Chapter Eighteen

The visit that Miss Caesar had decided she had to pay was to Mr. Bygrave. It was, to say the least, forward for a lady to call upon a gentleman directly. But social convention had started to fall by the wayside the moment Miss Caesar had materialised from the fairy realm on Hampstead Heath at dawn and driven two grown men to their knees with her otherworldly majesty.

Had circumstances not been so dire, the walk from the Caesar residence to the similarly respectable but not excessively wealthy abode of Mr. Bygrave and his family would have been a rather lovely one. Flanked by Mr. Caesar (the younger) and Captain James (the one and only), Miss Caesar made a picture of maidenly respectability. Or rather a statue of it. A statue of it carved in crystal glass and dancing with pale light.

Mr. Caesar, being in theory at least the ranking member of the party, offered his card to the Bygraves' footman, who showed a commendable lack of concern at being confronted by so atypical a party. I considered slipping inside and seeing for myself what kind of home life the tedious Mr. Bygrave had, but since I had no interest in the man, I remained outside with my chosen protagonists.

They were admitted in a timely fashion and shown through to a tastefully decorated receiving room where a delicate-featured woman in her late thirties was wearing an unfashionable dress and an expression of suspicion.

"Robert will be with us presently," she said. "Am I to assume that this is the"—her lips grew thin—" glass lady who has captured so much of his attention?"

Miss Caesar curtsied, which in her new state was a mesmerising motion, a ripple of impossible materials and a cascade of white light. "I am. And would I be right in assuming that you are Mrs. Bygrave?"

The lady nodded. "It is past time we met, I think."

"Does your son often speak of my sister then?" asked Mr. Caesar, riven somewhat between his desire to support his sibling and his desire to simplify the complex situation in which his family found itself.

"Incessantly. Indeed I have found it quite concerning."

While Mr. and Miss Caesar were accustomed to maintaining a certain politesse, Captain James felt that could very much go fuck itself. "What do you mean by that?"

As if she'd only just noticed him, Mrs. Bygrave turned her head the merest fraction towards the captain. "James, is it?" she asked. "Orestes James?"

" Captain James," the captain corrected her.

"My husband spoke well of you." It was a quiet approbation, almost grudging. "He said you had merit."

From the cannon-smoke of the captain's memory, some patches of detail emerged. "Your husband was Colonel Bygrave?"

The lady nodded.

"Good officer. Bloody waste."

Before the silence could fully settle, the door opened and Mr. Bygrave entered, shadowed by two younger children.

"But we want to see, " said the taller, a girl of some twelve years with an unruly tangle of brown hair and more freckles than were considered comely. This sentiment was echoed by her younger brother, still young enough to be composed primarily of mucus and entitlement.

"Miss Caesar is not a fireworks display," Mr. Bygrave chided them. "She is not here to be gawped at."

At which exact moment, because the magics of my people have a strong sense of irony, a beam of sunlight struck Miss Caesar at just the right angle to light her up like a fireworks display. And the whole room gawped.

Once the assembly had recovered their various composures, Mr. Bygrave glanced nervously at Miss Caesar's companions. For her brother to accompany her on a visit was not so very unusual. For him to be accompanied by an officer of His Majesty's army with a reputation for mingled heroism and ruthlessness was rather more out of the way. "Have I"—he hesitated—"have I done something wrong?"

Miss Caesar drifted forward with the endless grace of the Other Court. She looked Mr. Bygrave in the eye and tried to find the words to say the things she very much did not want to say. But at last she had to admit that the words were simple, plain, and unavoidable. "Why do you like me?" she asked.

With almost parodic chivalry, Mr. Bygrave took hold of Miss Caesar's faux-gloved hands. "You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen."

If there is one thing that my people know, reader, it is that flattery is a drug. Quite literally, for some of us; it can be condensed from the webs of a certain kind of spider and distilled over black fire in the caverns between our world and the domains of the dead gods. But even for mortals it can be intoxicating. And fragmenting as Miss Caesar was, a shard of her wanted to believe that it was enough. "What about me is beautiful?"

