“Miss Ratcliffe,” Gideon says. He does not add ‘Grace’. He does not add ‘I am sorry’, because he has never been a man careless enough to waste words on lies. He acknowledges me the way one acknowledges a painting in a corridor hung there for tradition, not pleasure.
“Mr Harrow,” I return, because we are formalities now. I do not bow. I do not lower my eyes. I do not reach. I hold my own spine like a staff refusing to bend, refusing to show anything for these men.
He places the folio on the table. He remains standing, the table between us like a small white altar.
The man with the tablet taps the glass twice. The one with the folio opens it without sound.
No one mentions the ring. It is on my finger, a thin white gold band with the Brethren’s crest sunk into it like a fingerprint. It looks like nothing, the sort of thing a girl might purchase with her first impulsive wage.
And then he looks at me. Meets my gaze, holds it for a moment and I wonder what it is he sees, what it is this man thinks of me now. I was a prize, a great fucking prize. I would have made his family. I would have made his entire bloodline… but not now. No, now I am a tarnish, something to be scrubbed out, buffed out.
Does he regret this? Does he have even an inkling of compassion for where I have ended up through no fault of my own?
I feel the briefest rush of heat in my throat, ridiculous as a schoolgirl’s blush. For a heartbeat, my body betrays something like relief that he at least has the humanity to look me in the eyes.
“We should proceed,” The man beside him says quietly. “Her overseer has made provision for the room to be used for ten minutes.”
I glance at Mrs Vale who inclines her head a fraction, as if to say see, even your dissolution has a schedule.
Gideon unlatches a pen from the folio. He turns documents without rustle. There are stamps in the leather, embossed and blind, like the bones of some flayed animal. He does not look up at me while he speaks, instead, he addresses the page.
“As you are aware,” he says, “the engagement agreement drawn between the house of Harrow and the house of Ratcliffe included stipulations contingent upon the continuance of the Ratcliffe line’s privileges within the Chapter. With the recent…formalities regarding the headship and the subsequent restructuring by the Senate, those contingencies have failed. The Senate approved dissolution last week. We have obtained all necessary seals.”
He slides a paper forward, as if I have all the time in the world to review it.
“I am required by protocol,” Gideon continues, “to deliver the notice in person.”
He is telling the truth now. The Brethren prefer their cruelties enacted face to face. They call it honour.
“Per clause twelve,” the man with the tablet murmurs, though I don’t hear the words he speaks.
Something in my head starts to scream, like the hot air being forced out of a kettle. It’s growing louder and louder, and all I want to do is squeeze my skull and let it all out.
“We will require the return of tokens,” Gideon says. His eyes fall to my left hand.
I slide the ring from my finger by feel alone, unable to look at it as it moves and when the cool band meets the knuckle there is a faint suction, as if my skin had been holding its breath.
He does not receive it from me. He nods to the man with the folio, who steps forward with a small velvet tray, black as a hole, and I place the ring on it. The sound it makes, a small metal kiss, is enough to make my throat burn.
To my right, Mrs Vale’s eyes glitter a fraction. I imagine what she will write afterward: Subject surrendered token without incident.
“There is one signature required,” Gideon says, after a beat. He slides the pen toward me and turns the page with two fingers, as if it might burn him. “An acknowledgment that you’ve received notice. It binds you to nothing. It is a formality for the registry.”
It binds me to nothing.He says it like a kindness. God, it’s so hard not to sneer, not to show on my face all the contempt I feel in this moment.
I step to the table, and the three of them move almost imperceptibly, recalibrating the geometry of space so that nothing of them touches me. I bend over the paper. It is full of deliberate language, curlicued and chaste. Somewhere on it is my name, printed in legal type so neat it almost looks like affection. The signature line is naked. I take up the pen and scrawl my name as quickly as I can.
As I set down the pen, I ensure my hand doesn’t shake. It is the rest of me that trembles, a shiver that is purely interior, like something in the wall’s wiring gone amiss.
Gideon inclines his head. “Thank you,” he says, as one thanks a functionary who has handed back a mislaid piece of rubbish. His eyes flick again to my throat; no, not to my throat, to the hollow above my collarbones.
And then as quickly as he appeared, he turns on his heels and exits. Job done. Mission accomplished.
The worst of men, I once thought, were the ones who enjoyed cruelty.
Today, I think I have been corrected. The worst of men are indifferent to it. They are not wolves. They are the ones who stand placidly to the side and allow the violence to occur, and then they reap the benefits, picking off the juiciest cuts of meat left on the bodies still slowly dying.
I expected…did I expect anything? A small excuse to linger? The grace of a second look? In the nights when sleep refuses to come, I have entertained the romance of my own pity: that he might be compelled by something as undignified as affection to make a small rebellion on my behalf. The Brethren speak of sacrifice; I had in my unguarded moments entertained the fantasy of a man breaking one small twig off the great tree of their law for me.
