eep from Ravenheart, without even knowing if the treatment worked! Ten years, wondering if you were alive or dead, if you had simply moved on and forgotten about your step-daughter!” She throws her gloved hand across her face, fingers gripped tightly against her forehead. Messy black hair waterfalls across it.
“Red--” Harriet begins, but stops herself short. Her eyes fixate on the lady’s arm, where the black sleeve fell down to reveal her wrist, and the rivulet of dark blood that stained across her forearm from beneath the glove. She pauses, then starts again, in a tone softer. “You’re hurt. Your hand.”
Red looks at her hand, and then tucks it down into her lap, hidden under the sleeve of her other arm. “It’s nothing. I’m fine!” But it’s too late, and already Harriet holds her own hand out. The interlocking plates of her bronze palm beckon her, and after a few apprehensive moments, Red brings herself to lay her hand in hers.
The cold air stings her palm when Harriet peels the glove away. She shakes her head in disapproval.
“How long were you planning on doing nothing about this?” She sighs, leaning back, starting to dig through a drawer on her desk.
“Until I figured out a way to get out,” Red answers, but her gaze is on her lap. Her eyes are not there.
“Or until your fingers started falling off? This is going to sting, hold still,” she says, sternly, as she unveils a small bottle of rubbing alcohol.
“I’m going to be fine-” Red mutters, then hisses and bites her lip, clutching the end of the table tight with her other hand. Harriet pours a small stream of the stinging-smelling alcohol onto her palm. Her skin tingles and burns as it soaks into the purpled wound, her fingers twitching, the pain only intensifying when the woman starts tenderly - yet firmly - scrubbing a clean handkerchief across it.
She feels her eyes going warm and her cheeks flushing, and in response she shuts them tightly. Her jaw tightens, her teeth grit against themselves, but it’s too late by now. Like fire the remaining anger bubbles through her pores, but like fire, it only burns so hot until all that’s left are cold ashes in a scorched chamber.
It’s hard not to cry. Not because of the pain. The pain has nothing to do with it. But Harriet’s movements slow, too, when she sees the crystal beads of tears shining on Red’s eyelashes. The scrubbing is over before she knows it, and tenderly does she wrap a roll of clean gauze around the girl’s hand, before letting it go.
For a moment, her eyes open again, and through the fog and blur, the shiny cat’s pupils make contact with Harriet’s. But the woman does not twitch. For once, it’s Red that has to look away from someone’s eyes, from the cloudy diamonds of the superintendent.
“Stop… looking at me like that.” Red snatches it back and holds it close to her chest, buries her chin into the fur collar of her coat. By now, it’s become encrusted in mud, dirty snow and grime, much like all the rest of her. She’s hot and cold, with goosebumps all over.
Even among those people ‘immune’ to eyeshine, nobody could look into her eyes for long. Even Paul, who’s known her since she was ten, and who didn’t feel a shred of fear when around her, couldn’t stare directly into the yellows of her pupils for more than a few seconds at a time before his skin would crawl, or he’d look away. Only one person, in all her life, could stare into her like that - unwavering, unmoving, without so much as a hint of discomfort. Of all of the people in this world, of all of the eyes in Algadda, why did those have to belong to Harriet?
She feels the tears wetting trails across her cheeks, and finally runs out of the willpower to hold back a sob.
“I’m not…” she begins, many moments later after she’s gotten a grip again, dragging her unhurt hand roughly across her eyes. “...angry that you left. I was never angry that you left, I… I understood why you had to leave. Even if I was young, I understood that it was Ravenheart or death, and I wanted you to leave, seeing the way you were, bedridden like that…”
She opens her fist slowly, looking at the bandage wound tightly around her hand. Already, the palm is stained with the deep burgundy colour of blood as it soaks through her skin - though the worst of the pain has faded, it still pulses, slowly, rising and falling with her heartbeat.
“I wanted you to get better. To be happy. But I just always expected that… one day…” Red blinks slowly now, staring not quite at Harriet, but not quite at the wall behind her, either. Staring into a long-ago memory of a goodbye. “...You’d come back. That maybe, just maybe, I truly did mean something. That you didn’t only stick around because of father.”
