At her back Soter fumed with anger as though Diverus had committed the most terrible violation of etiquette. As if the answer had slammed the door on discussion, Orinda stated, “Your meal will be ready by now,” and walked back through the curtain.
Soter scowled and, shaking his head, went after her, calling, “Orinda, please!”
Left alone on the balcony, Diverus muttered, “No one tells me anything, and then they blame me when I have to guess.” Finally he decided that he wanted something to eat, too, and parted the curtains again.
The mute pinotto continued to perform for the emptiness.
TWO
Leodora awoke. The space around her was dark and sounded fearfully close; for a moment she imagined she was inside one of the undaya cases, transformed into a puppet, locked in with the Coral Man. She reached up with both hands and swept them back and forth through the air. Her fingertips touched nothing and she realized she was in a larger space, a room. The sound of it might have been dull and tight, but it was not a puppet case.
Something was poking at the ribs of her right side. She reached under herself, fingers digging, snaring a length of fine chain. As she tugged at it, the chain made a slithery sound, uncurling against something else metal that was vaguely oval, its surface a symmetrical raised design. Her fingertips couldn’t identify what the design was, but it was nothing she owned, nothing she knew. It forced her to try to remember where she’d been last before awakening here.
She had walked—yes, that was right—walked out onto the decrepit dragon beam of Colemaigne. She’d done it on a dare, as a taunt to Diverus. She must have gone into the bowl itself, but squeezing her memory brought forth only a view of inverted buildings that might have been a reflection in a rain puddle, some odd music that tinkled like glass breaking, a few other disjunct and incoherent images, a few swirls of clarity in a fog bank of forgetfulness and beyond that, nothing. She might be anywhere save in the belly of a ship, for the room wasn’t rocking in the slightest. That wasn’t much, but it was some small knowledge. Diverus and Soter must surely be near.
“How do I choose?” she heard herself ask. The words seemed to die as they left her mouth. She said it aloud again to hear her voice, dry and muffled against the close walls: “How do I choose?”
In the darkness beside her, a different voice answered, “That is a challenge without more information about the choices proposed.”
Leodora sat up. The voice spoke from so near that the speaker must have been right at the edge of the bed. Her eyes strained the darkness for any hint of a shape, a body, a face. Finally she let go of the pendant chain and reached out. Her splayed fingers found nothing.
She wondered for a moment if she might be hearing the voice of the Coral Man. She had heard it, she thought, in dreams, though they seemed so removed now that she couldn’t be certain he’d ever spoken, nor could she recall now anything he had said—just the sound of it, like humming. This voice didn’t resonate in her head. It was separate from her, the voice of someone else, even if that someone else proved to be a phantom.
“How do I . . . get more information?” she asked.
“You could simply get up and leave the room,” the voice suggested.
“Will that work?”
“If it’s not as dark as a crow in a mine everywhere else.”
“Is it that dark everywhere else?”
“Oh, my, yes. Just now it is. It’s night outside, and cloudy, and moonless, so there’s no cast light, either.”
“You’ve been outside.”
The voice didn’t answer.
“How do you know what it’s like outside if you haven’t been outside?” she asked, slightly peeved by its reticence.
“It’s just something I know.”
“Who are you, then?”
“I? I can’t say.”
“Why not?”
“No self-awareness,” the voice explained.
She could not help laughing. “That’s absurd.”
The voice said nothing, and she was sure she had offended the person behind it. “You can speak to me, but you don’t know that you exist? You’re a figment, then. I must have made you up. Otherwise how can you talk to me and have no self-awareness?”
“I’m a counselor. You ask. I counsel.”
“A ghost counsel. You’re certainly not the one who visits me in my sleep.” Upon the last word she lunged and waved both hands in the air this time, all around.