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freuleinanna · 1 year

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trials (and errors)

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 AO3

Chapter 4: Liars

A perfect lie does not exist. Untether it from truth, and it's a mere fantasy. Weave truth into it, and it becomes a commemoration, for concealment is just an act of protection, and protection, well, is just an act of love.

Can you imagine? The chapter I started the whole thing for? Ugh. Welcome to the circus, aka the courtroom angst, aka Sturrock hardly dealing with those two and those two hardly dealing with each other

The hearing itself is a blur.

If they were to compare memories, both Marisa and Asriel would probably agree that what they remember most is endless bureaucratic gibberish and a whole lot of pretentious words flying about. Illicit affair this, conspiracy to murder that. Asriel powers through the whole thing silently agreeing to at least consider respecting the Authority should he miraculously manifest himself and strike down the bunch of dim-witted black-robed idiots blabbering about marriage institutions and the worth of a human life. Beside him, Stelmaria is unmoving, her eyes glide from one speaker to another, thoughts impenetrable behind the icy facade. Both of them exude the feeling of having much better and more important things to do with their time, which isn’t wrong. Both of them are fully focused on not looking at the opposite side of the hall where Marisa and her daemon are.

They climb their respective stands. They aren’t allowed to be seated. After all, it is a trial, and they are supposed to be defending themselves. Asriel has a feeling that neither him nor Marisa are interested in defense, simply wanting things to be over.

Stabbing each other in the process is just an extra perk.

‘State your name, please,’ Cardinal Sturrock is slumping in his direction. Asriel opens his mouth and doesn’t shut up out of spite listing his name, status, estates, and full heritage up to the seventh generation even when he’s interrupted – twice. His voice thunders through the room. People wince.

‘You did ask, Your Eminence,’ he shrugs coldly.

‘Thank you, Lord Belacqua,’ comes the most thankless tone possible.

Marisa’s answer, against his, is short and dry.

‘Marisa Coulter, née Delamare.’

With the precision of French vowels on née. Whether it’s pride or emotions that make her resort to the accent, or a simple habit of pronouncing it right, Asriel doesn’t really know. I love you, sea creature. He doesn’t look, but his teeth hurt from clenching.

And then it becomes very hard not to look because questions come one after another, and it’s their shared history that gets spilled on the floor.

‘Could you remind the honorable judges of the circumstances of your meeting?’

He stifles a groan. The only thing stopping him from suggesting the honorable judges to shove their honorable questions up their honorable asses is Stelmaria’s tail around his legs. She could have crushed the pathetic daemon-insects between her paws if she wanted, but she is playing impassive for his sake. Asriel burrows his fists deeper into his pockets and clears his throat.

‘It was a social event, I don’t remember which. Both Mrs. Coulter and I were present.’

Well, he made the whole board frown. Again. What, did they expect him to pour out every detail? Who cares, let’s cut right to the chase. They met, they slept together, they had a child, he killed her husband – that’s what everyone wants to discuss anyway. Dancing around the subject just takes the meaning out of it.

‘And how old were you?’

‘Twenty.’

‘And Mrs. Coulter?’

‘Why don’t you ask Mrs. Coulter herself?’ he snaps, patience is leaking out of him despite the decision to stick to his best behavior. Damn his non-existent tolerance for stupidity.

‘It is your account of the events, Lord Belacqua. We will address Mrs. Coulter when needed.’

Speaking of her like she isn’t in the room. The spot of blue color is very still in the corner of his vision as Asriel makes an effort to look straight in the Cardinal’s bloated face. He can’t lick Marisa’s taste off his lips. It’s distracting. Stelmaria moves her head in a warning: focus.

‘I believe, Mrs. Coulter was nineteen at a time.’

‘And is it correct that your affair started a year after that?’

To be fair, Asriel said so himself during one of the previous hearings because it was easier then, one on one with Sturrock and his henchmen. He said a lot of things. Now, however, with Marisa standing witness, the lies become palpable like rough stitches in the air. Seeing them, knowing them, how could anyone believe they lasted a whole year?

