Cruel Beauty(49)
Author: Rosamund Hodge

“I want to visit her grave,” I said.

“Hm?”

“My mother.” The words felt awkward, but I made myself meet his eyes. “I want—I need to visit her grave. I’ve always been a terrible daughter.”

I did not say, And now I am making love to her killer, but I was sure Ignifex knew I was thinking it.

“You’re not supposed to leave this house,” he said. “That is a rule.”

“There’s nowhere I can go but this house,” I pointed out. “Anyway, what about the Heart of Air? That was about as outside as anywhere in Arcadia.”

“I was with you then.”

“So, take me to the graveyard. We don’t have to go on the Day of the Dead, just . . . soon.”

His fingers drummed against a stack of books. From outside, the wind moaned softly.

“Please,” I said.

Abruptly he smiled. “Then I will take you. Since you ask so very nicely.”

“Thank you,” I said, and kissed his cheek.

Ignifex kept his word: he took me only a few hours later, when the sun glinted high in the sky and the parchment around it glowed a honey-gold that put its gilt rays to shame.

“Get whatever you want for an offering,” he said, so I hunted through the house until I found candles and a bottle of wine. Ignifex took out an ivory key and unlocked a white door that I had never seen before. On the other side of it lay the graveyard; I went through it, and found myself stepping in the main gate. Before us a jumble of tombstones sprouted up in ragged rows, from plain little slab markers to statues and miniature shrines twice as large as a man.

Mother’s tomb lay near the back of the graveyard. I could have walked there in my sleep, and it did feel like I was dreaming, to stride there in clean daylight with the Gentle Lord at my side. The air was crisp, and the wind blew in ragged gusts that smelled faintly of smoke; the red-gold leaves swirled about us and crackled under our boots. Above us, the holes in the sky yawned like open tombs, but I was growing used to them. Instead, my back crawled with the fear that human eyes could see us, that all the world was waiting behind the tombstones to leap out and condemn me for my impiety. I looked around again and again, but though I saw no one, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched.

My mother’s was not the largest of the tombs, but it was elegant: a stone canopy sheltered a marble bed on which lay a statue of a shrouded woman, so delicately carved that you could see the lines of her face through the gauzy folds. On the side of the bed was carved “THISBE TRISKELION,” and below it the verse—in Latin, since Father was such a scholar—“IN NIHIL AB NIHILO QUAM CITO RECIDIMUS.”

From nothing into nothing how swiftly we return.

I knelt and set out the candles. Ignifex, standing beside me, lit them with a snap of his fingers, then stuck his hands in the pockets of his long dark coat. For the first time that I had known him, there was something stiff and awkward in the way he stood.

“You look like a scarecrow,” I said. “Kneel down and give me the corkscrew.”

He knelt and handed me the corkscrew; after a few moments of cold-fingered struggle, I got the bottle open. I poured a trickle of the dark wine onto the earth before the tomb.

“Blessings and honor belong to the dead,” I whispered. The ritual words were comforting. “We bless you, we honor you, we remember your name.”

I lifted the bottle and gulped a mouthful of wine. It was sweet and spicy, like the autumn wind, and it burned its way down my throat. Then I held out the bottle to Ignifex.

He looked at me blankly.

“We drink as well,” I said. “It’s part of the ceremony.”

His gaze waved. “I . . .”

“You will honor my mother or I will break this bottle over your head.”

That got a ghost of a smile; then he took the bottle, and his neck flashed white as he tilted his head to drink. When he handed the bottle back, I poured another libation into the ground.

“O Thisbe Triskelion, we beg you to bless us. We breathe now in the sunlight, as you once did; we shall soon sleep in death, as you now do.”

I drank again, and handed the bottle back to him. When he had drunk as well, I took the bottle back and sat still, watching the statue’s face. It was curious to see my mother’s grave without Father and Aunt Telomache droning in the background; for the first time, I could look at her stone face without anger curling beneath my skin.

“What now?” asked Ignifex.

I paused, but there had already been ten generations’ worth of hymns sung at her grave; I had no desire to add to them. Instead I took another gulp of wine.

“We finish the bottle.” I passed it back to him.

Ignifex held it up to the light, squinting to see how much was left. “Mortal customs are more fun than I thought.”

We must have sat there nearly an hour, slowly drinking the wine amid the swirling leaves. We hardly spoke; sometimes Ignifex glanced at me thoughtfully, but mostly he seemed absorbed in studying the graveyard. Once, from the corner of my eye, I caught him pouring a tiny libation onto the ground, his lips moving silently.

By the end, we were no longer kneeling but sitting leaned against each other. After I poured the last drops of wine into the ground—for the dead must always have the first and last sip—we sat another few minutes in silence.

“Thank you,” I said at last.

I felt him take a deep breath; then he said, “Your sister calls to me every night.”

I sat bolt upright. “She what?”

“I don’t answer her,” he added quickly.

I was on my feet now, all peace forgotten. Had this started after I broke the mirror? Or had Astraia been trying to sacrifice herself every night since I left, and the mirror had just never shown me? It was the sort of trick I could expect from a piece of the house.

“She knows about your bargains—what can she be thinking?”

“Something heroic, I imagine.” He stood too, as graceful as ever.

I remembered her face as I had left her. Surely she wouldn’t dare so much for the sister who had hurt her.

My shoulders slumped. She had smuggled me a knife. She had grown up hearing about Lucretia taking her own life and Iphigeneia laying down hers on an altar, Horatio defending the bridge and Gaius Mucius Scaevola burning off his hand to show devotion to Rome—all the heroes that Father and Aunt Telomache had used to instruct me. Of course she would dare.

“I thought you had to answer everyone that called on you,” I said.