46. Sam Livia
Sam: Livia
Encontrar : With this word you cannot find a thing that does not exist, and you cannot find a thing that is abstract, without substance. But if your search is for a physical thing, encontrar will find it.
—Euphemia Parra, Encantos de palabra (translation mine)
With Draken defeated and the portal destroyed, the Cisneros Society members had nothing to fight for at the Manse.
They abandoned it to the Sor Juana Alliance, leaving only the bloated serpent and the Trenches behind.
Simeon Trench was lying shirtless on the grass, still struggling with the pain of the burns.
(Norbert, perhaps unsurprisingly, wasn’t a skilled medic.) Roy looked at the sad remains of the duel with a mixture of disgust and pity.
“I’ll take the serpent in as evidence,” he said.
“Let the Office of Criminal Enchantment manage the consequences.”
“Is Keel House safe?” I asked Wister anxiously.
“It is. They knew nothing about the portal, only that it was a Sor Juana refuge, so their approach was less ferocious than it might have been. We’ll have some repairs.” She smiled. “Nothing insurmountable. I’m terribly sorry we weren’t here as planned, but I see you’ve managed without us.”
“We have.” Clem glanced at me. “And if we aren’t needed here,” she added, “Sam and I must go to Commonwealth with some urgency. There is a final Cisneros Society member there…”
“Go,” Roy said, clapping her on the shoulder. “Go, but carefully through Salem; there is considerable damage.”
“Will you come to Keel House tomorrow?” Wister asked. “We have much to discuss.”
Clem nodded. “Until tomorrow.”
The drive to Commonwealth was calm. The rampaging creatures that Draken had unleashed upon Salem had left a silence in their wake.
As we rolled through the city, we saw the trail left by the En Micó: a dozen buildings on Essex Street and many more trees turned to solid salt.
Not far from the Lyceum lay the remains of the creature, now a lumpish white pile that had been doused into inertia by the fire brigade.
All ordinary activities had come to a halt, and now that the creatures had been contained, there was an air of relief—even tentative celebration—in the air.
Children were skating along the block of Essex Street that had been turned to salt; clusters of people stood here and there, trading stories of sightings and narrow escapes.
Our animated carriage, drawing almost no attention after the day’s other spectacles, glided smoothly along Bridge Street and continued into Beverly, curving around the seashore where the waves sparkled in the afternoon sun, unperturbed by the events that had shaken Salem.
I watched the gulls tussling with clams, remembering briefly the Carpia that had attacked us with their razor-sharp beaks.
Already they seemed like a thing I’d imagined.
Clementine had been almost silent on our journey, and she grew uncharacteristically agitated as we neared Commonwealth.
She urged the little carriage onward; it hurried obediently past the great mansions, under the shade of elms and copper beeches, doing all it could to carry us swiftly to our destination.
Finally we reached the black iron fence that bordered the campus, and I glanced through the bars at the idyll of greenery and stone, the place where both Clem and I had sought, and failed, to learn enchantment.
The faint resentment I still felt was, I found, softened by the surprising realization that Clem and I had triumphed against the very men who had spurned us from this institution.
I remembered Clem’s words to Rosetta, when she’d returned after a week at Commonwealth and declared how little the place had to teach her. She was right.
The carriage came to a stop outside the crooked house that lodged Throckmorton’s office.
Clementine fairly leaped from the driver’s seat, hurrying now along the path toward the building, and I scurried along beside her.
“The tokens,” she said to me, as we neared the building.
I handed her the tokens I’d been holding and she dropped them into her pocket.
They did nothing for her overall dishevelment, but they did add the requisite whiskers and stature.
She was still quite encrusted with dirt, and her clothing was noticeably rumpled from her encounter with the Drago. I doubted Throckmorton would notice.
As we burst into his office at something like breakneck speed, he looked up from his desk with a startled air. It was probably the fastest anyone had moved in that building for nearly sixty years. “Mr. Quinn?” he said, blinking in astonishment. “Is that…is that a spirit thew?”
“Good afternoon, Professor Throckmorton. It is.”
Throckmorton blinked again. I was beginning to think that he lived in this office, perhaps inhabiting that very chair day in and day out. Livia stood by the window, hands clasped before her, demure as ever, but with a tension that mirrored Clementine’s. “But…” Throckmorton said. “But it’s a man.”
“Precisely,” Clem said with a perfunctory bow. “Just as you say. A man.”
