WC:536

After so much time, Pendour had finally made it back to Neptune. It was proper winter now, so she hadn’t brought anything for the garden, or even the rooms. That wasn’t the point of this visit, anyway. She had questions first, so she started up to the stage where she’d first met Irving.

“That took you long enough.” The voice came from behind her, from down the stairs. Pendour stiffened. She took a breath in through her nose and out through her mouth before she turned around. It was Irving, of course. She wondered where he had been, what places his ghost-steps haunted in the weeks and months that she’d been gone. Was it the old chamber? Was it the cove of bones?

“Well, um,” she murmured, but trailed off. He stared. He did not try to hide it. He scoured every inch of her ruined face, his eyes open wide, his lips curled back. She felt her cheeks going hot as hot, red as red, even as she fished over her shoulder for her braid, told herself that she did not need him to like her, that if she was not his perfect heir now, maybe that was the silver lining to all this. “If you didn’t know,” she said, with only a little more steel in her voice than usual, and then she peeled off a glove and fished her false eye from the socket. “There is a war in my city right now. I’m sorry if I’ve been a bit preoccupied. I really did want to make this place a priority.”

She couldn’t look at him any longer. She walked over to the banister and slipped the eye back in, then ran her bare skin over the marble, feeling how ancient this place was and trying to ignore the eyes she felt burrowing into her shoulder blades.

“What have you gone and done?” Irving asked. “Oh, this will not do. This will not do at all.” He could not spin her around to face him, but he could walk up the stairs and stare her down from above.

Pendour turned her gaze away from him, down towards the cove. Even with the darkness clinging, the death, there was something about it that brought a smile to her lips. She let Irving fume for a few long minutes, looking instead at the patch of algae overtop of where the entrance to that lovely bedchamber had been. It was messy, maybe, but that was the only bit of green that she’d seen in this place. It had to be important, somehow.

“I’m sorry,” Irving said. “This must be very difficult for you.”

Pendour nodded and tapped her fingernails on the stone. Anger, she decided. She felt angry at him. “I’m sorry if this has impacted your plans,” she said, more herself. She looked back over to him and swallowed hard. “That’s why I stopped by, actually. I wanted to learn more about your suggestions to me.”

He smiled. It was the first she’d seen him smile today. The ball of anger in her stomach grew. “Come with me,” he said.

She followed him up the stairs and to the pavillion, where he hoisted himself onto a seated position on the edge of the stage and then patted the ground next to him with a sugar-sweet smile. Pendour sat. The view of the staircase and the cove and the empty garden beds was lovely from up here.

“I was wrong earlier,” he said. “You gave me a bit of a shock, that’s all. You’re quite the lovely girl, Sadie. More than skin deep. You’ll overcome.”

There was no banister here, so she ran her fingers over her braid instead. “Um, okay,” she said, ready to move along from that bit. “Tell me about this.”

There was a moment of silence before he said, “This is a beautiful place, isn’t it?” Pendour nodded. That was easy to agree with, even with the place so dead. “This is not a place for war. People came here to listen to the water, or to dance, to look at nice things, to forget their troubles. Still, the war came, just as war came to you.” He reached a hand out towards her bad eye and she went stone still. “I was unprepared. As the knights, we have powers that reflect this place. We soothe. I did not think I could fight. I thought I was helpless, but over time I learned. I thought I would be able to prepare you, and there is still hope that I can.”

He smiled that sweet smile again. “I have learned to use these powers as a weapon. You need no sword if your enemies do not fear you.”

She shook her head, careful not to move more than that. “I was never a warrior, Irving.”

He still smiled. It was too wide, she realized, like someone on an infomercial. “You can be,” he said.

She shook her head harder. The feelings were welling up to her chest now, and she knew she could not take this for much longer. “I don’t think you understand,” she said, “But anyway, there’s one more thing I need to know. The bones- the people, in the lake?”

“Enemies, Sadie,” he said, his voice softer now, his head tilted to one side. “People who got a kinder death than they deserved.”

Slowly, she nodded. The feelings reached her throat. It was anger, but there was sadness, too, and disgust. He jumped down from the stage and reached a hand out to her. “Let’s go down there, I can walk you through what happened, if you'd like.”

“I said no, Irving,” she said, and then she vanished back to Earth.