III
CONFIDENCE
“Courage is, then, knowing what is formidable or otherwise,
and by maintaining invariably such a sense of them, as to bear them, or despise them.”
and by maintaining invariably such a sense of them, as to bear them, or despise them.”
The sweeping double towers and colorful stained glass windows of the Catedrala San Basileus had always been comforting to Marron. Even at night, when it was impossible for him to enter, he could isolate its brassy bells from every other church in the city, and always knew when it was time to come home. When last he had stood before these great mahogany doors, they had been hung with the festive trappings of a Catholic Easter, with white lily and daffodil garlands strung all together by pale blue ribbon, and the air had been filled with song. But that was months ago. Today, he wasn't here for Holy Mass, and the stained glass windows were dark with winter weather and all-too-secular thoughts.
A biting sleet fell from ice-white clouds, and clung to the brim of Marron's new cap. Brown felt, one side held up with a copper button, and delicate cream-colored feathers tucked into the band. It was a not-quite-gift from an almost-friend who was probably warm inside right now, attending to his meetings and other Stewardly business. I still haven't paid him back the portion he lent me, Marron worried, before wrenching himself back to the matter at hand.
He entered the church. Dipping his fingers into one of the silver fonts placed inside each of the three doors, he made the sign of the cross. Rather than heading down the nave and into the pews, however, he took a sharp right, striding down the long hallway and up a flight of twisting wooden stairs that landed once at the choir loft, and then again at the entrance to Minister Tristine's personal apartments. Typically, he might have taken this opportunity to take a crack at how inviting an unmarried man into her private rooms had the makings of a grand scandal. But the tone of the telegram tucked inside his coat pocket had little room left for humor. Instead, Marron took a deep breath to steady his racing heart, brushed melt-water droplets off his shoulders, and knocked thrice upon the door.
Tristine looked up abruptly at the sound of the knock, then down at the stack of books in her arms. Blast it… well at least she’d managed to get some tidying done. Marron was uncharacteristically prompt, with the clock in the bookshelf declaring it barely past eight thirty in the morning. She hurriedly made space on the shelf next to her and slotted the books into it, then slipped off of the arm of the parlor chair and tucked her crutch under her shoulder.
She bundled her robe tighter around her neck as she crossed the room. The weather had taken a decidedly devilish turn, rain hardening into sleet and morning mist into feathery frost. Fortunately, she was prepared with a pot of chamomile tea steeping quietly on an end table. With the curtains drawn against the cold, what little daylight that filtered through the clouds was blocked out, replaced by the amber glow of three candelabras scattered through the room. She unlocked the thick library door and pulled it open, scooting back on a slippered foot to make room for her guest.
“Marron,” she greeted, smiling despite the gloom in the air. “I would bid you good morning but… I’m not quite convinced it is.” She hesitated, studying his face. He looked uncertain, even anxious. “I’m sorry for bringing you out here in this dreadful weather but… thank you for coming. Please—” She gestured towards the room and the parlor chairs set around a cozy fur rug.
"Oh! Hey, no need t'apologize. Can't exactly turn down me Minister when she summons, can I?" Marron replied, quickly masking his unease behind a toothy smile. He took off his hat and allowed himself inside.
The ferryman had to take a moment to appreciate Tristine's decor. Her place was well-cared for, cozy, and absolutely full to bursting with books. On shelves, on end-tables, everything lit by warm firelight, the scents of old ink and chamomile floating in the air. It was...nice, and exactly the kind of place he imagined she would live in, even if he couldn't imagine lingering in such a space for very long himself. "Hahah......so, erm. What's this...about?"
Tris closed the door behind him, lingering a moment as he walked into the room. She had been thinking about what she would say all morning, turning the words over in her head, but she still felt woefully unprepared. Finally she sighed and turned to face him.
“I wish it could just be tea between friends, but… I’m afraid it’s a little more serious than that. It’s nothing you’ve done,” she said quickly, raising a hand. “Just something I’ve come across that might concern you…personally.”
She crossed the rug and took a chair near the teapot, gesturing for him to do likewise.
