hellonspectacles | The beginning of a beautiful friendship

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The beginning of a beautiful friendship

Palamedes has been in Darrow for two weeks, and the days have begun to blend together. Some days, he stays up so late that it’s nearly early, other times he rises before the sun. Most days he works on theorems that have begun to wallpaper his apartment, or sips tea in Gideon’s kitchen, or surrounds himself with a citadel of books in some corner of the public library. Darrow has yet to give up its secrets, but Palamedes is still determined, and he often pontificates at Gideon about his latest theories. Sometimes he talks to the kitchen table instead, since it’s less likely to talk back.

“Warden, you need to get out more,” says the voice in his head—the one he thinks of as Camilla’s—as he paces his apartment restlessly. She’s right, of course. Camilla usually is. On impulse, he picks up his phone and texts one of the few people he actually knows in this strange city.

Mr. Darlington,

Do you like tea? I would be very interested in meeting up to learn more about these portal magicians of yours.

I promise, I’m slightly less of a raving lunatic these days, though my furniture may believe otherwise.

I look forward to your response,

Palamedes Sextus.

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"It seems like most people here do," Darlington says, hitting the button to unlock the doors as they approach the car. "Whether that's a result of the majority of people coming to Darrow from places where it's habitual to have learned how to drive, or that the nature of the city and its surroundings sort of...invite the idea of learning for those that don't, I can't say. Most likely, it's both."

He goes around to the driver's side, nodding Palamedes over to the passenger door. "Given that Alex and I live out in the countryside now, it's useful to have the car, but when we were still in the city proper I mostly took the bus. Or walked."

"Fair enough," says Palamedes as he gets in the car. The door's handle is familiar, and the seat similar enough to those on buses and space ships alike, and neither trips him up. "Where I come from, the combustion engine is an ancient technology. Even if you could somehow get your hands on enough petrol to get one running, they've been out-of-date for a myriad at least." He gives a shrug and laughs a little. "And now, here I am inside and automobile."

For the most part, Darlington doesn't think about the vast gulf of time that separates the world he knows from the one Palamedes does. Even if they aren't the same one--and he has to be agnostic on that point in general, for the sake of doing something with his days that isn't filling them with research and experimentation--there's enough of a parallel to invite the possibility. He tries not to think about it, but at moments like this the reminder is impossible to ignore.

"Here you are," he says, fitting the key in the ignition. "Doubtless it's not as flashy as a spaceship, but for an ancient piece of equipment it isn't too bad." He grins, turning the key and letting the car rumble to life. "Although please tell me you know about combustion engines only because there's...diagrams or something in the Library's collections and not because you've had to work at preserving a physical example for thousands of years."

“Spaceships aren’t half as glamorous as it probably sounds,” Palamedes says with a grin. “And space itself is a nightmare—gives me awful headaches. Honestly, I never traveled away from the Library very often.”

As they drive down the road, Pal gazes out the window, mesmerized by the sight of the scenery going blurry as they speed up. “Even less than that, in fact. People just write about combustion engines from time to time. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a find-hand account of an automobile in the archives. But they tend to get a mention in discussions of the precipitating events that led to the Resurrection--petroleum’s impact on climate catastrophe, that sort of thing.”

He winces. “Sorry, that probably sounds quite grim from your perspective.”

"Reality does rarely measure up to the glamorous hypothetical," he says, pulling away from the curb, his eyebrows ticking up just slightly when Palamedes mentions space giving him headaches. It's an unsurprising reaction, maybe, but still mysterious. "Which goes as much for space as anything else, I guess."

Darlington starts towards the edge of town, on a whim choosing a route that's a little more scenic. You might only be able to get so far in Darrow, but that doesn't mean they can't enjoy the journey a little. He listens as Palamedes explains, grimacing almost as the same time as the other man winces. "Just a bit, yeah," he says ruefully. "Though as far as I know, back home we at least haven't tipped from climate change to catastrophe. Small mercies." Palamedes' mention of a Resurrection is something Darlington heard from him before, albeit still rare given the newness of their friendship. Something in the way he says it now suggests import and mystery, a meaningfulness he can't help but grab onto.

"Is that the precipitating event, then? What tips a world like...well, like this," he lifts one hand from the steering wheel to gesture at the road in front of them, the outskirts of town just starting to give way to the fields and trees of the countryside, "into the world you know?"

