CHAPTER 23 #5
The window over the garden has its shutter armor still down; I lift the small interior catch and crack the shutter open a quarter inch and look through the gap.
The garden of the Tessellate is the walled garden at 05:00 of December the twenty-first, the morning of the seat-strip vote that will be 6-2-1 in six hours without Konstantin in the room, the morning of the parley at 10:00 that Julian has granted him.
The garden is moonless; the only light is the small spill from the corridor's Waterford chandelier through the suite's open door behind me. The Tessellate is silent.
I lean my bare forearm against the iron sill.
The iron of the sill is cold. The cold goes through the thin skin of the inside of my forearm and into the bone. I leave my forearm there. I count to ten.
I count what I know.
I know I have been publicly claimed before the council at 11:32 yesterday morning under a Waterford chandelier; the formal register has Vance, Julian Cyrus, claim of bond-pending consort, Quinn, Eliza on it for the next thousand years.
I know the audit-hash chain was presented and Konstantin's seat will be stripped at 11:00 today by a vote of 6-2-1.
I know I have had the three drops; the taste; not the bond.
I know my hematocrit is at 37% by Helene's instrument-pad in the next room that has been recording across the night via the small wrist-band she clipped to my left ankle while I slept; she will tell me at 06:00; I do not need her to tell me.
I know the cold against my forearm is the cold of an island in the cold Atlantic in late December, the cold of weather and place; the cold of being alone has left the room.
I know the cold of the silver brand has changed at my back; it has become the cold of a wound that will heal one day when I tell it to.
I know I am going to stay with him.
I have known it since 22:30 last night when he removed the blindfold before the bite because he wanted me to see him bite me.
I have known it since the slow build at 21:45 when he counted the strokes of his tongue against my clit and gave me the slow build that had been kept from me at twenty-three or twenty-six or any night before.
I have known it since he kissed me in front of the council and the fourth beat of the kiss was mine. I have known it since the boat yesterday when I said then do it.
I have chosen.
I will stay.
The choice is not the warm choice of a woman who has been seduced into a cage.
The choice is the cold clean choice of the auditor who has read the ledger line by line and seen what is in it and decided that the ledger is hers.
The brand is in the ledger. The Sargent oil of Mathilde is in the ledger.
The 1547 silver coin is in the ledger. The 1689 saber and the two silver streaks at the right temple are in the ledger.
The 1812 Lake Erie field hospital and the 1944 Bastogne and the 1948 Polish bond and the seventy-six years of Konstantin's forgery and the cobalt enamel pin of Ines Calder and the brass radiator under the library window at Vance Tower and the lemon tree in the rooftop greenhouse and the 1925 brass alarm clock that keeps its own time are all in the ledger.
The four beats of the kiss in the council chamber are in the ledger.
The three drops on my tongue are in the ledger. The cold of the iron sill against my forearm at 05:00 on Saturday December the twenty-first is in the ledger.
The ledger closes.
I lift my forearm from the iron sill. The skin of the inside of my forearm is cold to the touch of my own fingertips when I press them against it; the cold will fade. I close the shutter armor. I turn from the window.
He is awake.
He has stayed in the bed. The pale gray eyes are open in the dark of the room and they are on me, level, unsurprised, the way mine were on him in the council chamber yesterday morning.
He keeps the question behind his teeth. The question is already answered.
He has read the ledger of my body in twenty-four nights and he knows.
I walk back to the bed. I let the dove-gray silk gown fall from my shoulders to the floor.
I climb onto the linen and lie down beside him.
I put my hand at the brand on the inside of his left forearm — over the cold metal of the wound that has stayed open for four hundred and seventy-seven years — and I leave it there.
He puts his hand at the small of my back.
"Quinn," he says.
"Vance."
"Saturday."
"Konstantin at ten. The vote at eleven."
"Yes."
"I will be in the chamber for the vote."
"Yes."
"Sleep until six."
"Yes."
He closes his eyes. His hand at the small of my back is warm.
The brand under my palm holds the cool of a wound still waiting for its healing.
The Tessellate is silent above us and silent below us.
The smaller Waterford in the corridor outside throws its two hundred small cold-blue prisms onto the white marble of the corridor floor, and the cold-blue prisms walk in the slow rhythm of the candle-flames the staff will extinguish in an hour, and the cold-blue prisms walk over the threshold of the closed door of the corner suite and stop there.
I close my eyes.
I have chosen.