Mildred didn’t question the way she’d gained her victory. She simply nodded at Ari and Natty, and popped the plain grey glass eye back in her empty socket. When she breathed out her words of the past, the room darkened, just as Ari had been hoping it’d do for her.
It wasn’t the worst way to go.
That was what she’d spend her days thinking, rotting on a hospital bed. At least it was her body that’d betrayed her, while her mind still buzzed with thoughts like these.
It wasn’t the worst life that she’d led.
She’d tried, as hard as she was trying to draw breath now. She’d tried, more times that she could remember, at least that was what they told her, and now, it was all up to Marcel and that boy he’d found – or was it the other way round?
The door creaked open. Probably a nurse, here to top up her fluids. She blinked away the itch in her right eye. Probably an eyelash, next to abandon this sinking ship.
‘Gram Gram.’
Miri? Miri hadn’t called her that since she was a little girl, shooting water guns at her flowerbeds. Time hadn’t slipped in the wrong direction, had it? No. She was still here, here on this bed-on-wheels, losing the last bastion that was her mind. Miri couldn’t be here. Not without Marcel to announce her visit.
‘Gram Gram, I’m sorry, but trust me! After this is over, you’ll gain a new life!’
Wait. Wait. She blinked hard, wishing that she could still bid her treacherous arms to pull her body up. From the corner of her eye, blurred by the years and the oxygen mask over her nose and her mouth, she saw Miri, hair wild and tangled, clutching the book.
‘Hhhuhhaaa.’ The words that she wanted to speak turned into noises that no one could decode. TAP-tap, TAP-TAP-TAP. She tried to tap out her message in Morse code, tried to tell her that ever since they’d found out about the world through those pages, they’d been trying to close the connection between the two worlds, to barricade over a hole that they couldn’t quite find, that the last thing she wanted was to chisel at the mortar and bring down another layer of bricks, just to escape her own mortality, but Miri wasn’t listening.
‘It’s going to be OK. Everything is going to be OK. Your will be well again, and I’m going to pray that you’ll have a good life. You’re going to have all the gold you desire.’
TAP-tap, TAP-TAP-TAP. Because all she desired was an eternal sleep. She was so tired. So, so tired of fighting wars, worlds, her own body.
But in the end, it was never her choice. In the end, as the smoke and fire ate through her skin and bones, as she woke up in a different bed, huddled beside two other girls who were not Miri, the only choice was to fight on.
‘Not an account you’d want me to give your coroner, I presume.’
Ari sank closer to the surface of the water, to the meeting of two worlds: the cold air above and the warmth below. ‘What connected the two worlds?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. Might have made our lives easier if we did. It just happened one day, as things do, without rhyme or reason. When I was still back home, I did think that if only I could come here, I’d find the source of the Incident, but I’ve been here for two years and haven’t got very far.’
‘What incident?’ Natty finally rejoined the conversation.
‘The theory is that there was an initial explosion of sorts that blew a hole from this world to ours, but who knows? Maybe we were always connected. Whatever it may be,’ she sighed, breathing out mist, ‘I believe that the first to travel between worlds is someone from this world to ours, and we built the Institute because we came to realise that instead of a peaceful coexistence, the connection would come to destroy us.’
‘How? Can they possess our bodies? Have they?’ Ari tried to picture Lady Oriana with a sub machine gun or trying to think of a password that contains sixteen-characters, something in uppercase, something in lowercase, a number and a symbol; she wasn’t sure which was worse.
Mildred shook her head, but the denial didn’t come. ‘We could deal with a handful of visitors, but this wasn’t about people. They compromised the…’ A waxy look crept over her face. She clutched her head, dripping water over her temples. ‘…the…’
~No more.~ Claribel clutched her arm, fingers slipping bone deep.
~You should stop. Now.~
Despite herself, Ari stopped and said, ‘Whatever it is, it sounds… terrible.’
It wasn’t like Mildred’s statement hadn’t already ripped holes in the fabric of her own reality and left a trail of wreckage behind. She wanted to cramp them all into the box of useless things in her mind, but the pieces were too large to fit.
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For one, her words meant that the book was written about this world, that this world was not a work of fiction, but somehow it wasn’t the bigger of the shards, somehow it didn’t seem to matter, because the world had always felt real. What mattered was the meaning behind the Institute, because Mildred’s words chipped away at the foundation of who the Chief was to her. If he’d fought for all those years to close the portal, if he’d fought to save the world from something terrible, something worse, then the only reason that he’d send three Agents into this world would be that he loved Miri more.
She could accuse Mildred of loving Miri enough to make it a motive for Tristram’s murder, but if it was the Chief who’d donned Bleuet’s form, would Ari have the confidence to sit here pointing the finger?
Ari looked at the woman in front of her, behind the glass eye, behind the damp curls, into someone who should have been a stranger, outlined by a few of Natty’s words, gleamed from a single conversation with Miri. Her own certainty in Mildred’s motive disturbed her.
‘Miri likes burnt pizza, doesn’t she?’ she found herself asking.
Mildred looked at her as if she was as insane as she felt. ‘Yes. All burnt food, actually. Steak had to be well done, then some.’
