Work Text:
I.
This is how it begins:
The telescope is Sokolov’s work, a sleek and shining thing of chrome and glass. Hiram takes her up to see it on a summer night when the sea is calm and the warm, heavy air does not stir the blue Kaldwin banners all around the Tower.
Hiram is well-prepared; he is always well prepared. He has armfuls of chats, maps, diagrams. Esma tilts back her head and watches the stars burn in the sky as he speaks of taking them down and reordering them, catching them in the nets of mathematically-arranged constellations. His ideas are poor and petty. As ever. She will not tell him this.
Esma spins with teetering steps around and around on the Tower balcony, and the firmament spins above them, and on this night she is the brightest star in the sky.
II.
This is how it begins:
Hiram claims that he comes to the conservatory to study and make note of its acoustics. It’s tactful of him. It’s obvious that he is not studying music. The man has a fine mind for symbolism but no love of art for art itself – he has artifice,yes, and subtlety, but no poetry. He fits together like the gears of a clock. If Lydia were to take him apart, she would know exactly what she would find inside and be able to piece him back together undamaged. This bores her to tears. Hiram Burrows is a precise, predictable man.
“He’s an ambitious man,” says one of her sisters, pointedly, from her position on Lydia’s left on the library couch. “You like ambitious men. He’ll be good to you.”
“He won’t be good for me,” Lydia snaps. “I refuse.”
“He’ll be good for the family,” says her other sister, on cue. She reaches across from the right corner of the same couch and folds her hand over Lydia’s own.
They have her, quite efficiently, hemmed in.
III.
This is how it begins:
The condemned man is ripped apart like a paper cutout, and the winter air of Holger Square is showered with millions of blue sparks. They’re fine, brilliant, glowing. Like fireflies. They vanish before they burn anyone. Screams and loudoohs and aahs pepper the snap and sizzle of electricity as the so-called ‘Wall of Light’ dies back down.
Several well-born ladies faint. Waverly does not. She applauds until her hands are numb.
She must speak to Sokolov, immediately, about getting his next prototype installed in the manor. As soon as he’s ironed out the flaws. She has no interest in burning half her inheritance to a cinder.
Following the Empress’s very public condemnation of such technology, Hiram Burrows is the highest-ranking man at the demonstration besides Sokolov himself. Waverly catches him at the fringe of the crowd. He’s smiling. “Impressive, isn’t it?”
“Beautiful, actually,” replies Waverly. “If you like that sort of thing.”
He catches her eye, and nods.
I.
These are the things he tells her:
That she must never wear lily-scented perfume in her hair, ever again, because this was the scent that the Empress favored and this is a new dynasty dawning.
That he has dreamed of her devoured by the plague rats of his own design, and woken up nearly screaming.
That the halls of Dunwall Tower are cold.
They are colder when she leaves in the morning.
That laughter echoes, and he can still hear it when she is gone, and he had not realized how the Tower needed this sound.
That he is little used to desire and less used to the honesty it requires.
That he will see the flower-gardens in the courtyard re-planted come spring, if this is what she desires.
That her daughter will run through them as Emily once did, play hide-and-seek in the shadow of the Tallboys, be strong, be ruthless, be beautiful, be feared.
That she is all these things, but also beloved.
II.
These are the things she does not tell him:
That the stays of her corset are whalebone and the bones of her corset are oldest whalebone, rune-carved, and that he is touching heresy tight as armor against her skin when he undresses her.
That wearing the corset this long is painful.
But taking it off is more painful by far.
That he should not have placed the harpsichord in the middle of the grandest ballroom.
That Corvo Attano smiled at her, once.
That she rehearses her charm in front of the mirror, and the jokes she tells are her sisters’.
That this is the life she was afraid of, but it is hers.
That she is startled that he cannot taste or does not mind the lies in her mouth.
That she is horrifyingly hopeful of what this might mean.
III.
These are the things they almost tell each other:
That the rats are not going away.
That the water level in Rudshore is rising every day, but the last thing either of them thinks to do is drown.
That it is not necessary to apologize for marks.
That a little fire that warms is a petty, predictable, thing.
It is better to blaze and burn.
That money and blood and fear all taste the same on the tongue.
That they do not remember a time without loneliness.
That severity suits the both of them, as does black and red, that there is no greater power than symbolism.
That they know she carries poison in a little vial close to her heart, and they both know who it is for, and it is not for her.
I.
This is why she is painted wearing white:
Because her daughter must remember her as pure.
II.
This is why she is painted wearing white:
Because it makes her shine like an untouchable sun.
III.
This is why she is painted wearing white:
Because they are liars, and they will throw this in the world’s teeth.