There was a light tap on the door and Agnes sat up. Bellamy hovered in the doorway, her shoulders hunched as if expecting someone to strike her.
“Ambrosine wishes to see you,” she said. “All of you.”
Agnes hadn’t spoken much to Hektor’s shy, skittish wife, but Sera had told her how she’d seen into Bellamy’s memories and that the woman had been devoted to her ever since. Agnes wished more people on this planet felt that way, instead of trying to control or trap or manipulate Sera for their own purposes.
They followed Bellamy down through the halls until they came to a large circular room Agnes hadn’t seen before. The ceiling was glass but the walls were marble, pristine white with narrow, arched windows cut along them at intervals. There was an enormous chair that was more of a throne, upholstered in velvet with gilded wings, and two benches on either side. Matthias and Hektor were already there, seated on the right-hand bench. Bellamy scurried to sit beside her husband. Ambrosine, of course, was on the throne.
“Come,” she said. “Sit.”
The foursome dutifully took their seats on the left-hand bench, exchanging confused glances with each other. They heard footsteps down the hall and Agnes’s pulse thrummed in her ears.
When her father and Kiernan were marched in, they looked awful: dark circles under their eyes, their hair wild, their faces gaunt. Kiernan’s whole body was shaking.
“I trust you had an unpleasant evening,” Ambrosine said to Xavier, who stared at her with a steely expression despite his unruly appearance.
“Mother, please—” Kiernan began, but Ambrosine held up a hand and he fell silent.
“Be quiet, Ezra, the adults are talking.” She turned her focus back to Xavier. “Now. What judgment should be made on the man who stole my granddaughter and two of my prized possessions?”
Agnes kept waiting for her father to look at them, either her or Leo, but he kept his gaze fixed on her grandmother.
“I am a citizen of Kaolin,” he said. “You have no authority to pass judgment on me.”
Ambrosine’s smile cut like a blade. “But you are far from home, Xavier. Your pitiful president and his silly navy have no power here. You should never have come back. Why did you? Was it to rescue your children?”
Agnes’s heart twisted, sharp and painful, as her father, still not looking at them, said, “No.”
“Yet you took Agnes away from me,” Ambrosine said. “Why? If you care so little for her, why not leave her here?”
“I didn’t say I didn’t care,” Xavier shot back. “She wasn’t yours to keep. Alethea would never have wanted that.”
“As if you knew what she wanted better than her own mother.”
Xavier’s nostrils flared. “You didn’t know her at all. You only saw the Alethea you wanted to see.”
“You only saw her money.”
“I loved her!” Xavier snarled, suddenly turning as wild as his hair. His eyes bulged and a vein throbbed in his temple. “I loved her more than my own life and you killed her. You made her come here, you made her have them here. Why couldn’t you just leave her alone?”
“You came too late!” Ambrosine shot back. “I told you. I told you, seven months at the very latest, but you had to wait to the last second, you arrogant bastard.”
“It was your fault we had to come in the first place,” Xavier said.
“Oh, please. You saw Culinnon and you wanted its treasures. Don’t turn yourself into a victim, Xavier, it doesn’t suit you. And you haven’t looked once at your children since you’ve entered this room. How do you think Alethea would feel about that?”
Xavier’s face darkened and his throat bobbed up and down. “I . . . can’t,” he said.
“Do you blame them for her death, as well as me?”
Xavier said nothing. Agnes heard Leo shift on the bench. She felt a dull ringing in her ears.
“So,” Ambrosine said, steepling her fingers, “Alethea’s death was everyone’s fault but yours. How so very Kaolin of you. Men don’t have to take responsibility for their actions where you come from, but here on Culinnon, you will be held accountable. So tell me again: Why are you here?”
Xavier’s hands clenched into fists and for a moment, Agnes thought he might try to hit Ambrosine.
“Braxos,” Kiernan cried, breaking the tension. “We came for Braxos.”
Ambrosine’s turquoise eyes glinted like chips of ice. “Braxos,” she said. Then she sighed. “I admit, Xavier, I’m disappointed. I thought you would have some better motive than riches.”
“It’s not about riches,” Xavier said. “You think she didn’t tell me? About the stories, about the scrolls?” He pulled at his hair and for a moment, Agnes wondered if he’d gone completely mad. “She’s supposed to be there!” he cried. “She said . . . the island where you could speak to the dead. She said so, she told me! Past, present, and future, all together, all at once. I just . . .” Suddenly he crumpled to his knees, and this frightened Agnes more than the shouting. “She can’t be gone forever,” he said. “She’s supposed to be there. Everything else I had is gone. My work, my company, my children, all of it, gone.” He glared up at Ambrosine. “Does that make you happy? You won. You’ve got everything now. But not her. I can still have her. If I can just get to Braxos.”
For a moment there was nothing but a ringing silence. Xavier’s chest heaved and even Ambrosine seemed at a loss for words.
“Your children are here, Xavier,” Matthias said softly. “Look at them. You never lost her.”
Xavier turned his head away and Agnes felt her chest collapse. But then, to her great surprise, Sera stood.
“I can show her to you,” she said, and Xavier gaped at her, at his ability to understand her as much as at her words. “I can show you Alethea.”
Her skin began to glow faintly and her eyes burned. Agnes felt a gentle wind wash over her body and her muscles seized up, just the way Leo had described the sensation, and she knew that Sera was calling up their veils of life, of memory. Part of her wanted to cry out and say no, don’t let Ambrosine or my father know of this power, but she was frozen and could not speak.
And then the memory came.
Alethea was in the brownstone on Creekwater Row. She was trying to hang a mobile over a crib in the nursery, hugely pregnant, her red curls pulled up in a messy bun. She stood on a stool on her tiptoes, her legs wobbling.
“Alethea!” Xavier cried when he came in. “Let me do that.”
She grinned and pecked him on the cheek as he took the mobile, stars and clouds and little golden ships. “I think our daughter will like this. It reminds me of sailing with Matthias in the summers.” She spoke Kaolish with the faintest trace of a Pelagan accent.
“What about our son?” Xavier asked. “Is his mobile made of gloom and doom like Hektor?”
Alethea laughed and slapped him playfully on the arm. Then she bent down and picked up a different one, trees and fish and a yellow sun in its center.
“His will be his mother’s home,” she said.
“But you hate Culinnon.”
Alethea sighed and let Xavier hang the mobile over the second crib. “I don’t hate it,” she said. “I wish it were different. Not so isolated or secret. I think that island has made my family crazy.”