The truth is, the affair had started immediately. It’s just that the sex came well after, but she cheated on her husband the moment their hands met.

They would meet at the library. She would pretend to not notice Asriel’s presence until the last minute, but always made sure to wear the most flattering dresses. He would pretend he visited the dusty archives for any serious, adult reason except spending a day with Marisa.

She would smile politely as she saw him and say, ‘Lord Asriel. Here again?’ – in a voice that fit a genderless servant, not a woman of flesh and blood, but her eyes would spark with delight. Sometimes, he would approach to read over her shoulder, hardly seeing the lines from being struck on the head with the scent of perfume mixed into that of her skin.

She would turn her face half-round to ask, ‘I wonder, what do you make of the Bermundsen’s last paper on potential use of natural events, Aurora lights in particular, as a source of renewable anbaric energy?’

He would breathe ‘I think Bermundsen is flying pitifully low’ down her neck.

They would sit across from each other, shamelessly making love with their words and ideas, innocent to anyone who could see.

At times, she would make for the stepladder to take another book. He would take it for her, reaching over her head, almost pressing her into the shelf in the process. Their eyes would meet, and there would be that look in hers, all at once calculating and genuinely content, impossible to decipher all the way through. Not daring to allow their fingers touch over a book, they would pause. In the air, an instant collapse waiting to be released. They would both stand, undoubtedly imprinting one another in memory to imagine late at night for their own raw, secret pleasure. Adding a throbbing sensuality to that image on purpose.

At the end of the day, they both knew exactly what they were doing.

It’s a force Asriel, with his scientific mind, cannot comprehend or break down into a handful of co-applying laws physics has to offer. Something possesses him to take a look, something not entirely lost, that’s still trying to live and breathe despite his best efforts.

Marisa appears withdrawn. Empty, like she isn’t there at all. The harmony of deep blue with the gold of her daemon would be fitting to a saint, except that wearing a color besides black only paints her more of a sinner. Deep within, Asriel is admiring the defiance. His admiration is of dark, self-torturing quality.

Under a delicate hand, the golden monkey seems to have lost all life. Therein lies the Marisa effect.

‘Lord Belacqua?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Is it correct that your affair started a year after you and Mrs. Coulter had met?’

‘Yes. Yes, that is correct.’

***

Mrs. Coulter, he keeps saying.

I briefly collaborated with Mrs. Coulter on one of my branching research, she was providing theological base to…

When Mrs. Coulter and I had become involved…

… there was no paper correspondence, Mrs. Coulter insisted…

…Mrs. Coulter…

Some other woman she must be, that Mrs. Coulter, because Marisa doesn’t recognize herself in what Asriel is saying. The person he talks at such lengths about sounds rational and cold, plotting her way through the affair down to every breath she takes, and not at all in love. She remembers being in love. How does one pick memories clean off the carcass of that giant dead thing?

Bones are there, alright, but Asriel is lying. Tiny details get cloaked sometimes, and sometimes grand ones. Marisa isn’t fool enough to think it a protection, instead pulling herself together against what it really is. An erasure, utter and complete: of her, of what they were. Matter-of-factness, with which Asriel answers the questions, ultimately retelling the story in a way a dust-dry librarian would retell the plot of an exciting novel, is an act of killing. She is reduced to an outline, a character – someone unimportant, and only vaguely familiar.

A stranger, in a word. A stranger whose name he pretends to have never tasted on his tongue in moments of disarmed tenderness.

He said he wouldn’t spare her. Who knew it was to be like this.

Despite the indignation it pokes alive, his flow of immaculate half-truths has another effect, an unexpected one. They carve Mrs. Coulter into existence out of thin air, and the more Asriel speaks, the more real she becomes, allowing Marisa to dissolve in the image. Soothing her until she enters a state of tranquil trance, her tyranny buried into the golden fur. How easy it is to pretend uninvolved. It allows her some control – maimed, disfigured, but control still.

So she listens, and doesn’t object. Her hatred, now cool and steady as opposed to the fiery eruption before, listens too. Grasped by curiosity almost unhealthy, it wonders how much less emotional Asriel can make the whole thing sound.

