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“Member-Elect Crow,” President Wintersea did not stand but she did look up at him as he came through the door into her office. He tried not to gaze like an idiot around the place, while his heart beat loud enough in his chest to be heard by the shoe shiner on the street he’d briefly tossed a few coins at before coming into the building.
“President,” he bowed his head at her.
“Please,” she gestured at a pair of armchairs to his left, finally standing. “Let us sit.”
She was still robed in the vestments of her office, her wig immaculate, gold chain gleaming white makeup striking, making it clear who she was. That she was more than who she had been prior to her election. She was Wintersea. She was the Republic personified, and all the other things Corvus hoped to believe about himself one day. As Chancellor of Great Wolfacre, he had also worn robes and a chain, but a far lesser one, of course. She represented four times what he did.
He sat, back straight, arms sitting neatly at his sides. The boyish habits of fiddling with the edges of his suit jacket or with his hands had been long-trained out of him, but the urge still stirred in him now.
“I wanted to congratulate you on your success in this most recent election,” she said. “There is great hope for you in this new stage of your career.”
President Wintersea was likely much younger than him, but he had been a latecomer into federal politics, even if he had been successful at the state level. He tried not to dwell on the reasons that every poll taken up until this election had suggested that he would lose outright, or that the eight years he had spent as Chancellor has seen him cling to his seat each and every time. The main reason was buried and rotting in the ground, and he could only hope she would remain there for a great deal longer.
“Thank you,” he said, nodding again. “It is a great honour to be invited by you, ma’am.”
“Yes,” she said. “And I wished to take this opportunity to congratulate you also on the success of your family, particularly your children.”
He smiled tightly, “My boys are doing very well, thank you.”
“I’m sure they are,” she was not smiling. “But that was not to whom I referred.”
His breathing shallowed, “I beg your pardon?”
“Granted,” her mouth twitched ever so slightly. “Crow, tell me about what you know about this realm in which we all live?”
“There are… four states,” he said, feeling slow, and stupid. Like he was a schoolboy being pranked by his peers, and not about to be one of the most powerful people in the republic. “All of which are part of the Wintersea Republic.”
“Wrong,” she said. “Although, I would forgive you for not being aware. People of your grandmother’s generation may well know, but for at least eighty years, it’s been quite need-to-know in regards to the Free State?”
“President Wintersea,” he started. “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but is this some kind of jest?”
“No,” she said, voice like a stone. “Not at all. East of the Harrow Strait lies the fifth state. The Free State. Our enemy. And current home of your daughter, the Wundersmith Morrigan Crow.”
“Ma’am,” he coughed. “My daughter is dead. She died on Eventide, as we all expected. I saw her body myself. I-“ he wanted to stand, and charge out. But this was President Wintersea, and he was not an idiot. Perhaps this was some hazing ritual to see if he was able to handle himself in difficult social situations? Regardless, he didn’t much like it. “Her memory, I will not take the disrespect upon-“
“As if you ever respected the girl when she lived in your house,” she said softly. “Believe me or not, it is true regardless that your daughter resides in the Free State with her guardian Jupiter North, who took her from Crow Manor on Eventide.”
He thought back to that night. It existed to him as a collection of inevitable facts. One last dinner with Morrigan. Ivy’s less than advisable pregnancy announcement. An argument. Morrigan’s death, hours earlier than it was supposed to be. Her small body, made smaller as a corpse. She had been so light, when he had taken her from the footman’s arms to lie her on her own bed. His last service to her mother.
And a guest. That strange man, who had appeared, what, five minutes before she died? He had had the most ridiculous hair. It was an odd thing to recall from the five minutes his daughter died but memory was a strange thing, he supposed. He didn’t remember what his brother had sounded like, or looked like, outside of his portrait in his mother’s favourite room, but he remembered them eating steak and kidney pie together with gravy a week before he had died.
What had his name been? He remembered that he had kissed him loudly on both cheeks, but not the man’s name, although he was sure that he had introduced himself… and said that he was his daughter’s patron.
“I understand, Crow, that this has been distressing. You may be glad to hear that your daughter is doing well,” President Wintersea’s voice was soothing, in the way that venom numbed a body before it went for the kill. “It is my own hope that the two of you will be reunited soon.”
She went on to tell him about some summit which he would surely regret not listening to in days from now, but his brain had stopped working. It had jammed like a typewriter and he wondered if he hit it off a wall enough times that it might restart again.
“Ivy, dear,” his wife appeared a second after he said her name. So beautiful. So obedient. Not a single wrinkle on her face, even after all these years, her hair still vibrant as their sons’.
“What is it, darling?” she asked, pecking him on the mouth, her hands at his hips already. He handed his briefcase off to Left, and went with his wife to their private parlour, up the stairs.