Before Darrow, Palamedes had little reason to think about the Resurrection itself, for concrete evidence about what happened is scarce, and original records almost nonexistent. Now, he finds himself explaining it regular and often reflects, as he does now, just how little he knows for certain. "Climate catastrophe was part of it. People left the planet, in fact, as it became less and less habitable. And then there was some kind of nuclear accident--or it may have been a war." He shrugs, disliking how little he can say for certain. "Understand, it was ten thousand years ago, and the best accounts we have were written hundreds of years after the fact. Records are awfully scarce from the period immediately pre- and post-Resurrection."

"For understandable reasons, I'd imagine. Difficult to maintain records when it's one disaster after the next."

The scale of time Palamedes is working with--and coming from, in a certain light--still boggles his mind just slightly. His interest in history was only ever specific and compact, the rise and fall of one town forever on the brink of something great and the uncanny forces that may well have helped or hindered it on its way. Thinking of something ten thousand years in the past only brings to mind the artifacts in the Peabody, things so old it's uncomfortably easy to divorce them from any connection to the here and now, to consider them only as relics in a glass case.

Darlington guides the car around a curve in the road, surprise and a faint resignation warring in his expression. The idea of people fleeing the planet, choosing to go before war or catastrophe or something equally as unfortunate forced their hand, smacks of a privilege that he thinks would infuriate someone like Alex or Blue. It doesn't sit well with him, either, though there's a small part of him that can understand it--that might, if the Arlington fortune had stretched to it, have made a similar choice himself. "So those who could, fled, and those who didn't had to contend with whatever apocalypse was on the horizon."

There’s something in Darlington’s expression that Palamedes can’t read—he’s rather good at reading people, but they don’t know each other well, so fair enough. He must be digesting the unsettling truth of the world’s destruction, or so Pal assumes until Darlington speaks. The comment quite surprises him. Pal is used to imagining those early refugees and their descendants as the unlucky ones, most of them still stranded outside the security of the Empire. But the perspective must have been very different when they were fleeing a dying planet. “I suppose so. To be honest, I don’t know why some people left while others stayed. Perhaps they had the means when others didn’t, or perhaps they had lost everything and no other options remained to them. Or perhaps they were just better at predicting what lay ahead.” He shrugs. “I do wish I knew more. There are so many myths, you know? So many concepts that everyone takes for granted. And it’s all based in history with scant documentation.”

Darlington nods, understanding the faint and familiar note of frustration in Palamedes' voice as he finishes what he's saying. "Context gets lost. Hell, events only a few centuries old are still ripe with conjecture sometimes. You can't always have all the answers, it seems." His smile is wry as he makes the turn onto his street; a lack of answers has never been an easy thing for him to accept, and he suspects the same is true for Palamedes.

He guides the car between the stone pillars marking the entrance to Black Elm's long drive, the gravel crunching beneath the tires as they make their way up to the house. After so many months, it's slipped back into feeling routine, but there's still a part of him that holds its breath a little, afraid that somehow the house he loves will have vanished again as quickly and mysteriously as it appeared.

Palamedes hums in agreement, watching as the house comes into view. By his own reckoning it’s enormous—but then, most things in Darrow are. He thinks this house might be bigger even than some of the homes further away from the center of town that he has sometimes passed. Still used to thinking on the scale of a crowded space station, he just stares for a long moment.

It’s filled with history, too. Even from the drive, Palamedes can detect the swirls of thalergy and thanergy of the lives that have passed through it. His instincts had been right. This will make for an excellent demonstration.

As he gets out of the car he says, “And this just…appeared one day? Must have been quite a surprise to the local wildlife.”

Darlington's always been fascinated by people's first reactions to Black Elm--not out of snobbishness or ego, but something a little harder to define. It shows him what they're really like, or solidifies what impression he's already formed; suggests what they value and what they don't. Michelle's near-instantaneous How much do you think it's worth? had been just as revealing as Sandow's studied non-reaction, or the brief moment where Alex's eyes had gone wide before her tough Van Nuys mask slipped back down.

In a way, it's a different version of that moment he'd been looking forward to for three years with Lethe, the chance to reveal something beautiful and extraordinary to an unsuspecting soul. As Palamedes sits and stares through the windshield at the house, Darlington can't help but smile as he undoes his seatbelt and slides out from behind the wheel. There's an academic curiosity in that look along with the surprise, a desire to know more not out of acquisitiveness but as a chance to understand Black Elm's bricks and trees and the beams of its roof a little better. It's exactly what he might have expected--exactly, he thinks, what he'd hoped to see from the other man.

