Under A Velvet Cloak (24 page)

“Did it offer any hint? You were in it for a moment; maybe there’s something.”

“No just a sort of nonphysical urgency. A lot of feeling, but I can’t say what kind. Raw emotion.”

“Like chaos, before the fragmentation into assorted aspects. The ten children.”

“Perhaps. Whatever is left to Nox.”

“Secrets!” Molly exclaimed. “That’s what Night has.”

“Secrets,” Kerena repeated thoughtfully. “Maybe that’s it. But what secrets?”

“Your Seeing. Can you use that?”

“Not on something that intangible.”

“On the Night Swirl. It’s still there.”

Kerena looked. “Try Seeing the swirl,” she said, intrigued. “What have I to lose?”

“You may lose it if you don’t.”

Kerena approached the swirl. She extended her Seeing, and stepped into it again.

Again the energy of it suffused her being. Again she found herself beyond it. But this time she had a notion.

“Secrets,” she agreed. “You were right. To merge with it I must learn to control secrets. To expose those it wants to hide, and hide those it wants to reveal.”

“What are those?” Molly asked, excited.

Kerena smiled ruefully. “I don’t know. They are secret.”

Molly laughed. “Is this thing teasing you?”

“Not intentionally. I simply don’t yet understand its nature well enough to merge with it.”

“I think we need to
go
home and think for a while.”

“That does seem best.”

They returned to the warren. This time decades had not passed there; Kerena had gone to the past and returned to the present, and the present remained the present. She was relieved.

She had some sessions with Morely, and talked with Vanja. “Secrets?” the vampire asked. “That makes sense. Our existence is mostly secret, necessarily.”

“But I haven’t fathomed what secrets to expose or hide.”

“Well, let’s reason it out. What’s the most sensitive secret a girl can have?”

“News of a crime?”

“People steal bread all the time without shame. But they hide their sexual activity. We vampires don’t, but we’re different. Real people hate to have it exposed.”

“People hate to have their toilet activities exposed too,” Kerena said. “But everyone knows they perform them.”

“Embarrassment, literally. You sit on the pot, you don’t want tourists peeking at your effort. But that’s not optional; you have to
do
it sometime. Sex is optional, so can be canceled if the occasion is not private enough. That makes it more sensitive; they don’t provide public facilities for sex, apart from the brothels.”

“Still, just about everyone does it, and since normally two do it together, it can’t be entirely secret.”

“I suppose not,” Vanja agreed. “That leaves you without a secret. Maybe the library could help.”

Kerena brightened. “I’ll try it.”

She went to the library, and this time used her Seeing to orient on the appropriate scroll. She found it-and was baffled again. Had Night balked her once more?

The scroll she found had no text, just three pictures. A coin. A stage. A group of people.

“What does it mean?” Vanja asked.

“I wish I knew! None of these seem exactly secret. Coins are used for money, a stage is used for a public address, and people are everywhere. Yet my Seeing suggests this is the hint I need.”

They discussed it with Morely. “An audience,” he said. “That’s what the people are. An audience for whoever is on the stage. And the coin is what the people pay to hear the speaker. He must be an entertainer.”

“But what is secret about that?” Kerena asked.

“Nothing. It’s a public event.”

Still, it seemed to be progress, of a sort.

“Maybe we should put on a show,” Vanja said. “I always like those. I’d love to be a star.”

“What can you do?” Morely asked. “Can you sing or dance? Tell jokes?”

“Not well. I suppose I’d have to demonstrate how seductive I can be. And I’d be ashamed to
do
that in public. So it’s a bad idea.”

“I love to see you seductive,” Morely said. “Why shouldn’t the world appreciate it as well?”

“The world might call me a whore.”

“What’s wrong with being a whore?” Molly demanded. She remained with Kerena, but hadn’t participated in the dialogue until now. “I was a
good
whore. Rena was a better one.”

Morely laughed.
“Good
question. Men value whores for sex, but feel constrained to disparage them at other times. It’s sheer hypocrisy, but widespread.”

Kerena was intrigued. “Why
do
men condemn what they like best?”