And then, suddenly, it’s her turn.

And then, suddenly, it’s a full-blown interrogation.

Air grows thicker, as if molecules knit themselves closer together with every pair of disapproving eyes landing on Marisa. She tenses.

‘Mrs. Coulter, do you agree with Lord Belacqua’s account?’

Down to the detail, except where he left out that we actually had hearts, she says, yet the words transform in her mouth and leave it as a plain, ‘Yes.’

‘Very well,’ Sturrock locks his ring-laden fingers, leaning over them and resembling at that moment a fat hawk on the search for a prey. ‘Could you say for how long you had been married to Edward Coulter prior to meeting Lord Belacqua?’

‘Six or seven months.’

‘Are you not sure?’ the hawk frowns.

‘Seven,’ Marisa corrects, even though it’s not true, because the whispers start swishing and she needs some merit. Yes, she was still very freshly a wife when she broke all her vows, but at least she can track her own marriage. That must count for something, must it not?

It was, in fact, six months and eighteen days. She spent endless nights wishing she’d just waited for six months and eighteen days longer before allowing Edward to put a wedding band on her finger. Or that Asriel had come along that exact amount of time earlier. Either way, a fruitless endeavor, but it kept her up for hours.

‘And would you say you had amicable relationships with your husband?’

‘Quite.’

‘Mrs. Coulter, I’m afraid I need you to elaborate.’

They say, when vultures come, it’s already too late. Marisa stands surrounded by vultures, painting and repainting her cracking mask of humbleness to not let fury taint it. Even in death, Edward traps her. Say a few good words about him, and her sins become appalling in comparison. Say a few bad ones, and she’s obviously besmearing his memory with lies to save herself, a malign creature whose only hope is to pray for forgiveness. In a convent.

Very carefully, her voice treads across rows.

‘My husband was a man of politics, as you know. Often away. Amicable is the exact right word, Your Eminence, for we didn’t have much in common, nor did we spend much time together. There were always…other duties.’

‘Is that why you chose to betray your sacred union by infidelity?’

Damn you.

Is there any winning this at all? The Cardinal himself is pushing her onto the thinnest ice Marisa’s ever walked on. Everyone is waiting, everyone is angry. A bunch of men who’ve never known a woman’s touch behave like she’s been unfaithful to them personally, and that is a mighty dangerous sea to navigate. That collective ego can crush her like a wave.

Giving herself some time, Marisa strokes the gold. Her hand is hard despite the gesture, the monkey shivers under it. It might pass for embarrassment, his fear. Good. She tugs at the fur a little and greets the pain where, connected to her deamon, a part of her soul resides, stuck among arteries and veins in rivers of blood – the one thing she’s yet failed to dissect to understand the nature. Her insides yelp; it helps her think. She needs to think fast.

Truth, she decides, is the simplest thing to say. And the quickest way to try and thaw a few hearts that are so hung up on innocence.

She only makes one mistake. She looks at Asriel.

‘I was…’ in love, is what Marisa tries for, ready to play the cards, but that incomprehensible soul of hers… She would throw it to the wolves if she could. It makes the words cluster in her throat. It fights against every sound, clawing them down with a fierce proprietary desire to omit, to withhold, to never share a single meaningful piece.

‘Yes, Mrs. Coulter?’

Because it was theirs.

A young man bumps into her, rushing away from her husband like all dogs are on his tail, which is a bit funny since he’s being followed by a giant cat. A leopard, alright. For the sake of precision, a snow leopard. The man’s face still carries echoes of an argument he’s very obviously continuing in his head even as he turns.

‘My apologies,’ he mutters, a hand on Marisa’s shoulder making sure she’s okay.

‘No need,’ she chuckles at how aggravated he looks, then nods to his suit. ‘You’ve spilled your drink.’

‘What? Oh–’

Something very inappropriate is about to leave his lips, but the stranger contains himself, albeit hardly. He does give an impression of someone who’s not used to doing it. A gentleman, then; sparing Marisa’s ears the horrors of hearing him curse. She smiles. It is a very expensive suit he’s wearing, of fine materials, clearly tailored. With a big wet whiskey spot on the left sleeve.

