hellonspectacles | 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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His eyebrows tick up, his expression shifting to a keener interest when Palamedes mentions the assistive gel. It doesn't sound like the same thing as the Bullet, not in application or intent, but the general principle was familiar enough. Something to reveal a bit more of the world than you could discern on your own, a way of pulling back the curtain a few inches further and glimpsing something special.

The idea is fascinating, but the questions will have to wait. When the other man asks for something to write with, Darlington breaks from his train of thought and nods. "This way," he says, inclining his head towards the open doorway that leads to the kitchen. "I know I have at least one notepad in a drawer." It's old habit, carried over from when there'd been a land line in the corner of the kitchen; messages taken down in Bernadette's neat penmanship and his own far messier scrawl, grocery lists and rough outlines of planned menus for the Layabouts' occasional visits. He and Alex might only use their cell phones, but the junk drawer remained.

Entering the kitchen, Darlington finds a pad of paper and a pen, setting them on the counter next to Palamedes.

"Perfect," he says with a curve of a smile, immediately picking up the pad and pencil and setting to work. The page is soon filled with a series of letters and numbers that distinctly resemble the sort of equations usually employed among theoretical physicists. "Have I told you yet how remarkable paper is? I still can't quite believe how casually people use it here. You can find it back home, but it's terribly rare and precious."

He stops abruptly and pauses, tapping the end of the pencil on his chin as he looks over his notes. "Well, it's a start. I may need to sleep on it." With a rueful smile Pal turns back to Darlington. "I'm afraid my demonstration didn't live up to expectations," he says. "Sorry about that. What I get for being so cocky."

"Not in so many words," Darlington says, quietly amazed at the speed at which Palamedes scribbles on the paper. The complex equations mean nothing to him, another puzzle he doesn't have the key to, but just seeing them take shape is fascinating. "But I got a sense of it on our walk to the train station, after you saw that woman throw a newspaper away in front of you?" He grins, though the idea of a future where paper was a precious commodity--not just manuscripts or old books, but literally anything paper-based--still seems unbelievable, even shocking.

When Pal stops writing and looks up, apologizing, Darlington smiles, shaking his head. "No need to be sorry," he says. "Even if it didn't go as planned, it was still...I told you what little experience I had with psychometry, so even those few impressions you were able to glean were fascinating. And once you find a way to work with whatever Darrow's doing to limit your abilities, you're more than welcome back to try again."

“I should have been able to tell you to eye color of your ancestor’s bricklayer,” Palamedes sighs. But that’s just his own vanity talking, and he knows it. He offers Darlington a rueful smile. “But I’m glad it was interesting enough. And I meant it—this has been a useful exercise, if not the one I was expecting. I would very much like to try again once I’ve figured out a work-around.”

He finishes with his notes and folds up the piece of paper, tucking it in his pocket. “In any case, enough psychometric show-and-tell. This house is absolutely remarkable.”

"Anytime," says Darlington, and means it. When Palamedes compliments the house, he grins. "There's been a lot of work put into it," he says. "Here and when it was in New Haven. A lot of time and money spent, but it's been worth it."

He takes in the kitchen, the Delft tiles above the countertops, the rack of pots and pans above the stove, the heavy door of the old refrigerator and the dark wood floors that stretch into the butler's pantry and through the rest of the house. Affection, bone-deep and utterly genuine, flickers in his face for a moment. "It's the only place I ever really called home."

The pride just radiates off Darlington, and Pal can't help but grin as well. Darlington looks like a boastful parent--a relative, at least, and maybe that's accurate. For all he loves the Library, Palamedes has never considered that a place could be a sort of family, but that's clearly what this house is to Darlington.

"Is there anything magical about it?" he asks. "Not that a house needs magic to be precious."

"Nothing overtly magical," he says. "The wards on the house, I set myself, and planted protective species along the borders of the garden, but there was nothing there to precede it."

Black Elm looked like it should carry some kind of enchantment--a portal to another world at the back of the hall closet, a shelf full of ancient and arcane tomes in the library or a chest of strange artifacts in the corner of the attic. That had always been its blessing and Darlington's curse, the thing that molded him as solidly as anything his grandfather did or that the Layabouts hadn't. If he'd grown up in the sun-soaked West like Alex, in a house of clean lines or suburban conformity, maybe his life would have taken a different track. He'd never really know, and he hadn't ever wanted to.

"The magic of it is in the history, really," he adds. "That it was built, and lived in, and imbued over the years with everything my family was and is. And could be."

“That’s always where the real magic lies.” Palamedes makes a face. “Which sounds awfully sentimental, but I think there’s some truth to it. Sometimes I think we rely too much on psychometry, back on the Sixth. Some junior scholars are so caught up trying to read a thalergenic signature that they don’t even look at a manuscript.” He gives a disappointed sort of sigh. “Looking for molecular traces, they forget the people. At least with a place like this, that’s a little more difficult to do.”

"No, I agree with you," he says, a knowing smile on his face when Palamedes sighs like that. Their friendship had seemed an inevitability long before this, but if he'd had any doubts, they'd be gone now. "All the tricks in the world, magical or scientific or otherwise, can't tell you everything about an object or a place. They can't make you see how it matters."

It sounds just as sentimental as anything Pal had said, but just as true. Huffing out a laugh, he shakes off the last threads of it. "Want a tour?"

"You know I would." Pal rises from his chair, checking his pockets to make sure that his notes are still there. One wall of his apartment is already covered in pasted-up bits of paper filled with observations, necromatic and otherwise. His observations here will make a good addition.

But first, he longs to see more of Black Elm, which is nearly as grand as Canaan House, but with none of the horror lurking beneath. "Lead on."

The beginning of a beautiful friendship

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