hellonspectacles | Dear Mr. Postman...

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Dear Mr. Postman...

It’s not that Palamedes means to ignore the messages from Marianne. The day following Harrow’s arrival, his head feels fit to split open, and when he glances at his phone periodically to make sure that Gideon hasn’t sent him a frantic messages, he notes the usual texts from Marianne with a smile, and vows, quite sensibly, to write her back when he can see straight. But he ends up spending most of the next day with the Ninth, arguing with Harrow over this theory and that, only realizing when it has gotten quite late that he has again forgotten.

And then Camilla appears in Darrow, an event that had seemed so astronomically unlikely that he had tried with every fiber of his being not to hope for it, and he is swept up in the miracle of it. The pair talk into the night until their throats are hoarse, they spend days poring over all the evidence Pal has collected about Darrow, sometimes with Harrow and Gideon, sometimes on their own. His promise to return Marianne’s missives becomes more and more distant.

It’s Thursday, and Palamedes is alone while Cam goes for a run—still half-terrified to let her out of his sight, he’d offered to go with her, and she had just looked at him—when his phone buzzes. It’s only a reminder that he has books due at the library, but it makes him realize, to his horror, that he had never replied to Marianne. Without quite knowing why, his stomach twists at the thought that she might be angry at him.

He opens their text chain and writes,

Marianne,

I hope you will accept my most sincere apology. I fear that, in my unconscionable silence, I have revealed something that I have attempted to keep from you: necromantic powers alone are not enough to keep me from being a complete jackass from time to time. My week has been unexpectedly eventful—please understand that this is an explanation, not an excuse.

In answer to your earlier messages: I like the first sunglasses best, I wasn’t free for coffee on Friday (explanation forthcoming), and Orlando was really quite remarkable.

Are you free for lunch this weekend? I would like to apologize in person.

Palamedes Sextus, Master Warden of Dunces, etc.

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"Where to begin?" Palamedes laughs a little and runs a hand over his face. "Since I last saw her, Harrow has become...Well, to put it quite straightforwardly, she has become an incredibly powerful sort of necromancer. But there was a cost to it, and in an effort to avoid paying that cost she inflicted a certain amount of damage on her brain." He winces, remembering again the absolute wreck he had found under Harrow's skull. Furious as he is with her for it, he can't help but be awed by the strength of will it must have taken her to go through with. And he can't help but wonder what he might have done in her place.

Marianne's dark eyebrows draw together in a frown, her mouth hanging open a little. The waiter comes with their drinks and she picks up her wine glass.

"How bad does it have to be for her to give herself brain damage? Do I even want to know?"

Palamedes presses his lips together, frowning as he tries to find the simplest way to explain the terrible sacrifice that had been made on Harrow’s behalf—and the almost equally terrible thing Harrow had done in an effort to stop that sacrifice from wholly taking effect. “Harrow’s new powers had required the death of someone very close to her.” Marianne has heard him talk about Gideon, but it feels invasive, somehow, to now mention that his friend is technically dead, so he avoids naming her specifically. “In order to halt that death—in order to retain the possibility of life, you could say—she removed certain memories from her temporal lobe and shaped her skull in a way that would cause cranial hemorrhages if any of those memories were triggered.”

Almost unthinkingly, he picks up his spoon and absently stirs his tea. “For the record, I sincerely doubt that such an extreme intervention was necessary. I’m certain there was another way. Hell, if only I’d been there.”

"Oh, my God," says Marianne again, her hand over her mouth. "That's all...It sounds so awful." Palamedes is younger than her, so she has no reason to assume his friends wouldn't be. They were all so young to go through that. "That's..." She shakes her head, taking a sip of her wine. "But you fixed it?"

“I know.” Palamedes sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Harrow’s been through a lot as it is. It’s made her a rather…cold person. Not someone good at asking for help.” He huffs a little. God, what an understatement. “But I think I could have convinced her, if I’d been there. Even if Cam had been there…” But so much had gone to hell in those last hours at Canaan House, tearing them all apart in every way imaginable. Maybe someday he’ll feel like he can tell Marianne the entire, gruesome story, but the last thing Pal wants to do is burden her with it now.

“But that’s hardly the point now, is it?” He flashes a tiny smile. “The important thing is that we were able to repair the damage, and she seems to have recovered her memories without causing herself further harm. I’ve been spending as much time keeping an eye on her as she’ll let me.”

"I'm starting to see why you definitely didn't have time for texting," says Marianne. "But at least...is she feeling better now? Settling in?" Whatever is going on with Cam, at least he's got friends here now. Marianne has made this fragile little family for herself. It'll take a while, but she'll figure out how slot him into that.

“Nevertheless,” Pal says, waving his hand, “I might have at least told you I was busy.” He takes a sip of his tea, considering the best way to answer the question. “Physically, yes. But Darrow has been a…complex adjustment for her.” He sighs and shakes his head. “She’ll be all right. But I do worry about her, especially after all that has happened.” And Palamedes is certain there is plenty he doesn’t know, given Harrow’s penchant for secrets.

"Maybe next time you could remember that, yeah," she says, smiling at him. The way he talks about Harrow, there's obvious affection there. It lights him up the way things do, sometimes, the grey of his eyes bright behind his glasses. "And she's another necromancer?"

