(no subject)
Nov. 5th, 2013 09:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
methony"I want you to see this," Diokletian said.
I freed my arm from his grip. "See what?"
"Your mother."
I was following him reflexively while my brain struggled to make sense of his words. "What did you say?"
"Just for once in your life hold your tongue and come with me."
The rawness in his voice silenced me more than the command. I followed him into a part of the Nephelion I had never seen: narrow back corridors, cramped, twisting staircases. It looked more like the Mirador than anything I had seen in Troia, and I was conscious of my pulse accelerating, my mouth going dry.
"Where are we?" I said and hoped Diokletian would believe I had intended the words to come out in a whisper.
"These are the acolytes' quarters," he said. "What? Did you think they slept out on the grass?"
"No, of course not," I said, annoyed to feel my face heating. "I just hadn't ..."
"Furnished with cast-offs, memories, the history that no one wants to speak of. I've often thought it a mercy that the acolytes are too preoccupied with becoming celebrants to stop and look around themselves. Here."
He halted in the middle of a corridor, no different to my eyes from any other, and called witchlight, sending it to illuminate one of the pictures on the wall. "This is your mother, painted the year before you were born."
Whoever the portraitist had been, they had had a gift. The young woman in the portrait, eighteen or nineteen at a guess, seemed so vividly alive that I almost expected her to step out of the frame, or at least to push back the strands of hair falling in her eyes.
She looked almost exactly like me--or, rather, I looked almost exactly like her. Save for my slightly heavier bone structure, save for my one blue eye, I could have been looking at a mirror instead of a picture. My resemblance to Mildmay was close enough to be startling, but this ... this was uncanny.
"Are you sure I had any father at all?" I murmured. "Are you sure she did not create me entirely from herself?" Cheekbones, nose, that slight sardonic hitch in one eyebrow that said louder than words how little value she placed in having her features recorded for posterity.
"Only the laws of nature stand against your theory," Diokletian said. His voice sounded easier, as if seeing me here, seeing me with the portrait, had purged something that had been festering in him. "And if anyone could find a way around that, it would be her."
"Tell me about her," I said.
He glowered at me. "You talked to Xanthippe, you said. So you already know."
"That in my mother's case, it was not a matter of sinking to prostitution?"
"It wasn't like that."
"Then what was it like? This is your chance. Tell me who she was. Make me believe she was something better than a whore."
"You have no idea what you're talking about," he said, almost growled.
"No," I said in exasperation. "I don't. That's the problem I'm inviting you to rectify. I'm told she slept with so many men that no one knows who my father is, and yet you say she wasn't a whore. You do see the paradox, don't you?"
His expression was mistrustful, and suddenly I understood. He had been defending Methony for twenty-seven years, defending her to people who would not listen to what he tried to say, who took his words and twisted them--as he undoubtedly felt I had been doing--so that they came around again to slut, harlot, whore.
"I was a prostitute," I said, still calm. "I know it isn't the worst thing one can be." No, because I'd found that worst thing for myself. But Diokletian didn't know about that, and he wasn't going to. "Tell me."
He must have wanted to, must have put the words together over and over, in different ways, with different inflections, because this time, when he started to talk, it all came spilling out.
Methony had been the daughter of a Celebrant Major of little power but tremendous organizational skill: Periander of the House Demetrias. Her mother, Theseia, a daughter of the House Leontis, had died when Methony was barely five, leaving Periander to raise his daughter alone.
"He did a bad job of it," Diokletian said. "He couldn't control her."
My eyebrows went up, and he smiled, very slightly. "I know, I know. Certainly it's not the verb I'd want to use with my daughters. But it was how he thought, and it was the worst way he could have chosen. She was ... if I say willful, it gives entirely the wrong impression. She was the most obstinate woman I have ever known. And it was more than that. She would not let him control her."
"I think I understand. It seems to be a familial trait."
He could not understand the source of the bitterness in my voice, as I remembered the things Malkar had done to make me obey him, how I had fought against him and been defeated. But after a moment's puzzled look, he went on. "Her ... wantonness was, I think, aimed partly at her father, in defiance of his ideals, his plans for her. But it was also a way--maybe the only way, I have thought since--that she could reach the celebrants as an equal."
"You'll have to say that again."