She lends him a handkerchief. Simple as that.

‘Seemed like you were having a hard time with Edward Coulter there.’

‘Politicians,’ the man scoffs, patting his sleeve dry. ‘A fine specimen too, pigheaded as they come.’

‘Hard to disagree.’

The man snorts.

‘Thank you.’ He looks up to return the handkerchief. For the first time, their eyes meet. Marisa feels blizzard skies touch her face.

Fathomless, untamed, impossibly blue.

Now she’s dizzy.

She has to blink and breathe before reinforcing a polite smile.

‘You’re welcome.’ There’s a little crack in her voice, through which something new seeds in, spilling gold all around. Everything is brighter. Warmer. And the stranger doesn’t help, the stranger is watching her with intensity so profound, as though taking his snowstorm eyes away would be death.

‘I don’t think we’ve been introduced.’

‘We haven’t,’ meaning to take the pitiful piece of cloth, she reaches forward, sly cruelty curling the corner of her mouth in anticipation. ‘Marisa Coulter.’

Now their hands meet. Now she shudders.

It’s against the rules, the anbaric charge running from her fingers and all the way down her spine.

The young man raises his eyebrows, glances over at Edward, then turns to Marisa again. She nods, enjoying the trick. Now he’ll say, ‘Forgive me’. He’ll say, ‘I didn’t mean to be rude’. They’ll laugh about it for as long as another minute will be merciful to last and by tomorrow, they’ll have already forgotten. Simple as that.

He sends her a grin with not a hint of apology in it and whispers, ‘My condolences.’

Their hands are still touching.

Now, Marisa falls.

How does one share… that?

‘I was weak,’ she says instead, hiding the truth so deep in the hardened soil that is her core now, it doesn’t have any chance of pushing back to the surface, ‘and easily seduced. A young woman, the high society. Getting plentiful attention from a handsome young man. It doesn’t excuse me, but the result is, I think, understandable.’

That should do it. That should be enough.

In years to come, she’ll bare her teeth at anyone suggesting that she was, indeed, seduced, for every time, this exact moment will come before her eyes. When she set the rumors free to cover her refusal, her actual inability to kill whatever love there was by laying it down before the judging eyes. When she stood lying her heart out to protect it. What a wild, unreasonable thing to do, lacking any logical backbone.

‘In your own words, Mrs. Coulter, could you describe the nature of your affair with Lord Belacqua?’

And she keeps doing it again, and then again. Before the board of the Consistorial Court, before the Authority himself. Before Asriel, to whom she has no means of explaining what she’s doing and why, and it’s too late for explanations anyway.

‘It was just that, an affair.’ The monkey’s frozen under the palm of her hand, but his heart is racing. He’s looking at Asriel, making her want to look. She can’t bring herself to, not with all the atrocities falling out of her mouth. ‘I never made any advances.’ A lie. ‘Our relationship was merely physical.’ A lie. ‘There were no high feelings involved on either of our ends,’ a preposterous lie, ‘and I certainly never planned for a child.’

‘Now, the child…’

And so it continues: a hook after hook, round after round of scrupulous investigation, escaping traps, spinning a detail or two into webs by myriads and morphing them to the point of striking unrecognizability, concealing what couldn’t be shared.

Marisa goes through humiliation of describing her pregnancy to a board of priests, each of whom, at some point, winces at the realness of their beloved sacred concept. She answers increasingly stupid questions, and grooms her voice to sound respectful and calm. She acknowledges her sins without ever raising eyes. She, for all means and purposes, survives.

There’s one moment where it almost goes downhill.

‘What were the circumstances of your conceiving of a child?’ Sturrock asks, cruelly overdoing the air of grave solemnity. Perhaps, Marisa is just too exhausted to be impressed anymore.

Are you stupid? she might have as well said it, with the way she turns to the man raising a brow, face completely unreadable otherwise. The fat hawk dives out of his papers. Without as much as a word, he gestures for her to talk, and Marisa, the perfect statue, feels the last crumbs of patience being incinerated within.

