The Truth of Things Unseen

Gintas' mansion was six miles north. The monster trudged along the rutted cart track, face set in a scowl. She had refused a horse, a carriage, and every other offer of help from Father’s servants. None of the bastards had pressed the issue.

How could she not have known? Mother would have known; she would have never let herself be trapped so.

Be like a dancer, Mother had said. Come in from one side and strike from the other. Smile with a blade up your sleeve. Subtle is the way. Subtle and full of knives.

Her pink silk slippers were useless on the rutted path. Brown water soaked through the soles. Mud and small white stones clung to the laces. She might as well go barefoot like a filthy peasant. The blood had crusted down the front of her gown, stiffening it and now the stitching scratched her chest. The pearls were dead stones. Ugly bones from stupid ugly little dead animals, hoiked by peasants from the bottom of a turgid sea.

Everything was stupid. Hot rage boiled up inside her. She howled across the fields. The heat of it pressed into the corners of her face. The pressure of the screaming filled her cheeks.

A flock of crows rose from a distant stand of trees. They circled, then settled once again in the same place. The world cared nothing for her pain. She was all alone in the middle of nowhere and no one cared at all. She would make them care. Give her a knife, she would make them care.

She felt the subtle tug of her own lost heart, hooked on the hollow place inside her, and she hated it. There was only one road she could walk now, towards Gintas, and when she saw him, what then? She could not kill him, Father had been right about that. He held her heart. He owned her in the most complete and intimate way a person can own another. To disobey him was impossible. It was degrading; humiliating. No one should have to suffer so.

She crossed a bridge over a little river. Two Lennel men were down by the sparkling water. Their shapeless black forms rippled slightly in a breeze that was not blowing. They cast no shadows. Though they stood together, each looked in a different direction as though the one did not even know the other existed.

Stupid things, doing nothing all day long, billowing and drifting and silently watching everything. What were they even doing here? There was nothing for them out here, nothing but shepherds and crows. She picked up a rock from beside the path and hurled it at the two shadow creatures. The rock passed straight through their inky bodies and splashed into the stream behind.

She picked up more rocks and hurled them. Some piece of her was aware that she was cackling like a witch, lifting and hurling muddy, squishy rocks, while the dirt mushed under her fingernails and splashed up over her dress.

A rock passed straight through one of the shapeless heads. The creature shivered but still, it didn't move. When she ran out of rocks, she hurled gravel and chunks of mud. The gravel splatted through the billowing ragged bodies, making ripples in the water behind. She wiped her hands on her dress, neverminding the stains.

When at last she sank down, exhausted against the parapet, the Lennel men were unmoved. She might as well not have bothered with them at all. The world cared not a fig for her, and she, in turn, cared nothing for it.

She pictured her father, short and fat and crying, and had to suppress a giggle. At least one person was sorry.

The monster reached Gintas' mansion by mid-morning. It was huge, with at least fifty plate glass windows on the front face alone, much larger than father's house. Two wings made of newer stone angled away as though the house were hiding secrets behind its back.

She wiped the mud and white stones from her slippers onto Gintas’ pristine lawn. Her grey gown was a ruin, streaked with mud, torn around the hem. Some of the pearls had fallen away along the road. She hadn't bothered to gather them.

She brushed herself down and ran her fingers through her hair. She was not presentable, but she didn't care. Gintas could take her as he found her. She composed her face into a scowl as she knocked. The fat little bastard might own her heart, but she’d be damned before she’d ever let him see her smile.

The door swung open on well-oiled brass hinges, and a servant in a stupid red waistcoat frowned down at her.

"You are Taliette?" he intoned, ushering her inside. "You are expected."

She didn't bother to reply. She pushed past the frowning man into the hallway. Some of the mud on her dress smeared on his waistcoat leaving a mark. She almost smiled at that, but not quite.

The reception area was sumptuous. She refused to look at the glorious frescoes that spread up the walls and across the ceiling. She ignored the alabaster carvings. The floor was tiled in complex geometric patterns. She steadfastly kept her eyes from chasing them.

The house might be a palace for all she cared. It was all shit, and she hated it forever.

The servant showed her through a small door into a wood-panelled room like a ship’s cabin. Shelves lined the walls, heavy with books, scrolls and scientific instruments. There was a rack of knives on the wall. She ignored everything and kept her eyes stubbornly downcast. If she could not make him suffer, she would suffer instead and make him watch.

She felt again the faint tugging at the core of her, and her eyes were drawn to a glass bead on the table, nestled among parchments. Inside the ball, something was fluttering like a moth against a window.

