Page 127 of Play of Shadows
‘I come for you,’ I said, my voice hoarse with Corbier’s grief, and my own. ‘And none shall stay my hand.’
She turned to me. Pale blue eyes narrowed as she once again recognised me through Corbier’s visage. Her smile warmed me. ‘Ah, Veristor, you’ve returned.’
‘My Lady, those two men– are they members of the Court of Flowers?’
‘That pair of sycophants?’ She snorted. ‘Servants of servants, lackeys to other lackeys who themselves couldn’t name a single one of the miscreants who command them.’
‘And your investigations?’ I pressed her. ‘Nine years past you told me to meet you here. Have you uncovered the identities of those who rule the Iron Orchids?’
‘No.’
That simple denial crushed the last hope I’d brought with me, this one chance paid for by the daring of my fellow actors and the sacrifice of decent men and women in the ruins of the Belleza.
‘It’s all been for nothing,’ I said, turning away from her, unable to countenance Corbier’s love and admiration for this woman,whose optimism was in its own way as reckless and damaging as his propensity for violence. The two of them truly were a pair, their rash idealism as destructive as the sentimental historias used to propagate the lies of the past.
‘Veristor. . .’ she began.
‘Please don’t call me that, my Lady. Everyone’s been trying to convince me that becoming a Bardatti Veristor was a gift. I thought it a curse, but I was wrong; it’s nothing so grand. Actors aren’t beloved of the gods any more than we are condemned by them. The gods are jesters, mocking those who dare attempt to rise above their proper station. This ability inside me is simply their latest joke.’
At last a twilight breeze rustled through the leaves, breaking the silence between us.
‘Are you done yet?’ Ajelaine asked.
‘Done what?’
‘Feeling sorry for yourself.’
‘My Lady, you misjudge me. I am an actor. We never tire of feeling sorry for ourselves.’
I heard a different rustling then, the shuffling of leather against canvas. When I turned, I saw she’d removed the leather-covered book I’d seen when first I’d come to this time.
‘I suppose you’ll have no use for this, then?’ she asked, holding it out to me.
It was a plain thing really, the emerald-green leather not yet worn by time or misuse. Something about it tugged at me– a memory, but not of the distant past. The Grand Library. . . a hand-written journal filled with somewhat perverse poems and faintly obscene illustrations. . . A book entitledThe Court of the Flowersby one Sigurdis Macha.
‘You’re him,’ I breathed. ‘You’re. . . And this– this is the second book, the one Duke Meillard stole from the Grand Library. . .’
She grinned wickedly. ‘Perhaps you’re aware thatSigurdisMachameans “Cutter of Weeds”.’ She pushed the slender tome against my chest. ‘This book will be my scythe.’
I took it from her, fearing it would disappear in my hands or that I wouldn’t be able to read the text, but when I opened it, I recognised the handwriting, and when my eyes travelled across the handful of filled pages, I saw the culmination of Ajelaine’s investigations and the cause of her exuberant pride.
And my heart broke.
‘These are the Orchid Laws,’ I said. ‘The ones they’re trying to force the duke to enact in my own time.’
She sounded oblivious to my despair. ‘Exactly. Step by step I’ve traced their actions, the bribes and blackmails, the political manipulations and targeted killings.’ She tapped a finger on the page. ‘This is their true aim: this is what the Court of Flowers seeks to bring about, in my time if they can, in yours if they fail.’
‘But it’s just. . . it’s nothing but a list of proposed edicts.’
‘Precisely.’ Her fingernail ran down the scrawled lines on the page. ‘But see howoddthey are? Demands for the removal of bans on pleasure drugs? Mass imprisonment of the homeless? Eviction of foreign artisans? I need only uncover who benefits most from this particular combination of decrees and I will have found our enemy.’
But I already knew who benefited from the enactment of these laws– or believed they could, at any rate. Someone so desperate to bind the Iron Orchids to the ducal throne that, on learning of the banned book’s existence, they’d used a tiny brooch of ebony with a diamond eye at its centre to steal the only existing copy from the Grand Library.
You thought you were protecting Pertine’s future. Instead, you’ve doomed us all.
Ajelaine snatched the book from my hands and snapped the emerald- green leather cover closed.
‘A year or two, no more,’ she went on, stuffing it back in hercanvas bag. ‘Come and find me hence and I’ll be able to give you the identity of our enemy.’