Mr. Bygrave was speaking now as in a rapture. "Your beauty," he told her, "defies speech itself."

This was literally true. The Beauty Incomparable is, by its very definition, incomparable. No analogy or simile can do it justice, no adjective can seem anything but scorn compared to its shattering, ensnaring reality.

I will admit, dear reader, that this makes it translate rather poorly to a written medium.

"Then … what do you like about me?"

Still half-mesmerised, there was only one answer Mr. Bygrave could possibly give. "You are the most beau—"

"About me, Robert." Using his given name was an intimacy that should by all rights have been reserved for a far more developed relationship. "About my character, my accomplishments, my connections such as they are."

"None of those things matter," Mr. Bygrave replied. And from his breathless lover's tone he meant it well.

Miss Caesar turned away, crystal tears forming in her eyes. And Mr. Bygrave reached out and placed a hand to comfort her, not seeming to care about the razor leaves that sliced deep into his fingers.

"I have upset you," he said with the typical perspicacity of an English gentleman.

"No." Bewilderingly, Miss Caesar answered truthfully. Touched as she had been by my people, she had yet to acquire our taste for deception. We lie like we breathe. Which is, of course, never.

If I was bewildered by the lady's reply, however, Mr. Bygrave was downright confounded by it. "I must have made some error—I wish only to please you and—"

"Don't."

Mrs. Bygrave and her other guests were watching this little vignette unfold with a mixture of fascination and apprehension. Of the three, it was the hostess who seemed to be handling matters best, but then she had a decade or so on the others and while that is little time in the overall scheme of things, I understand it makes a degree of difference to mortals.

"If you are attempting to say something," Mrs. Bygrave observed, "you are making an ill job of it. Speak plainly, girl."

Though her tears were falling freely now, and bestrewing the carpet like dry dew, Miss Caesar did her best to do as instructed. "I believe that it would be best to end our association."

Neither fully enchanted nor fully free, Mr. Bygrave had little way to process this, and so he made no attempt. He just blinked like he'd been unexpectedly transformed into a rabbit and cast amongst wild dogs. Not that this is the sort of thing that happens to very many people. More's the pity.

Seeking to cover for her son's inarticulacy, Mrs. Bygrave fixed young Miss Caesar with a stern glare. "Would you be so good as to furnish us with a reason?"

"This isn't my society," the captain said, "but where I'm from a lady doesn't have to."

"She does not have to," agreed Mrs. Bygrave. "But it is polite for her to do so. Especially when circumstances are so … peculiar."

Still weeping glass, Miss Caesar made one more effort. "It would be best because … because this is not me." She flourished her hand with a grace just this side of natural in a gesture that encompassed herself and her situation; light flowed within her as she moved, as if in illustration of the point. "This is an illusion made of stars and mirrors."

A residual loyalty to my people prompts me to disagree with the lady here on behalf of that other Lady whose handiwork was being so disparaged. It was not that she was wrong precisely. It could indeed be said with some accuracy that her new status was illusory. But she was making the typical mortal error of thinking illusions are the opposite of reality, rather than just another facet of it.

Mr. Bygrave was still looking uncomprehending. "Mary," he said, moved to informality by the intensity of the situation, "you shall break my heart."

On that much, at least, all parties could agree. Miss Caesar gave a solemn nod. "I shall. That is why I must leave."

There was little more to be said, and so the visitors made little effort to say it. Miss Caesar gave a last immaculate curtsey and Mrs. Bygrave, rising, walked the three visitors to the door.

"You never visited me," she told Miss Caesar, only slightly pointedly. "Nor invited me to dine with your family. I confess I thought rather ill of you for that."

With the whirlwind of it all, and the tiny little matter of being physically transformed into a mineral, the specific social niceties had rather slipped Miss Caesar's mind. "I am truly sorry," she said. "For that and—for any other distress I have caused you and yours."

While she was not the one made of unliving matter, Mrs. Bygrave had a rigidity that came from quite a different source. "Thank you. Although given the circumstances I am sure you understand why I am not wholly disappointed at the ending of this connection."

