The Better to See

Chapter 33

"Hello, Father," Vermeille said to the man behind the desk. "What big eyes you have."

He stood frozen, half out of his chair. Dull glass flowers waved around his ankles, reflected in his glossy shoes.

Vermeille kept Sarah and their guide behind her. She would protect them, like she had protected them from Alain. Not Alain, said Francis in her head, but she ignored him.

"Woodsmen," said her father. "Report."

"Seriously?" Sarah broke in, pushing away from the wall and past Vermeille.

Had there been walls, once? There were no walls now. Only those flowers, and the dark shadows of steel trees.

Sarah was speaking. "Sir, your daughter is here, and David's dead, and I'm supposed to be dead, and all you can say is 'report'? Where is Pearl?"

Now Paul Edwards was speaking. Her father was speaking, but not to her. He was saying something to someone else, and Vermeille didn't care who. His desk stood in a glade full of the soft clinking of glass flowers. The air grew heavy and damp, until mist began to rise from beneath the pale petals. Her father sat again in his chair, listening to someone else respond.

No Alain appeared to lean against the metal pillars and make snide comments. Alain was dead twice over. No Reynard came from nowhere to lead her to the empty cottage. Reynard was left behind.

The mist curled around her ankles. She thought she had once been afraid of it. Now it seemed more like a friendly pet. She let one hand drop to stroke it. She wasn't afraid of anything anymore, was she? Others were afraid of her. Sarah was afraid of her. Was her father?

Paul Edwards would not look at her.

She would have to make him look.

"Father," she said. Her voice sounded strange and soft in her own ears, more like the voice of the mist than the voice of a human. Maybe the mist was speaking for her.

"Father," said the mist that was also Vermeille. "I didn't try to find you. You left, and I didn't try to find you, and Mother didn't either. You wanted to leave, so we helped you go away. But then you came back, and you burned down my house and you killed my friend."

Edwards continued to talk to someone else. Behind him, in the fog, Lucas's unassuming silhouette appeared and began to slide slowly forwards.

"You killed a boy," Vermeille continued.

Peter, dim and faceless, joined Lucas.

"You didn't raise me, Father, but I learned at your knee nevertheless. I learned to hurt. I learned to kill."

That first Frenchman from the Pearl Earring rose up, the little doctor from the ship next to him.

"I killed a lot of people."

There was Alain, and Kouma—the first one, the one she'd killed. Another two or three whose names Vermeille didn't know. Alain again, broader, different, not Alain at all. All of her ghosts and shadows. They all moved forward, slipping around Edwards, who still didn't raise his head.

They didn't care about him. They came for her.

She held out her hands to them. They were like the mist. They were part of her, now.

The two Alains reached for her at the same time. She jolted as they grabbed her arms, hands cold and insistent. They held up the red cloak.

Still her father did not look at her.

She let her ghosts slip the red cloak around her shoulders and clasp it at her throat. It hung to the ground and pooled at her feet like blood between the clouded flowers.