WINTER GALA (I)

Day 56 of 100

The Winter Gala of Thornwick Academy was held, by a tradition older than the Academy's charter, on the last Saturday of the winter term; and since the winter term at Thornwick ended when the Dean judged that the thaw could be trusted, and the Dean had not trusted it before the middle of May since 1871, it was customary for the young ladies to waltz in muslin under windows that still showed, beyond the glass, a rim of gray ice along the lake.

Rooke had never attended. He had stood in the doorway of the Great Hall for six years, in uniform, watching the exits. He had thought it a most unlikely entertainment. A hundred and fifty people in a room, going round and round, in time, to the sound of a violin.

He stood in the doorway now in the dress gray of the Wardens, with the silver buttons and the black facings and the number on his collar, and thought: I am going to dance.

It was quite the most frightening thing he had done in his life.

…

The Great Hall was transfigured.

He did not know how it was done. They had taken the long oak tables out, and the benches, and the Founder's portrait in its black frame; they had hung from the beams a hundred paper lanterns, rose and amber and pale green, so that the whole vaulted ceiling swam in a soft warm dusk. They had banked the end wall with white lilacs, which he had not known were in bloom, and the scent of them stood in the air like a presence. Gas jets in frosted globes burned along the walls. The floor had been waxed until it shone like a lake.

And the people.

They filled it to the edges. The faculty in black gowns, at the dais end, with the Dean fluttering among them like a plump rook; the Fellows in evening coats; the students, boys in their first tailcoats and girls in white and pink and primrose, with flowers at their wrists and a look of breathless unreality. Their light rose from them like steam from a field. He had put up the Sight, a little, as one cracks a window, and the whole hall pulsed and shimmered and sang: gold, rose, green, a swirl of colors thick as paint on a palette, so bright he had to narrow his eyes.

On a dais at the south end a small orchestra tuned. A cello. Two violins. A flute.

"You look," said Okafor at his shoulder, "like a man who is about to be hanged."

"I feel it."

"It's only a waltz."

"It's a trap."

"It's both," said Okafor comfortably. He was in uniform too, with a flower in his lapel that Pip had pinned there, and he surveyed the room with the placid pleasure of a man who has not been asked to take part. "The Director's by the pillar. He hasn't taken his eyes off you since you came in."

"I know."

"And the doctor's beside him. Looking like a sour plum."

"I know."

"And Miss Ashgrove has just come in."

Rooke did not turn his head. He did not need to. He felt it, as one feels the sun come out; and across the hall, in a ripple, the colors parted.

…

She came in on the arm of Josie Tull.

She wore red.

It was the red of a ruby held up to a lamp: a deep, living, luminous crimson, in a satin that clung and fell and moved with every step, cut low at the shoulder and tight at the waist and sweeping behind her in a train that whispered on the wax. Her hair was up, in a heavy coil, with a single scarlet rose pinned above the ear. Her throat was bare, but for a chain; and at the end of the chain, resting in the hollow of her collarbone, a drop of black stone, small and dull, that seemed to take the light of the lanterns and put it out.

She was very beautiful.

There was no doubt of it. The room knew it. He heard the hush go before her, felt the heads turn; saw a first-year boy at the punch-bowl forget to close his mouth. She came down the length of the hall like a flame carried in a glass, smiling a little, with her chin high and her eyes bright, and when she reached the center she stopped, and looked round, and found him.

She inclined her head.

It was a graceful, formal, faintly amused little nod, such as one gives an acquaintance across a ballroom; and in the same instant, through the thin layer of the Sight, he saw the flare.

There.

The great clean column of silver-blue and coal-red rose from her like a banner, brilliant and complete. And at her throat, small and black, the stone. It was like a hole in the light. He could see the shape of the thing, quite clearly, in the soft haze of the lanterns: a sort of faint dark swirl in the air around it, a wire-fine suction, as of water running into a drain.

That is a resonance stone, thought Rooke.

He knew the look of it. He had seen it once before, on a hand.

…

He had known since the tenth.

That was the thing he kept coming back to, standing in the doorway with his heart beating in his throat. He had known for six days, and had said nothing, and had done nothing, and the weight of it had settled in him like a stone in a well.