At last, she lets her bandaged hand fall back down onto her thigh, and then it grips her knee tightly alongside her other hand. They tremble, but the tears have run out. Red opens her mouth for only another second, but stops herself before any words can be spoken, and closes it again. Only when Harriet doesn’t say anything herself does she add:
“At least I know you’re okay, now.” And her eyes fall on the superintendent again. And through the eyes of memory, she sees the bloodied bandages wrapped tightly around her neck where there’s now a gorget. She sees the cotton padding used to staunch bleeding where her jaw once was, and where there’s now a prosthetic. She hears the slow, ragged, scum-choked breathing in her lungs, instead of the clean, sterile stretching of bellows. There’s the ticking of cogwheels and minute clockwork, and the glints of technomagic sigils hidden beneath her fake skin, but they are all simply fancy bandages of metal instead of fabric, facades of bronze layered over flesh torn by shrapnel and bullets, and the battering wind of the war that was.
“I’m sorry, Red,” Harriet says. Her words are the tune of a rusted violin string. “It took months, years even, until things could even come close to being normal, again. And by the time that happened…” She shuts her eyes and rests a palm on the desktop.
Outside, the clocks strike the hour. Far away, the great bell of the Martyr Cathedral echoes a deep, reverberating tune that almost rattles the windows in their frames. Any semblance of light is gone from the sky, and all there is is darkness and the glow of street lamps, filtered through the red glass.
“I was too ashamed to return, Red,” says Harriet. “I hoped you wouldn’t miss me. I don’t know what I ever did to warrant it. I… was never a good step-mother.”
Red doesn’t know what to reply with. She’s quiet, and for once, Harriet opts to continue:
“But… I’m here now, Red. And-- I promise, now. I promise I’ll be there for you, little Red. I promise, for as long as I still breathe, that I’ll do everything I can to make sure you don’t come to harm, okay?” she asks. Her tone grows hopeful. Her metal fingers twitch. Slowly Red’s eyes gaze up at her again. “I promise, Red. I…”
Harriet doesn’t get to finish. Something goes wrong -- somewhere, Red doesn’t know -- and she hears the tick of something jolting out of place in her chest. The superintendent stops, suddenly grasps the edge of the table and begins to wheeze out this raking, hoarse, dry cough. Instinctively Red stands up and holds out a hand to help her, but Harriet raises her own.
“No-” she wheezes, and has to sit back down. By the time the cough subsides, she looks much worse for wear. “I’m--” she taps her chest with her fist. By the time she finishes, Red doesn’t know if what she says is true or not: “Okay, little Red. I… shouldn’t get myself so worked up.”
The treatment didn’t heal Harriet completely. It was a bandage placed over a gushing wound.
The tea tastes sweet. Morgana’s valour - an autumnal flower, picked from the dark underbrush beneath fallen red leaves, left to dry until winter, when it makes a soft-smelling tea that tastes like sugared port. In the days of yore, warriors drank it to soothe their nerves before a battle. Red’s knocked out two cups of the stuff, and is now on the third.
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Harriet has become a languid pile in her seat. Her eyes are sunken deep on her pallid face, and she’s shed the heavy overcoat and unbuttoned the white shirt so far that the bronze metal plate over her chest is now left exposed, where its sigil-inscribed grooves catch the golden-yellow light of the Lady’s eyes.
Red finishes her final sip and sets the cup down. Harriet is slow to draw in a deep breath, where it produces a rattling, scraping noise from somewhere in her chest, but she doesn’t cough again.
“Do you want me to go back?” Red asks.
The superintendent shakes her head: “No.”
“I can come back later, when you feel better.”
“We mustn’t put this off any longer than we--” Harriet’s eyes open wide as she scrapes in another breath. “--have to, Red.”
“Why?” she asks, and Harriet grasps the edge of the table to slowly pull herself upright in her seat. The loose overcoat falls from her shoulders and decorates the backrest. With a few hollow-sounding metallic thumps, she slams her fist against her chest a couple of times, and finally she blinks and rubs the bridge of her metallic nose. “Why?” Red punctuates.
