Dekarta shook his head. I am a fool to keep looking for anything of her in you. He turned away then and began moving down the hall, slow even with the cane. Viraine fell in beside him, ready to assist if Dekarta stumbled. He looked back at me once; Dekarta did not.
I pushed myself away from the wall. My mother lived truer to the Bright than you ever could!
Dekarta stopped, and for a heartbeat I felt fear, realizing I had gone too far. But he did not turn back.
That is true, Dekarta said, his voice very soft. Your mother wouldnt have shown any mercy at all.
He moved on. I leaned back against the wall and did not stop trembling for a long time.
* * *
I skipped the Salon that day. I couldnt have sat there beside Dekarta, pretending indifference, while my mind still rang with the heretics screams. I was not Arameri and would never be Arameri, so where was the point in my acting like them? And for the time being, I had other concerns.
I walked into Tvrils office as he was filling out paperwork. Before he could rise to greet me, I put a hand on his desk. My mothers belongings. Where are they?
He closed his mouth, then opened it again to speak. Her apartment is in Spire Seven.
It was my turn to pause. Her apartment is intact?
Dekarta ordered it kept that way when she left. After it became clear that she would not return He spread his hands. My predecessor valued his life too much to suggest that the apartment be emptied. So do I.
He added then, diplomatic as ever, Ill have someone show you the way.
* * *
My mothers quarters.
The servant had left me alone on my unspoken order. With the door closed, a stillness fell. Ovals of sunlight layered the floor. The curtains were heavy and had not stirred at my entrance. Tvrils people had kept the apartment clean, so not even dust motes danced in the light. If I held my breath I could almost believe I stood within a portrait, not a place in the here and now.
I took a step forward. This was the reception room. Bureau, couch, table for tea or work. A few personal touches here and therepaintings on the wall, sculpture on small shelves, a beautifully carved altar in the Senmite style. All very elegant.
None of it felt like her.
I went through the apartment. Bathchamber on the left. Bigger than mine, but my mother had always loved bathing. I remembered sitting in bubbles with her, giggling as she piled her hair on top of her head and made silly faces
No. None of that, or I would soon be useless.
The bedchamber. The bed was a huge oval twice the size of mine, white, deep with pillows. Dressers, a vanity, a hearth and manteldecorative, since there was no need for fire in Sky. Another table. Here, too, were personal touches: bottles carefully arranged on the vanity to put my mothers favorites at the front. Several potted plants, huge and verdant after so many years. Portraits on the walls.
These caught my eye. I went to the mantel for a better look at the largest of them, a framed rendering of a handsome blonde Amn woman. She was richly dressed, with a bearing that spoke of an upbringing far more refined than mine, but something about her expression intrigued me. Her smile was only the barest curve of lips, and although she faced the viewer, her eyes were vague rather than focused. Daydreaming? Or troubled? The artist had been a master to capture that.
The resemblance between her and my mother was striking. My grandmother, then, Dekartas tragically dead wife. No wonder she looked troubled, marrying into this family.
I turned to take in the whole room. What were you in this place, Mother? I whispered aloud. My voice did not break the stillness. Here within the closed, frozen moment of the room, I was merely an observer. Were you the mother I remember, or were you an Arameri?
This had nothing to do with her death. It was just something I had to know.
I began to search the apartment. It went slowly because I could not bring myself to ransack the place. Not only would I offend the servants by doing so, but I felt that it would somehow disrespect my mother. She had always liked things neat.
Thus the sun had set by the time I finally found a small chest in the headboard cabinet of her bed. I hadnt even realized the headboard had a cabinet until I rested my hand on its edge and felt the seam. A hiding space? The chest was open, stuffed with a bouquet of folded and rolled papers. I was already reaching for it when my eyes caught a glimpse of my fathers handwriting on one of the scrolls.
My hands shook as I lifted the chest from the cabinet. It left a clean square amid the thick layer of dust on the cabinets inside; apparently the servants hadnt cleaned within. Perhaps they, like me, hadnt realized the headboard opened. Blowing dust off the topmost layer of papers, I picked up the first folded sheet.
A love letter, from my father to my mother.