In the colony, he had been named my keeper. In London, I had been his queen and his commander. Now we were just two fugitives, each with no power over the other. At last, we were on level ground.
I liked spending time with him. It had taken me months to fully admit it to myself, but it brought a smile to my face to see him each morning. I had worried we might run out of things to say within a few days, yet we never did. Sometimes we stayed up talking all night.
He was intelligent and perceptive in conversation, solicitous, a good listener, with a bone-dry wit that I was never wholly sure was intentional. I told him things I had never told anyone—about my childhood in Ireland, on my grandparents’ dairy farm, and about my time with the Seven Seals. We talked about music I had saved from piles of salvage at the black market, about books he had discovered in the colony. He told me stories Scion had erased.
He described the Netherworld, so I could almost sketch a map in my head. He conjured its buildings in exquisite detail—colossal, carved from iridescent stone, cities that shone like shattered glass— and described the river, the Grieving, with its bed of pearl-like pebbles.
“Your river was called the Grieving?” I raised an eyebrow. “The Netherworld sounds like a riot.”
“It is a poor translation.”
We shared an interest in languages as well as music. One evening, he asked me if I might consider teaching him my mother tongue.
“You realize almost nobody speaks Gaeilge these days,” I said. We were playing chess, and I was waiting for him to make his next move. “Not in public, anyway.”
“All the more reason to learn it.”
We were into our endgame. There were more black pieces on the board than white, which definitely meant I was winning.
“Scion made a concerted effort to destroy all evidence of the Irish language after the Molly Riots,” I said. “You won’t find many books, and you’re not likely to be able to talk to anyone but me.”
“I enjoy our conversations very much.” Arcturus moved one of his pawns. “And I would like to be fluent in another human language.”
“How many do you already have?”
“Six,” he said. “English, French, Swedish, Greek, Romanian, and Scion Sign Language.”
“Only six?” I slid my black queen across the board. “You’ve been here two centuries, lazybones. I already have half as many as you and I haven’t had unlimited decades to learn.”
“Clearly yours is the superior intellect, Paige—”
“Well, I didn’t want to say—”
“—but you still cannot best me at chess.” He set down his white bishop. “Checkmate.”
I stared at the board. “You . . . infuriating bastard.”
“You only had eyes for the king and queen. Remember not to overlook the other pieces.”
With a sigh, I sat back. “Well played. Again.” I shook his hand. “Fine. I’ll teach you Gaeilge if you teach me Gloss. Deal?”
“Humans cannot learn Gloss. It is the language of spirits.”
“Polyglots can speak it.”
“They do not learn it. They are born with it.”
“Try me,” I pressed. “Say a word in Gloss and I’ll copy you.”
He humored me and made a soft, chime-like sound, which I had a stab at mimicking.
“Wrong,” he said.
“How?”
“You are not Gloss-articulate. Even if you were to perfectly imitate the sound I made, you would only be speaking with your vocal cords, not your spirit.”
I tried not to look crestfallen. Gloss was beautiful, and I would have liked to call him by his real name.
Still, the thought of holding a real conversation in my mother tongue was tempting. My grandmother had been born on an island where Gaeilge had once been spoken daily, and had passed it onto me—a bright jewel, a shared joy, that I had kept buried for years.
Scion had outlawed all the Celtic languages during the Molly Riots. They would die out soon; now families were too afraid to teach them to their children even in secret. I liked the idea of a Rephaite knowing mine. Through him, it would be immortal.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll teach you. But fair warning—nothing in Irish sounds like it looks.”
“I enjoy a challenge.”
“Good.” I took a pen and paper from the table and scribbled the longest word that came to mind, grianghrafadóireacht. “Your best conjecture, then. How would you pronounce this?”
Arcturus considered it, then served himself a large glass of wine.
“This may take some time,” he said.
****
We found a collection of films and took to watching them together in the evenings. I looked forward to that time, when we would sit on the couch and I would eat my supper. Often I would fall asleep there. In the morning, over breakfast, he would tell me how the film had ended.
One such evening, not long after my birthday, found us sitting in the parlor as usual. Arcturus was immersed in the film. After weeks of stress and separation, it was strange to be resting at his side. The set of his jaw was softer, his hand at ease on the arm of the couch.
A month ago, I might have moved closer. He might have drawn me to his chest and pressed his lips to my hair.
Sometimes I wished we could talk about how it had been. Not that there was much to say. I had ended our trysts because as Underqueen, I could put nothing and no one above the revolution—and because if they had found out, the Ranthen would never have tolerated it.
And yet I was Underqueen now only in name. And there were no Ranthen here to see us.
As if he had sensed the thought, Arcturus glanced at me. I looked away a second too late.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine.” I put my plate aside. “I just can’t believe you’re here sometimes. That we both are.”
“Hm. We have come a long way since you last contemplated killing me.”
“We have.”
Out of habit, I traced the silver marks on my palm. When I had banished the spirit that powered Senshield, it had joined the scars there, forming the word kin. I had no idea what it was supposed to mean, or how I had banished the spirit without knowing its name.
Women with damson lips and penciled eyebrows glided across the screen. There was just enough light to remind me that I was no longer chained underground. Curled up next to Arcturus, I slipped into a drowse. I was warm. I was clean. I was safe, if not entirely free.
I jolted awake when a spirit glided through the window, frosting the panes. A psychopomp. I held still as it approached Arcturus.
“What did it say?” I asked when it had gone.
“That Hildred Vance’s replacement has been summoned,” he said. “Vindemiatrix Sargas, the blood-heir, is on her way to London. She will assist Scion with Operation Albion.”
“Vance isn’t dead?”
“No. Hospitalized.”
Alsafi should have finished her off. I might have known she would cling to life with every finger.
“Operation Albion.” I rubbed my eyes. “That sounds familiar.”
“It is the formal name for the eradication of resistance in the homeland. This includes the complete dismantling of the Mime Order.”
A military operation within Scion. I sat up a little. “You think this . . . Vindemiatrix Sargas is going to help with that?”