“Because you’re in a terrible position right now, Red,” says Harriet. “You and your friend. This whole business has to be kept down-low, and the more we wait, the more at risk you are. The Gathering can’t hear a word of this.”
“How come?”
The High Gathering of the Realm: the rushed and poorly thought-out brainchild of the Crown Compromise, thirty years ago. A national parliament made to appease everyone, and which ultimately satisfied no-one.
Harriet sighs and grabs the tea-kettle. The water’s gone lukewarm by the time she pours herself a cup. “Because if this goes to trial, it’s impossible that word won’t reach the Gathering, and then they’ll be upon you like rats, little Red.” The Lady listens intently. “The estates aren’t going to be kind to you, the noble one especially. Ever since the war, they’ve been slowly pecking at the lesser families, and the handful of vassals that the Crown has by its side have been growing rich with acquired land and titles. The Glovers, the Joyes, the Dubois, the Karrigans, they’ll smell blood in the water and tear you apart for your estate and your title.”
“What’s there to tear me apart over?” Red asks. “A crumbling old estate and the title to what? What did the Crown leave us with that the others could want? Guardians of the Eye? Former Barons of Torain? A cabinet full of dusty medals? Bunch of…” she drawls, and bites the tip of her tongue. “…poppycock.”
“Does it matter?” sighs Harriet. “It’s something. So long as it exists, and it’s not theirs, the others will want it, and they’ll put you in the grave for it if they have to.”
“Still,” says Red. “You were dad’s wife. Wouldn’t they… go to you?”
“I didn’t mess with any inheritance, Red.” Harriet’s reply is quick, almost reassuring. There’s a moment of quietness after it. “You were Damian’s only child, all of the lands and titles of the Hildegards belong to you, now. And then, when you’re gone, they’ll go to your heir - not me. I never wanted to take what was yours,” she says, almost softly, but the sentiment cannot last as she continues: “And if you haven’t got an heir, they’ll go to the Crown, and it’ll be another battle in parliament to see if the estate gets turned to common land, or get gifted to one of the families King Stephanus has been rubbing elbows with lately.”
“...Mm.” Red stares in silence into her empty cup and the few amber drops still clinging to the porcelain walls. She pipes up before Harriet can continue: “Still. That’s a single estate.”
“And you think the others will support you?” Harriet leans forward and rests her elbows on the table. “The urban estate will be happy to tear down another blueblood. There’s no way the clerical or the rural ones will support a Hexist. They’ll see you defenceless, and they'll cannibalise everything off you. Your only bet would be if the Black Cabinet intervenes, but… You can’t rely on anything from them.”
The Black Cabinet, the king’s eyes and ears. If the High Gathering is a flaming carriage, then the Cabinet is its silent, cloak-shrouded coachman, steering it into directions known only to itself in the long night.
Red still doesn’t look convinced. She harrumphs, and continues:
“Still! They’re untrue accusations,” she insists. “I’m not a spy, Paul’s not a spy either. He was born here, for crying out loud, he’s never even met a Mordian. All one needs to do is look through the village records. Nothing will hold water on trial!”
“And you think anyone would make the trek all the way there?” Harriet shakes her head apologetically. Her eyes blink quietly. She would, Red knows, but Harriet would do many things, if she could. The ticking in her chest, the ragged scraping of her breaths grow louder for a moment, and almost sound like they could rattle the windows. She clucks her tongue with displeasure, and Red snaps back to reality: “So close to Hexentag, across half the kingdom, up a muddy dirt path to a village that only entertains the bare-minimum of recordkeeping, to sort through hundreds of uncategorised files to find your friend?”
“I can figure out a way to get a lawyer. I’ve read the lawbooks. Even if I can’t find one, as a noble, I’m entitled to a defence attorney.” Red wracks her brain, to remember. Yes, that’s correct… she thinks. At the very least, she hopes. The estate library has the law codex from the 1850’s - a book bound in enchanted skin, old and mouldy, written long before the summer of nations or the Crown Compromise. Maybe things have changed since then…
“Maybe you could rely on that, in a normal situation.” Harriet shakes her head, and Red frowns, feeling how the situation begins to weigh on her. She’s beginning to understand why the superintendent looks so sullen. “But war is brewing right on the horizon, Red, and nobody is going to be making that trip with every road and railway in the kingdom congested with military movement. And even if they would, by the time they’d return, the trial would be long over, and you’ll be long without your name.”