Shaking his head, Throckmorton endeavored to overcome his wonder and move on to yet another perplexity. “But whose thew is it? I know of no enchanter who has a male thew.”
Clem smiled. “He is my thew. Although, to be frank, I dislike the sound of that, and it may be better to say that this spirit, Samuel May, and I are bound to each other.”
“You bound this spirit to yourself? You? So young? But how? And why?” He was so astounded by his own questions that he actually rose several inches from his chair, like a balloon drifting free. Then he collapsed back down in the chair, overcome.
“Ah! Interesting questions.” Clem held up a hand to enumerate her replies.
“How? Because I am not a member of the Cisneros Society”—Throckmorton’s eyes popped at the mention of this august body—“I accomplished it the traditional way. By traveling into the realm. Why? For many reasons, but among them, because Sam knows as well as I do the crimes committed by the Cisneros Society. Now, thanks to Sam, we know how your thew was acquired.”
Throckmorton gaped. The loose tendrils of his white hair fluttered over his scalp. He turned in his chair with effort to look at Livia, and then he returned his gaze to Clementine. He blinked beseechingly. “I don’t understand,” he said piteously. “Crimes? How…how my thew was acquired?”
“Will you persist in the false claim that you ventured into the spirit realm and found her there yourself?”
Throckmorton clasped a hand to his mouth, hoping, perhaps, that this would prevent the truth from spilling out of him. “What are you saying?”
“Sam had the misfortune of being coerced into ‘roping’ thews for the Cisneros Society. Is that not how Livia was found in the spirit realm? Not by you, but by a roper?”
Abruptly, Throckmorton shifted from confused to indignant.
“And what if I did rely on another man to find the spirit? That was no crime. I paid my dues. I designed that damnably ridiculous armor with swans on it. Quite reluctantly, I might add, and the acquisition of a thew was only fair recompense.”
“So one act of coercion justifies another? Justifies two others?” Clem reached into her jacket pocket and withdrew a small lead case about the size of a flask. It was the case Vera had delivered to Keel House.
“What?” Throckmorton rose tremulously to his feet, revealing a pair of tweed pants that were covered with crumbs, no doubt the remnants of his most recent meal. “You ungrateful thief.” His voice was bitter with fury. “I’ve been nothing but kind to you, and this is how you repay me.”
“You have been kind to me,” Clem acknowledged quietly.
“Which is why we have bothered to come here at all. You should know that Sam has just transformed Karl Draken into a serpent.” Throckmorton’s small eyes widened with awe.
“But the fact remains that several years ago, you allowed a young man to travel into the realm on your behalf and find a spirit for you. That spirit was not yours to take. Not only because you didn’t find her yourself, but because her life was stolen by Draken.
She was forced to end her life to serve as a thew. She must be set free.”
The effect upon Throckmorton was severe.
He sank into his chair heavily and pitched forward onto the desk, resting his head in his hands.
We waited in silence for several seconds.
Livia was watching Throckmorton with an unreadable expression.
She did not seem resentful, as I would have been.
She seemed, almost, to feel sorry for him.
“I loathe them,” Throckmorton said wearily.
“I loathed them then, and I loathe them now. Vain, grasping, power-hungry prats. It is all true.” He lifted his head and turned to Livia.
“But they gave me you. You’ve been a such an aid to me, Livia.
You’ve been a patient companion to a querulous old hermit. I’m eternally grateful to you.”
He glanced at Clem. “Take it. Take the shroud,” he said, waving his hand. He did not look defeated. Somehow, despite what he had just confessed and despite the fact that Livia did not need his permission to leave, he looked magnanimous, as if he had just bestowed upon her a great favor.
Clem bowed. “Thank you.” For a moment Livia and Clementine stared at each other across the room, and then Livia burst across the space and enfolded Clementine in her arms.
“There, there,” Livia said. Her voice was soft and soothing. “We are together now at last. You’ve done it, my brave, dear Clem.”
Clem’s eyes, squeezed shut, ran with tears. She buried her face in Livia’s shoulder, and she shuddered with the force of a sob. “I thought I’d never get you back,” she whispered.
“Never mind,” Livia said, as if calming a child. “Never mind now.”
Throckmorton looked at them, flummoxed once more. He looked at me for an explanation. I took pity on the old fool. “In her lifetime, Professor Throckmorton, Livia’s name was Lydia Quinones, or Lydia Quinn. She is Clem’s mother.”