She had told him on the tenth.

It had been the afternoon of the day the ten days ran out. He had come back to the cabin at dusk, from the Post, with a knot in his belly, having spent a long sick day not looking at the calendar. She had been waiting. She had set the table with two cups. She had laid before him, in a neat stack, a black notebook full of her small hard handwriting; and she had said, in a voice so quiet and so level that it frightened him more than any shout could have:

Cal, I want you to read this. All of it. Before I say a word. And then I will tell you who I am.

He had read it for an hour.

He had read the Trial Record, in her copy. The figures. Subjects drawn: 19. Survived: 2. He had read the Reservoir and the copper filaments and the diary of a frightened woman in a gray gown. He had read, in the last pages, the words Eclipse night. Target: both. He had got up and walked out into the dusk and stood by the lake until it was dark, and when he had come in again she was sitting exactly where he had left her, with her hands in her lap, and her eyes lowered.

My name, she'd said, is Mara Ashgrove.

He had sat down.

I'm not a Doppel. I am the one who was torn. The one on the dais, the day of the Ascension, in the white gown, with the sigil cracked. She came out of me. She's the one in the library. In the blue silk. Her mouth twisted. I know how it sounds. I know it's what she would say. But I have thought, for six weeks, how to prove it to you, and there is only one way, and it is the Mirror, and if you put me before it I will die.

Mara, he had said.

He had not been able to say anything else. It was the first time he had said it aloud, to her, in that room; and she had flinched as if he had struck her, and then her face had broken, and she had put both hands over it and wept.

I believe you, he'd said.

You can't. You've no proof.

I have Calder's. He had laid his hand on the black book. The Mirror draws the weaker. The weaker is the Original. I have watched you go out on a stair; I've watched the other, in her blue dress, burn like a lamp. I have been a Warden for ten years, and a Seer for eighteen, and I was taught that the Doppel fades. His voice had shaken. I was taught a lie. I believed it because I wanted a rule. I would rather have the rule than the truth. And I looked at the truth in the face for six weeks, every morning, over a pot of tea, and called it a flaw.

Cal—

I knew, said Rooke. Not in my head. Somewhere lower. In the cave, when I saw the thread. On the dais. I think I knew on the dais.

She had looked up.

I looked at you, he'd said, and my heart turned over. I thought I was ill.

…

"Captain."

He started.

It was a light, warm, amused voice at his elbow, and it smelled of vanilla.

"Miss Ashgrove."

"You are looking at me as though I were an unexploded shell."

"Am I?"

"Rather." She had crossed the hall. She stood before him now, close, in her ruby satin, with the lantern-light running over her bare shoulders, and the black stone on her breast like a closed eye. Her eyes were very bright. "I came to ask if you'd honor me."

"Honor—"

"The first waltz. They are about to begin." The dimple showed. "I know you don't dance. Josie says you have a leg. But I thought, since the Captain has been so very kind to me this spring, and since I am so very likely to be dull company at supper—"

"Miss Ashgrove—"

"It would be a small thing."

"It would be a compliment," said Rooke, "and I should be delighted."

He bowed. He held out his arm.

It was perfectly ordinary. It was a thing a Warden could do without comment, before two hundred witnesses, with the Director's eyes boring into his back. He had decided it earlier that week, in the cabin, with Mara at the other side of the table: If she asks, I must say yes. I must not appear to know. I must find out what she means to do.

Then do it, Mara had said. But, Cal—

Yes?

Be careful of her. She had hesitated. She's not as hard as she wishes. If she thinks you're lying to her, she'll break. And I don't know what she does when she breaks.

Vesper laid her gloved hand on his sleeve.

It was warm. It was light as a leaf. She raised her face to his, and he saw her smile, and under the smile, as plain as a bruise, the faintest tremor of the mouth.

She is afraid, he thought, with a lurch.

She's more afraid than I am.

…

The orchestra struck up a waltz.

It was an old one, slow and sweet, the sort of tune that is played in dreams: a long swaying sigh of strings in three-four time, with a lilt to it like a boat on swell. The floor filled. The girls in their pastels swung out in a slow bright wheel, with their partners' hands at their waists, and the paper lanterns swayed overhead, and the lilac-scent came in great warm waves.