Miss Caesar understood entirely. Ill-chosen connections were preying increasingly on her mind.

The journey back was slightly less pleasant in theory and much less pleasant in practice than the walk over had been. The sun, however, remained bright, which meant that the way it danced through Miss Caesar's body was utterly incongruous with her mood and left her looking a torrent of merry contradictions.

For a while, a pall—not a literal pall, bathed as they were in light and glory—hung over the assembly and they proceeded in silence. But at last Captain James inclined his head towards Miss Caesar the tiniest fraction of an inch and said, "You did well, miss."

"I do not feel I did well." She looked down and away, and the sun gleamed a moment from her eyelashes.

"Had to be done. You did it. And you did it to his face. I'm a simple man, miss, but I know courage."

All in all Miss Caesar did not consider herself especially courageous, and she said as much. "It was fear, Captain. Fear and uncertainty and knowing I could not go on as I was."

And at that, the captain nodded rather more solemnly. "Most courage is."

That evening, Miss Caesar retired to her room early and sat on her bed sobbing. I took the shape of the loyal Ferdinand and curled up next to her and, to my intense chagrin, the Lady took the shape of a faint scent of blood and incense and watched from the shadows.

"You must admit," she told me, knowing full well that I was incapable of replying without compromising my disguise, "she's coming along rather well."

I gave a low growl, which Miss Caesar incorrectly interpreted as addressing her.

"I know, Ferdy," she told me, "I have ruined everything."

"Or," the Lady commented from nowhere, "set everything up perfectly. "

There was an element of bravado to this, of course. And an element of circularity. Ours is an anarchic people, so when we say everything is going perfectly what we really mean is that the tumult that has followed from our actions is the kind of tumult of which we broadly approve.

"I have nothing," she continued, a little overdramatically for a young woman still well endowed with friends, family, and social connections to the aristocracy. "And I fear I may soon be nothing."

This was perhaps a more serious concern. The fissures that had begun in her feet had of late begun appearing also in her fingers, crossing the palms of her hands like too-short lifelines.

Before she could soliloquise further (people do, you know, at least in my experience), Miss Caesar was interrupted by a knock at the door and her brother's voice asking for admission.

"Come in?" she offered, tentatively. In all her sixteen years on your dull material earth, she could not remember her brother once visiting her in her chamber. It was not unseemly precisely, but they had spent most of their lives in separate spheres and it was strange for them to begin colliding now.

Mr. Caesar entered almost timidly. His attire, for all the pressures acting upon him at that instant, was still immaculate, but his expression was drawn and his eyes downcast. "I wanted to be sure you were all right."

It was churlish to laugh at that, but Miss Caesar was not above a little churlishness. I would offer her youth as defence, but I have never especially felt that churlishness required defending. I have known a great many churls in my time and they are normally excellent value for money.

"You have never wanted to know if I was all right," she told him. "Did it really take a bargain with a fairy for you to care about such things?"

The Lady gave a smile of smoke and shadows. "And will she be grateful to me? She will not."

"I have always cared for your well-being," Mr. Caesar told her. "But I think perhaps I have, in the past, had a clearer sense of what that entails."

Miss Caesar's fingers tightened, and a hairline crack spread an eighth of an inch further along her hand. "And what did it entail, in the past?"

"Preserving your reputation," Mr. Caesar replied at once, "helping you seek a husband or, if necessary, some other means of securing a future income. Or of securing an income for myself by which I can support you if the worst befalls."

"The worst"—his sister's eyes were half glaring and half pleading—"being that I remain unwed."

It was a blunt way to put it, but broadly correct. I gave an affirming ruff.

Her brother's silence was all the affirmation that Miss Caesar needed. "And you wonder why I did what I did."

Satisfaction gleamed in the Lady's eyes as she watched Mr. Caesar's discomfort. At the back of his throat, the part of him that had been raised a gentleman, that not merely saw the world as it was but accepted it, wanted to protest. To say that yes, he understood, but that things were as they were and though he liked it no better than his sister did, her actions had been rash and selfish. Because that approach had worked so very well for him thus far.

