Confession. Bardia, year 547 since the last falling of leaves in Elinima

Ever since the old mulberry tree finally died two years ago, the courtyard was too hot to be pleasant during the day. The orange trees, stunted from growing in pots, provided a false shade: mere dark spots on the ground, neither cool nor lasting. In mid-day, the only shade clung to the garden wall, and even that narrow strip of twilight was jealously guarded by the thorny climbing roses, ever-eager to bite into your sleeve.

Father liked it this way. Midday sun reduced the number of frivolous petitioners, who knew of no more pleasant way to spend the day than to publicly expound on their woes first by the fountain in the courtyard, and then in Kadi’s chambers. So effective this was, in fact, that Father took the habit of spending the particularly hot middays playing tavla with old Selim.

Aziz sat in his usual spot, in a cool alcove of Father’s harem, concealed behind a carved wooden window which granted him full view of the petitioners. He liked the feeling of being alone, yet surrounded by people at the same time -- it made for a great place to daydream. But he wasn’t daydreaming today. For the past three hours, he has been watching the only petitioner to the Kadi’s court: it was a woman, and she was pacing.

Or perhaps pacing was not the right word for it. She didn’t walk; she shifted and swayed like a reed in the wind, moved with languid ease like a goldfish in a hot pond, with delicate gravity, like a tear down a maiden’s cheek. Normal people did not walk like that: they shuffled and slumped, or they dashed forward, full of purpose, or they skulked out of the way, or they danced along, or they strolled in the shadow of their own importance. No -- this wasn’t pacing, this was poetry.

She wasn’t pretty at all, this woman, nor young -- probably as old as Mother, or maybe even older. She was small and flat-chested as a boy, and her face and her bony forearms were both covered in freckles. Beside her walking her only other redeeming feature was her teeth -- small and straight and white. Aziz could spot them occasionally, shiny and damp -- like the smooth white that shows when you peel back the mottled shell of a boiled quail egg.

Aziz couldn’t tell where she was from. She certainly wasn’t from his part of the city, or the Palace, else he would have known her. She was wearing the white garments of the Faithful -- but that didn’t say much anymore. Nowadays most everyone wore them, especially in public, lest they be confused with a slave, or heavens forbid, a foreigner. Her hair was cut short, indicating her to be a widow. This made sense: most women in Father’s court were widows, begging for money or protection, or sometimes just sympathy. And yet Aziz could not imagine this majestic cypress begging for... well, anything, really.

In fact, he was genuinely curious how the cypress woman was going to pull off the elaborate theatre of abject deference that Father expected from all petitioners. To forego the traditional motions of addressing a person so illustriously titled was to gamble with Father’s moods, and nobody was willing to do that.

Aziz tried to imagine her kneeling on the floor and touching it with her forehead, and reciting all of Father’s numerous virtues, and it seemed... profane, almost, to think that she could do that. Certainly, she would never bow...



Yet bow she did -- once she was finally invited inside, she knelt and said all the virtues in a clear even voice, with all the correct intonations. Incredibly, the woman did it without losing an ounce of her majesty -- Aziz could hardly believe his eyes. He observed this ritual hundreds of times, but what he saw now he was seeing for the first time. How was it possible to remain dignified while being prostrate on the floor?

It took Aziz a few moments to realize what it was. The cypress woman simply meant every word of what she said. It wasn’t just a line to her, it was an affirmation of genuine respect not only for the man before her, but for anyone who expected a Kadi to possess the virtues she recited. Aziz listened to them as if for the first time: just and wise, courageous and chaste, a serene mind that seeks the truth, an arm raised in defence of the weak, a voice that breaks the silence. That is how the princes of Elinima meant for the virtues to be recited! Not empty words of flattery, but words that burn the heart hotter than a brand: at once a solemn prayer and a binding promise. And sure enough, when at last she did get up (not like a person, but like a heron taking flight), all three of them: he, Father and the woman herself seemed to stand taller for having heard them.

Father proceeded to sit back down on his cushions. “What is your name, hanimefendi?"

“You do not recognize me, then... But I suppose it has been a while. I go by a different name now, but your son used to call me Angie, and you may call me that.”

The room began to spin as Aziz realized the woman was not talking about him. From somewhere miles away, he heard Father's voice: "Aziz, please cancel the afternoon court, and take the rest of the day off yourself."