He grimaced, but now it was only because he could not find the words he wanted. "She had power, but only a tiny amount, even less than her father. And I do not truthfully know whether she was interested in entering a covenant, ours or one of the others. But it drove her mad, to be surrounded by wizards who talked to her as if she were annemer. And so she seduced them. I don't know when she started, or who her first target was, but by the time I came here as a Celebrant Minor, she was already ..." He stopped, started again. "I don't think the Celebrants Terrestrial knew, or any of the wizards her father's age. But we younger ones ... she could have any one of us she wanted, with nothing more than a raised eyebrow. Men, women, the Tetrarchs know she didn't care. Never the same lover two nights in a row. And so when she announced she was pregnant ... everyone asked, of course--everyone who could have been the father--and she just smiled and said, 'If you needed to know that, I would have told you.' That's what she said to Periander, too."
"I see," I said. I wasn't quite sure how I felt now; it wasn't as if I had any warm, glowing memories of my mother to be trampled into the mud by these revelations. And certainly this story was no worse than what I had believed to be the truth. But it was still strange, unsettling, like looking at myself in a distorting mirror--or perhaps a mirror that did not distort at all.
I glanced at him. He was staring at the portrait with a rueful smile; he seemed almost to have forgotten about me. After a moment, he said, still not looking at me, "How did she die?"
"I don't know exactly," I said. "I was ... not living with her. But there was a fire."
"A fire."
"Oh, that doesn't even begin to convey it. It was ..." I made a frustrated gesture with my hands and then had to laugh at myself. I could taste ashes and smoke again, as I had for weeks when I was eleven. "Almost everyone I knew died. The ... the place where she worked," the brothel, but we both knew that and I did not need to hurt him by saying it again, "it burned to the ground. No one got out."
"An ugly death," he said softly, flatly.
"Most deaths are. But yes." I remembered Joline, dying of smoke-inhalation and burns in the middle of the Rue Orphée while I held her and wept and all around us the city burned and raved, writhing in agonies that were still not enough to kill it. I remembered that for a long time afterwards I had wished I had died with Joline.
Diokletian heaved a sigh that seemed as if it came from the bottom of his soul. "We should go back," he said. I wondered if he would lie awake tonight, tormented by images of my mother choking, screaming, the flesh burning off her exquisite bones.
I freed my arm from his grip. "See what?"
"Your mother."
I was following him reflexively while my brain struggled to make sense of his words. "What did you say?"
"Just for once in your life hold your tongue and come with me."
The rawness in his voice silenced me more than the command. I followed him into a part of the Nephelion I had never seen: narrow back corridors, cramped, twisting staircases. It looked more like the Mirador than anything I had seen in Troia, and I was conscious of my pulse accelerating, my mouth going dry.
"Where are we?" I said and hoped Diokletian would believe I had intended the words to come out in a whisper.
"These are the acolytes' quarters," he said. "What? Did you think they slept out on the grass?"
"No, of course not," I said, annoyed to feel my face heating. "I just hadn't ..."
"Furnished with cast-offs, memories, the history that no one wants to speak of. I've often thought it a mercy that the acolytes are too preoccupied with becoming celebrants to stop and look around themselves. Here."
He halted in the middle of a corridor, no different to my eyes from any other, and called witchlight, sending it to illuminate one of the pictures on the wall. "This is your mother, painted the year before you were born."
Whoever the portraitist had been, they had had a gift. The young woman in the portrait, eighteen or nineteen at a guess, seemed so vividly alive that I almost expected her to step out of the frame, or at least to push back the strands of hair falling in her eyes.
She looked almost exactly like me--or, rather, I looked almost exactly like her. Save for my slightly heavier bone structure, save for my one blue eye, I could have been looking at a mirror instead of a picture. My resemblance to Mildmay was close enough to be startling, but this ... this was uncanny.
"Are you sure I had any father at all?" I murmured. "Are you sure she did not create me entirely from herself?" Cheekbones, nose, that slight sardonic hitch in one eyebrow that said louder than words how little value she placed in having her features recorded for posterity.
"Only the laws of nature stand against your theory," Diokletian said. His voice sounded easier, as if seeing me here, seeing me with the portrait, had purged something that had been festering in him. "And if anyone could find a way around that, it would be her."
"Tell me about her," I said.
He glowered at me. "You talked to Xanthippe, you said. So you already know."
"That in my mother's case, it was not a matter of sinking to prostitution?"