“Oh, that’s reassuring.” The smile on Marron’s face faltered, but never quite faded, as he hung his hat and jacket on the coat rack and took his seat. “Usually when I’m in trouble it’s been your office, but I can never be quite sure.”
Tris smiled again at his answer, but it faded almost as quickly as it appeared. She selected two teacups from the tray, placing one for her guest and one for herself. A distraction, perhaps, but he also looked quite cold and damp. She poured for the two of them. “I’m sorry if it’s a bit strong. I wasn’t sure when you would arrive.” And I rather prefer it this way, she thought. She couldn’t have gotten to sleep this morning if she tried, but the week’s worth of worry over Ruinam was starting to catch up to her.
She let the cup warm her fingers, giving Marron a chance to recover from what must have been an arduous trek from the riverside to the estate grounds.
“Thank ye, Marm,” Marron said, savoring a hot swig of chamomile. As usual, he slurped, but not before fixing Tristine with an oddly measuring look over the rim of his cup.
It wasn’t like her to apologize so much, nor so often. Not to him. And though he knew Tristine for an insomniac, the shadows under her eyes told a story of anxiety on top of lack of sleep. Marron’s mind raced, trying to invent some explanation for her apparent exhaustion, and how that should somehow involve him.
“Whaaaat’s on your mind?”
She looked at him, then looked away. This is a mistake…
“Before I answer that,” she began, “I need your solemn word that our conversation here will not leave this room.” This time when she met his gaze, she held it intently. Evaluating. Almost challenging. “Everything I tell you, I say in confidence.”
“I…!”
Marron hesitated. Not because he felt any misgivings about the oath itself, but because the steely look in Tristine’s eyes rattled him. He was just a ferryman! Who was he to be the confidant of Ministers? This wasn’t right...
..But then, nothing’s right, right now. It’s all been wrong since Necalli’s murder, and nothing’s getting any better.
Slowly, he put his cup aside and, leaning forward in his seat, met her stare for stare. “Ye’ve me word,” he agreed heavily.
And I’ve never tripped you again, neither, have I.
Tris didn’t need any further confirmation. The promise rang sincere. She sat back in her chair a little, suddenly very tired. As much as she hated the thought of involving Marron in something this delicate, she couldn’t deny a desperate wish to share her findings in an environment she knew she could control. The admission sent a little flutter of shame through phantom antennae, but she kept her face composed as she considered where to begin.
“How much do you know about my predecessor, Solomon Sanbourn?”
Marron frowned. “Er...I mean, not all that much, besides hearsay.” Solomon had left the post so long ago...he hadn’t heard the name in almost twenty years, yet somehow his name hung palpably in the air over their heads, a heavy grey curtain that made Marron’s heart beat fast. “Why?”
“Because I may have discovered what it was that made him betray the Organizer.”
She finally looked away, brow furrowed in thought as she began to retrace her steps from earlier this week. The discovery of Solomon’s journal, enciphered and dearly protected even hundreds of years after his departure. The account of Seren, and of Syrah. Tris chose her words carefully at first, but soon enough she was just speaking her mind. The furtive, shadowed nature of the subject matter only made her want to speak more honestly—as if in counterbalance. She confessed her opinions, her doubts, even her fears.
By the time she had finished, the teacup was cold in her hands.
And not once in all that time did Marron interrupt. He watched her, stormily at first and then with increasing disbelief, until by the end of it he sat back in his seat with his mouth half-open. A fierce gust of wind rattled the windowpanes, and precipitation clacked against the glass, but neither one of them spoke.
At last, Marron drew a deep breath and ran a hand down the length of his face. “....Good God*, Tris.”
*In English, not Sybalian
“Yesterday, I deciphered something else in his notes,” she continued. “Solomon was getting desperate…understandably… so he… he confessed everything to a close friend.”
…What was that about not following in his footsteps?
Tris clenched the teacup tighter in her fingers, but the dark liquid still rippled slightly in her grip. This was not the same, dammit. She was not Solomon, and Marron was not…
She squared her shoulders, took a soldiering breath, then met his eyes.