"Out of nowhere just like the rest of us," he says. "I'm honestly not sure what was here before, but we see enough wildlife on the edges of the property that it's safe to assume it was just woods. Not unlike where the house was situated back home, come to think." Westville had expanded considerably since the first Daniel Tabor Arlington began work on Black Elm, the lot itself sold off in bits and pieces as time went on, but there was enough there still for it to feel utterly different from the regimented lines of downtown New Haven.

“Just like the rest of us,” Palamede echoes. “I really do think that must be true. Whatever mechanism brought us here—I’d call it a theorem, but even doing that requires making more assumptions than I’m comfortable with—must also draw these things of ours. There must be a veritable web of connections crossing dimensions and universes—“ He grins and shakes his head. “But I’m getting ahead of myself. Can I see inside?”

Pal doubts that he could get a read on an entire building all at once. He needs to focus on some portion of it, some detail he can isolate.

"It's enough to make you want to map it, just to see if you'll understand a fraction of it," he says, understanding completely. Whatever power fuels Darrow is different from the nexuses under New Haven, the pools and streams of magic whose ongoing existence no one could satisfactorily explain, but the general principle applies. Nothing was truly unknowable, not if you were willing to put in the effort.

Palamedes asks to see inside, and Darlington nods. "Of course. Although..." He looks up at the house, musing for a moment. "You should know the house is warded. Basic stuff, but for Alex's sake I'm wary of taking it down completely. Is that going to interfere with what you're hoping to do?"

The question surprises Pal, and he looks at Darlington with renewed curiosity. He had already gotten the impression from their initial meeting that Darlington understood more than most people about matters of necromancy, even if they called most things by different names. Their conversation this afternoon further confirmed this impression. But he hadn’t expected wards.

“They shouldn’t, though it might depend on the wards. You said Alex is your girlfriend, right?”

Darlington smiles a little at the sudden surprise on Palamedes' face; he hadn't meant the question to startle, but neither is it a complete mystery why it had. "She is," he says. "Back in New Haven, we'd only just started to become friends, but that developed into more here." He can see how it might have there, too, if whatever occurred that night in Rosenfeld hadn't happened the way it did--or the way it would, a distinction he still finds strange to consider. Before he can sink too far into thought, he pulls himself back to the matters at hand.

"It's understandably not something she shares with most people," he says, "but Alex sees ghosts. And has for...as long as she can remember. They've always been there for her, whether she wanted it or not. It's why Lethe was so interested in bringing her in as a delegate." He looks up at the house, at its looming tower of crumbling stone and the wide bank of windows that marks out the nearest wall of the ballroom. "We warded the house against them, along with a few other places around the city, so she'd have some quieter places to go."

“Revenants are called to her spontaneously?” Palamedes’ eyes go wide as the implications of such an ability run through his mind. “Emperor’s bones, but she must have some kind of way of harnessing thanergy without even realizing it…” He shakes his head, awed and horrified in turn. “That must have been terrifying when she was a child, and I can’t imagine it’s particularly pleasant now.”

Pal has about a thousand questions, too, but mostly he just feels for the poor girl.

Palamedes' shock echoes what Darlington's had been during that late summer conversation with Dean Sandow, but without the note of envy at the back of it. He'd learned, over time, how misplaced his jealousy had been, and thinking of it now is faintly embarrassing. He nods. "Greys, what you call revenants, are drawn as much to magic as they are to reminders of life," he says, starting to walk towards the front door again. "Blood, sweat, strong emotion. Even the mere fact of being acknowledged can be enough. Her ability to perceive them was like a beacon, and her subsequent fear when they came only made that signal clearer."

Darlington's expression grows sober, unable to keep from thinking of the worst stories he knows from Alex's past. They're not his to tell, but he thinks of them regardless.

"Like a dreadful feedback loop," Palamedes observes grimly. "I suppose I don't have to tell you that revenants can be quite unstable. Most people who practice spirit magic in the Empire would say that they are inherently unstable, though I have reason to believe it's not as simple as that." He had, after all, constructed an entire plan on the assumption that he would never become a troublesome kind of ghost. "But the fact remains that most are."

"Trust me, I've read enough and seen enough to know how unstable they can be," Darlington says, equally grim. The reports from Lethe's history were bad, the accounts of the few missteps they'd made and the damages they'd either failed to prevent or had to cover up after the fact--but the stories of the abuses from before were even worse. "But you're right, there's plenty we don't know. And simplifying the problem is an imperfect solution, if it's a solution at all."