“It’s religious. Sex is one of our strongest drives, but often socially condemned. So we have to have it, but also have to deny it. To pretend that we don’t really desire what we desire. We must love and hate women for it.”

“I want to be loved, not hated,” Vanja said.

“You are,” Morely said.

“Can that be the key?” Kerena asked. “Sex is most desired, but also most feared if it is exposed? Surely there are more secrets concerning sex than anything else.”

“That can explain the stage and audience,” Vanja said. “But not the coin. It can pay for sex, or for a show, but there’s not much shame in that; anything can be bought.”

“A coin is also an agent of chance,” Morely said. “When it is flipped. It spins in air and where it stops is theoretically unknown.” He produced a Roman coin, one of those left over from the days of Roman occupation of

Britain, and flipped it. It landed on the floor, bounced, and came to rest before Kerena.

“Chance,” Kerena said, staring at the coin. “What’s the connection between Night and Chance?”

“A strong one, I suspect. If Night shrouds the unknown, nothing is more unknown than the outcome of pure chance.”

“So the coin could be the symbol of chance. But how does that relate to a performance on a stage for an audience?”

“Oh, it can relate,” he said. “When there is a performance, no one can be sure ahead what the reaction will be. They may love it or hate it, for indecipherable reason.”

“I wouldn’t dare risk the stage,” Vanja said, “if my success or failure depended on the flip of a coin. I’d be mortified by a loss.”

Hell had no fury like that of a woman scorned, Jolie remembered. That thought might be anachronistic here, but related. No woman wanted to be rejected or deemed to be worthless.

“Yet the coin is mindless,” Morely said. “It has no values. You shouldn’t care.”

“I
do
care. Horribly.”

“You’re cute when you’re nervous.” He caught hold of her and began stroking her. She resisted a moment, then participated, as there was no doubt of his interest and she was a lusty vampire.

Kerena had been flirting with a realization. Now that she was alone, in a manner, she concentrated. Sex-a stage-audience reaction-chance- Night-secrecy. How did it all fit together?

She picked up the coin. One side had the head of a bygone Roman emperor, the other the designation of its amount. Heads and tails. A win or a loss.

“Let’s find a stage and an audience,” Molly said.

“Somewhere,” Kerena agreed.

She went to the central hall of the warren, where there was a stage. Several vampires were there, conversing between sexual efforts. They glanced up as she entered.

She mounted the stage. Then, acting on a prompting by her Seeing, she flipped the coin high in the air. It spun, trying to scintillate though there was no significant light here; the vampire vision could see it well in the dark. It seemed to slow, hanging in the air, turning in a leisurely manner. Time was pausing.

Kerena started an impromptu performance: a sexual dance. She moved her body sensuously, spreading her arms in seeming invitation, quivering enough to make her breasts ripple. She turned, making her hair fling out, showing her bottom. She was trying to make herself desirable to this spot audience. If the coin landed heads, perhaps she would succeed and be thrilled. If it landed tails, she might fail, and be chagrined. Suddenly it was important that she win, proving herself to be lovely and worthy. It would be awful if she lost; she would want to die. Yet her chances were even. It depended on the unpredictable coin. Her life depended on its uncaring chance.

The coin descended, turning. Perhaps it already knew which way it was going to land, carelessly sealing her fate one way or the other. Everything depended on it. If it landed right, she would be a brilliant success, warmly applauded. If it landed wrong, she would have to flee the stage, humiliated. Chance.

To merge with Night she needed to fathom a secret Night was trying to hide, and hide one Night wanted to expose. To be a public success, or a private failure. The coin was random, but Night was not; it controlled its secrets.

Yet they were two sides of the same coin. Heads and tails, publicity and privacy, success and failure, joy and chagrin, all and nothing. They existed together, opposite aspects of the same concepts.

It wasn’t sex that powered human emotion, or accomplishment. It was feeling. Success was to be loved by others; failure was to be scorned. Yet to achieve applause, a person had to risk condemnation. The verdict of chance.

The coin stopped in the air. Kerena stepped forward and caught it in her hand, not looking at it. She had conquered chance, by realizing that secrecy was the necessary underside of the human drive for recognition. She had fathomed what Night had tried to hide, and now she would hide whatever she chose.

