A Far Better Thing by H. G. Parry

Author:H. G. Parry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

* * *

THORNE, IT transpired, was working that night at one of the theatres in Montmartre, and after an hour or so had to go back upstairs to ready himself to go. Rosemary walked me to the door.

“So,” I said, conversationally. “The two of you? Really? For how long?”

Rosemary grinned. In that moment, with her grey-streaked hair, crooked teeth, and worn face, I knew she felt more beautiful than her changeling could ever be. “Ages. Years. Since you first spoke to him, and he came back to Paris. He didn’t mention it when he saw you last?”

“We aren’t really on the kinds of terms where we discuss our love affairs.”

“You English and your discretion. He probably didn’t give me a second thought, actually, once I was no longer in front of him. There’s something missing in Addison at times. Probably the same thing that’s broken in us.”

“What is that, do you think?”

She shrugged. “If you’d asked me that a few years ago, I would have said a heart. But perhaps that’s not fair to any of us. Addison is lacking a number of internal organs, thanks to his free-handed trading with goblins, but I don’t think a heart is among them. And whatever you feel for Lucie Manette, which I don’t mind telling you certainly sounds at least bent if not broken, I’d never question that what you felt for Ivy was love.”

The bluntness was refreshing. It was how we’d all talked in the Realm: it went as well with the First Language as formality and sarcasm did with English or, these days, revolutionary heat did with French. “You told me you didn’t know how to love.”

“I didn’t, then.”

“And now?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes I think perhaps I do. At other times I know it’s only an act of revenge.”

“Perhaps for us, love is always an act of revenge.”

“Then they win again. They don’t want us to love. We need a rebellion they can’t win, Memory.”

“A rebellion?” I laughed. “Forgive me, but I would be quite content with revenge. I have no faith in rebellions—not the one out there, and certainly not against fairykind. Frankly, I’m amazed that you do.”

“You haven’t been here very long, Memory, and you weren’t here on Bastille Day. I think it might be possible for France to overthrow their oppressors, yes. And if it can happen here…”

It couldn’t happen here, and it certainly couldn’t happen in the Realm, but I wasn’t quite mean-spirited enough to say so. Besides, there was no argument of despair I could make that she didn’t know perfectly well, and had somehow, enviably, managed not to hear.

“You say you’re fairly enmeshed in the Revolution,” I said instead. “You must have some sway with the new government.”

“Some,” she acknowledged. “Not as much as I once did. If you’re asking whether I have any influence over Darnay’s captivity, the answer is no. I’m not that well-regarded. And if I did try to use what influence I have, I suspect Shadow would be down on me so fast I’d never write another pamphlet.

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