‘Physical intercourse,’ from her tongue, venom all but drips. ‘Am I supposed to explain to the honorable judges what that is?’

Well, now she’s done it. Caused a storm. Rows of black attires buzz in a unanimous disapproval. Marisa imagines Asriel chuckling. She doesn’t see him, doesn’t hear him behind the noise, but she’d like to imagine a smile. A half-hidden, proud smile he used to have as he looks at her stirring trouble.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! A gavel brings order by slamming the living demons out of the wood. The monkey’s tail curls around Marisa’s forearm. He scowls, and takes a step back. Closer to her. She doesn’t have shelter to offer, only her nails driven deep in the fur.

‘Let me rephrase the question, Mrs. Coulter, and from now on, please refrain from any irrelevant comments,’ the Cardinal grimaces. ‘Were the circumstances clear enough to presume Lord Belacqua to be the father?’

‘I am the father!’

Immediately – a roar, as if that man can’t speak in lower volumes. Always the roars with him.

Across the room, the whole magnitude that is Asriel comes alive, and suddenly Marisa knows – not even understands, it’s not a eureka, she just knows. Stelmaria paces, abandoning her sphinx-like grace; her hissing grows into snarls and back. Asriel is arguing with Sturrock who, without a doubt, is telling him to shut up, which Asriel, without a doubt, ignores. The voices echo. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that for all the lies they both told – the lies, she realizes, absolutely identical in their meaning and reasoning – this one he won’t allow. That single grain of truth must remain unmutilated, untouched by their game of erasure.

For Asriel loves that child. He loved it enough to name it, loved it enough to steal it away. He loves it enough now, to fight for it. And Marisa, while having the power to invent any obnoxious story and take his fatherhood away, won’t do it.

Because it’s theirs.

Because it’s the only thing they haven’t buried yet.

Because, as her love-stricken body never ceases to remind her, she didn’t want a child, but she also wanted his just a little.

So she bites her cool, steady hatred down and doesn’t ruin it all the way. For an act of killing, an act of mercy. Screaming: Here. Don’t you fucking dare say I didn’t have a heart.

‘My husband was frequently absent, sometimes for weeks on end.’ A sterile voice, devoid of anything but a drop of sarcasm. ‘As a scholar, I pride myself in knowing the basic mathematics to do the count.’

It’s hard to say if the Cardinal’s forehead is glistening with sweat of responsibility or mere frustration. He waves his hand, and doesn’t ask Marisa any more questions.

From the distance, Asriel is scrutinizing her. She can imagine gears turning in his head as he contemplates her actions. Imagining is the only thing she can do; to salvage something, something else must be sacrificed. Marisa fakes a cold smile. He frowns. Threads of Aurora colors are still hanging between them, uncut, piercing the space to weave the two together, but the ability to read them is lost.

***

Mercury. Lead. Cadmium. Aluminium. Any type of hazardous metals, Asriel is used to handling in his laboratory with according tools and protection, but when a tiny bundle nestles on the crook of his arm, he suddenly feels stupefied. What to do. How to hold it. How, for heaven’s sake, to not harm it?

Afraid of breathing the wrong way, he walks to the stairs. Thinks. Properly, carefully. Then sits on the lower steps, all the way making sure not to press the baby too hard, not to bump the head, not to… a billion other not-tos.

The tiniest face he’s ever seen wrinkles in sleep, and Asriel understands why it’s called ‘falling in love’. It is a fall. His heart plunges down toward something so entirely new, it’s torturing, yet rewarding at the same time. He felt it with Marisa but this, this is different. He stares at his daughter’s face with awe written all over his.

‘Won’t you introduce us?’ He’s oblivious to his own daemon approaching. Stelmaria rubs at his shoulder, her impressive might turned delicate, affectionate. Amber eyes find the baby. She gives the blanket a couple of sniffs and grumbles with content, tail slowly passing from side to side. Asriel feels holy.

‘Stelmaria, this is Lyra,’ he whispers proudly, stunned at the sheer strangeness of the words he never thought he’d use in a combination until he does. ‘My child.’

And then again, ‘My child.’ Like he’s perpetually amused by it. His chest shakes with a stifled laughter of joy.

