Now he looked sad. “Is that why you’re doing all this?” He gestured at the walls. “To get back at someone?”
“To get back, at all,” she said earnestly, “I must have my revenge. Else I am brought low forever and can never go home. For otherwise—” Her voice caught.
For otherwise, I have no reason to return.
His expression, of compassion, would have maddened her on anyone else. “You were telling me about the horses,” he said quietly.
“Ah. Yes.” Grateful of the distraction, she said, “Well, they have these huge barrel-shaped bodies and elegant long necks. Long heads like on my ring.” She held it up, splaying her fingers. “But their legs! Garth, their legs are twice the length of their bodies—like spider’s legs, impossibly long and thin. They stalked around the paddock like… well, like spiders! I don’t know how else to describe it. They were like a dream that’s just tipping over to become a nightmare. I’m not sure I want to see them again.”
He nodded. “There are cattle loose between some of the estates. I’ve seen them, they look similar. You have to understand, there’s no room on the city wheels to raise livestock.”
Venera pried open the lid of the grease can and picked up a brush. “But now that the nation of Buridan has returned, the horses are our responsibility. There are costs… it seems a dozen or more great nations have acted as caretakers for one or another part of the Buridan estate. Some are tenants of ours who haven’t paid rent in centuries. Others are like Guinevera, who’ve been tending the horses. There’s an immense web of relationships and dependencies here, and we have a little under a week to figure it all out.”
Garth thought about it for a while. “First of all,” he said eventually, “you need to bring a foal or two up here and raise it in the estate.” He grimaced at her expression. “I know what I just said, but it’s an important symbol. Besides, these rooms will just fill up with people if you give them a chance. Why not set some aside for the horses now?”
“I’ll think about that.”
They cleared out the space behind the rack, and slid it against the wall. It fit comfortably over the exit hole. As they stood back to admire their work, Garth said, “It’s a funny thing about time, you know. It sweeps away anger and hate. But it leaves love untouched.”
She threaded her hand through his arm. “Ah, Garth, you’re so sentimental. Did it ever occur to you that’s why you ended up scrabbling about on Greater Spyre for the past twenty years?”
He looked her in the eye. “Truthfully, no. That had never occurred to me. If anything, I’d say I ended up there because I didn’t love well enough, not because I ever loved too well.”
She sighed. “You’re hopeless. It’s a good thing I’m here to take care of you.”
“And here I thought it was I taking care of you.”
They left the cellar and re-entered the bedlam of construction that had taken over the manor.
The headache began that night.
Venera knew exactly what it was, she’d suffered these before. All day her jaw had been bothering her; it was like an iron hand was inside her throat, reaching up to clench her skull. Around dinner a strange pulsating squiggly spot appeared in her vision and slowly expanded until she could see nothing around it. She retired to her room, and waited.
How long was this one going to last? They could go on for days, and she didn’t have days. Venera paced up and down, stumbling, wondering whether she could just sleep it off. But no, she had mounds of paperwork to go through and no time.
She called Garth. He exclaimed when he saw her and ran to her side. “You’re white as a new wall!”
“Never mind,” she said, detaching herself from him and climbing into bed. “Bring in the accounts books. It’s just a headache, I get them. I’m sick but we need to go through these papers.”
He started to read the details of Buridan’s various contracts. Each word was like a little explosion in her head. Venera tried to concentrate, but after ten minutes she suddenly leaned over the edge of the bed and retched.
“You need to sleep!” His hands were on her shoulders. Garth eased her back on the bed.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she mumbled. “If we don’t get this stuff straight, we won’t convince the council and they’ll cart us both away in chains.” A blossom of agony had unfurled behind her left eye. Despite her brave words Venera knew she was down for however long the migraine decided to hold her.
Garth darkened the lamps and tiptoed around while she lay sprawled like a discarded doll. Distant hammering sounded like it was coming from inside her own head, but she couldn’t hold up the renovations.
Sleep eventually came, but she awoke to pain that was abstract only until she moved her head and opened one eye. This is how it’s going to be. These headaches were the bullet’s fault; when it smashed her jaw it had tripped some switch inside her head and now agony ambushed her at the worst times. Always before, she’d had the safe haven of her bedroom at home to retreat to—her time on the Rook had been mercifully free of such episodes. She used such times to indulge in her worst behavior: whining, accusing, insulting anyone who came near her, and demanding that her every whim be catered to. She wallowed in self-pity, letting everyone know that she was the sad victim of fate and that no one, ever, had felt the agonies she was enduring so bravely.
But she really was going to die if she let the thing rule her this time. It wasn’t that there was nobody around to indulge her; but all the sympathy in the world wasn’t going to save her life if she didn’t follow through on the deception she and Garth had planned. So, halfway through morning, Venera resolutely climbed out of bed. She tied a silk sash over her eyes, jammed candle wax in her ears, and picked up an empty chamber pot. Carrying this, she tottered out of the room. “Bring me a dressing gown,” she said in reply to a half-heard question from a maid. “And fetch Master Flance.”
Blindfolded, half deaf, she nonetheless managed to make her rounds of the work crews, while Garth followed her and read from the books. She told him what points to underline for her to look at later; inquired of the work and made suggestions; and, every now and then, she turned aside to daintily vomit into the chamber pot. Her world narrowed down to the feel of carpet or stone under her feet, the murmur of words in her ear, and the cataclysmic pounding that reverberated inside her skull. She kept going by imagining herself whipping, shooting, stomping on, and setting fire to Jacoby Sarto and the rest of this self-important council who had the temerity to oppose her will. This interior savagery was invisible from without, as she mumbled and queried politely, and let herself be led about passively.
All of this busywork seemed to be getting her somewhere, but that evening when she collapsed onto her bed, Venera realized that she had no memory of anything she had said or done today. It was all obscured by the angry red haze of pain that had followed her everywhere.
She was doomed. She’d never be ready in time for the interrogation the council had planned. Venera rolled over, cried into her pillow, and finally just lay there, accepting her fate. The bullet had defeated her.
With that understanding came a kind of peace, but she was in too much pain to analyze it. She just lay there, dry eyed, frowning, until sleep overcame her.