A hall of white marble, spacious and cool. The afternoon sun leaves a spray of molten gold on the floor, pouring through the elaborate lace of the windows, but leaving the stifling heat behind. The floor is richly decorated with silk rugs, but the Kadi's court is otherwise bare of displays of wealth. Now that the boy had left, the room is empty save for two people, a man and a woman.

The man is tall, handsome, and meticulously groomed. He looks younger than his years, his middle age showing only in the occasional threads of silver in his thick hair. His beard is entirely black like his hair once had been, and his stomach is still flat as a youth's. He wears white silk robes of the Faithful, decorated with a purple and gold sash of his office and an elaborate silver pin with agate and mother of pearl -- a gift from the Emir.

He sits on an elevated terrace propped by horsehair pillows, but his pose is not in the slightest bit relaxed. His back is taught, as are his lips, and his hands are clasped in a white-knuckled knot on his lap. Calm are only his eyes: fixed on the woman in front of him, compassion and aversion swimming side by side in the deep blue of his irises.

The woman facing him is short and willowy, with an entirely unremarkable face, though not unpleasant to look at. Her face still looks very young, but her eyes betray her, suggesting she's closer to thirty in age. The woman's skin and hair look like they have been recently ravaged by the sun: the former is spotted with freckles and the latter matted and faded to a dull rusty red. Still, just as the man in front of her, she has been painstakingly groomed, down to the pristinely clean toenails of her bare feet on the rug. The red belt on her hips is recently laundered, and her linen shalvar-kamiz is new.

She stands in the middle of the room, her mud-coloured eyes level with those of the Kadi, yet she does not avert them as a woman is required by custom. It is perhaps because of that that he switches to the language of the City to the North, a much harsher sound, reminiscent of the buzzing of flies and slaps of wet laundry on a washboard, compared to the gentle song of the Tongue of Poets.

"Angelica. I was under the impression you were dead."

"I am not."

"I can see that. And my son?"

"He died twelve years ago."

"Why are you here?"

"I need you to listen to what I have to say."

"Go on, then. I will listen."

The woman pauses, as if to remember where she should start. "Thirteen years ago I was a fifteen year old girl, with no family other than the one I chose myself. You and your father, your nieces and your son were the family I very desperately wanted. Their happiness became my most hallowed priority. I was proud beyond all measure to have earned Isaac's friendship, and even more so to have earned Ambel's love."

"Did you? Earn it?"

The woman's eyes falter for the first time, as if from a slap. "I beg of you, do not bring yourself low by trying to trip me. I am nobody to you."

Something softens in Kadi's face. "Have a seat, Angelica."

The woman gracefully lowers herself on the silk rug beneath her feet. She takes a few moments to compose herself before speaking again, but this time does not risk to bring her eyes to stare directly into his. "I am old and sober enough not to claim that our love was the truest and most unique thing. The truth is, Ambel loved a good mystery, and I could pull off mystery better than anyone. And on my end, I loved being that mystery, the one puzzle he loved solving the most. We were devoted to each other, and deeply in love, but we never got the chance to find out what would happen when everything was solved and finished, when the game was done. We didn't know, but we were eager to play it out nonetheless. I can only say that during those few months we spent together in the city after we left Bardia we were blissfully, breathlessly happy.

I can't help thinking now that had we gotten married right then, had we both stayed in Neu Ungren, or had I gone on the crossing with him, things may have turned different. But we didn't. He never asked for me to marry him, and I could not dare to mention it."

The man appears surprised. "Why is that?"

"Because I knew that if I did, he would have married me without hesitation."

"And you didn't want to marry him?"

The woman smiles a sad smile and lifts her eyes again to look into the man's face. "I know, it makes little sense, doesn't it? Especially for a girl who needed a meal ticket as badly as I did?"

A sharp look from the Kadi brings her eyes back down faster than a whip. "Do not bring yourself low by expecting prejudice from me, Angelica. You are nobody to me."

The woman nods. "I suppose that is fair. The true reason was, at the time I was a lot more enamoured with the idea of having a family to call my own, than with being his wife and a mother to his children, and that was just not a good enough reason for marriage. Beside that, I sensed that there was still something else on his mind... not another woman, but another puzzle. Sometimes I caught him reading his old books again, or frantically charting notes on the tablecloth with Jusuf, who had become his constant partner in all manners of obscure research... So I let him go to Miskoltz, assuming, in my hubris, that in a year's time he would leave all his puzzles there and come back to me, and then we will join our lives together without reservations.

