She nodded. “You know about her, then?”
I was afraid if I said I’d met her, the conversation would go off the road, so I said, “Only a little. Her father—Lord Zhayin—doesn’t like to talk about her.”
She nodded. “She’s the one I’d have expected to toddle into the wrong room, you know. She was always running away, exploring, and trying to find new places and taking things apart to see how they worked.”
I nodded. “What happened to her?”
“Her mother died during the Interregnum.”
Okay, so, there it was. Just what Tethia had said. Hit a big drum, light a big torch, make a big splash in the pond. I still had no idea what it meant, but it was important. I wasn’t going to figure this thing out until I knew what that meant.
Maybe it had something to do with the place being a “platform.”
Maybe her mother had been in charge of filling the pantry, and that’s why there was no food, and Tethia had starved to death.
Maybe, with all the time weirdness, Tethia’s mother had died during the Interregnum, and then time twisted itself around so she was never born.
Maybe it had something to do with Devera.
One thing, though: I was starting to feel a little sorry for Zhayin. Wife dies during the Interregnum, daughter dies from something mysterious, son gets turned into some kind of hideous thing that has to be locked up. Poor bastard couldn’t catch a break with a break bucket during a break storm. T-A-L-T-O-S.
I looked around for something to scowl at that wasn’t an old dry-nurse. To kill time while I figured out the best way to get information from her, I walked around the room, looking into corners, opening the door to a linen closet.
“Nice mirror,” I said. “I see it’s right by where the crib was. Did she like looking at herself?”
She nodded.
I still didn’t have anything. Well, I suppose I could try just asking. I cleared my throat. “Odelpho, could you explain why whenever I ask how Tethia died, the only answer I get is about her mother?”
For a moment she looked like she didn’t understand the question. Then she said, “M’lord? Who else have you asked? If you don’t mind?”
I hesitated, then, “Tethia,” I said.
Her eyes got big and she started shaking. “Where?” she whispered.
“I’m not sure how to describe it. The front room? Kind of long, overlooks the ocean-sea, tables, chairs?”
“Of course,” she said, as if to herself. Her eyes lost focus. Then she looked at me again. “Please, how was she?”
“She seemed all right. Maybe a little confused, but so was I.”
“She didn’t seem”—she groped for the word—“sad?”
I thought about it. “Maybe a little. But mostly it seemed like she wasn’t exactly there. It was more like, I don’t know, she personified the room? Does that make sense?”
“Oh, I know that,” she said, as if I’d tried to explain what a candle snuffer was for. “After all, she—” She broke off and flushed a little.
“She what?” I said.
She shook her head and looked down. There were tears on her cheeks.
“What is it?” I asked. My best soothing voice isn’t very soothing, but I did what I could.
“I’ve been here for all of it,” she said.
“All of—?”
“I mean, since before the building of Precipice Manor, when we lived in the old castle.”
I nodded, and waited. When she didn’t go on, I said, “This was during the Interregnum?”
She nodded. “Oh, yes. My lord worked in the capital before the Disaster. He was consulted on many projects, both new and reconstructions.”
“There was a lot of reconstruction work?”
She gave me a funny look, then I could see the “Oh, you’re an Easterner” moment of revelation, and she said, “Dragaera City was very, very old. Nothing lasts forever, especially then. The Imperial Palace itself was always being rebuilt or repaired.”
“What do you mean, especially then?”
That look again, and: “Preservation spells didn’t become easier until after the Interregnum. M’lord,” she added, suddenly realizing that she’d been forgetting her courtesies.
“Oh, of course,” I said. Then I added, “We Easterners are always younger than we look,” because she was already thinking it.
She nodded, a little embarrassed and at a loss for words.
I said, “I saw the award he got for designing some building. I don’t remember what.”
“The new Silver Exchange. It was beautiful. It looked like a silver needle, and all around it were balconets and bay windows. It was beautiful. My lord’s city house was in sight of it, just past the Tsalmoth Wing of the Palace, and I would it see every day on the way to the park with—” She broke off and looked down.
“Everyone here is so cheerful I almost can’t stand it.”
“Shut up.”
“And it was then, before the Interregnum, that he started on Precipice Manor?” I managed to say it without rolling my eyes.
“Yes,” she said. “No. Well—it wasn’t like that.”
“What was it like?”
She looked down. “I shouldn’t say any more, m’lord.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” I said, going for the silky-smooth nice-guy tone. I’m not so good at that, though I’m better at it than I used to be.
No good; she just shook her head. All right, then. I wasn’t going to let this go. There was something there, and if it wasn’t important, I was a Teckla. All right, let’s hit it from another angle.
“You were alive during Adron’s Disaster, weren’t you? It must have been horrible.”
She nodded.
“What did it feel like?”
She shook her head. “I can’t describe it.” She looked to be telling the truth, but more important, there were no signs that talking about it made her nervous, which meant I wasn’t getting any closer to my answer. “You know that it created a Sea of Amorphia, just like the big one? Did you know that?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Hard to believe. And then the Interregnum. I can’t imagine what it must have been like.”
“It was hard,” she said. “Although we were luckier than some—we had everything we needed nearby.”
“Were you close to Tethia’s mother?”
“Close, my lord? She was my mistress.”
“Right. Of course. Were you sad when she died?”
“I—” She seemed to be stumbling a little. “I didn’t learn of it right away.”
“Oh, so it didn’t happen here?”
“No, my lord.”
“Where, then?”
“It was … somewhere else.”
Bugger. What was the big secret? I hate secrets. Except mine. I like mine. But it did seem like I was getting closer. Push more? Push more.
“Where was it, Odelpho? Where did she die?”
The old woman gave a sort of sob, sank off the chair and onto her knees, and started clawing at her face. I stood there, frozen. I’d never seen that before. It took me a long time, seconds, before I got over to her, grabbed her wrists, and knelt down next to her, Loiosh and Rocza abandoning my shoulders for some convenient shelves. Her face was tilted down and there were long, bloody scratches on it and she was sobbing. I said things, I don’t know what. I don’t have much practice at being soothing, okay? It doesn’t come up a lot while you’re killing people for money or running for your life. I said her name, and some other crap that doesn’t mean anything, and after a while her wrists relaxed in my hands and she leaned forward, sobbing, and put her head on my shoulder. Verra.