‘No wonder she was willing to burn you.’ But she did wonder how Miri had managed to launch herself into this world when her body hadn’t yet been fed to the flames. ‘You did it for her, didn’t you? Killed Tristram for her?’
‘Not exactly.’ Instead, Mildred breathed out another part of her past.
Rose, Violet, Pansy, Heather, Iris, Lily.
Bleuet. Another flower in a garden of blossoms. They didn’t mind her renaming herself, as long as it was still floral, because girls who made their way through these gates were reborn anyhow. She hoped the name would always remind her of a past she’d rather forget, but would bloody her own fingers to engrave in stone.
She grew into the name she’d chosen, setting cornflowers in her dark, sparkling glass eye. She trained girls that had nowhere else to go. She went to every one of the Cathedral’s services, morning and evening, then made offerings at Levia’s sun arches, trying to catch meaning in the priestesses’ dance.
Time slipped away too fast for someone who’d outlived her lifetime. She was still putting together plans for a pilgrimage to Lady Una’s Shrine of Ice two years since her arrival, when Hesperus and Tristram stepped through their doors.
She made herself their preferred attendant. Giving Rose a chance to demonstrate her overflowing gratitude couldn’t overpower her desire for the snippets that she’d overhear from their conversation. At first, it was only because that’d been the first time she’d come face-to-face with someone who’d been named in the book. But then…
Spirit possessions from another world? Lost scrolls that held the secrets?
On that day, the two of them discussed, the two of them argued. One of them drank too much, and the other left, exasperated.
‘It’s no good for my sister. She’ll be burned before we can convince anybody,’ he said as she went to clear his half-chewed pork ribs. ‘It’s probably all a lie to part a fool from his gold. I never thought Hes would be such a fool, but here we are. More wine!’
‘Of course, my lord!’
Yet before she could leave, he grabbed her wrist and hissed, ‘If you don’t prove my sister innocent right now, I’m going to kill Miri tonight. Hmm? What’s this? Did I strike gold?’
By then, it was too late to school this newly familiar face from murderous to confused. She’d always been a straight-forward woman, and at her age, her habit might follow her through to the next life as well.
‘It appears that I didn’t put enough faith in Hes. He’s right. The scrolls are genuine, and this place is suspicious. It changed too much, too fast. Come on then, we’re going to the Cathedral. You’re going to tell the Cardinal that you’re the one who’s possessed, not Malory!’
His drunken strength flailed against her training. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘No? Then goodbye Miri. The Agents from the Institute couldn’t save you.’
She gritted her teeth and put on her best smile. Before she knew it, they’d passed the fishpond, past the replica from her past life, sparring with words, surrounded by weapons.
‘Do you really know a way to get through to the other world?’
‘Those were not my words, wench.’
She gritted her teeth again at the way he addressed her and considered smashing the nearby mace against his skull. ‘But Miri…’
‘She is here. She walks among us. The Institute seems to mean something to you. Are you one of its Agents too? Mayhap not, as you were not aware that the current mission is to retrieve Miri. Mayhap you can complete this fated mission, because Miri might be trapped in my sister’s body as we speak, might she not? You can retrieve her and give me back my sister!’
That was the thing with drunks. Their brains were too addled to keep a consistent lie. Then goodbye Miri? He had no idea where Miri was; he knew too little to threaten her for his safety, but did he know too much too?
‘Didn’t you ask for more wine, my lord? Let me bring some here. Then we can discuss your plans at our leisure.’
Back in their quarters, she warned Madame Lucretia of the dangers that lurked in their storage room. Together, they mixed the experimental brandy they’d distilled from Aquilon glass that they’d commissioned into his wine: a fruitless sangria, much stronger than the watery mess that he was used to, a little at first, then more and more as the night wore on.
And more and more, he spilled his secrets until there was nothing left but slurring words, until he slumped onto the cold, hard floor. She lit a fire to keep him warm. Then she sealed the door.
‘Are you saying it was an accident?’ said Ari, once Mildred shook off a droplet at the end of her nose and the darkness with it.
‘That’s what I’m going to say to the coroner. Tristram can’t have been threatening my great-granddaughter in that statement now, can he? I’d have to make it a threat against my estranged but beloved sister. He tried to coerce a poor attendant with a certain set of skills and a deep knowledge of this city’s secret passages to break his beloved sister out of the dungeons. Unfortunately he fell into a slumber all on his own.’
Of course, she’d killed him before Malory’s burning. It all lined up, fire ants and all. ‘Did you put those ants on him to throw off the timings?’
‘Ants? I thought you’d ask about the secrets he spilled. It’s a shame that Tristram spent most of the night rambling about some family curse, but the scroll... It was a fragment of the North Sea Scrolls. The man who was trying to sell it to Hesperus only gave him a snippet to entice him to cough up gold for the whole thing. If I were you, I’d pay any price to get my hands on the full thing.’
Mildred pressed a finger between Ari’s brows, leaving behind a damp spot. She didn’t have to ask where to find the scroll. All three of them had seen Hesperus walk away with it on the night after Malory’s burning at La Petite Mort.