His early letters suggested as much. He embraced every new experience only to share it with me. I would get a letter with every ship sailing back from Miskoltz. They were so reassuring, that when they stopped I did not give it much thought. Besides, there was a lot to keep me busy, with Steffana missing, and Isaac's operation, and other things that were happening in the city... And so, when I got the opportunity to go to Miskoltz a year later, there was no doubt in my mind that we were just one joyful reunion away from being together for good.

But I was wrong. He wasn't there to meet me on the dock. He wasn't at the residence he had rented. His business contacts had not seen him for a few months, and Jusuf was missing, having had a falling out with Ambel's current host and new mentor. Ironically, that host was none other than Lord Kostafranos, the very man I recommended he seek out when in Miskoltz..."

"Who was this man you recommended?"

"I'm afraid I hardly know anything about him, but at the time what I did know seemed enough. I knew he was extremely rich, very well-connected and very comprehensively knowledgeable, with a keen interest in just about anything natural and unnatural, including just the sort of stuff that Ambel was into. He was an avid traveler, pleasant enough in his manner and straightforward about his interests, so he set off no alarm bells..."

"I understand. Go on."

"I went to see Ambel at the Kostafranos estate, expecting him to have gotten... sidetracked and to have lost all sense of time, as he has been known to do. I was not prepared for what I saw."

"Did this man hurt him?"

"No... not in a direct way. As far as I could tell, Kostafranos was a perfectly gracious host -- he gave Ambel an entire wing of his manor, and the use of his library, and any help with research he could provide. But I think perhaps it is the research that did it, that changed him...

After the incident in the Cathedral that I'm sure you've heard about, Ambel was left in a somewhat frail health. He would tire easily, and was prone to fainting spells. When I met him again a year later, he no longer suffered from these -- if anything, he was tireless, frantic, almost euphoric. Yet it didn't seem that he slept at all, or ate anything -- except occasionally drinking a kind of oily black liquid, which he claimed was all he needed. He wasn't just thin, he was skeletal -- his cheeks hollow and a fever in his eyes.

He refused to meet with me at first, but I managed to seek him out during one of his strolls through the garden. He was angry at me, and bitter -- in ways I have never seen him. He accused me of betraying him, of being unfaithful to him, saying that he was shown my true self, he was shown what I did."

"Were you unfaithful?" The man's voice is quiet, but his direct gaze makes it impossible to lie -- a well-practiced skill of a Kadi.

"In the year we spent apart, I have pursued a man out of purely physical desire. I was successful in my pursuit, and the man himself was entirely worthy of my attentions. It was a brief and pleasant adventure, one I still look back upon fondly, and I hope that man does too. I never planned on keeping this a secret from Ambel. And believe me, I never would have done it in the first place had I thought there'd be any possibility that it would break his heart. He knew that virginal purity was not something I could ever deliver, and I've never given him cause to doubt my devotion to him."

"And you are saying he found out about it without you telling him?"

"He said he saw it as it was happening. I assume it was done through arcane arts he had learned. But whatever he saw, it affected him in a way I never intended."

"Mm."

"I see you are not convinced of my intent either. Perhaps it was naive of me to think this would not hurt him -- because it did break his heart. And he broke mine in return. There was something intolerably, inhumanly cold in the way he spurned me... Or perhaps all heartbreak feels this way. I had to leave the estate the next morning, as he would not have me around."

"So you left?"

"I did. But regardless of what went on between us, I still felt I had to get him out of there. Yes, he claimed that is where he wanted to be, but I felt that it was killing him. Maybe somewhere I also hoped that this new illness of his has left him confused about us, that as soon as he leaves this place everything will go back to the way it was.

I sought out Jusuf, I tried to ask him for advice, but he had none to offer -- at least none that I could understand. One thing I understood was that he shared my apprehension about leaving him there, which only strengthened my resolve. I had despaired to ever succeed, but I had to try again, so two weeks later I came to see him again, ready to take him by force if I had to.

