RED SILK

Day 11 of 100

She had learned, in five days, that there are three kinds of looking.

There was the sort that Josie did, which was merely loving: a wide, warm, unguarded gaze that went over a person like a hand. There was the sort the tutors did, which was measuring. And there was the sort that Captain Rooke did, from the far end of the refectory, across forty feet of candlelit tablecloth and the backs of a hundred heads. She had never met it before. It was neither warm nor cold. It was attention, in a pure and terrible form, like a lamp turned on a wall, and she had felt it on her skin the first time he came into the Academy dining-hall on the Monday, with a gray coat and an air of weary courtesy, and stood a moment at the door.

She had not looked up from her soup. She'd known he was there as one knows a draft.

That one, thought Vesper. That is the one.

She did not say it aloud. She was becoming rather good at not saying things. It was one of the more interesting discoveries of the past week, along with the pleasures of cake and the vulgar delight of a satin ribbon. She sat at the long table among the students, a tall girl in a blue gown with her hair up, buttering a roll, and listened to Tobias Marsh explain the Hegelian dialectic by means of a boiled egg, and she watched, from the corner of her eye, the man in gray cross the floor.

He was looking for someone. She could see that. He was making his way along the wall, past the servers and the sideboards, with that unhurried stride, and his eyes went from face to face and moved on. When they reached hers they did not stop. They slid over, politely, thoroughly, and went on.

So, she thought. He doesn't know me. Not yet.

She'd spent three nights building that moment. She had studied the other's memory of him: a scrap of a library table, a gray stare, the click of a pencil. She had made a map. She had learned that Captain Rooke was a man of habit; that he took his coffee black, and walked the shore at dawn, and was said to have the Sight so sharply that the Bureau kept him away from crowds. She had learned that the Bureau had a number, and that he was proud of nothing and guilty of everything.

And she had learned, with a prickle of delighted alarm, that he was the only person on earth who could end her.

…

"Come to the library with me," she said to Josie.

"Now?"

"After supper. Your Hippocrates can wait."

"It's the one thing that can't. There's an examination."

"Then read it aloud. I'll listen."

"You hate it when I read aloud."

"I've changed." She smiled. "I've decided I enjoy being bored."

Josie looked at her with narrowed eyes and a spoon halfway to her mouth. She had been doing that a good deal lately. It was the one thing about the last week that Vesper did not enjoy: that small, sharp, searching glance, which came and went like a fish under water and left her feeling, each time, as though a stranger had walked across her grave. Josie was not stupid. She was merely loving. And love, Vesper had discovered, was a more efficient instrument of detection than any amount of intellect.

"All right," said Josie, at last. "But I'm taking the lamp."

The library at night was a different country. The great reading room, so brisk and gray by day, had become a cave of dark wood and green glass, lit by a scatter of lamps along the tables, each in its small pool of gold. The fire had burned low. The galleries above were lost in shadow. A few scholars sat bent in the lamplight, like monks in a cell; the air was thick with the smell of paper and sleeping wax.

She chose the table by the north window.

It was Mara's. Everyone knew it. It stood by itself at the end of the room, under the tall arched pane, where the light fell clean and gray in the daytime and at night there was only the dark glass and the reflection of the lamp. There was a green shade. There was a brass inkwell shaped like a snail. She sat down in the chair. Josie, grumbling, spread her Hippocrates across the other end.

She did not look at the door. She took up a book at random, a dull one on the metaphysics of grief, and opened it, and began to turn the pages with an air of mild, vague absorption.

She had been there twenty minutes when the door opened.

…

She knew his step before she saw him. It was a remarkable thing: she had heard it only three times, and each time she'd memorized it, as she memorized everything of Mara's, with a dreadful ease. A long stride, heel and toe, unhurried. A slight drag on the left boot where the sole had worn. A pause on the threshold.

He came into the room.

She did not raise her head. She went on with the page. She turned it, with a small dry rustle, and ran her finger down the margin, and felt the whole of her skin go alert, as a cat's does in the grass.

He was walking toward the shelves on the east wall. He was passing the long tables. He had a book under one arm. She heard him stop to say something to the old librarian, a low murmur, and the old man's creaky reply; and then the step again, nearer, coming up the aisle, past the fire, past the globes, toward the window.

Now, she thought.

She reached for her glass of water.

It was the simplest thing. It was an accident, of the kind that happens a dozen times a day in any library. Her elbow caught the edge of the book. It slid. It struck the floor with a flat, sharp crack, and the reading room went still.

"Oh!" said Vesper.

She was on her knees at once. She was a picture: the blue skirts spread on the boards, the hair coming loose from its pins, one hand pressed to her cheek. A dozen heads had turned. She looked up with wide, rueful eyes, and the lamp behind her turned the edge of her hair to copper, and she said, in a low, unsteady laugh, "How dreadfully clumsy. I'm so sorry. I woke the whole room."