She rushed to it, fingers hooked like claws, but some invisible force held her back. The more she leaned into it, the more she was pressed away. She groaned in frustration. She was inches away, but she could not come any closer. It was hers, damn it, it was her own heart, and she would have it!

"You cannot take it," said a soft voice. "It is mine, bought and paid for."

Shit. The little bastard was standing in the corner. She almost giggled at the fright of it, but suppressed the feeling and composed her face into an icy scowl. She smoothed her dress. Never let them see.

His appearance was quite ordinary, a balding grey head, sensible indoor clothes. He spoke with a lowly Belonosian twang like a pirate. He looked her up and down appraisingly. She expected a leer at any moment, but none came.

He was less than her. He was beneath her notice. He would know this from the way she was staring at him. He would recognise the contempt, and he would crumble beneath the weight of it, yet still, he held her gaze.

"You have the look of your mother about you," he said at last. "The same hair, the same dark eyes. We were friends, her and I, back in the old days."

"My mother would have killed you for what you've done," she spat back at him.

"Oh, you'd be surprised." His voice was gentle, but there was steel in it, just beneath the surface. "She was a powerful woman, your mother. Too powerful in many ways, given what happened to her. If she had been weaker, perhaps your father would have got his way, and she would still be here."

"I don't want to talk about my mother," she growled.

"No, I can understand that, so let's talk about you instead."

Gintas scooped up the glass bead from the table, and she felt the warm pressure of his hands around it. Her heart fluttered within the bead, then rested once again. It pulsed, red, then green, regular as the beating of a heart.

"It is a beautiful thing, isn’t it. I own several of these, but yours is by far my favourite."

She held her tongue as he flipped the stone over and over between his fingers, stirring the heart inside into movement. She felt the ghostly flickering of it inside her chest, so close. He held the bead up to his eye, staring right down into it, right through it and out the other side, until he was staring at her instead.

"I have spent many hours studying this thing," he continued. "I've held your dreams in the palm of my hand. I know what makes you tick."

She choked back a curse. "You don’t know me," she snarled.

"Oh, quite the contrary, I know you very well. I've seen the darkness just beneath the surface. You hide it so well when you want to, but you shouldn't have to. Darkness shouldn't be hidden."

She refused to reply. She glared at him. No emotion.

"You know, I could force you to speak," he said. "I have your heart here. I could ask anything of you, and you would have to obey me. I could command you to drown yourself in a bucket. That is what it means to own a heart."

"I am not yours."

"And yet here I am holding your heart in my hand, and there you are, covered in mud with sticks in your hair, and could you not have tried to come to me clean?" He sighed. "Still, it will not matter soon."

He lowered himself into a leather chair behind the desk and motioned to a second chair opposite. She ignored him and remained standing.

"Allow me to speak plainly," he said. "I have no use for slaves here in Blazeby. Everyone under my service is here willingly. I will not hold you captive. If you really desire it, I can give you back your heart, then you can take it and go home, whole and intact."

"Why would you..?"

"Home to your father." He drawled the word father, extending the syllables as though testing the sound of it. His eyes glittered, watching her.

Her father. She would have to go home, and really, could anything be worse than that?

And yet her heart called and she longed for it. She snatched at the stone but felt the pressure again, pushing her back, like many hands pressing against her chest and her face, crowding into her mouth and the hollows behind her nose.

"It is not so simple as snatching a rock," he said. "There’s a process..."

"Show me how I can get it..."

She leaned against the pressure holding her away from it, her feet slid on the floor, it was like hands inside her skull, hooked in her nostrils, in her sinuses, mushing against her forehead hot and rough.

"Stop struggling. You’ll hurt yourself."

"Give me my heart!"

"You were made for greatness!" He slammed his fist down on the table. She froze. People did not shout at her. "Do you have any conception of what you can be? You are Leola’s daughter. I can make you magnificent!" The quills and books jumped as he pounded his fist into the table with each word.

"I am mine, not yours. I do as I please."

"You lay in your bed tormenting servant girls."

"Give me my heart right now!"

“You waste yourself!”

“Now!”

"You are so stubborn! I am offering you eternal glory, you ignorant little brat! You will ravage nations. You will fuck empires up the arse. The world will be your sodding cunt-toy, and all you have to do is stand still for a moment and let me tell you how!"

"Give it!"

He closed his eyes, took several deep breaths. When he spoke again, he was collected, casual. Mildly amused.

"Walk with me a while," he said. "The gardens are magnificent this time of year. You will hear what I have to say, and then you will make a choice.”