“The alternative,” she said, “Is that you don’t give any answer at all. Keep mum, refuse to open your mouth on the subject. I can do the same.”
“A pact of secrecy?”
“It’ll have to be.”
“I think you underestimate the pressure that three sisters, two aunts and a mother can exert,” Aimon said.
She stood, dusting herself off. He looked away as she fixed up her skirt and undergarments.
She spoke to the back of his head. “You keep complaining about having people make demands of you, the people leaning on you, the family, and what that family might do to you.”
“So?” he asked.
“I experience all the judgement and expectations too,” she said. “My father, he’s a harsh disciplinarian, but he’s fair. He’ll hit me when I get back.”
He turned to look at her. She stood there, in a short sleeved dress with kerchief collar, diary and pen each held tight in both hands.
“Kind of strange to think of that,” he said. “The Thorburn diabolist and her husband lecturing their daughter, the stern gaze, the belt…”
“Oh, no need to feel strange,” Rose said. “My mother doesn’t lecture me. All she’ll ever do is give me a look. She’ll leave me to wonder what she thinks. To guess at something when she’s never let me know what she really thought, not once in my life. ”
She shifted the diary to one hand to put the pen inside the hollow of the spine. Her hand trembled a bit.
“You’re shaking.”
“Am I? I am. That’s not like me. I suppose I’m afraid of what her response will finally be.”
“Her response? I thought you weren’t going to tell her about this.”
“I wasn’t and I don’t plan to. I said it before, I’ve made a lot of mistakes lately. I made an oath earlier tonight, said things in anger and haste, and it may well affect the family.”
“She’ll be upset?”
“I’m,” Rose stopped short. When she exhaled it came out as a huff of a laugh. She blinked a little, as if to hide the tears. “I’m frankly terrified. My carelessness ruined three or four lives, and she didn’t bat an eye. But this? I don’t think upset is the word.”
“I don’t envy you,” he said.
“Who would ever envy me?” Rose asked.
“Would you stop arguing every other question or statement I make? You make being kind a challenge.”
Rose seemed caught off guard by that. She fidgeted, avoiding eye contact. “I didn’t ask you to be kind.”
“I’m giving what I can, all the same. It feels feeble, giving only a listening ear when you might face the unrestrained anger of a diabolist, but I’m giving- what?”
She was laughing, scoffing, even.
“What?” he asked, again.
“That isn’t what worries me. My mother’s unrestrained anger.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m worried she won’t care.”
■
It was four days before he crossed paths with Rose Thorburn again.
The main street of Jacob’s Bell took no more than five minutes to cross. Many of the shops were closed; the ice cream parlor was among them. A hand-drawn sign in the window urged would-be ice cream buyers to support the troops instead.
Aimon worked in a squat building that had been crammed between the now-empty ice cream parlor and a small bank. Young women passed by with regularity, to and from the factories and small shops on the main street.
He quietly considered it a sort of hell.
His wrist was mangled, set firmly in place with a plaster cast. Most people still in town were women and the elderly, and a few odds and ends like Rose Thorburn’s father, who were looking after local businesses and factories. Every curious look he got felt like an admonition, a criticism. It didn’t help that he still had marks on his face and hand from the altercation with Rose.
He’d been bad at numbers as a child, but grueling lessons from the family had remedied that. A chronomancer couldn’t be bad at numbers, of all things.
Still, he’d never loved numbers, and now he lived them. He was forced to write with his left hand, to scrawl down and total the amounts, to note times and dates when he handed letters and parcels over, or when he accepted them.
He wanted to spend power to make the days pass faster, but the family kept a close eye on that sort of thing.
He almost didn’t notice when Rose Thorburn appeared at the entrance to the small, narrow office.
She stepped outside, looked both ways, then returned.
“You aren’t using the Sight?”
“I don’t trust the Sight, not completely,” she said. She handed over an envelope.
“Montreal… the Academy?”
“Yes. I agreed to send a letter when I returned home. I had to go back for court, the Lord of Montreal had words with me… a mess, all-in-all.”
“I admit, I was sweating a fair bit, worrying that you’d let your mother know what we’d done. Jumping at bumps in the night.”
“I said I’d keep silent,” she said, sounding offended. “Few things annoy me more than being called a liar.”
“Already, you’re on the defensive.”
She frowned.
“Was it as bad as you’d feared?”
“Nearly,” she said. She turned around, leaning against the counter with her back to him.
“I’m sorry.”
She glanced over her shoulder, eyebrows raised.
“I am.”
Her expression softened a bit. “Thank you.”
“My sisters still hound me, asking how I got these cuts and scrapes. My aunt keeps suggesting that the light beating was punishment for coming home, when others are still waiting for brothers and sons. I think she’s trying to bait an answer from me. My mother has been suspiciously quiet on the subject.”
“It sounds lively.”
He made a face.
“I’ve been thinking, ever since that night,” Rose said. “One sprawling idea, unfolding.”
“A diabolist, deep in thought. That’s cause for concern.”
“What’s going on elsewhere in the world, it feels like a premonition. Old systems are fixed in place, and they’re starting to wear out. Too many layers, too many patch jobs, too much stress placed on the wrong things.”
“How unexpectedly philosophical of you.”
“Our families are the same way,” she said. “Bound to old systems, degrading, winding down like an unwound clock.”
“I wouldn’t argue with you there.”
“They’re like great, old works of machinery that are coming to pieces. You said your family’s expectations weigh on you?”
He frowned.
“Are we not so close as we were that night?” she asked. She turned to lean over the counter. “Divulging our weaknesses?”
“It gnaws at me,” he admitted, his voice low. “Even my own expectations for myself. Especially my own expectations for myself.”
“What if I suggested a small kind of revolution? A way to respond to those expectations?”
“Revolution?”
“You’re trapped in a box. I can imagine you the clockwork soldier with a ruined arm. Your father would have you marching in step, doing what? The Behaim family hasn’t made any grandiose moves in some time. The entire family pays in, as far as I can tell, but nobody claims the prize.”