"Death is traumatic, regardless of its circumstance." One does not need to have died to figure that out, though the answer sounds unexpectedly strange to Palamedes' ears, now that he has experienced it himself. The effort to avoid examining too closely the vivid memories of his own death remains both exhausting and necessary. "And I suspect that eternity, even the prospect of it, can make a person lose touch with reality. But if one could ensure the right kind of structures for the right mind, then the results might be different." He shrugs ruefully. "Difficult to test, for obvious reasons."

"All true, unfortunately," he says, and though there's not as much hollow finality in that, Darlington can detect a whisper of it, an echo to the brief moment of bleakness that colored much of what Palamedes had said. The things that happen to him in the Rosenfeld basement aren't the same as a death; he can't think of it that way, as some kind of appointment at St. Elmo's, especially when all he knows is colored by Alex's own guilt. They get him back. Wherever he's gone, he trusts Sandow and the rest to fetch him home again.

"Whatever you have planned for today," he says, unlocking the front door and pushing it open, "isn't going to be quite that challenging to test, I'm guessing."

"Oh, God no." Darlington has no way of knowing, but the comparison makes him smile. "This will be child's play--or it should be." His confidence doesn't falter, exactly, but it's tempered by thoughtfulness. "To be honest, I'm still trying to decipher the exact affect of doing necromancy on a thalergenic planet."

Palamedes follows Darlington inside, and is greeted with an interior as grand as the exterior promised. He is still awed by how much wood is used in construction in Darrow--and by extension, in pre-resurrection society. Here, it's warmth and shine is on full display.

Now that he's here, he properly considers the options for his demonstration. "Is there a part of the house that is integral to its construction, but could conceivably have been built independently, at least in part?" Pal tries to remember some of the more old-fashioned aspects of Canaan House. "A fireplace, perhaps?"

"Thalergenic?" It's a word Darlington's heard him use before, a term he can guess at the definition of, but he feels no shame in asking rather than extrapolate. As they step into the house, he can't help taking note of Palamedes' reaction, his curiosity and awe at the wide sweep of the staircase and the dark paneling on the walls, the tiles of the foyer giving way onto the polished wood boards of the floor. Introducing people to Black Elm for the first time, showing them this piece of himself and his heart, was always one of his favorite things.

The question and its limitations has him nodding, thoughtful, and when Palamedes mentions a fireplace in particular, Darlington smiles. "In the great room," he says, nodding towards the vast open space just beyond where they're standing. Since the house's arrival in the city, he and Alex--mostly Alex--have spent a lot of time and money turning it into a place that suits them both, with new paint and updated furnishings, decorative objects on the shelves and a few pieces of art on the walls. Still, there are some parts of Black Elm neither of them are able or willing to change. The fireplace fills a good portion of one wall in the great room, its dark stone blackened further by generations of fires, the wide wood mantle above the hearth burnished to a gloss over the years. He's always loved it.

“Sorry—thalergy is life energy; thanergy is death energy,” Pal explains as he follows Darlington into the next room. “Thalergenic planets mostly produce thalergy, though they produce thanergy as well. Everything dies, after all. On thanergenic planets, like those in the Empire, it’s the reverse. Necromancy requires thanergy, so I have less to work with here, literally.”

When he sees the fireplace he grins. “Perfect.” Without further ado he approaches it, lightly running his fingers over the mantlepiece. He never likes to make assumptions about an object based on necromancy alone, but he knows almost nothing about the aging of wood or styles of architecture on pre-Resurrection Earth, so he can’t say much about it by observation alone. He rests one hand on the stones of the hearth and explains, “The Sixth House specializes in psychometry. We’re trained from an early age to read thalergenic and thanergenic signatures on objects to determine their age and other characteristics of their history. Rather good skill for a librarian— Hmm.”

He’s not getting much. A trace of age, yes—two hundred years? Three hundred? But other details remain out of his grasp. Dozens of people must have laid their hands on the fireplace over the years, but it’s like they’ve blurred into the background.

He nods, filing the terms away, appreciating the internal logic of them; life and death and the cyclical nature of both. "It makes about as much sense as the nexuses I'm familiar with, just...more universal. A greater well of power to draw from."

They go into the great room, Pal's delight immediate and palpable from the first moment he sees the fireplace, and even that is a reward in itself. Not the same as revealing a new piece of magic to an unsuspecting person, but close enough--showing a bit more of a place he loves to someone so rapidly becoming a friend. "That is a useful skill," he says. "Psychometry's not something practiced by any of the Ancient Eight, or Lethe, and even what little I've read on the subject is incomplete. I think the closest anyone comes is...Aurelian, maybe, but even they are..."

Noticing the frown on his friend's face, Darlington stops talking. "What is it?"

The beginning of a beautiful friendship

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