He took her hand. He put his arm around her.

He had danced, twice, in his life, in the Warden school, with a dancing-master who smelled of cloves. He remembered nothing. But his feet found the pattern, and the music took them, and in a moment they were moving, turning, a little stiffly, out onto the shining wax among the others; and she was close against him, in the red satin, with her hand on his shoulder and her face turned up.

"You do it very well," said Vesper.

"I am told I count."

"You do. I can hear you. One two three, one two three." She laughed under her breath. "It's charming. I feel as though I were being waltzed by a very polite abacus."

"I apologize."

"Don't. I like it."

They turned. The hall wheeled past in a blur of color. Over her shoulder he caught a glimpse of the dais; the Director on a chair beside the Dean, his stick across his knees, watching with an expression of mild benevolence. Calder at his elbow. Pryce, gray and rigid, standing a little apart. Josie, at the wall, with a glass of punch in her fist, her round face tight as a drum.

And in the doorway, in a gown of silver-blue that caught the gaslight like the skin of a fish, a woman with dark cropped hair, standing very straight, with her hands pressed together before her.

He missed a step.

Vesper's grip tightened.

"There she is," she said softly.

…

"Who?"

"Your clerk." She did not look round. Her eyes, level and gray-green and a little too bright, remained fixed on his face. "In the doorway. Do you see her?"

"I see her."

"She looks well. For a dying woman."

His blood went cold.

"Dying?"

"Oh, Captain." She smiled. It was a small, sad, knowing smile. "Do you think I haven't seen? I'm not a fool. The whole Post knows she's been ill. Pip says she dropped a cup. She hasn't been seen in the village for a week. There's a story she has gone to Rutland." The smile deepened. "I should like to hear how that came out."

"It was a records matter."

"Of course. I'm sure it was." Her hand slid a little on his shoulder. "I am only glad she's returned. It's so unlike one to see a woman go that color and not wish to put her to bed."

"Miss Ashgrove—"

"Mara."

"I—"

"Say it." She was very close now. The music had slowed; the violins fell to a long low trembling note. Her mouth was a few inches from his ear, and her voice was a thread of breath, scarcely audible above the strings. "You have never once said it to me. Not in the library. Not at the dinner. It's always Miss Ashgrove, as if I were a stranger. You say it to her. I know you do."

He did not breathe.

She cannot know.

She cannot. She has only her own heart to guess from.

"I say it," said Rooke slowly, "to no one."

"Liar."

It was so gentle that for an instant he took it for tenderness. Then he heard the break in it, and understood that she was very near to tears.

"You say it to her in your sleep," whispered Vesper. "I can feel it. All the way across the Academy. You say it, and I wake up, and I'm— and I lie there and I think: that was supposed to be mine."

…

The waltz ended.

It ended in a long sweet chord, and a rustle of applause, and he let her go. He stepped back. He bowed. She curtseyed, with her hand to her throat, and then, before the next dance could begin, before he could think, she was gone into the crowd with a flash of red; and he stood in the middle of the floor, with the blood hammering in his ears, and a hundred and fifty people, laughing, going round him like water round a stone.

Be careful of her.

He turned.

Mara was in front of him.

She had come across the floor without his seeing. She stood a pace off, in the silver-blue, with her hands at her sides, and she had taken off her spectacles. She had not worn them since the cabin. Without them she looked a different woman: younger, pale, a little wide-eyed, her cropped brown hair gleaming in the lantern-light and her face like a lamp turned low. The gown was cut simply. It fell from her shoulders in a straight sheen of silk, the color of moonlight on ice; Ruth Pellam had made it in four days, and wept over the hem.

"May I?" said Mara.

"Is it proper?"

"I haven't the faintest idea." Her mouth shook, and steadied. "I have never done this either."

He took her hand.

…

It was a slow dance, a different air.

The orchestra had softened. The cello led, a long deep singing line, and the violins came in above it like a second voice: a quiet, wistful, circling melody, half a question, half a sigh. They moved out onto the floor. The other couples fell back a little. He did not notice; he knew only the weight of her hand in his, so light that it hardly seemed to rest there, and the movement of her body under the silk, and her eyes, which were fixed on his, and were gray-green, and steady, and brimming.