"I said clearer," he tried instead. "Not more accurate. I—I may have been trying to help in the wrong ways, I think."

"You think that, do you?" replied Miss Caesar. She did not sound entirely convinced.

"I know it," her brother corrected himself.

"And when did you have this revelation?"

Rationally, Mr. Caesar knew this was a fair response. But rationality was not his first priority. "Mary, must you be difficult?"

The candlelight in the room danced through Miss Caesar's body and gathered at her fingertips. "I'm not being difficult, John."

"You're being a little difficult."

And now the light flared. "I swear, even when you're trying to be kind, you're insufferable."

"Well, perhaps if you'd be a little easier to be kind to. "

Miss Caesar let out a tiny shriek, which, through a glass larynx, rang like a crystal chime. "That isn't how being kind works. "

This much Mr. Caesar had to admit was true. After all, the captain had persisted in being kind to him and he'd made that as difficult as humanly possible. So he stopped, took a breath, and said: "You're right. I'm sorry. You're right. And whatever we do from now on about"—he made an inarticulate gesture intended to express the fact that you have been transformed into a statue —"we'll do it with you, not in spite of you. I promise."

Miss Caesar remained silent and, inasmuch as she was capable in her new form, looked sceptical.

"Really. I promise. Although in candour I am not certain what we are going to do. I fear we have exhausted our options."

There was an opportunity here to turn things against my rival or, at least, to prod the mortals into doing something interesting. I ruff ed in a way that I hoped might stir my not-exactly-mistress into action. And it did, in a way. "I could still use my situation to advance Anne?"

"You sincerely think she might be queen?" asked Mr. Caesar, less incredulous than he would have been a year ago. His various encounters since had taught him pleasing respect for the abilities of uncanny beings.

"I think the Lady has great power. And"—she shut her eyes, the light dimming inside her—"I do not think her kind break their promises. Not as they are spoken, at least."

"Such a perceptive girl," the Lady said to me. "Well, perceptive now. "

As true as this seemed, Mr. Caesar was not certain that it wasn't a horrendous trap. Which was also perceptive of him. "Whatever Anne's wishes may be, and as powerful as your patroness undoubtedly is, we should strive to keep her out of her clutches, not to herd her into them."

"And me?" asked Miss Caesar.

Mr. Caesar was silent for long enough that I wondered if he, too, had undergone some manner of transformation. "I do not know. And I cannot help but blame myself."

"Don't," Miss Caesar told him with a gentleness that seemed to rankle at the Lady, who expected better from her protégés. "This was my choice."

It did not escape me that she was now using the past tense.

"Still," her brother replied, "I would free you from it if I could. But I do not know how. We have sent to the Folly for a vitki, but he has limited knowledge of Titania's court."

An air of melancholy was radiating from Miss Caesar, which I would in other contexts have found satisfying, your people's passions being a vintage we savour when we can. But there was a bitterness to knowing that this particular drama had been orchestrated by our rivals, and for the benefit of their queen rather than of my good and noble lord.

"I am sorry, John," she said at last.

"Don't be. You fell foul of an indifferent world. It happens to thousands of people every day, no better or worse than you."

And again, Miss Caesar laughed. But there was affection in it this time, rather than despair. "You're beginning to talk like the captain."

"Apparently he's a good influence on me. Or a bad one. I have yet to work it out." Fearing, perhaps, that he had overstayed his welcome, Mr. Caesar rose and, taking care to avoid the glass roses, laid a comforting hand on his sister's shoulder. "And—if you've still a mind, we will take you to speak with the witch."

When she'd raised the question of returning to Amenirdis, Miss Caesar had not expected her brother to support the notion, or to insist on accompanying her despite his having almost as little experience of the city's worst districts as she had herself. "I do," she told him. "Dangerous as it might be."

Reaching across the narrow space between them, she took her brother's hand in hers, and Mr. Caesar tried not to notice how cold and unyielding they were.