[Two Years Before the Emperor's Murder]

[hellonspectacles]

Palamedes had written the letter six weeks ago.

Six weeks. Each one had been like a knife being slowly pressed through his hand. He'd floated ghost-like through the Library, and though he remained perfectly professional, people began to whisper about the Warden’s mental state where they thought he couldn’t hear. Plenty of people knew about his attachment to the Duchess of Rhodes, though all but those closest to him would have been shocked at his rash decision to propose. Poor girl, she wasn’t even supposed to live through the year—what reason would anyone think that the prospect of marriage was what troubled the young Warden’s mind? The most common diagnosis was simple exhaustion, with a side of he is still quite young, and the responsibility is vast, which would have annoyed Pal thoroughly if he had been in any state to notice.

Camilla knows about the proposal, of course, though in the weeks he waited for a reply, he did not speak of it. Whenever he tried, the words caught in his throat. He began to treat his studious silence on the matter of Dulcinea as a sort of talisman, as though she would be more likely to say yes if he kept all his hopes and dreams in his heart, and waited patiently.

When the letter arrived from the Seventh House, the Warden immediately shut himself in his study. Hours had passed. He’d been scheduled to attend some tedious dinner; he never appeared.

Palamedes is still in his study when the lights dim as the Library spins away from Dominicus. The letter is still in front of him. He’s read it a hundred times—as though he needed to, as though it hadn’t immediately burned into his memory, as though comprehension required anything beyond the first line.

You know how I hate to cause you pain, my darling boy.

For six weeks it was as though a knife had slowly been pressed into his hand, and now it twists.

Comments

[go_loud]

Camilla had attended the dinner, which was just as tedious as expected; as the Warden's Hand, she'd been of course invited by proxy -- wheresoever you might go, etc etc -- but it also made something better of an excuse if his cavalier showed up with apologies that he was otherwise engaged. She could see the skepticism, but even (or maybe, in some ways, especially) at a table full of Archivists and Scholars and the occasional visiting guest, politics were politics.

You couldn't keep secrets very long in the Sixth House. Not without causing a rumor mill that could power half the Library. But you could smooth them over with a polite smile, and if it was her sworn duty to protect the Warden's person, it was a much more likely and necessary scenario for her to protect his persona.

She knew what the letter said, of course. Without truly realizing it, she'd known what it was going to say -- in one form or another -- since the evening he'd declared, "I'm going to ask Dulcinea to marry me." (Not a question. Not a request for an opinion. A declaration. Maybe a forewarning? She wasn't sure.)

She knew it was unreasonable then. She also knew that derailing Palamedes Sextus from his goals, either gently or unkindly, was even less likely. Where Dulcie was concerned? Practically impossible. She can't put a finger on when the letter writing stopped feeling like they were about the three of them and more about the two of them, but she's borne it quietly and with -- incredibly irritating -- care for both of them. If Pal didn't love everything he loved twice as hard as he should, he wouldn't be Pal, would he? There's no sense in resenting it.

Just as there's no sense in resenting what must be in that letter. But she does, just a little bit.

(She'd said, once, lying awake at the cot at the bottom of his bed in that thin time between his announcement and whatever dozenth rewrite of the proposal had made the cut, "You know she's the heir of her house." If she hadn't; if she hadn't tried, at least, how could she really claim to protect him?
And of course, he'd said back, "That's old-fashioned nonsense," the same way that he'd gone about making changes to the Library that no one had in a thousand years. "She's going to die, Camilla," he'd said, and it had cracked something in her chest into a hundred pieces. "They must know that. They're prepared for it. Why not have it be with someone who'll take care of her?"
She'd laid there, in silence, for a long beat, and said, quietly, "She'd be very lucky to have you.")

She'd gotten a letter too. A short one:
C, dearest,
Take care of him, will you? Of course you will. I don't need to tell you.
I want you to know, too, how very much I wish -- so much. That all of this was very different.
-DS

She'd archived the thing almost immediately. It hurt to read. It almost felt wrong, reading it without Pal telling her first what had happened, but it hurt beyond that, reasons she can't even name to herself exactly. No. She didn't need to tell her.
Emperor's Bones if she knows how to go about doing it, though.

She knocks on the study doors now, rubbing the bridge of her nose. When no answer comes, she unlocks them with the only other copy of the key that exists. There are a thousand things she could say. Somehow the first one is; "You need to eat something. I brought food."