“M’lord?”
“With what I told you. About Gormin and Harro. How are you doing with it?”
“It’ll take some time to settle in.”
“Will it be hard to act normal with Harro? I mean, if you even want to?”
“I don’t know.”
I shook my head. “I just don’t understand it. I can’t wrap my head around it.”
“Around what?”
“You two. You and Gormin, I mean. You’re together, all is well, then his House changes, and, boom, everything’s different. It isn’t even that his station changed, because it didn’t. It’s just his House. How can you let that—”
She was quiet for a few seconds as I broke off and stared into space. Then she said, “What?”
I shook my head, my brain spinning. “That’s it,” I said finally. “It all ties together. The Houses. The Cycle. The Empire. The Disaster. Stagnation. Catalyst. All of it.”
She waited patiently until I started to get up, then she said, “Vlad, you can’t just leave it like that.” Her tone was one of amusement, but she had a point. I sat down again.
“Sorry. Too much, too fast. And, yeah, this affects you.”
“How? What?”
“I don’t think I can explain it, except to say that you—I mean Dragaerans, all of you—have been fu—messed with. And it permeates everything you do, even who you let yourself love, and it was done deliberately by the Jenoine because they wanted to see what would happen.”
“Ah.…”
“You’re very nice. You don’t want to say ‘You’re crazy.’ That’s sweet.”
She put on an Issola smile, but didn’t say I was wrong.
“Okay, believe it or not, whatever. A lot of this I’ve known for years, some of it is new and I’m putting it together, and my head is spinning. But just tell me this: why is it so unthinkable to marry someone from another House?”
“Well, because … you wouldn’t understand.”
“No, I wouldn’t. But the odd thing is, you don’t either. You know it, you feel it, but you don’t understand it.”
She looked at me, then slowly returned her eyes to the stage.
“Sorry,” I said. “This must be making you uncomfortable.”
She said, “Maybe we should talk about your problem.”
“Sure.”
“Maybe if you explain it? I mean, what exactly you’re trying to do.”
I shrugged. “All right. There’s a girl named Devera. She was born in the Halls of Judgment. Her grandmother is a goddess, her—”
“Which goddess?”
“Verra. Her father is the shade of Kieron the Conqueror.”
“Go on.”
I blinked. All right, well, if she was just going to accept all that as if it were reasonable, I might as well tell her the rest. I went through the conversations I’d had, the things I’d seen, the oddness of the room design, my conclusion about Lady Zhayin, and about the mirrors. She didn’t say anything, but nodded at a few of my conclusions, and winced when I spoke of killing Discaru and the thing that had once been Zhayin’s son.
When I’d finished, she was quiet for a long time, then she said, “Devera.”
“What about her?”
“You described Devera appearing and disappearing. Why does she keep doing that?”
“Um. Yeah. I guess I just thought, well, because of her nature.”
“That doesn’t answer the question though, does it?”
“No, I suppose it doesn’t. You’re right.”
“So?”
“So, you’ve got me asking the right question, now how do I figure out the answer?”
“I can’t help you with that.”
“Every time you say you can’t help me, it means I’m about to learn something.”
She smiled at the stage. “I think that’s more you than me.”
“Maybe. Well, okay. It isn’t just her nature, or she’d do it all the time. And it isn’t just the manor, or it would be happening to everyone.”
“Which means?”
“It’s the interaction.”
She nodded.
I laughed. “Well, good then. In order to understand how the place works, I need to figure out why Devera keeps disappearing, which I can do as soon as I’ve figured out how the place works.”
She smiled at the stage again. I wondered if the balcony was getting jealous. She said, “Well, none of the rest of us vanish. That gives you lots of people to talk to.”
I chuckled. “That’s true. Polite of you. Except…”
“What?”
“Tethia.”
“What about her?”
“She also vanished abruptly.”
“But, isn’t she a ghost? You said she was a ghost. I mean, ghosts do that, right?”
“I don’t know. I’ve only ever met one before this.”
She nodded. “And I’ve never met any.”
“And I think she’s pretty much confined to that one room, whether she’s a ghost or whatever else she is.”
Hevlika nodded. “That makes sense.”
“So I guess I’ll go talk to her.”
She nodded.
“I doubt I’ll run into you again.”
“It’s been a pleasure.”
“Thank you. For dancing.”
She smiled and nodded, and I went through the door.
I had a theory.
I returned to the room where I’d slept, grabbed the rope hanging from the ceiling and pulled it twice, and waited. The wait went on far longer than it should have; I was about to conclude that my theory was wrong, or else you just can’t find good servants, when Gormin appeared, looking hesitant.
“Sir? You rang twice.”
“Yeah.”
“The call for Harro is once, and for me it is three times, so I was uncertain—”
“My mistake. I meant you.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Who is two?”
“No one, at present.”
“Of course. I’d like to speak with you. Want to sit?”
“I’d prefer to stand, sir.”
I knew he’d say that, but I had to ask. I sat down in the chair. It was like a repetition of the little drama I’d played out with Harro just an hour before. Or maybe that was the rehearsal, and this was the performance.
I said, “You remember me, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I mean, from before, when you drugged me and tried to interrogate me.”
He stared over my shoulder and was silent.
“Answer,” I said. “Do you remember me?”
“I didn’t recognize you at first. And then I wasn’t sure.”
“But now you do, and you are.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. I’m not altogether pleased about that, you know. Especially because to me it was only yesterday. But you suspected that, didn’t you?”
He did his “staring over my shoulder” thing again. If he kept that up I was going to get irritated.
“Answer me,” I said. “Did you suspect that?”
He nodded.
“So you know about paths through time.”
“I—know there are odd things. There are rooms we are not permitted to visit, and restrictions as to with whom we can speak. And I’ve known for a long time that my lord Zhayin was working to solve the problem of a structure that could reach other worlds.”
“But not that he’d solved it?”
“Not then,” he said.
“When?”
“Two days ago, I heard a scream. I tried to see where it came from and became lost. Eventually I reached a window, and we were on a cliff.”
“And that was your first clue that the entire manor had moved?”