“She is,” Pal confirms. “Heir to the Ninth House. They’ve got a reputation for being cold and mysterious, to put it mildly, and Harrow does her best to live up to it.” He grins a little, knowing that Harrow would be severely annoyed by the implication that she does not always succeed perfectly. She so wishes to be the perfect Locked Tomb adapt—but Pal sees more to her than that. They are all more than their houses, after all.

She knows about the houses - Pal has given her a rough overview, and she knows that his house, the Sixth, is all about study and truth. He'd probably have fitted into some circles at Trinity.

"Which house would I be best suited to, do you think? Where can you see me?"

Palamedes laughs a little. "That sounds like a trick question if I ever heard one," he says, pointing at her with his spoon. Though he had tried to be fair to each house when he had described them to her, he thinks he might have let a few less charitable opinions slip through.

He considers the question, though in all honesty, the answer is fairly easy. "The Seventh," he says. "You're thoughtful. You're inspired by beautiful things. You appreciate excess, but you want it to have meaning. And Ireland is known for its experimental literature, isn't it? That's very Seventh." Pal's smile is a little shy. He feels like he's read her fortune and isn't sure how she'll take it. "Does that sound fair?"

She's not sure she's ever seen a smile quite like that on his face before; she tries really hard not to be intensely endeared.

"I think that sounds fair," she says, with a faint smile. "Do I take it as a compliment?"

"You should take it as an accurate assessment. 'Truth over solace in lies,' as we say on the Sixth," he answers playfully. "But as it happens, those are all things I like about you." He feels himself flush.

"I'm always suspicious of people who tell the truth no matter what," says Marianne. She doesn't comment on the blush, but that doesn't mean she doesn't notice it. "What about when it hurts people's feelings?"

“God, you really are Seventh,” Pal laughs. It had never occurred to him before now, but now it seems obvious. The question itself is one he has confronted hundreds of times in dozens of permutations, both within and without the Sixth House. It’s one he has asked himself plenty of times. “People can use the truth to be cruel just as easily as they can lies, and I know plenty of people who do,” he concedes. “But truth, real truth, isn’t just the first thought that pops into someone’s head. It takes work to discover. It’s complicated, and it’s far more important—far kinder, too.” He sips his tea. “Whereas lies can sometimes be nice, but they are never kind.”

Marianne almost asks him - almost asks what the real truth is with them, where she fits in now Cam is here but, instead, she picks up her wine glass and takes a sip.

"You make it sound noble when you put it like that," says Marianne. "Maybe I just don't have enough experience with the real truth."

Palamedes gives a shrug. "I don't know if I would call it noble. But I think it's a better approach to the world than some others." He looks at her gently, his heart suddenly aching for her, for whatever she's not quite saying. "I don't know if a lot of us have much experience with real truth, honestly. But that's just a reason to keep looking."

Marianne looks like she's about to say something but the waiter brings their food and she swallows it back instead. She nods her thanks.

"Maybe you're right," she says. "Maybe I will keep looking."

"Good." With a smile he adds, "I'm happy to come along with you, if you like. We in the Sixth can be awfully pedantic, but we've got some experience looking for truth."

"Are you offering to be my wingman?" she asks, both eyebrows raised, hoping that she's managed to keep the sting of it off her face. "Think you've got what it takes?"

“I grew up in a library, Sheridan. I’ve been preparing for this my entire life.” Oblivious to the pain behind her cheerful facade, his eyes twinkle. “You’ll find no better companion on your quest for truth.”

Marianne has never been afraid of the truth but, usually, she's wielded it like a weapon - to sting, to get reactions. She takes a bite of her food, chewing meditatively for a moment.

"I don't think you'd want to be my friend if you knew the whole true everything," she says.

The answer is enough to make even Palamedes aware that their conversation has taken a turn--that maybe it had, ages ago, without him realizing. For a long moment he just looks at her over his mug of tea, his expression searching but gentle. "The whole true everything of you? I very much doubt that. Do we all see each other differently, the more we know of one another? Yes. But I don't think I'd like you less."

He sets down his mug and props his chin on his hands. "But like I said, 'truth over solace in lies' isn't about spilling your guts if don't want to. It's a philosophy, and like all philosophies, it's much neater in theory than in practice. Hell, there's things I haven't told you about myself because I worry what you'd think." He makes this confession straightforwardly enough, those it causes him to flush faintly. While he's sure Marianne has figured out that something terrible happened to him immediately before he arrived in Darrow, he has never laid it all out in any kind of detail.

"But I'm here to listen to any truths you wish to share about yourself, if that is what you'd like."

Marianne does give that some thought, reaching for her wine glass before she shakes her head.

"Maybe one day," she says. "We can swap and see if it makes a difference."

It's a thing, to be looked at like that by him, to be really scrutinised. There's something about the clear grey of his eyes that reminds her of the way the sea sometimes looked in Sligo. It makes her homesick in the same breath as she finds it faintly comforting.

“I’d like that,” Pal says with a smile. He tells himself that Marianne owes him nothing; hadn’t he just told her that he isn’t expecting any deep, dark secrets, certainly not ones she doesn’t feel comfortable telling? But he finds himself a little disappointed when she decides to keep her thoughts to herself.

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