At first he did not wish to see me, but conceeded after Lord Kostafranos graciously intervened. I sat with him and told him news about home, gossip from the city, anything to get him to imagine being back there again, and to my surprise it seemed to have worked a miracle. As we sat there, I was hopeful for the first time that things can be repaired between us -- specifically, the feverish madness subsided to give room to the boy that I once knew. We joked like we used to, making light of everything and everyone. He agreed to come with me, and we made plans to take a barge ride eastwards up the river before we sailed back... for some reason he no longer was eager to show me Miskoltz. Just as well, I thought the fresh air and relative solitude might be better for us anyway. He seemed more and more himself, as we packed his things and said our goodbyes to Lord Kostafranos. On the morning before we left, he took me by the hand and forgave me the affair, and I was thrilled to put it behind us.

The two weeks that followed were almost perfect. He was every bit the boy I fell in love with -- funny and curious and adventurous, always eager to show the world to me, even as he was discovering it himself. Only two things worried me. The first was that his health was ever-declining. Once he went off the black potion of Kostafranos', his mind was a lot clearer, but the fainting spells and coughing fits returned, getting worse by the day. He was beginning to have trouble keeping his food down -- and this is from a boy who got his sea legs at the age of 5.

The second was that sometimes, maybe every other night, he would unpredictably go into a very dark mood. He wouldn't sleep -- he would just go up on deck and stare at the water. If I tried to talk to him, he would turn away from me and sob, or sometimes lash out on me to drive me away. A couple of times I saw him playing with his dagger, the blade turned on himself. It was such a stark antithesis to the sweet Ambel I knew, that it seemed like he was an entirely different person during those moods, nobody I recognized."

A shadow of pain passes across the woman's face, and she waits a few moments before proceeding.

"One early morning we were watching the dawn on the barge. I remember it like it was yesterday. We had just made love. The sun was slowly bleaching the sky white, and the river was still cloaked in night's fog, which always reminds me of home. Everything was so very right in the universe. And we talked, he and I, about the future -- how we were going to spend eternity together exploring the world.

And then he said... he said that it probably won't be eternity for him, that it may just be a year, two at most. He said his condition was getting worse, more painful, and there was no stopping it. I tried to convince him -- or maybe just myself, that nobody knows what is going to happen, that we can weather this, that if his grandfather could sail off with a broken back that everything was possible... But somehow I knew he was telling the truth when he said there was no medicine that would treat this -- there were only arcane means, and those never came cheap.

Without thinking very much about it, I mentioned that I would be willing to look into those, if it meant keeping him here longer. He smiled in an odd sort of way, and said that the price was too high for me to contemplate. I pressed him for what it was, until he told me -- that it takes a child, a firstborn. Virgin witches of the Tiertz do it all the time, apparently. One child, and we could be together for many more years; one child and we could watch our other children grow. He said I wouldn't even have to do it myself, that he could find a way to make it less difficult... It seemed so natural and so easy, to talk about it, to think of how we could pull off something so horrible, how we could justify it. He made it easy  to talk about it. 

And I agreed, as easy as that. When what we want is so very close, and so very fragile, and the price is something hard to envision, it is surprising how effortless the fall is -- like a pebble into a pond, falling amongst other pebbles as if it had always belonged there. As I did, he placed a ring on my finger. This ring."

The woman takes out a small golden ring with a green jade stone and lays it on the floor in front of her.

"His mother's. I remember buying it for her. Marianne loved jade..."

"And as simply as that, it was sealed with this ring -- the most unnatural awful contract possible, sealed as naturally as an engagement between two lovers. And as I raised my eyes up from my hand, I suddenly saw him. as if for the first time in these last few weeks. The man I saw wasn't Ambel, not the Ambel I knew. It was somebody else, someone foreign and far more devious giving me exactly what I wanted; giving me a dream that was no longer possible, all in exchange for a price. It was as if a veil was lifted from my eyes, and I no longer could be fooled by the facade of my former lover that was built around the wreck of a man that he was turned into. The joyful and gentle lover by my side during the days was just a mirage, made real by my desire to have him back. Meanwhile, the bitter madman I saw at night and whom I didn't recognize was the man who loved me, who was driven insane by whatever it was that perverted me in his memory.

And it was the bitter madman watching me from behind my lover's eyes, horrified and mute, desperate and impotent. It was he who saw me damn myself forever. And I believe now that it was his silent scream that saved me, that made me suddenly see---"

She chokes on her last word, but composes herself enough to hold herself back from crying. The man on the terrace doesn't speak, he seems frozen in place, waiting for her to finish. When she speaks again, her voice is hoarse but steady.