Red sits silent, gloved hands gripping into the armrests of her chair. The lady shuffles uncomfortably against the velvet cushioning. The faraway sounds of the bells cease at last, though their echoes continue to ring across Ravenheart for a few moments, and the low sound makes her grind her teeth.
“What do I do, then? Is it over, just like that?” She sighs. “So much work done, only to be tripped up by a spider’s web of red tape?”
“There is a solution I thought of. But you won’t like it.”
Harriet tents her iron fingers across her lap, the way a doctor might before giving an unfortunate diagnosis. Red sucks in her lips, silently.
“Testify against your friend.”
“No.”
She answers before Harriet can finish the last syllable. The lady’s face twists from an uneasy frown, and the superintendent goes quiet in her chair. Her eyebrows lie low above her eyes, her faded glossy pupils staring at the papers on her desk.
“You can’t be serious, now,” Red says. Furrowed eyebrows form a deep crease in her pale forehead, and it feels as though the wrinkles under her yellow eyes deepen and darken. Glints of yellowed eyeshine shine in the smoky red window, reflected in the auburn tea.
“It’s simply the safest option, Red,” argues Harriet. “Testify against your friend as a spy. It’ll be hardly argued against. A noble testifying against a commoner? So long as the cards are played right, which they will be so long as I’m there, the estates won’t catch a word of it before it’s too late, and you’ll get away scot-free.” It feels like she doesn’t know what to do with her hands, and she picks up fountain pen the shade of onyx from the desktop, moving it from one ferroskin palm to the other. “Maybe you’ll get a couple weeks’ community service, working city cleaning or some other oddjob, but that’s nothing in the grand scheme of things.”
Red snarls: “Yeah. Nothing compared to what poor Paul is going to get.”
“Red…”
“I’m not abandoning Paul.” She hears the hum of Harriet about to speak again, and is quick to talk over her: “No, I don’t care what your point is! I am not throwing him to the wolves just to save my own skin! That’s… that’s cowardly! It’s not just cowardly, it’s… heartless!”
Red’s tone is cold iron. It carves into the conversation like a war axe through a shoulderblade. She catches herself only afterwards, after she sees the way Harriet is slowly rearranging the documents on the table, stacking them up in a white brick in front of her, her eyes fixated elsewhere.
“I’m…” She paces her words, speaks more quietly now. “...Not going to abandon Paul, Harriet.”
“It’s okay.” Her fingers drum in silence against the outer edges of that stack of paperwork. “But… I’m afraid I have no other ideas, Red.”
There’s a long stretch of silence, now, and just as Harriet doesn’t know what to do with her hands, Red doesn’t know where to look. Meeting the superintendent’s gaze is out of the question, and so her eyes trail awkwardly across the desk, again and again. A few moments later, the silence is too deafening, and the teapot empty.
“What would even happen?” Red asks. “To Paul, if I…” she doesn’t finish - she feels ashamed for even considering it, but she can’t think of anything else.
“It wouldn’t be… terrible,” Harriet begins, and the pitch of her voice struggles an octave higher than usual as she tries to make it sound at least halfway genuine. “Espionage allegations would probably be the worst of it, but after the Black Cabinet finishes its interrogations and… most likely acquits him, he’ll just have to worry about assaulting a constable and resisting arrest. It’d be just a few years of labour, a few hundred laurels’ worth of fines, at least in a normal situation.”
Red is clearly not sold. But her ears twitch on the last words.
“Normal situation? Would there be something abnormal about it, this time?” She shuffles in her seat, closer. Ropes of that wild, grimy hair fall across her white face.
Harriet raises a hand, as if prepared to dismiss it, but her eyes catch Red’s. They gleam like two golden medallions, and on the glossy finish of her desk’s surface they’re like a pair of reddish-brown amber chunks, staring with… well, she’d hesitate to call it hope. Desperation, maybe. This is a terrible idea.
