“Saving Cassius, of course.” She waved her cigarillo. “Vestiges are, by and large, treated well and given a nearer approximation of life than any semblance in the Strata will ever know. Most of them choose to be vestiges for these very reasons and understand the potential sacrifices they may have to make.”
“What about you, then?” I asked. “You’re not even a vestige, yet you came to me talking about escaping a life of slavery.”
“What are you trying to say, Jack?”
“I guess I’m wondering if this is really about holding Brach accountable.” I watched her take a long drag from her cigarillo. “Or if it’s about revenge for whatever he’s done to you.”
Emaline stood and drew a small cylindrical lantern from her satchel.
She spoke it alight. “Now you,” she said.
I stood, got out my lantern and bow, then spoke my ghost stone to burn, as well.
“Brighten your shine and cast my shadow deeply,” she said.
I pulled my bow across one of my lantern’s brass frame rods in a revelatory stroke; amber light shone, creating a crisp cutout of Emaline across the hardwood floor. She manipulated the light of her own small lantern with a few whispered commands, washing out all her shadow save a storm-grey occlusion at her navel.
“This, Jack,” she said softly, “in case it wasn’t clear, is peering of theintimatesort. Now, hold in your mind everything you know about me and add to it this one fact: that my soul was ready to move on and be received into the warmth of my family.” She paused. “You may now peer into my primal moment.”
Last time I’d done this—with Madam—it hadn’t felt good to discover the person’s secrets. Gave me more empathy for them, but also screwed up my objectivity. This time, though, Iwantedto get closer.
So, I peered.
First, I saw the occlusion—a raw wound torn in the shape of a stick doll wrapped in a tobacco leaf and surrounded by an oblong chain. Inside it were blurred memories just beneath the surface. So, I added the context she’d given me—the kind of context I’d been missing when I peered into Madam’s shadow. When I did, the images cleared a bit . . .
. . . a glimpse of Brach . . .
. . . Emaline rising up from a stone effigy on the Meadows . . .
. . . whispers telling her she’s been rescued . . .
. . . an unnatural binding to a body, no need of threads . . .
. . . Brach holding her little hand, pulling her through Blackgang Chine . . .
I wanted to see it all.
So, I concentrated for a moment on Emaline’s shimmer pattern. Her gleam notes quavered like the trills in Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” I loved that tune, and began to hum the melody I could see in her pattern.
The occlusion lit like an ember touched by the wind, and the images began to get even clearer. But before I could look deeper, she let out more light from her lantern, washing away the part of herself she’d allowed me to see.
“You’ve learned a new trick,” she said.
“It’s just instinct. Helps me see.” I dropped into my chair, set my lantern down, and darkened my stone. “And what I saw . . . you’re Brach’s daughter?”
She sat, too. “He couldn’t bear it when I died, so he broke Precedent Law and snatched my soul from the Meadows before I reached the mountain of fire.”
That went beyond thanaturgic elanothalia—at least from what I’d read so far. “But you’re a thanatist, aren’t you?”
“I am what he made me.” She took a drag, her lips gently pressing around her cigarillo. “I was hit by a bullet intended for my father. When I died, I didn’t transition to a semblance that he could simply bind to a new host—I was a soul ready to move on. So, he swept me from the Meadows and imbued me with thanaturgic abilities while keeping me bound to him in this life.”
“How’s that possible?”
“That is beside the point,” she said. “The point is that my motivation, and more importantly my primal moment, were clearer to you when I allowed you to peer.”
I nodded. “Because of the additional context.”
“It’s called Illumination, Jack.” She took another smoke and blew it out in a slow stream. “To see the truth inside a wound of the soul—especially a primal moment—requires more than light; it requires some knowledge of the soul you’re peering into.”