"You've done nothing of the kind."

It was a man's voice, low, level, close above her.

She looked up.

He was standing over her, with the book in his hand. He had picked it up before she could. He held it carefully, with both hands, by the edges, as one holds a sleeping bird. He was looking at her. It was a direct look, grave and quiet. The gray eyes passed over her face, and her hair, and her hands; and she felt it, quite distinctly, as a faint pressure behind her breastbone.

He is using the Sight.

She had counted on it. She had planned for it. She did not flinch. She lifted her chin and met the stare with a tremulous smile, and she let a little of what she was thinking show: the shyness, the fluster, the innocence of a clever girl who has been caught in a foolishness. And she shifted, ever so slightly, to the left, so that the lamp stood behind her shoulder and the green shade threw its narrow shadow across her face.

It was an old trick. She had read about it in Mara's book on optics. A light behind the subject; a veil of shadow. It didn't stop the Sight. But it muddied it.

"Miss Ashgrove," said Rooke.

"Captain."

"I believe this is yours."

"Thank you." She took the book. His fingers brushed her own, for an instant, dry and warm, and a small shock went up her arm. "It's the most boring thing I've ever read. I think I dropped it on purpose."

"It's a treatise on bereavement."

"Is it?" She laughed. "I hadn't noticed."

"You were reading it, I think, with great attention."

"Was I?"

"For a quarter of an hour, without turning the page."

She went very still.

He watched me, she thought. He watched me from the shelves. He saw I didn't turn it.

It was a mistake, a small one, and she had made it because she'd been trying to look absorbed. She felt the blood leave her cheeks. But the man standing over her did not smile, or press; he merely stood there, quiet, and let the silence stand; and she understood that this was a method. He did not ask. He waited. People filled the pause for him.

Not me, she thought. Not you.

She smiled again, slowly, with a different smile: the one she had practiced in Mara's mirror, the lopsided one, with the dimple.

"I wasn't reading it," she said. "I was thinking."

"About what?"

"About the Captain of the Wardens."

…

Josie made a small noise.

It was a half-strangled sound, like a hiccup, and it came from the other end of the table. Vesper did not look. She kept her eyes on the man in gray. She saw his brows lift, a fraction. She saw the scar through the left one go white.

"Indeed."

"I hope you won't be offended." She gave the dimple its head. "It's only that I've heard such a deal about you. Everyone has. You walk about the Academy like a thundercloud and nobody dares breathe. The first-years think you're a vampire. Tobias Marsh says you can see through clothes."

"Mr. Marsh is mistaken."

"Is he?"

"I see a great deal. Not that."

"What do you see?"

It was bold. It was a good deal too bold, for the girl he thought he knew, and she saw the flicker in his face as he registered it: the hair-thin crease between the brows, the instant of reappraisal. This is not what Ashgrove was. She had meant him to see that. She had also meant him to put it down to the Ascension, the shock, the freedom of a woman who has lived at last. It was a risk. It was a fine one.

"I see lights," said Rooke.

"Lights?"

"Souls, if you like. They have a presence. A color."

"What color am I?"

He did not answer at once.

She saw him look. She felt it, and it was strange, like the touch of cool water on a bruise: a long, quiet, patient pressure. His face did not change. But she saw the muscle tighten along his jaw, and she sat in the lamplight in her blue dress, breathing carefully, and knew exactly what he was seeing.

Full, she thought. Bright. Whole. Blue and silver, as hers is, because I am cut from her cloth; but blazing, and under the blue a coal-red warmth I can't hide.

Everything she isn't.

"You're very vivid," said Rooke at last.

"Is that a compliment?"

"It's an observation."

"I'll take it as one." She tilted her head. "May I ask you something, Captain? Since we're both being frank."

"You may."

"Why did you stare at me on Ascension Night?"

…

It was the question she had come for.

She felt Josie go rigid. She felt, in the stillness of the room, the weight of every listening ear. But she did not take her eyes from the man. She watched him as a gambler watches a card turn.

"I did not stare."

"You looked at me for a very long time. You frowned." She kept her voice light. "I've wondered about it. I thought perhaps I'd done something improper. Or that there was something wrong, with the sigil. They've all been so kind, you see. And so careful. They don't say."

"The crack was unusual."

"Yes. But it wasn't the crack, was it?"

He said nothing.

"You weren't looking at my wrist," said Vesper. She said it very gently. "You were looking at a place beside my shoulder."

Gotcha, she thought.

He did not move. It was almost beautiful, the quality of his stillness: the discipline of a man who has trained for years to give nothing away. But she had been in Mara's head. She had seen the library table, and the long steady flame leaning, and the empty place where the other half should have been. She'd seen it from the inside, as one sees a room from the wall; and she knew that this was the question he could not answer, because it would give him away.

He saw it. He saw what was missing. And he doesn't know what to call it.

