“How do you manage not to be afraid?”
“Hmm? Why would I be afraid? Strokes are rare at our age. Statistically, there’s little chance of the same happening to me . . . or to you. You’d know that, if you’d read the Official Journal. Which, for us Forerunners, must be the sole source from which we garner our information,” Elizabeth recited, like a well-learnt lesson.
“I don’t know much about statistics,” admitted Ophelia, “but don’t forget Mademoiselle Silence. A heart attack and a stroke in the same location, fifty days apart, that seems improbable to me.”
It was Elizabeth’s turn to look at her with incomprehension, from the shade of her half-closed eyelids. “I don’t know where you’re from, or what you’ve experienced, but here, in Babel, illnesses and accidents are the only causes of death. If Lady Septima tells us it’s a coincidence, then it’s a coincidence.”
Ophelia was tempted to retort that this woman she put on a pedestal didn’t set great store by powerless people like her. And that she probably wasn’t telling them the whole truth. The Lords of LUX had doubled the security staff at the Memorial; it was no longer possible to enter or depart without being checked.
And then there was Professor Wolf, his mysterious accident, his research stopped from one day to the next. He, too, was a regular at the Memorial, and he, too, had suffered a great traumatic shock.
No, it definitely wasn’t a coincidence. It was a crime. Three crimes. And the fact that that word was forbidden by the Index made no difference. Having accepted this hypothesis, Ophelia could no longer disregard Fearless’s message to Mediana. “He who sows the wind shall reap the storm.” Was it he who had tried to take her life, along with the lives of Professor Wolf and Mademoiselle Silence? If so, by what means and, most of all, why? What did an expert on wars, a senior censor, and an apprentice Forerunner have in common, apart from the fact that all three worked at the Memorial?
“Aspiring Virtuoso Elizabeth, Apprentice Eulalia, please complete your obligatory circuits!”
Ophelia turned her glasses toward the stadium’s watchtower, from which the command had come, and then back toward Elizabeth, who still hadn’t caught her breath.
“The best of all possible worlds, didn’t you say?”
They continued their run, side by side. Their two bodies were in perfect dissymmetry, Elizabeth’s being as long and flat as Ophelia’s was short and plump.
“You know . . . I didn’t like you . . . at our first meeting.” Elizabeth had casually panted this remark between two strides, her long, tawny plait thumping her back.
Ophelia agreed. “I’m not sure I thought much of you, either.”
“And now?”
They exchanged questioning looks, and Ophelia finally outran Elizabeth on the stadium’s track. The truth was, they could have become friends, had Eulalia really existed. But Ophelia was under no illusion: if the aspiring virtuoso discovered that she was lying about her identity, she would denounce her to Helen and Lady Septima without the slightest hesitation.
When she had completed her obligatory circuits, Ophelia went to the changing room. She bumped into Zen, who was just leaving, smelling of camellia oil. They stammered apologies. They might share the same dormitory and attend the same classes, but they had never exchanged more than one sentence. Zen was the oldest of the whole company, but she was more of a doll than a woman, always ready to hide her almond-shaped eyes behind her thick, black fringe. It seemed to Ophelia, however, that this habit Zen had of avoiding her was down to something other than shyness.
To fear?
Once alone, Ophelia collected the uniform and boots she had deposited at the laundry the previous day. She then went to the communal showers and there, after placing her clothes, gloves, and glasses on a chair, she stood still for a long while. She waited until her heartbeat, taxed by the run, had returned to normal. But it didn’t happen. Her entire flesh seemed to be pulsating to a single chaotic rhythm.
This evening, she would see Thorn again.
She had spent these recent weeks not allowing herself to think of it, remaining focused on everything that wasn’t him. She had virtually neither slept nor eaten. Her emotions were so muddled, it was impossible for her to untangle them. She wanted to be with Thorn right there, right now. She’d wanted that every second of every minute of every hour, for almost three years. And him, the best he could come up with was to impose three additional days on her! Learning Mediana’s translation off by heart? It was nothing but a disjointed, incomplete, and abstruse text that had given her no insight into Thorn’s ulterior motives. How had he become Sir Henry? Why had he joined LUX? What was he seeking, through the reading groups? What had stopped him, all this time, from giving a sign of life? Ophelia had given in to the temptation of reading the notes not merely with her eyes—after all, she had become their official owner—but those metallic gauntlets Thorn was wearing when he’d handled them had prevented him leaving any trace on the paper.
Reading the notes with her hands had taught her nothing about Mediana, either, no doubt also due to work gloves having been worn. The Seer had certainly duped her. All that time, she had known that Sir Henry was the man Ophelia was looking for. Would she have ultimately revealed it to her?
Ophelia unfolded a shower screen, threw her running gear over it, and yanked the water pull-chain. She kept her eyes wide open, despite the gush of boiling-hot water. The moment she closed her eyelids, even briefly, she saw Thorn’s expression again, imprinted on her eyeballs. His lack of expression, in fact. As though, really, all playacting aside, Ophelia meant nothing to him.
While washing her hair, she tugged on her curls. She kept them short herself, with wary snips of the scissors, but never with the help of a mirror. Surely she hadn’t changed that much, had she? She squinted at her skin, tanned by the sun. Suddenly, she felt naked in a way that, never before, in all her life, had she felt naked. This abrupt awareness, ridiculous as it was, made her feel an apprehension she couldn’t really fathom.
“You hate being treated like a child,” Mediana’s voice mocked, in her memory, “but in front of a man, you remain an inexperienced bambina.”
Familiar clicking sounds cut through the noise of the shower. Ophelia released the pull-chain and wiped her dripping eyelashes. As nearsighted as she was, she could make out, under the screen, shadows on which there were glimmers of silver. The winged boots of the Forerunners.
“You will listen to us.”
“You will not scream.”
“You will say nothing.”
When the Seers spoke in the future tense, ensuing events generally proved them right. So Ophelia stood silently and waited to hear what they had to announce to her.
The answer came in the form of a bucket, pouring a crystalline torrent over the top of the screen. Ophelia barely had time to protect her face with her arms. In an instant, her whole body was grazed with hundreds of scratches. Once back to her senses, she contemplated the fragments of glass scattered over her damp body, and a few seconds later, the blood tracing a vast network of tributaries across it.