“What is it, Corvie?” she asked again. “You’re worrying me.”
He pressed his hands to his mouth, not sure how to say it as he sank onto one of the settees, “Morrigan didn’t die.”
“What?” The maid hadn’t come by with their tea yet. At least nothing had been dropped. Ivy sank down next to him, rubbing his shoulders. “Darling? What do you mean?”
He shook his head, “She didn’t die. It was… a trick or something. She’s been alive this whole time.”
“Where?”
He paused. The Free State was still a matter of need-to-know. Ivy had never needed to know anything in her life except how to laugh like a bell, and be as beautiful as was physically possible. He was fine keeping it like that, “Do you remember that man?”
“How could I forget?” she whined. “He ruined my pregnancy announcement. Guntram and Wolfram didn’t deserve that disrespect.”
“Of course not,” he said. “They said… they told me, that he took Morrigan.”
“Corvus,” she said. “We saw her body. All of us did.”
“That’s the part I don’t understand,” he said. “But this is from a source that it would be, frankly treasonous to question, darling. I have to believe it.”
“I-” she bit her lip, pushing his hair away from his face. He needed to get Right to book a barber’s appointment for himself. “Well. If you trust the source, I suppose we must believe it. What will we tell the boys?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know if we’ll tell them yet. It might come to nothing.” His sons didn’t even know they had a half-sister, living or dead. They had all agreed to never mention her name ever again, and he was lucky enough that it was considered rude to bring up deceased Cursed Children in Great Wolfacre. In Southlight, he’d heard of them being brought up every week until their whole families died. The indignity of such an idea disgusted him. “I wanted to tell you first.”
“Will you tell your mother?” she asked, moving away from him slightly. He knew that his wife was just waiting for his mother to die so that she could claim her “rightful” place as matron of the household, or whatever it was that women feuded over, like the colour to make the napkins at dinner, or the viscosity of the gravy. As long as there were no parsnips involved, he had no complaints. He hadn’t eaten a single one since Eventide besides.
“I think so,” he said, rising. “Best to get it over with, don’t you think?”
She tried to smile as he left, but the word “try” was very much operational there.
“Mother, may I to speak with you?”
Ornella Crow turned away from the portrait of his eleven year old daughter. He did not look at it. He did not think about how she might look now. Was she more like her mother, or like him?
“Speak.”
“Morrigan isn’t dead,” he said simply. “She didn’t die on Eventide.”
“Oh,” she said. He wondered, in the back of his head, if this would be the thing that finally did her in. And then what she had left him in the will. It better have included the house. The fact that the deed to Crow Manor wasn’t in his name bothered him more than he was willing to admit to.
“Well?” he said, his hands ripping through his hair. “Mother, my daughter isn’t dead and all you can say is “oh”?”
“It’s,” she turned away from him, her shoulders hunching. “A big surprise. Who told you this?”
“President Wintersea herself.”
“What else did she say? Where is she, Corvus?” Something didn’t ring quite right in his head. In his line of work, he was used to half-truths and outright lies. But his mother was his mother before anything else, and she was less silly than his wife, at least.
“Did you-“ he cut himself off. Plausible deniability was better than the truth. He didn’t need to know outright what she did or didn’t know. He needed to be able to swear in a court of law that she had not told him that his daughter had fled to their enemy nation. “It’s a secret, Mother. Only myself and Ivy know.”
“And President Wintersea,” she said. “And Morrigan herself.”
“And them,” he snapped, turning on his heel before he had to see his daughter’s face, immortalised in oil on the last day he’d seen her alive, again.
“Member-Elect Crow,” a man with feathery brown hair and a scar through one of his eyebrows shook his hand. “Mr Jones. Pleased to meet you.”
“You as well,” he said, hoping that his hands weren’t sweating. “With whom do you work?”
“I’m Mr Squall’s assistant,” Mr Jones explained. “I’m here as his representative for this.”
“He couldn’t make it?” his eyebrows shot up.
“Unfortunately, my employer has, quite fragile health,” he said, releasing him from the handshake. “A shame, I must say. Today is quite exciting, isn’t it? Such a reunion to be made.”
Corvus couldn’t help glancing at him, wondering if the panic was showing in his face, “I beg your pardon?”
“Between our nations,” he clarified. “Of course. What else could I mean?”
“Indeed,” he said, swallowing thickly. Was there a lot more saliva in his mouth than usual or was he just focusing on all the wrong things today. “Excuse me.” He pushed past him, ready to get to the back of the hall, as far out of sight as possible. Away from everyone who might know him. Away from her.
“Of course,” Mr Jones said, his eyes flashing cheerfully. “I say, are you feeling quite well, sir?”
“Perfectly,” he clenched his jaw, hearing the gong reverberate through the hall, killing his plans in the cradle. “Quite well.”