“He told Lumiere.”
No matter the occasion, Marron was the sort to fidget. A bouncing knee, a change in posture, hands on his hair or his face, or along the rim of his teacup. But the sound of that name stopped him in time. For once in his life, he went entirely still. For a space of breath, the only things moving were his eyes, which searched Tristine for any trace of falsehood or uncertainty, and found none.
It felt like he had swallowed an ice cube. He gulped again in an attempt to rid himself of the sensation, and bared his teeth in a smile that did not reach his eyes. Flash-frozen thoughts tumbled one over the other, and suddenly he wasn’t looking at Tris at all but past her. A century past, to a holy woman with mahogany hair and a laugh to light up winter mornings, who was as delicate and sturdy as a sparrow, and whose outstretched hands had given him a place to call home. To that fateful afternoon when Sister Galvina had come to the docks and told him the news, that Lumiere’s body had been found lifeless on the edge of the Traveler’s Woods, and no one knew what had happened. To a funeral Mass with all too many memories, and to the years that followed, which held all too few answers.
To the implication that it was Solomon Sanbourn who had somehow caused Lumiere’s death, and the matter at hand.
“Which...is why we’re here.” Because the anniversary of her death is in a week, and she knows I’ll go to lay flowers there the same way I’ve been doing for a hundred years. “But Tris, that doesn’t make any sense, if something Solomon said somehow got Lumiere killed, what happened in the, in the I dunno, two and a half centuries between him telling her, and….?”
Even braced as she was, the pain clear in his eyes twisted in her heart like a mirror image. Whatever confidence had driven her to think this was the right path, she couldn’t find now. The only security she found was in the fact that it was too late to take back her words.
In a heartbeat, she set down the half-tasted cup of chamomile with a hasty clink and shifted forward in her chair. She reached out, put a hand on his sleeve, and squeezed his forearm. “There are not nearly as many answers as there are questions,” she said. “But… I don’t think he meant to endanger her. He…” she cast for words for a moment. How could she even try to defend him? “Some time after he told her… about his predicament, this Syrah came to him again and demanded that he steal one of Lumiere’s notebooks.”
Those neat little pocket-sized folios she used to carry. There had always been so many keen thoughts flitting behind her eyes, too many to keep track of without record…
Focus.
“Solomon didn’t refuse. He was terrified of Syrah. He wrote of regret in his decision to speak to Lumiere. He thought she might be… spying on him—or that she’d broken his confidence. Somehow Syrah knew something was amiss.”
Tris dropped her gaze. “I don’t know what happened after that. He didn’t seem to see anything in the notebook to imply espionage, and perhaps neither did Syrah. But…” She looked at Marron again, searching. “I don’t know for sure.”
Her eyes found echoes of long-dormant grief, honest consideration and, behind these things, a childlike need for explanation, as if despite her confession that she had more questions than answers, he still expected her to be able to explain. First Necalli, then Tisiphone, now this…
Yet the more he thought about it, wading through the fog of a hundred years of memories, it occurred to Marron that this was not the only time he had heard such rumors about Lumiere. Even though Solomon was gone long before he ever stepped foot in the City, he knew that Lumiere had once worked for him. And he also knew, thanks to the intimate nature of monasteries and the tendency of nuns to gossip, that Lumiere knew an awful lot about people. She had had dozens and dozens of those little black books, squirreled away in every nook and cranny of her apartment. An eccentricity on the surface of things, a necessity given her chosen mission in life...and a repository of information the breadth of which would have earned the respect of any archivist worth her salt. From that memory sprung the sudden realization that although Tristine didn’t have all the answers, he could think of a few ways that they might change that.
Marron’s jaw tightened. “What...what if I told ye that I still have one of those diaries?”
Tris blinked, sitting back a bit. “…Lumiere’s diaries?”
“Aye! I don’t know it’ll be of any use, but I know exactly where it is. She gave it to me a few months before she died as a congratulatory gift for getting through therapy.”
