Islands in the Sky

2.12

For a moment, Cassa didn’t move. For a moment, a brief moment, she thought about simply killing her grandmother and having done with it. She was sorely tempted. Since her grandmother and Konstantin had so cleverly closed off every other door to her except this one, it would almost seem fitting.

She glanced around, as she thought. There was a plate of bread and cheese on a side-table, across the room. There was a knife resting in the cheese.

Cassa looked at that knife, thinking.

She could do this, if she wished. She knew she could. The only thing stopping her was her own reluctance. There was no other barrier, legal or otherwise, nothing except the practicalities. This was how inheritance worked, in families such as hers. Cassa could simply kill her grandmother, and announce herself the owner of the tower. It would be legal. It might even be successful, if she could fend off her mother and cousins, which she probably could, in those first few exciting moments after the murder was done, as she stood there with a bloody knife in her hand, demanding obedience, and the guards and retainers all had to rethink their loyalties in an instant, while remembering she was the gentle one, the kind one, the one they liked.

Cassa could do this if she wished. It would cause chaos, but it was a predictable chaos, an expected chaos, one that had to be dealt with sometime. Eventually her grandmother would die, and whenever that happened, there would be a chaos which someone would have to manage. Perhaps it was best to get it over with, Cassa thought. Perhaps it was best just to deal with it now. It would be unpleasant, she knew, but she thought she could probably cope. She had been expecting to most of her life, after all. It would mean changes. It would mean killing some of her family, and probably some newly-ambitious business partners too. It would badly erode the position of the family among its rivals, so badly it would probably take years for the Middletowers to recover, but Cassa, by ensuring she remained unwed, would best be able to put her mind entirely to planning that recovery.

If she did it now.

Cassa thought, and her grandmother watched her.

“Go on,” her grandmother said, watching Cassa carefully, her hand in under a fold of her clothes.

For a moment Cassa thought her grandmother meant go on, attempt the killing, that Cassa should try. For a moment she truly thought that, until her grandmother added, “Go make ready for the wedding, child.”

Cassa realized her mistake. Or perhaps the intentional double meaning. She looked at her grandmother, still wondering, still undecided.

She was angry. That was part of why she was thinking this way, and she knew it. She was annoyed at being manipulated. She was annoyed at having all choice in this matter taken away. She was annoyed at her family, and everything about them, and she was probably annoyed as much because she was a member of her family as for any other reason. She was acting like one of her family, she suddenly thought, since at the slightest irritation, like this wedding, she had begun planning a murder, just as any of her cousins would do.

Planning a murder for the second time that day.

Cassa almost did it. She almost snatched the knife and drove it into her grandmother’s neck.

Then, after a long, angry minute, she decided that she couldn’t. She couldn’t because this wasn’t her. Inheriting in that manner, or settling the disagreement over the wedding this way, that wasn’t who Cassa was, or wanted to be.

She didn’t think she could bring herself to do it. Not like this. Not so cold-bloodedly.

She didn’t want to, and as well, some sense of caution might have stayed her hand. In her anger, she might be overestimating her chances of success. She calmed herself, and began to think, and once she had, once she was thinking clearly again, she was almost certain she wouldn’t have succeeded.

It seemed very unlikely her wise, sly grandmother was as utterly defenceless as she seemed.

Cassa was not the first woman of her family to take killing seriously. Her grandmother did too, in her own complicated way. She might not know formal knife-fighting the way Cassa and Konstantin did, but she knew how to kill, and that was almost more dangerous.

Cassa had no idea what her grandmother might do, if Cassa tried to murder her. She had no idea how her grandmother might defend herself, or what her grandmother was capable of. She had no idea what such a fight would be, and one important thing her years with Konstantin had taught her was to never go into a fight without some idea of the opponent’s capabilities.

Cassa drew a slow breath. She realized her hand was clenched tight, and made it relax. She felt silly for that mistake. Konstantin would not approve of her showing her tension, and intentions, in that way.

She thought, and she decided.

She decided she wouldn’t do this, no matter how she was pushed.

“Very well, mistress,” she said, and made herself smile. “I shall go and make ready.”

She unclenched her hand, and walked over to the door, and her grandmother kept watching her, warily. They were both too clever to assume that an apparent retreat actually meant a retreat was occurring.

Cassa walked to the door, and was calm again. She reached out, and put her hand on the door, and began to pull it open.

“You should have,” her grandmother said quietly.

Cassa stopped, and looked back. She didn’t need to ask what they were speaking of. Her grandmother was still her grandmother, still a monster like all her family. Even Cassa, Cassa supposed, given what she’d just been considering doing.

Her grandmother was still looking at her, still watching.

“No,” Cassa said.

“Yes,” her grandmother said. “If you do not want this wedding, then you should have done what was necessary to prevent it. You are like your mother, too weak to simply take what you want.”

Cassa stood there for a moment, and had no idea what to say.