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I hear Electra following me. That means that she doesn’t want to surprise me, or that she has forgotten how to, just now. The first possibility seems more probable. Electra is skilled in movement, and in lethal stealth, so this is her way of showing sympathy.
Even with her heart carefully armored by layers of fierce temper and her tongue as sharp as one of her blades, it is her turn to be compassionate, because it is my mother who is dead.
I don’t want comfort. I don’t want to need it.
I stride down the worn green path of the carpet, trying to outpace Electra as if that is all that is worth living for now: a few seconds more to myself. I imagine losing grief within my body the same way I could have lost myself in the bowels of this once-flamboyant ship, given enough time. My interest in the cancerous sea-scapes lining the abandoned aquaria lasted until Amel’s flesh smoked on the stage and Sefi uttered the dreadful truth. She is the kind of woman who answers violence with more violence; who prefaces cruelty with cruelty. I already knew that.
I thought I already knew so much.
The Heart of Venus used to host the sort of reality-defying parties that my father most hated to attend. He always said he wanted to rest, the few times he was docked on Luna or home on Mars, but of course he never did that either.
I thought—
“Pax.”
I don’t snap at her, to tell her to go away, to tell her I don’t need her. At the best of times, it isn’t my way. Electra is the one who scolds and nags and chastens me, because all that has ever been necessary is for me to favor her with a politely contemptuous glance, or an academic explanation of her errors of logic (physical or mental). She makes less errors now that she has been training with the Skuggi, but glances and explanations like that can still set her dancing with rage.
I do not look at her. I do not speak to her. I have nothing inside me: I have even outpaced the grief.
“Pax!”
There are faded murals of Venusian sirens on the walls of this passageway, which leads along a row of pillaged guest-chambers where the All-Tribe probably stores supplies now. I do not reach out to touch the flaking paint, but I look at the images closely as I pass them, tethering myself to existence through memory. I am reminded of Monet, not by their impish, seductive features, but by the way time and the ravages of thieves and soldiers alike have smudged the edges of every figure.
My mother had one of his paintings—the water-lilies—in her bedroom. She said it was her favorite. She said it was a gift from her brother, and for a long time I thought she meant my uncle Claudius, who was her older brother and a great, kind hero—
But she meant Adrius. The Jackal.
I never felt the same about the water-lilies after that, but when I asked Mother, she said no, it did not make her sad to remember the giver.
“There is nothing ugly in it,” she told me. “And I choose to forget what was ugly in the gift.”
I squeezed her hand to show that I understood, but I didn’t. She never forgot anything. She never—
I only realize that my feet have stopped working properly when Electra catches my arm. She looks more like Uncle Sevro than Aunty Victra just now. Her eyes are the color of copper, but they are rimmed red with tears. Why do I not cry?
Why am I able to master my tears, but not my steps? Why am I still alive, when my mother is dead?
“Sefi is a liar and a fool,” Electra hisses, as if this is true, or helpful, or can undo what Sefi told us. “I won’t—I won’t let her—”
My mother is the kindest person I know. The bravest person I know. The wisest person I know. And if anyone is stronger than my father, it is her.
Is, is, is.
My mother—was—
“Don’t,” I whisper, and my voice sounds broken, like a branch snapped in two. Like a practice-sword clipped by a real razor. I enjoyed training on Eagle Rest, tramping the vine-covered walls of House Bellona’s ruined Citadel. I thought I have survived, and imagined myself grim and doughty, like an old warrior. Like my father.
I am more like him than I want to be, because I, too, left my family behind. I, too, thought that in my absence, I could aid in restoring peace.
The difference between me and him is that he had a choice, and I didn’t.
The difference between me and him is that I would never have chosen to leave my mother.
Electra’s hands brush my cheeks, and only then do I realize that I am crying too.
I don’t make a sound. After a little while, neither does she. We were trained to keep quiet, for safety and dignity’s sake. We were trained to keep each other alive.
I see now what is ugly in that gift.