"It wasn't like that."
"Then what was it like? This is your chance. Tell me who she was. Make me believe she was something better than a whore."
"You have no idea what you're talking about," he said, almost growled.
"No," I said in exasperation. "I don't. That's the problem I'm inviting you to rectify. I'm told she slept with so many men that no one knows who my father is, and yet you say she wasn't a whore. You do see the paradox, don't you?"
His expression was mistrustful, and suddenly I understood. He had been defending Methony for twenty-seven years, defending her to people who would not listen to what he tried to say, who took his words and twisted them--as he undoubtedly felt I had been doing--so that they came around again to slut, harlot, whore.
"I was a prostitute," I said, still calm. "I know it isn't the worst thing one can be." No, because I'd found that worst thing for myself. But Diokletian didn't know about that, and he wasn't going to. "Tell me."
He must have wanted to, must have put the words together over and over, in different ways, with different inflections, because this time, when he started to talk, it all came spilling out.
Methony had been the daughter of a Celebrant Major of little power but tremendous organizational skill: Periander of the House Demetrias. Her mother, Theseia, a daughter of the House Leontis, had died when Methony was barely five, leaving Periander to raise his daughter alone.
"He did a bad job of it," Diokletian said. "He couldn't control her."
My eyebrows went up, and he smiled, very slightly. "I know, I know. Certainly it's not the verb I'd want to use with my daughters. But it was how he thought, and it was the worst way he could have chosen. She was ... if I say willful, it gives entirely the wrong impression. She was the most obstinate woman I have ever known. And it was more than that. She would not let him control her."
"I think I understand. It seems to be a familial trait."
He could not understand the source of the bitterness in my voice, as I remembered the things Malkar had done to make me obey him, how I had fought against him and been defeated. But after a moment's puzzled look, he went on. "Her ... wantonness was, I think, aimed partly at her father, in defiance of his ideals, his plans for her. But it was also a way--maybe the only way, I have thought since--that she could reach the celebrants as an equal."
"You'll have to say that again."
He grimaced, but now it was only because he could not find the words he wanted. "She had power, but only a tiny amount, even less than her father. And I do not truthfully know whether she was interested in entering a covenant, ours or one of the others. But it drove her mad, to be surrounded by wizards who talked to her as if she were annemer. And so she seduced them. I don't know when she started, or who her first target was, but by the time I came here as a Celebrant Minor, she was already ..." He stopped, started again. "I don't think the Celebrants Terrestrial knew, or any of the wizards her father's age. But we younger ones ... she could have any one of us she wanted, with nothing more than a raised eyebrow. Men, women, the Tetrarchs know she didn't care. Never the same lover two nights in a row. And so when she announced she was pregnant ... everyone asked, of course--everyone who could have been the father--and she just smiled and said, 'If you needed to know that, I would have told you.' That's what she said to Periander, too."
"I see," I said. I wasn't quite sure how I felt now; it wasn't as if I had any warm, glowing memories of my mother to be trampled into the mud by these revelations. And certainly this story was no worse than what I had believed to be the truth. But it was still strange, unsettling, like looking at myself in a distorting mirror--or perhaps a mirror that did not distort at all.
I glanced at him. He was staring at the portrait with a rueful smile; he seemed almost to have forgotten about me. After a moment, he said, still not looking at me, "How did she die?"
"I don't know exactly," I said. "I was ... not living with her. But there was a fire."
"A fire."
"Oh, that doesn't even begin to convey it. It was ..." I made a frustrated gesture with my hands and then had to laugh at myself. I could taste ashes and smoke again, as I had for weeks when I was eleven. "Almost everyone I knew died. The ... the place where she worked," the brothel, but we both knew that and I did not need to hurt him by saying it again, "it burned to the ground. No one got out."
"An ugly death," he said softly, flatly.
"Most deaths are. But yes." I remembered Joline, dying of smoke-inhalation and burns in the middle of the Rue Orphée while I held her and wept and all around us the city burned and raved, writhing in agonies that were still not enough to kill it. I remembered that for a long time afterwards I had wished I had died with Joline.
Diokletian heaved a sigh that seemed as if it came from the bottom of his soul. "We should go back," he said. I wondered if he would lie awake tonight, tormented by images of my mother choking, screaming, the flesh burning off her exquisite bones.