"Every word of love I knew I said to him then, and saying those words strengthened me, and made clearer the only path before me. As we kissed, I took that dagger that he always wore on his belt. My hand didn't even shake. After all, it wasn't my first time... I knew just how to do it, quick and painless, minimum blood. I felt his lips grow limp against mine as the morning sun poured from behind the fog. And he was gone.

There was barely any blood on his clothes, so nobody had any trouble believing that he had died in the night. He was buried on a stifling warm afternoon on the river bank two hundred miles east of Miskoltz, near a village of Didia."

The man rests his chin on his fist. For the first time today he looks tired and old. He looks away towards the window, where the sunlit dust swirls dreamily in the air. Several long minutes pass before he speaks again. His voice is quiet and resigned, having lost all its former steel tones.

"Why now? Why today?"

"I haven't had the opportunity before today, sir. I never made it back home. And we have only arrived in Bardia this morning."

"We?"

"My daughter and I. Our caravan came in the night, from Azabar."

The man blinks in sudden realization.

"Is your daughter---"

"No, sir."

"Then I am puzzled, Angelica. What are you hoping to get? Judgement? Punishment? Forgiveness? Absolution?"

"No! Nothing like that... Although that is certainly your prerogative... But that wasn't on my mind."

"What was on your mind?"

"That you are his father, that your deserve to know. That it must be unbearable not to know."

A brief shudder of emotion passes across he man's face, and is gone. "So you came straight here..."

"No, sir. I went to the hammam first."

"Of course. Then I don't suppose you have eaten."

The woman's mouth opens, but no sound comes out.

"Very well then, neither have I."

The Kadi picks up the smallest of three silver bells on the tray before him and rings it twice. The woman seems to have finally clued in to the significance of this and, bringing her hands to her forehead and then to her heart, proceeds to recite the customary blessings upon the house of the host at the offering of food. The blessings are typically foreshortened in practice, said in a fast barely comprehensible tongue twister under one's breath, but she says them out loud, taking the time to properly intone every word. As the blessings are spoken, a young girl enters the chambers with a tray. She is eighteen at the most, with a handsome face and a figure pleasantly rounded by a recent pregnancy. The girl down a plate with dates and sprouted almonds, pours two cups of sweetened milk and disappears - though not before jealously sizing up the woman dining with the Kadi.

"Your meita is quite good."

The woman nods, still looking somewhat at a loss for words.

"Well?" The man makes an inviting gesture with his palm towards the place on the terrace across from him. The woman nods again and gets up off the floor to sit on the terrace, her eyes level with his for the first time since she first walked in. She reaches out for the cup of milk which has been purposefully over-filled by the shrewd server who, no doubt, expected the unwelcome rival to spill it. With a deliberate and practiced grace she raises it to her lips and takes a sip, all without disturbing the surface of the drink.

"I see you are still confused." The man chews on a date, once again taking his time before speaking again. "As Kadi, I am faced with two unique challenges. The first is, of course, to give wise and just counsel. The second is to figure out who amongst my petitioners is lying, and to try to discern the truth from the way they lie. It is very rare that people tell the whole truth, and it practically never happens whenever they are speaking on matters of importance. And since this is a matter of importance, the question is not whether you are lying, but the degree of sophistication in your lie, and the truth that lies behind it."

"You don't believe me. Then why---"

"You are proud to a fault, miss Angelica. This makes it difficult for you to play down your intelligence, even in situations when it can potentially benefit you. I am grateful that you haven't attempted to do so, so far, and do not start now, or I shall regret choosing not to sup in my harem today. It is that same pride that makes it difficult for you to be at ease in any conversation where you are not on equal standing with your party, and that automatically makes you withhold information and, worse yet, fail to absorb any counsel you may receive. Which is why you are here -- not a petitioner, but a welcome guest at my table. It saves us both time."

"Thank you. But I did not lie to you."

"About Ambel? No, I don't think you did. An unsophisticated liar would withhold details that they believe would paint them in an unfavourable light with their audience. And yet, you had no trouble admitting to your adultery, which rules you out as one.

A sophisticated liar would seek to reinforce what they know to be their audience's prior opinion -- and you had all the reasons to believe that opinion was not very high. You haven't played dumb, which again I'm grateful for, but your pride could be the reason for that. What rules you out as a sophisticated liar is that a sophisticated liar knows to keep things simple -- sickness, rape, self-defence, et cetera; meanwhile you tell a story that is nothing short of fantastical, with a remarkable level of detail.

