And so I gain myself a few precious seconds to think of what to tell. The truth, yes, but truth has many flavors, some more bitter than others. My sister deserves some version of the events. Back at the Summer Palace, during the train journey, she was still a child, and I under an obligation to protect her from the information that would only hurt her. Now she is but two months, three weeks, and four days away from her debut, from the rite of passage that marks her an adult. Perhaps the time has already come to treat her as one.
I speak in a low voice only when we both perch on the bed’s edge, the book of scriptures between us a neutral ground that neither can occupy without breaching peace. “They were our mother’s younger sisters.”
Sibilia clings to every word, holding her breath, and it is as if the house, too, were listening to us. It occurs to me that I might have made a grave mistake in immersing myself in my plans, by considering only the guards and the gagargi as a threat. I have failed to take into account the other parties that may yet become involved.
“And what happened to them?” Sibilia asks, and at that moment I am certain that she has never really heard of them. But that can’t be it. How would she have then known their names, something even Elise is too young to remember!
“They plotted to assassinate our mother,” I reply, even as I wonder from which source my sister’s knowledge stems. There is but one way to find out. I must tell her more and read from her reactions how much she really knows. “They acquired a swan soul and sweet-talked a talented young gagargi into their service. It was only at the last moment that our mother learned of their plan and put an end to it.”
A family secret that soon became a state secret. I was taught to forget mother’s sisters, and it was by no means a difficult feat to accomplish with their names forbidden in conversations that steered around their absence, their faces skillfully altered in portraits to resemble no one at all, their friends and allies silenced with unsaid threats and punishments so terrible that any grain of loyalty still lingering in their bones withered willingly away. Only now, I realize that their fate could have been mine, even though I did not and I will not betray my sisters.
But in conspiring with the gagargi and plotting a coup together with him, even if I was under his spell, I did betray my mother. That night, there was so little time, and the guards escorted my sisters to the observatory before I had a chance to explain that I had merely intended to seek the gagargi’s counsel, nothing more. Though she forgave me, sealed this with one last kiss pressed on my forehead, I am sure she went to her grave thinking I was behind the coup. I can only wish that our father has revealed her the truth.
“Would-be murderers then?” Sibilia nods to herself, seemingly satisfied for a moment at least. But I have to ask myself: is she still on my side? How much can I trust her, or any of my sisters for that matter? These are ghastly questions, but ones every empress must consider, regardless of how fond they are of their sisters. Questions that my mother no doubt asked herself.
“What do you do when your sisters plot your downfall?” I ask her as much as myself. If the world had turned out differently, if it weren’t for the gagargi and his machine, my sisters might have eventually conspired against me in lust for more power. Now I know they won’t. If I have to be grateful for one thing, the gagargi’s actions have resulted in that. “She could have ordered them shot. Empresses of the past have done so more than once. But they were her sisters. She loved them, despite their betrayal.”
Sibilia stares blankly ahead. No, not blankly, but at the oval mirror above the vanity desk. She isn’t interested in her reflection. It is as if she is hoping to see more, but what? Surely not into the world beyond this one.
And then I know the answer. Ghosts can gaze into this world through reflecting surfaces.
I say, as much to those who might be watching us as to my sister, “Instead, our mother sent them here, into a house built so far away that any plot conceived could be stopped in time.”
Even without Millie’s confession, there was so much evidence, my mother told me after the guards had escorted Irina and Olesia away. The young gagargi cracked under the truth spell that mother’s advisors enforced on him. Come next full moon, her sisters would have poisoned mother with arsenic. Irina, as the older one of them, would have married the Moon. But even though the guards searched the palace from attic to cellar three times, the swan soul bead the sisters had acquired was never found. And that might yet turn out to be a blessing. Knowing the cunning of mother’s sisters, I am certain they smuggled it with them here, even if I haven’t been able to locate it yet.
Sibilia nods at her reflection, satisfied with what I have told her so far, if not by what she saw. “When you were still under the gagargi’s spell, you wanted to send me, Elise, Merile, and Alina here.”
She has grown indeed, for this I haven’t told her either. It was originally the gagargi’s plan. But it was I who decided that we should all come here—that night in the sacred observatory, it was the best course of action. Though, back then, I didn’t know what he had in mind for my mother’s sisters. Had I known, I don’t know how I would have chosen.
“It’s not as safe here as you thought it would be,” Sibilia continues in a voice too deep, too old.
I think of the bullet holes in the cellar, the ones Elise so vividly described that even though I haven’t seen them myself, I can feel them under my fingers as I brush the worn velvet coverlet. I don’t know if one of mother’s gagargis cast a spell on me, to make me forget Irina and Olesia even faster. I was only nine when they were exiled. But now I suddenly recall things I haven’t thought of in years. My nostrils fill with their perfume, white midsummer roses in bloom covering the bitter scent of cigarettes. I taste the hard, colorful candies they always carried around in their purses. My ears lock and pop. My heart pounds too loud.
Sibilia pokes my shoulder as if nothing had changed. “So, what’s the plan?”
I must be present, with her. I can’t think of what the past meant to me or what the coming days may bring in their wake. My sisters rely on me to find a way to leave this house, and leave this house I must, for my empire is torn asunder and my people suffer in the throes of a civil war. But only a secret untold is safe.
“Tell me,” Sibilia commands, playfulness gone from her tone.
I know it then: if I don’t tell her, I will put us even more at risk, even if a careless slip of tongue could ruin the plan beyond recovery. For it is clear now that though their bodies have bled dry, the souls and shadows of my mother’s sisters still remain behind and haunt this house. They distrust me as I am… will be the empress. If given half the reason, half the chance, they will sow seeds of distrust amongst my sisters, and this will then endanger so much more than the escape plan.
I face the mirror and speak as much to the ghosts of Irina and Olesia—if they indeed are present—as to my sister who sits beside me in the flesh. I shall tell them what awaits us. “We will flee on foot to the south. If we leave at midnight, that will give us from six to eight hours of head start before the guards notice us gone. If we walk through the night and the following day, down the streams and rivulets, by the time the guards reach Captain Ansalov, his hounds may not be able to determine our path.”
Sibilia nods to herself. “They will think we’ve headed toward the Summer Palace, that you are intent on reclaiming the empire as your first action.”
My sister is no longer a silly girl, but a woman of reason. Though, relying on the guards to draw the right conclusion without carefully scattered hints would be to count on luck too much. Toward this end, I have composed a letter that I will leave for Millie to find. She will give in under pressure, before the guards have to resort to more than threats. She has done so once in her life already.