She gave his arm another instinctive squeeze. Strength, Marron. I’m so sorry…
“I…” there was an intensity in his eyes, an eagerness that caught her off guard. He wanted to help, but she found herself suddenly reluctant.
What did you expect? She thought. Lumiere was a pillar in his life, and she never knew Marron for the sort of man to give those ties anything less than their due loyalty. She had to admit, the idea of scanning one of Lumiere’s journals was tempting. The few glimpses she had ever gotten of the books revealed a deeply insightful mind, one that did not think in straight lines, but rather full, watchful circles. But… there was so much more of Ruinam to decipher. Syrah could very well still be at large. Could she really allow Marron to tangle himself so far into this affair? It was only a diary, and he said he knew right where it was but… what if he had to ask? To explain himself?
Could she allow him to risk her own reputation? If word of this secret investigation got out…
“I’m not sure that’s necessary,” she said. “There’s still more to Solomon’s journal that I need to translate. It might paint us a clearer picture.”
“But-!” Marron leaned forward in his seat. “What if there is something there you could use? Ye said yourself, just now, that you’re turning in Solomon’s book by the end of the week. Which, let’s be honest, is probably smart--”
But you wouldn't have to do that with the diary. I’d let you hold onto it as long as you needed, even turn it back in for evidence, if it would give Lumiere’s death some goddamn meaning.
Tris pulled her hand back with a reluctant frown. “Yes, but that's all the more reason… I don't have time to—”
She cut off with a sharp sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose between both hands. She had seen and heard enough of the determination in his words. That spark of tenacious will to act that she recognized all too well. He would probably seek it out regardless of what she said.
“Give me the week,” she said. “Let me find the next key. Then we can look at the diary.”
Disappointment flashed across Marron's face. He didn't so much sit back in his chair as deflate, the brief wind snatched from his sails. Though he understood why Tristine wanted him to wait, the injustice of being asked to do so heaped upon him a measure of frustration that his already exhausted reserves couldn't immediately handle. Instead of argument, all that came out of Marron's open mouth was a long sigh.
"........Alright, Marm Tris. You're the Minister!"" Marron's lips turned up in a weak smile. "Thanks for...I mean, thanks for callin' me in. It means a lot."
“You shouldn’t thank me yet.” There are still too many questions, with potentially difficult answers.
But Marron’s smile, however tired, was encouraging. “I am glad you’re here,” Tris said. “It helps not to do this on my own, more than you know.” She felt the edge of her mouth curl into a half smile as she added, “all of this roguish sneaking… isn’t it usually your area of expertise?”
The tired smirk became a grin. “Only after dark!” Marron laughed. “Right now I’m the picture of good behavior. As, ah…Hah, as are you.”
Tristine raised an eyebrow in mock warning, but it quickly dissolved into another quiet smirk. She settled back in her chair, the lines of tension that she’d collected throughout the week finally going slack. She had a plan. She had a collaborator.
“Well then, clearly I have some work to do,” she said.
Then she hesitated, studying Marron thoughtfully. It would only be polite to offer the man breakfast at the Estate after all the trouble he’d taken to come in so early, but… what excuse could she give for his being there? Nothing plausible came immediately to mind, and she couldn’t afford to look uncertain.
Seeing Tristine's furrowed brow relax at last brought a little bit of life back to Marron's cheeks. He ran a hand over top of his head and unknowingly solved Tristine’s conundrum by rising from his seat. "Alright, Marm. I should...probably get back to m'shift. The river waits for no man, and no woman, her paperwork. Eh?"
“Mmm, so it seems.”
She pulled herself up onto her crutch and followed him to the door to undo the unusual latch—a recent installation. A precaution.
Such a tiresome word, she thought. Caution had never been her first instinct, but she hoped that this time it would serve her well.
“Travel safely, Marron,” she said. “Mind the ice.”
Gathering up his coat and placing his hat firmly on his head, Marron stepped over the threshold before turning to face her with a glint in his eye. “Oh, you know me,” he said, giving her a mock bow. “I’m never anything but careful...”
(This is a chapter preview. You can find the full chapter HERE)
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