She stood still, spreading her arms. “Come to me,” she murmured, expanding not merely her Seeing but her discovered power.

The swirl of amorphous energy came, attracted from far away as to a magnet. It overlapped her body, merging with her. This time there was no disorientation. She felt its power, and controlled it. She was Home.

She had become Nox, the Incarnation of Night, mistress of secrecy.

But it was soon apparent that though she had become the Incarnation of Night, she was not nearly close to being mistress of the Office. The secrets were now open to her, but there were so many that she simply could not keep track, or grasp the larger picture. It wasn’t just those of people, but those of the other Incarnations she was now able to fathom: Exactly what made souls be judged
good
or evil, the province of Thanatos. The nuances and paradoxes of time that Chronos had to manage, as he made his way backwards. He started with legions of selves, one for each timeline, which merged as he progressed; when he finally reached the beginning, all would be one. The devious interactions of the myriad threads of Fate. The ultimate causes and futility of War. The living processes of Nature. All those folk remedies she had studied with Morely were but the shadow of natural processes no person comprehended. Indeed, most of them should never be opened to mankind, lest he use them to exploit nature into destruction.

“I am Nox,” she told Morely and Vanja. “But the scope is huge. I feel like a bird riding the back of a heedless ox. How do I make it mind?”

“You can’t simply fathom and use any secret you need?” Vanja asked.

“I can
do
that. But now I am aware of the larger picture. Every action I take as Nox has consequences, like a ripple spreading out from a pebble flipped into a lake. Those consequences have consequences, and may lead to things I
do
not wish to be responsible for. So I dare not do anything.”

Morely nodded. “You have too much power, too quickly. You need time to grow into it. Fortunately you will have the time; you can take centuries to study the situation.”

“I don’t even know what to study. I need a guideline before I can start.”

“Maybe you should catalogue your information, as I catalogued magic folk remedies.”

“You have a better memory than I, and my challenge is far greater. There are more secrets than folk remedies.” How vastly she was understating the case!

“The other Incarnations must have similar problems,” Morely said. “We should consider how they handle them.”

“They have powerful tools,” Kerena said. “Death has the Scythe and Mortis the Death-Horse. Time has the Hourglass. War has the Red Sword.”

“And it seems Fate has the Tapestry of the Threads of Life,” he agreed. “Which she may weave in the form of a spider. The others surely have equivalent tools. How did they come by those dread symbols of their Offices?”

Kerena was taken _aback. _”Why, I’m not sure. They just seem to be there.”

“I saw,” Molly said. “The humans made them when they became Incarnations, or soon thereafter. I think Death converted an ordinary horse. I think they had some leftover chaos substance.”

“That is surely potent stuff,” Morely said.

“It is,” Kerena agreed. “It
adapted
Lilah from a ghost to a demoness. It would account for the powers of those symbols, as you call them.”

“Yes. They would be defined by the first Office holders, then passed along to their successors,” he agreed. “Or their predecessors, in the case of Chronos. So perhaps you should develop a similar symbol.”

“I should,” Kerena agreed, liking the notion. “But what?”

“The cloak, of course,” Vanja said. “You have been using its powers all along.”

“Those weren’t really its powers,” Kerena reminded her. “I only thought they were, deceived by the Fey.”

“Yes, they are your powers. You imbued the cloak with them. Now you can do it more. Make it the Nox Symbol.”

That was appealing. “Should I?”

“Yes,” Molly said. “Symbols are classy.”

“I agree,” Morely said. “I would be proud to see my old cloak become eternal.”

“I’ll
do
it.” She brought out the cloak, and put it on. She found surrounding left-over chaos stuff, and imbued the cloak with it. The old cloth developed a sparkle, then a deep shadow.

“The stars!” Vanja exclaimed. “It shows the stars!”

Indeed it did. The chaos element made the cloak’s surface fade out, and it showed the scintillating sky of night, with the stars as they were, slowly moving in their courses. Then the moon appeared, a crescent, followed by the first brightening of dawn.

“Enough,” Morely said. “Don’t burn us.”