The baby’s eyes aren’t fully closed, so he thinks he might need to ask Ma Costa if that’s alright. She’ll know. Still, the child appears happy in her slumber. His child, sleeping in his arms. Under her eyelids, a shard of blue. Gyptians say, everybody’s born with blue eyes, sky eyes, and only when spirits finish weaving the threads of one’s life here on earth, do they acquire their true color. What a bunch of nonsense. His child, Asriel knows, will have the bluest eyes forever, even when she’s all grown up. Because she’s theirs, Marisa’s and his.

A little mousy thing climbs from under the fold, yawning and squealing. Perhaps, it’s too hot there. The tiny daemon doesn’t even fully wake, slumping right back on his daughter’s chest and dreaming their little dreams.

‘Won’t you introduce us?’ Asriel turns to Stelmaria, echoing the question. The leopard comes to lick the mouse, her tongue as long as his whole body. A kiss of love, though she’s careful enough not to touch the baby. Small paws catch at the fur on her chin. She licks the daemon again, unmistakably pleased.

‘Feisty,’ she says with quiet fondness before resting a head on her human’s shoulder. ‘Asriel, this is Pantalaimon.’

‘Pantalaimon,’ the name settles over the little thing. Both little things. ‘Lyra and Pantalaimon.’

He sighs, content, amused. In love.

‘My child. My child.’

‘He was going there to murder my child, and I wasn’t supposed to intervene?’

‘Lord Belacqua, we’re not questioning…’

‘Where in your holy books does it say that a father should sit and let it happen?’

‘Your motifs are…’

‘Because I’ve read them, and there’s no such thing there! You know what else they don’t say? That a husband can kill the bastard his wife bore. And don’t give me the ‘violation’ speech, if he was going to avenge his wife, he’d have come straight to me. Edward Coulter chose to go and murder the child.’

‘Silence!’ Sturrock roars, banging the gavel in a deafening, psychotic rhythm for so long, the thing must have gone flat. The Cardinal drops it on the table before wiping his forehead for the umpteenth time. Another ink smudge appears. The man sighs. When he speaks again, his breath comes out heavy with wheezing. ‘As I was saying, Lord Belacqua, we are not questioning your motifs. But if the murder of Edward Coulter was indeed, as you claim, undesigned, the question remains: how did you know of his whereabouts?’

Asriel’s hands are itching to break something. The damn gavel, preferably. Preferably, against the Cardinal’s head. Conversations have been going in circles forever now, following the same patterns like figurines in a music box.

‘Once again, the gyptians sent for me,’ he grips at the sides of his stand until his knuckles show white. ‘I know you’ve spoken to Ma Costa and John Faa. I’m sure they told you the same.’

‘Did any of them know what Edward Coulter looked like?’

‘Why would they?’

‘So, a stranger shows up, and they immediately call for you? Certainly, you understand why I’m finding this peculiar.’

‘The man was ravaging their settlement, screaming my name and demanding to see the child. I doubt the dots were hard to connect.’

‘And you, luckily, showed up just in time?’

‘Luck, chance, divine intervention, I don’t care what you call it. Ma Costa sent a boy for me. As soon as I heard what was happening, I took his horse and rode. And yes, I killed a man, but need I remind you, I did so protecting my child.’

‘Yes, yes, you’ve made that abundantly clear, Lord Belacqua,’ Sturrock mutters, clearly irked, dropping back in his chair.

A short silence follows. A short time to regroup for another attack. What ticks His wheezing Eminence the most, Asriel thinks as he’s watching the man shuffle papers on the table, is that he does not exhibit guilt. Every fool knows it’s the surest way to win the judging party over, yet he disregards even the most basic of rules. Deep within, he can’t miss the appeal: a man of science facing a board of clerics and winning, slowly but surely. He allows himself a smirk. Right away, comes a cautionary glow of golden eyes. Stelmaria bares her teeth, just slightly. Nothing is over yet.

They are all tired, agitated, and way, way less patient. Sturrock finally stops pretending to be the all-knowing bringer of justice and sulks in his high seat, clueless as to what comes next. That makes him pesky, stubborn. From here on in, dangerous paths wind ahead.

