“There you are!” Miranda, in spotless breeches and a pale blue shirt, came through the archway. In the cool morning, she had color in her cheeks again and looked very much the poised, elegant lady of the manor. “I should have known you’d come down here before breakfast.”
“Habit,” Cecelia said. “But of course it’s not the season, and no one expected me to ride this early . . .”
“Ah,” Miranda said. “So . . . are you just pottering around petting horses, or would you like something to eat?”
“I was . . . Neil said you’d been in the old forge a few days ago . . .”
“Oh yes?” Miranda’s eyes were on the chestnut.
“I’d never seen it before,” Cecelia said. She saw the sudden tension in Miranda’s neck. “It’s a nice little workshop.”
“Yes, it is,” Miranda said. “We use it for mending tack now.”
“That’s what Neil said. I’ve never done that myself . . . well, except for leather. He said you’d been working on a bit, and they finished it. All I saw was this—” She held it out.
“My . . . I wonder what that is.” Miranda’s voice was breathless. “Quite old, it looks like.”
“Not like tack,” Cecelia said. “Some kind of strainer, maybe.” She put it back in her pocket. “How are you feeling this morning?”
“Shaky,” Miranda said. “I can’t—it’s too much, too fast. I can’t believe it all really happened.”
Breakfast, with obligatory small talk, was excruciating. Cecelia picked at her eggs and ham; Miranda nibbled a bowl of mixed grain flakes. At last the maid took the dishes away.
“I must meet with that militia officer again,” Miranda said. “I have no idea what to do, and with Kevil out of commission—”
“Miranda . . . you have to come to grips with it.”
“How?” The blue eyes clouded with tears. “How am I supposed to come to grips with Bunny dying, and Harlis trying to cheat us, and Pedar . . .”
Tell the truth, Cecelia thought but did not say. She was reserving that for later. She followed Miranda down the long corridor, its walls hung with pictures, past the case from which the antique weapons had been taken—she stopped abruptly. The case was partly empty now, of course—the weapons and masks Miranda and Pedar had used had been taken away. But seeing the faint discoloration outlining where they had been, Cecelia visualized it as if it were still there.
The solid metal helm. The pierced metal mask. Pierced just like the fragment in her pocket—her hand clenched on it.
“What?” Miranda said, from two strides down the hall. “What is it?”
She had known, and not known—she had not wanted to know. She had wanted to believe it impossible, so she would have nothing to do, no responsibility.
“Miranda, I am sure that this—” she held out the metal fragment, “is from that mask. That you did something to that mask. If I had the skill, and investigated the chemicals in the old forge—”
Miranda said nothing.
“You can’t expect me to let it go—”
“No.” Miranda’s voice was hoarse, as if she’d been crying. “I can expect you to be right in the middle of everything, with your teeth locked on the most inconvenient of truths.”
It was still a shock. “You mean, you did—”
Miranda’s hand smacked the table. “Of course I did. Damn and blast, Cecelia, the man had my husband killed, and his idiotic schemes as foreign minister endangered all of us—my children included. And he was putting pressure on me to marry him. He was a despicable, slimy, skirt-climbing bastard—”
“And now you’re a murderer,” Cecelia said.
“A killer,” Miranda said. “Murder is a legal definition.”
“I don’t care what you call it,” Cecelia said. “We both know it’s not something you can live with—not in our society.”
“Oh, fine. Pedar can have my husband killed, and get a ministry, but I—”
“Come off it.” Cecelia linked her big hands together and didn’t bother to hide the contempt in her voice. “You had the goods on Harlis; you could have waited and gotten Pedar legally—”
“I didn’t think so,” Miranda said. “I thought he’d get away with it.”
“You can’t just brazen it out. You can’t. It affects your children, your grandchildren, their position in the Familias . . . there’s Brun, back on Castle Rock—if you could only see her, Miranda. It’s like—” She bit her tongue on like Bunny come back. “She’s grown up, really grown up. She’s got a real talent—”
“Well, of course she does,” Miranda said, looking away. “She’s my daughter—and Bunny’s. If she’d only grown sense a little earlier, married—”
“She doesn’t need to marry,” Cecelia said. “She’s doing very well on her own. But she does not need a murderess mother hanging around her neck, an easy target for her enemies.”
“Buttons will—”
“Buttons,” Cecelia said, “has his own life to live. And he’s got many of your and Bunny’s admirable qualities, but he doesn’t have Brun’s flair. And no, he can’t keep people from using your act as a weapon against Brun.” Miranda’s stubborn expression annoyed her so much that she burst out, “By God, Miranda, I know where she got that reckless, stubborn determination to go her own way regardless, and it wasn’t Bunny.”
“I never—”
“You certainly did, and this wasn’t the first time.” Incidents she’d thought lost to memory decades before came spurting out, under the pressure of her anger. “Before you turned cool and calculating, you were hothead enough—like that birthday party where you pushed Lorrie into the fountain, and the time at school—Berenice told me about it—when you—”
“Oh, stop it.” Miranda, flushed with anger, looked more alive than she had since Bunny’s death. “I was like any child, hasty and unthinking. Yes. But I got over it.”
“Until you stuck a sword in Pedar’s eye. I wouldn’t call that getting over it.” Cecelia took a deep breath. “Listen—if you stay here, it’s true they’re not likely to come get you, but what about the other people here on Sirialis? What about your children? You wanted this for them, remember?”
“What, then? If you know so much, you tell me what to do.”
“Exile. Leave the Familias. Go to—oh, I don’t know, maybe the Guerni Republic. Get treatment for whatever it is that made you think you could kill him with impunity. Stay a long time . . .”
“And be arrested on the way—be reasonable, Cecelia.”
She was going to do it again, and regret it, but she was beginning to recognize the feel of a duty she dared not shirk. “I’ll take you.”
“You! You hate me . . . you insist I’m a murderess. And besides, you don’t have room in that little thing you fly now—”
“I don’t hate you,” Cecelia said. “And I’m not afraid of you—you’re not going to kill me, not if you agree to go. As for the ship, I found I didn’t like being completely solo all the time. It’s still small, but it’s adequate for two people.”
“So—what are you going to tell our militia captain?”
“I will answer accurately any questions he asks me. What he makes of the answers is his business.”
The interview covered much the same ground as the day before. When had she arrived, what had she seen, what had Miranda said and done. Cecelia recognized, in the militia captain, a man who did not want to think about what might have happened, if a good enough explanation appeared. Yet he would not let himself skimp the questions. Cecelia answered honestly, as far as his questions went.