The Big-Ginger-Fellow rested his elbows on the step behind his back. Victoria thought his smile strangely greedy, as if he suddenly wanted to gobble up the Funny-Eyed-Lady. “As far as I’m concerned, I know exactly where to look.”
The Funny-Eyed-Lady tilted her cap, and the hole disappeared from the garden just as her face did. “I’m really serious, Foster. Since Mother Hildegarde died, I don’t feel I belong here anymore. Neither at Citaceleste nor anywhere else on the Pole. That the toffs hate me, I can handle—I feel the same about them. But to see all our old mates groveling like grubs before me, it makes me sick. The cowards! They want to call a strike, to challenge, to demand . . . and then they kowtow to the first aristo they encounter. How d’you think we’re going to overthrow God if we can’t be bothered to take the revolution to a few marquises? So, what’s Mr. Unionist got to say about it? You do realize, just being seen with me makes you be seen as a traitor?”
The Big-Ginger-Fellow placed his hand on the Funny-Eyed-
Lady’s head and drew it close to him. “I say that the first to say one word against my boss, just one, I’ll smash his teeth in. And I’m really serious, too, Gail.”
The Funny-Eyed-Lady said nothing more, but Victoria glimpsed a smile under the peak of her cap. She’d never seen Father and Mommy behave like this, and that thought produced a sort of pain in her other body, the one that had stayed in the bed.
She turned around and then noticed Twit on the banister. He was staring at her with his big yellow eyes. Victoria had never stroked Twit—Mommy thought cats far too dangerous—but she’d always wanted to. As she raised a timid hand toward him, Twit spat. He sped away so fast that the Big-Ginger-Fellow and the Funny-Eyed-Lady both got a start.
Victoria ran back into the house, sure she’d made an unforgiveable mistake. For a moment, she was tempted to go back to being the Other-Victoria, in bed and sleeping, as Mommy had told her to, but as soon as she heard the harp, she forgot her fright.
Once again, the call of the journey was strongest.
She went into the drawing room. She slowed down on seeing Great-Godmother pressed to a window, arms crossed and frowning, looking up at the clouds. Victoria didn’t yet know her well. Her stern looks and yellow skin intimidated her.
Luckily, Mommy was there. She was sitting beside the harp and her lovely tattooed hands flew from one string to another, like the fake birds in the garden. Victoria went closer to cuddle her, but Mommy didn’t see her. Her music was as hazy as her body was.
To Victoria’s delight, Godfather was there, too, sprawled across an armchair. He was flicking through some envelopes as if they were a pack of cards. “More and more and more marriage proposals! Not yet three years old, and already she’s considered the finest match on the Pole. We’ll turn them all down, of course?”
His voice was distorted, too, and Victoria had to strain to hear it properly. Mommy continued to play the harp without replying to him.
“You’re never as fine a musician as when you’re furious with me,” Godfather added, his smile as wide as the split in his hat. “I returned her to you safe and sound, didn’t I? She remained within the Compass Rose. I know you’re not at all keen on the Citaceleste, but you can’t keep your daughter locked away in this manor house forever. Believe me, I tried that approach with my ex-sisters, and they’ve become more outrageous in two years than I’ve been for my entire life.”
Victoria didn’t know what Godfather was talking about—too many complicated words in one go—but she didn’t care. He had messy hair, cheeks all golden with beard, and held himself appallingly on his chair. She loved him to bits.
“Come now, Berenilde,” he insisted, flapping the envelopes as he would a fan. “I’ll soon be embarking once more on my journey, let’s not part on bad terms.”
Mommy burst into laughter as melodious as her harp. “Your journey? Roaming from Compass Rose to Compass Rose in search of an ark you know to be out of your reach? What you call a journey, I, personally, call an escape.”
Godfather’s smile widened. Victoria climbed the chair to touch his ill-shaven skin and prickle her fingers, but to her great disappointment, she felt nothing at all. “Oh, I’m starting to understand. It’s not my escapade with your daughter for which you reproach me, is it? What you can’t accept is that I returned without our little Madame Thorn.”
Mommy’s hands flew faster and faster across the strings, but Victoria sensed something was wrong. Mommy had told her once, while tucking her up in bed, that she possessed big, hidden nails that she wouldn’t hesitate for a second to use if someone tried to harm them. Victoria had sometimes almost felt them, those nails, when Mommy was cross.
She could see them now.
A shadow was forming all around Mommy: a shadow bristling with claws, claws even scarier than those on the bearskin hanging on the rack in the library. The shadow was as terrifying as Mommy was beautiful.
“Where is she?” she asked, calmly. “Where is Ophelia?”
Great-Godmother turned around from the window and exchanged a look with Godfather, who winked at her.
“You can ask the question again and again,” he said to Mommy, “the answer will remain the same. She made us promise not to reveal it to anyone. Not even to you. Isn’t the specialty of the Web to protect its secrets?”
“Your clan disowned you, Archie.” Mommy had spoken these words very affectionately, but Victoria saw the shadow bristling with claws spread wider. Godfather burst out laughing. So he couldn’t see it, Mommy’s fearsome shadow?
“Touché!” he said, throwing the pile of envelopes onto a coffee table. “And yet, whether you like it or not, dear friend, I will keep that secret preciously. Ophelia asked me to give you just one single message. A promise. She will find Thorn.”
The shadow around Mommy disappeared like a puff of smoke. She pressed both hands on the harp strings to silence them. That silence was almost as loud as a scream. And yet, Mommy was as calm as usual. “There was a time when I had mastered the rules of the game perfectly, even if learning them could prove a cruel lesson. The rules are no longer the same today. The new clans impose their reforms on us, and the servants complain behind their masters’ backs. I avoid the court like one of the disgraced; I’ve dismissed all those who served me. As for our Lord . . . he does try, you understand? He really tries, and they, they all take advantage of him. He’s continually harassed by his ministers. I haven’t seen him for weeks, and yet, I remain here and I write to him every day. Do you know why, Archie? Because he needs it. He needs me, and maybe even more, he needs his daughter. But the truth is, I’m terrified,” Mommy added, in an even softer voice. “I’m terrified because the world I thought I knew is but a cog among thousands of others, within a mechanism that is beyond me. That mechanism stole Thorn from me. I refuse to let it get hold of my daughter. The universe beyond these walls has become too dangerous for us. Stay here, please. Don’t leave us all alone, my daughter and me.”