She sighs, and after a long stare, pulls out a strip of yellow paper, bearing a black ink stamp of a raven wielding a Gallian scythe in its claws: His Majesty’s New Home Army. She sets the document on the desk and lets Red gingerly pull it closer - like a cat pawing at a loose thread - to look it over.
A notice of voluntary recruitment for lesser criminals - no jail time and pardoned fines, in exchange for service.
“Every army has gaps that need to be plugged in. Rear-line echelons, penal battalions, needed bodies and arms for logistics or earthworks or the sort,” Harriet begins to explain. “It’s an application. Any petty criminal can make the request, and then it’s in the army’s hands whether they get a uniform in a penal battalion or not.”
Red picks up the paper by its corners, looks it over. It’s hastily-printed, the black ink bleeding into the beige backdrop, the army heraldry smudged slightly by whatever hurried secretary had to give it the rubber stamp. She takes it, and she looks at it for a long, long moment.
“I could…” she drawls, her words far away and quiet, chewed through deep contemplation.
“As a noble, you could absolutely pull some strings,” Harriet nods, her fingers yet again tented. “And… with me around, too, I’d make sure you wouldn’t end up in a frontline unit.”
She feels Red’s gaze on her brass fingers and her iron knuckles, and how it trails up to look at the faux-jaw and the false nose, and how it seems her ears perk to hear the ticking of her canvas lungs louder, too. The goosebumps flare up, all of a sudden, and she catches the lady rubbing her forearms to chase them off, leaving the paper to flutter to the desk.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Red is quick to mutter, realising she was caught staring. “I’m… sorry.”
“No, it’s okay.” Harriet nods. “I… wouldn’t ever want you to be at risk of something like this, Red.
“I’m sorry,” she says again. But it feels like she apologises for something else. Harriet’s eyes blink languidly, and she gets little chance to mull it over before the lady continues. “I’m… afraid, Harriet. I’m…” Her hands clench tight around her knees, her bandaged palm burning. “Very, very, very afraid.”
“It’s okay, Red. I promise that this time-” She moves a hand under the table, to clench a fist. She feels the need to cough again, and scrapes in a deep breath to push it down. “-I will be there, to make sure you’ll be safe. I promise. It’ll be safe.”
Red looks down.
“Thank you, Harriet.”
There was paperwork to do. Lots of signatures and the sort. Paul wasn’t around, and far as Harriet was concerned, the faster this was done, the better. Red took the liberty of faking his signature. There was no time to bring him over, to explain everything all over - and not to mention, were he around, he would’ve wanted combat. Actual combat. Because Paul’s father never got home in a closed casket, and Paul’s stepmother never had to get her lungs replaced, and Paul’s pride would have never allowed him to settle for a menial, safe job. Because Paul thought that death was glorious. It wasn’t the most honourable thing to do… but Red was certain it was for the best.
And once the paperwork was done, and Harriet’s lethargy growed to the point that she looked like she would hardly be able to stand up from her chair, there was a short silence again, where neither knew what to do.
She couldn’t hug her. Not yet. But Red could leave something with her. And after a short thank-you and a bow, she left the iron skull-pin on the desk and retreated to the cell, accompanied by the raven-masked constable.
He opens the door for her, and in the flood of light, her shadow leaves a long streak across the floor and over Paul. He looks up at her and blinks a few times, having sat up against one of the walls.
“Hello,” she says.
Paul raises a hand to shield his eyes from the light: “Everything okay?”
“Yes. Everything has been sorted out,” she replies, and as the beaked constable unlocks the cell and moves to unlock his cuffs as well, Red explains it all:
No other alternative than to sign up for military penal service. What branch will they be assigned to? She doesn’t know. She knows where they won’t go, at least. Royal Artillery Support? Absolutely not, never in a million years. His Majesty’s Cavalry Corps? Not there, either - Harriet would never allow her.
“But I can assure you,” she does finish, quite sternly. “Wherever we go… we’ll need to be always on the lookout, eyes peeled, feet light. Always having each other’s back.” And she sates that foolish thirst for death with warnings like that: that they’ll always be in danger, that they’ll be frontliners, that they’ll be nothing but children in a world that makes grown adults break down.
As far as she’s aware, she’s lying.