Left is the possibility of you being the most expert of all kinds of liars: a liar who truly believes in the lie, and thus is able to make it as internally consistent and as detailed as she wants -- and you've certainly had enough time and mental capacity to do that. However, twelve years is enough time to develop an emotional distance from an event, however significant it is. An expert liar may believe the events in her story to be true, but would not be able to relive the events in her mind, simply because she did not live through them -- hence no genuine emotional response. For this reason, expert liars often attempt to fake an emotional response, and I've seen several do it very convincingly. But few expert liars fake suppressed emotions, which is what I saw from you, and none fake them so well that I wouldn't see it.

I believe your story to be genuine, Angelica, and I thank you for telling it to me. Whether you were right in your assessment of the situation, none of us have a way of telling, nor ever will, and that is something we both will have to learn to accept. Furthermore, please understand that I bear you no ill, as difficult as it was for me to hear of what happened. Ambel was on a dangerous road long before he met you, and he continued on that road to its tragic conclusion. The fact that he was not stopped in time is your fault as much as it is mine, or anyone's."

"But you still think I was not telling the truth."

"About the true reason for you being here, yes. And I'm still trying to puzzle it out. I don't buy it that you were compelled to to it simply because it seemed like the right thing to do. Even those who place what is right above all else, place it below their concern for their family. A virtuous person who had just arrived to a new city after weeks of exhausting travel,  would still not have left her daughter at, I'm guessing, the care of some woman at the caravanserai to run off to my court. She would wait a couple of days, until her family is properly settled.

One possibility which I considered was that the weight of what happened was on your conscience for long enough to make it unbearable not to alleviate it at first opportunity. But that has been ruled out. You obviously still feel awful about the situation, but you do not seek absolution or punishment to make you feel better about it, at least not from a third party. My guess is your uniquely excessive pride once again prevents you from considering any judgment imposed on you from someone other than yourself as valid or even necessary.

This leads me to conclude that even if you had no story to tell, you would have still been here.

So why tell it at all? Well, you know me well enough to know that being cunning and dishonest with me would make it impossible for us to ever speak on equal terms, as we do now. This makes your move - revealing your identity to me, telling me what happened to my son - the only course of action that would put you in the exact situation in which you now find yourself; a course you have seen, and acted upon.

So I will ask you again, this time as an equal, and without any prejudice. What brings you here?"

He looks the woman in the eye, and asks again, more quietly, in the melodious meita. "What brings you here, Angelica hanim?"

The woman responds in meita as well.

"You are right, this was the ultimate goal, to be able to sit across from you, to not have our past between us. But to me it is a goal in and of itself. I have no other business here today."

The man nods. "I see. You were setting up the tone for future conversations without imposing yourself right away. That is fair. But now I can't help but be concerned for what you plan those future conversations to be."

"Concerned?"

The man refills the woman's cup before refilling his own.

"Allow me to explain. While we may not have had many chances to interact directly, I have heard quite a bit about you from my father and my nieces. A lot of it was good, although in the context of you being dead I do believe they may have painted an unnecessarily glowing picture of you.

Still, I do believe them when they say that you are capable of charity, loyalty, self-sacrifice and great acts of courage. But from their stories, I was able to pinpoint one trait of yours that troubles me.

Specifically, I think that you believe that happiness lies in getting one's way. So when you decide to make someone the object of your commendable charity, you first find out what it is they desire and then strive to make it happen at any cost. Sometimes the cost is just your own discomfort, but sometimes the cost lies in neglecting to do what is right, choosing instead to do what will achieve your goal. Worse yet, it almost never really delivers the exact results you desire.

And that is one of the things makes you dangerous in my mind. I am hoping, for your sake and for mine, that I will not be the object of your charity the way my father and nieces were. But ultimately, I am hoping that you take measures to correct this trait of yours."

"Why?"

"Why indeed... It is a hard lesson to learn, I admit, since the potential results can be so very positive..."

The woman's hand freezes in the air just as she was about to bring an almond to her lips. "Were they? Positive?"

"Ah yes, you probably haven't had a chance to gather this intelligence yet. Yes, they were. My father kept sailing for nearly a decade before he died -- abruptly, and, as far as I know, painlessly. Until his death he was keen to indulge in all manners of irresponsible behavior that characterized his life before the accident, including siring a bastard child.

