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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"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.

"I'd be breaking the habit of a lifetime for you," she says, smiling against the rim of her wine glass before she takes another sip. "I've always avoided telling anyone the whole truth, but especially men."

That's not quite true though, is it? Nobody knows her as nakedly as Connell, but look how much that had hurt her.

“I’m honored,” Palamedes says, and he truly means it. He isn’t sure what he’s done to earn Marianne’s trust—or nearly earn it, at least—but he is awfully glad he has.

He takes a bite of his sandwich and chews thoughtfully. “Men particularly? I assume these are the same men guilty of all that ghosting?”

Marianne nods, chewing a bite of her own food, her free hand shielding her mouth.

"I don't have a great track record," she admits.

"God knows why. You're absolutely lovely." As is so often the case, he offers the compliment matter-of-factly. "Is it only romantic partners who cause all this trouble? I hope you've had friends who aren't so dreadful. You deserve that at the very least."

Palamedes isn't naive; he knows there are plenty of awful people in the world, and that some people bring out the worst in each other, regardless of what they're like otherwise. But what Marianne describes sounds so lonely, and he hates to think of her like that.

He always does this - compliments her like he's telling her the time, or offering her more tea - and, honestly, Marianne never knows what to do with it. He says it with such certainty, but then, in the next moment, he'll be talking about helping her find someone better, and she's sure that she's never met anyone as deeply fucking confusing. She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

"I had some good friends in Dublin, yeah. And I've got people here. A few, anyway. You. Sam. Laura."

“Well, that’s something, isn’t it?” Even if Marianne doesn’t feel comfortable confiding in him completely, Palamedes hopes that he can reassure her. “Look, I don’t know much about boyfriends,” he offers a brief, wry smile, “but I suppose what I’m trying to say is that you have no need to keep people in your life, romantic or otherwise, that you know you cannot trust.”

"I think I'm finally figuring that out, yes," says Marianne, swirlin what's left of her wine around her glass and watching him for a moment. "You've got lovely eyes. I bet you hear that all the time."

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