"I observed," said Rooke slowly, "an irregularity in your light."

"What sort?"

"I couldn't say with certainty."

"But it troubled you."

"It interested me."

"And now?"

"Now," he said, "it is gone."

She blinked.

She had not expected it. She'd had her reply ready, a pretty speech about sympathy and puzzlement; and she found it dying on her tongue. He was looking at her, directly, and there was something in his face she could not quite read. It was not suspicion. It was not even relief. It was a cool, courteous, rather sad thing, such as a doctor might wear when a patient has made an unexpected recovery.

"You are quite whole, Miss Ashgrove," said Rooke. "I'm happy to say. Whatever it was I saw, it has resolved."

"I'm glad."

"As am I."

He believes it, thought Vesper. And then, with a swift cold prick: He believes it, and it's not what he wants to believe.

He gave her the faintest of bows. "I'll let you return to your reading."

"Captain—"

"Good evening, Miss Tull."

He turned. He walked away down the aisle, the tall gray figure with the dragging boot, between the lamps. She watched him go. And at the door, as he reached for the handle, he stopped, and glanced back; not at her. At the north end of the room.

At the window.

At the table by the window, where nobody sat, where a green lamp burned, and the empty chair was drawn out a little from the desk.

He looked at it for a long moment.

Then he was gone.

…

"What," said Josie, in a rather high voice, "was that?"

"Conversation."

"It was an interrogation. You cross-examined the Captain of the Wardens! You asked him about his soul!"

"I was curious."

"You were flirting."

"I was not."

"You had a dimple. I've known you for six years and you've never had a dimple." Josie put her Hippocrates down with a thump. She was flushed and bright-eyed and wholly alarmed. "Mara. I'm not complaining. I've wished for years you'd let yourself go. But you've never—" She searched. "It's not like you."

"I'm trying a new thing."

"It's a very new thing."

"Is it unwelcome?"

"No!" Josie flung up her hands. "No, no, no. I'm glad. It's marvelous. I'd just like you to tell me before you do it, so I can brace."

Vesper laughed. She laid her hand on the other's and squeezed, and Josie's fingers turned in hers and clasped, warm and strong, and for a moment the blue eyes were wholly open, all the doubt put by. She thought: I could stay like this. I could stay here for the rest of my life.

If only it were mine.

"Josie," she said.

"Yes?"

"You'd tell me, wouldn't you? If I frightened you?"

The other girl stared. "What a thing to say."

"Would you?"

"Of course I would. I always do."

"Good."

"You don't frighten me."

"No," said Vesper. She smiled. It was a very small smile, very gentle. "I know."

…

She went to the window when the library had emptied.

It was past ten. The lamps were out, one by one. The old librarian had shuffled away with his keys. She stood at the tall north pane, alone, with her hands on the sill, and looked at the lake.

It lay silvered under the moon, vast and quiet. The ice had stopped its singing. In the stillness she could see the whole of the northern shore, the black pines, the hump of the boathouse, the broken stub of the old cottage with its one chimney; and, a little way along the nearer bank, below the Warden Post, a single yellow light.

It burned in the loft window.

She watched it. It was not moving. A lamp, in an upper room, with the curtain half drawn; and against the glass, now and then, a shadow passed. A woman's. Small, straight. It stopped at the table and bent.

She's there, thought Vesper.

She had known it. She had known it since the third night, when the thread in her side had begun to run, thin and bright, in a direction that was not the town. It had run to the Post. She had put her hand to the window and felt it tug, like a kite on a string. Oh, you clever, clever girl, she had thought, in a kind of dizzy admiration. You went straight to the lion's den.

She'd not told anyone. She would not. It was hers, this knowledge, like the red velvet at the bottom of the wardrobe. It was the one card she had.

What does he see when he looks at her?

The question stole up on her, soft and dark. She had been turning it over for days. It had come to her in the library, watching the Captain's face, and it came to her now, with the cold glass under her palms and the lamp burning in the loft. She thought of the way he had said, Now it is gone. She thought of the way he had looked at the empty chair.

He looked at me as an investigator looks, she thought. He looked at her as—

She stopped.

She had no word for it. She tried several. They were all wrong. She stood there, in the dark of the reading room, with the dimple fading from her face, and she felt it come up through her slowly, a thing she'd never had before and had no name for. It was small, and hot, and unfair. It was a pang. It was the most absurd sensation, because she had everything: the name, the room, the friends, the lamp-lit evening. She had the whole of Mara's life in her two hands.

And somewhere across the ice, in a cold room, a woman with brown hair and a bad leg had something that she hadn't.

"Who is that girl?" whispered Vesper.

Nobody answered. The moon stood in the window, round and white. She watched the light in the loft until it went out; and then she stood a long time longer, with her forehead against the glass, in the pale dark, with the thread tugging gently at her side, and the first jealousy of her life sitting in her throat like a stone.