Steffana is happily married to Sergio Parvi. They are expecting their sixth child this winter, I believe. She does not visit Bardia, but I do get letters from her regularly. If you wish to write to her, I will be willing to ferry the letter. She will be glad to hear from you.

Leonora is also very advantageously married, to one Luciano Brabanti, with two children of her own."

"But he--"

"--is queer, as well as she. And just as desperate to not be burdened with the expectations of traditional marriage, and thus far more understanding of her predilections than her father was."

"And yet you are saying that I should have done nothing to aid their misery."

"I am saying that you should stop taking responsibility for other people's happiness, Angelica. True happiness does not come from getting your way -- it comes from finding your purpose within.

And the payoff is not as perfect as it looks on the outside. My father, happy as he may have been, still never learned to care about anyone but himself. He consumed his talent, and left his family with nothing but the memories of drunken revels. Leonora has never learned to keep her carnal urges in check. Now that she finds herself in such a permissive atmosphere, to say that she is dangerously self-indulgent would be an understatement. And Stefana... well, from what I know of her story, things got a lot worse before they got better, and that was as a direct result of your meddling, was it not?"

"Was that what you were telling yourself? All you who stood by and knew about her suffering, and did nothing?? That she should try and achieve happiness from finding her purpose within? Because that is the one thing I am hoping I never learn how to do.

I understand that there are situations where it's difficult to know what the right thing is, because it's hard to tell who the bad guys are, but this was certainly not one of them! It was the Contarini versus an innocent young girl, and they were torturing her in the most exquisite way possible, killing her bit by bit inside. All of you knew perfectly well the things of which they were capable -- you, Isaac, her father, every one of her admirers, even Ambel, and you did nothing except shake your heads and express your empty concern for her, as you saw her slowly wither! Were you just hoping that she would find her purpose within that routine of misery and humiliation of being a toy, purchased for the pleasure of a sick man?"

The woman doesn't attempt to hide her agitation, but she forcibly lowers her voice to keep herself from screaming.

"And it was not even that the stakes were too high to contemplate! I'm sure that if the Chervez-Tervelies, with the addition of two other families, say the Sorranzos and the Parvi, had gone to Ludovic and put a bit of pressure on him, that it would have fixed things. Sure, he probably would have taken the opportunity to get some juicy concessions, but that would have been it! Ludovic loves his son, but he is not above taking away his toys to benefit the family.

But nobody did anything, or even made plans to. Not because they were bad people, but because that's just what people are like. Even in situations where the right choice is clear, and the stakes are not impossibly high, it's still very hard to go against the overwhelming and arbitrary tyranny. When doing nothing is even borderline comfortable, people cling to that comfort, terrified to make one wrong move and lose it. I've known a number of folks who began to hate humanity for that exact universal trait... but I don't want to hate. And that's why I do what I do.

I know what it is like to be desperate, to be helpless, to be alone. And I know just how important it is for there to be somebody, maybe just one person, who would reach out and try to do something. For me, all the philosophies in the world pale in comparison to the importance of being that one person for somebody, the one who chooses to stand beside them as the darkness is closing in. As long as I choose to be that person for even just one other, even just once in my life, I can believe that everybody has that in them; I can continue to expect good things from people.

You have me all wrong, Gaius bei. What I do is not charity; it is a duty. Perhaps it is a duty of any moral person, or perhaps it is only mine. My resources are few, my methods are not always very efficient, and they don't always work perfectly, but there is value in the trying; there is honor in it."

The Kadi sits straighter, and looks into the woman's face with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension.

"How interesting... I'm going to ask you something, Angelica, and I cannot stress enough just how important it is for you to tell me the truth this time."

The woman nods. "You will have the truth from me."

"Your relationship with my son - was it the old man's way to get to me?"

"The old m-- " the woman blinks, taken aback.

"Do not play coy with me." The man's voice is steely once again.

"Wait, you mean the Duke Major? Whuh... Well, first of all, no, it was not, but what ever gave you the impression that---"

"You are one of Gergely's girls?" The man allows himself a contained chuckle. "Angelica hanim, if I have any counsel to give you, it is that you at least try to be more subtle about it. I don't know if you realize it, but Bardia has a much longer memory than the city to the North, and we pay a lot more attention to what is said. And while your body language and your command of meita, which, by the way, is nothing short of scholarly, may leave some ambiguity, demonstrating the Gergely's family motto emblazoned in your heart the way you did will dissolve it completely.