"Cal," she said, very low.

"Mara."

It was the first time he'd said it in a crowd. It went through her visibly. Her hand tightened in his. She drew a quick breath and let it go, and for a moment he felt the whole of her tremble, and then steady.

"You danced with her."

"I had to."

"I know."

"She suspects."

"I know. I could feel it." She did not look away. "She hasn't a notion how much. But she's frightened. And when she's frightened she'll do something."

"What?"

"I don't know."

"The stone—"

"I saw."

"It's Halloran's. It's a resonance stone. It draws a divided light." He steadied his voice. "It's meant for you."

"I know."

"You should not be here."

"No." The ghost of a smile. "But neither should you, and here we are."

They turned. The lanterns swam. Her silver-blue skirt swung out and wrapped about his legs, and for an instant he thought he could not bear it, that he would pull her against him in front of the whole Academy and the Director of Special Dispositions and be damned. He held to the measure. One two three. One two three.

And then, as they came round to the open center of the floor, he put up the Sight.

…

He had not meant to. It came of itself, as a blink comes: a loosening of the eyes, a softening of the lamps. The lanterns bloomed. The room went liquid with light. He saw the dancers about them, each in their weather, rose and gold and green; and in the midst of them, close, so close that he felt it on his skin, the light of the woman in his arms.

It was brighter than it had been.

He saw it clearly. The wing, the blue-silver curve, rising from her shoulder, and the clean cut where the other should be. But it was fuller. It had a glow in it, a steady warmth, as of a candle in a window; and as he looked, with a movement so slow it was hardly a movement at all, the light stirred. It turned. It leaned outward, across the floor, through the thin crowd, toward something.

He turned his head.

Across the hall, among the dancers, a flash of red.

She was dancing with a boy. Tobias Marsh, with his hair slicked flat and his tie crooked, who held her as one holds a vase. She was laughing at something he'd said. And her light, the great clean column of it, was leaning too. Leaning toward them. Reaching, as a plant reaches along a sill.

Between the two lights, across the width of the hall, there was a thread.

It was thin. It shone. It ran from the woman in his arms, through the dancers, through the lamplit dusk, to the woman in red; a fine gold-white filament, taut as a violin string, humming faintly on a single note. And as he watched, the note changed. It rose. It deepened. The two lights, the blue and the red, began to move in a slow answering rhythm, like two bells struck in sympathy, swelling together, each a half-tone from the other.

They're resonating, thought Rooke.

They're singing.

It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. It was the same song. The dance with the one, the dance with the other: he had been wrong to feel them as two. They were two halves of a single melody, the verse and the refrain, and they were reaching for each other across a crowded room, and neither of them knew.

Dear God, he thought. This is what it would be, if she were whole.

The black stone at Vesper's throat gave a small dark pulse.

…

He felt it.

It was like a hand closing. A cold drag at the edges of his sight, a drain, as of a plug drawn in a basin; the colors of the hall tilted, the music thinned. In his arms Mara gave a small choked gasp. Her light flickered. The blue-silver wing dimmed, went pale, trembled as if in a draft; and from the heart of the hall, from the red figure laughing in the arms of a boy, he saw the thread go taut.

"Cal," she said. "Cal, something's—"

"I know."

"It's pulling—"

"Hold on to me."

The music went on. The lanterns swung. Nobody noticed. They were all too happy.

And Vesper, across the floor, looked up.

She had stopped laughing. She had let go of the boy. She stood quite still among the whirling couples, with her hand pressed to the black stone at her throat, and her eyes met his over the heads of the crowd. They were huge. They were full of a terror and a bright, helpless, despairing resolve. Her lips moved.

He read them from forty feet.

I'm sorry.

And then she turned. She walked out into the center of the floor, in her ruby satin, with the rose in her hair; and the dancers parted before her, and the music faltered; and she raised her arm and pointed, in a gesture as formal as a judge's, directly at the woman in his arms.

"Doppel!" cried Vesper.

Her voice rang from the vaulted roof. It was shrill, clear, and entirely terrible.

"That woman is a Doppel! She is a Doppel!"