I am indeed amazed that I did not realize this sooner, when you revealed that at sixteen you were already an experienced assassin, capable of delivering an effective lethal blow to an unaware victim. Indeed, now that I know this, everything else is beginning to make a lot more sense.

So again, I ask you - was your task to get to me? Are you just now completing it?"

"No. I had no such task. And I'm not anyone's girl, nor have I ever been anyone's girl."

"Lies. I don't even think you believe what you say."

"Would you really expect a person of such, as you say it, unuquely excessive sense of pride to be beholden to the commands of one man, even a great one?"

"No. But that is hardly evidence enough to convince me. I need more."

"I don't have to justify myself to you..."

"No, you don't. So I'll make you a deal. As long as I feel you are honest, your secret is safe with me. And, of course, we can continue these conversations you were after, as equals. Once I believe I am being lead on, the deal is off, and you are on your own."

The conversation is interrupted as the hot course is brought in, consisting of lamb stewed with mint and butter and hot barley bread for dipping. The man is visibly surprised to see that bearing the tray is not the same young girl, but an older woman, about the same age as his guest. She is exquisitely beautiful, with skin the colour of freshly curdled cream, an elegantly curved mouth, and large brown eyes concealed behind a fluttering veil of prodigiously long eyelashes. Painted on her face is a mask of polite obeisance, coming in stark contrast with the intelligence and contained passion in her eyes. The man acknowledges her with the same formal and distant courtesy. He then waits for her to leave before speaking again.

"Well?"

"There are questions I will refuse to answer."

"Fair enough. I will not ask you for full disclosure, just honesty with respect to all questions directly concerning the affairs of my family."

"It is a deal, then."

"Then I am all ears."

"Well, you obviously know about Duke Major's secret project. He indeed recruited and trained girls in a discipline that combined the southern art of love with the skills of assassins and spies. Beside the obvious skills, they were trained in the arts, literature, politics, mathematics -- they indeed received a better education than most highborn ladies do. They proved to be very effective and versatile agents, who could easily access most every strata of society, gain the confidence of careless men, and sometimes even kill without falling under suspicion.

The organization was run as a secret order of knights, loyal to the old man personally and to each other.

Certainly due to the nature of the work they had to be recruited very young, usually from the most obscure backgrounds -- orphans with no surviving relatives, slaves sold in the city, escaped serfs."

"Is that how you were recruited?"

The woman shakes her head, a strange sort of smile on her lips, as if she was recalling a fond old love.

"No. When I was approached by the order to be recruited, I refused. Having a man for a master was below me; still is. I was instead caught in a much wider, much more subtle net; caught so thoroughly, that by the time I fully realized I was caught, the old man was already dead."

"You're going to have to explain this to me."

"What makes a person become who they are, Gaius bei? Obviously some personal traits that they start out with. Then the right kind of education to help them learn their life's trade. Then maybe a few important people in their lives whose philosophy they either absorb or challenge as they grow up. Finally, a few meaningful experiences here and there, to help them chart their moral router. The rest is routine and tedium, unworthy of anyone's attention.

When you think about it like this, is it so unlikely that a man with near infinite resources and a deep understanding of human nature would be able to recruit and raise a perfect agent without the burden of controlling her every early experience? That just by placing enough crumbs in the right places that he could have her arrive exactly where he wanted her, on her own time, still thinking it was entirely her idea?"

"So you are saying you have been thus... engineered by him?"

"I don't think he had a clear idea of what I should be or how things should turn out, so in that sense, no. If I tell you my entire life's story to the finest detail, you would not be able to pinpoint his exact influence, aside from maybe a couple of well-annotated books made accessible in the right places at the right times. But when I arrived, he was expecting me. And when I spoke to him before he died, I had a sense that he was... satisfied.

I'm trained in the Arts, same as the other girls, or perhaps even better, but that is where the similarity ends. I've never performed any missions on his behalf. I swore no oaths, I hold no place in his secret order, I have been given no final instructions nor do I feel that I must honor his memory with any specific action. I am free as I have always been... but I am only free to be myself, am I not?

And thus, when you ask me whether I am one of his girls, in my heart I say proudly that I am. Like my pride, it is a flame that burns in me and cannot be extinguished. In tenebris lumen, pro custodibus gloria."

The man touches his forehead and then his heart in the proper formal gesture performed at the reciting of another's virtues.

"In tenebris lumen, pro custodibus gloria."