‘Where is the child now?’ the Cardinal finally asks.

Ah. So they know.

Asriel draws air to reply when he notices a tiny movement. It only makes him pause for a fraction of a second, but his mouth grows suddenly dry as he realizes what it was. Marisa turns her head. Marisa, who, for hours, stood as indifferent as a statue and seemed to be oozing nothing but quintessential, undiluted boredom with the fate of their daughter, turns her head, and listens.

‘Lord…’

‘Yes, I heard.’

He can feel Sturrock frown.

‘And?’

It doesn’t matter. Her listening doesn’t matter. The woman is a labyrinth, each turn a dead-end. A sea creature that learned to mimic humanity. It’s just his heart he needs to persuade, because, well… She told the truth. Threw away the best weapons she had and told the truth where it mattered.

‘Lord Belacqua, I have to insist…’

‘The Jordan College,’ Asriel barks, pushing through the pounding in his chest. ‘She’s in the Jordan College, in care of its Master.’

Come what may, he’ll fight.

‘So,’ the sweaty, round face of the Cardinal proves to be a surprisingly good distraction. Who could’ve thought. ‘How does a child, placed in a nunnery, end up in the Jordan College?’

‘I took her there myself.’

‘On what grounds?’

‘On the grounds of my doing whatever the hell I want, because this is my child!’

He shouts. Stelmaria’s roaring, carried by the echo, rambles through the hall, and a whole lot of bugs, spiders, and mice daemons hurry to hide in their humans’ sleeves. They don’t have anything against him, Asriel realizes with grim satisfaction. Better yet, they are quite afraid. He stands prouder, arms folded. The taste of victory grazes his tongue already, nearing in anticipation to that first sip of tokay as the liquid gold pours into a glass.

‘And did you not think to consult with Mrs. Coulter?’ Sturrock gestures innocently to the side. ‘Its mother?’

He looks a cheap magician demonstrating a trick, although why, Asriel can’t seem to grasp. Marisa has been standing there this whole time. It’s not like he made her appear out of nowhere. A thought stumbles on its own irrelevance, at once fading.

There’s something in Marisa’s eyes.

Something, he could swear.

She stands wearing her guilt, and shame, and sin like she would one of her ravishing dresses, and he could swear she gives him the smallest, sharpest nod.

‘Mrs. Coulter…’ Asriel begins hoarsely, then stops. Honey-spiked wine turns into a nauseating unctuous slush in his throat. With an effort, he swallows it all the way down. He’d swallow his own pride to keep talking. ‘Mrs. Coulter does not have a grain of interest in being a mother, Cardinal. As soon as the child was born, she wished for it to be sent away. She even went as far as telling her husband that it died at birth. That child never knew a crumb of mother’s care, so I don’t think Mrs. Coulter has a say in the matter.’

He never takes his eyes off Marisa. Treading onto the ice, waiting for creatures to come from the depths and devour him.

Take her away, Asriel. I can’t… I’ll hurt her, or do something, or… She will ruin everything, she will. I hate that. I hate… Just hide her, Asriel, please. Hide her from me. I’d rather hate her from the beginning than love her, and hurt her still.

Creatures never come.

The lie settles.

Hanging over the room, an uneasy silence: the entire board of the honorable judges grows quiet, shifting their gazes from one stand to another. There’s not a cough, not a chirp from their daemons. No minds able to unriddle that enormous magnetic charge pulsating in the air, created and sustained, it seems, in half-accidental, neither scientific nor theological, conditions of two people looking at one another. Each a defendant, each a prosecutor. Making their own gravity.

Which can only exist for as long as it’s allowed.

‘Be it as it may, Lord Belacqua…’ the Cardinal sounds a tad less sure now, yet there are no more grounds to surrender. ‘She is still the child’s mother, and in terms of the rightful…’

‘Your Eminence, if I may?’

A clear voice, so perfect in its tone against the angry, tired grumbles that have been bouncing off the walls for hours, it’s like a breath of air.

All Asriel can do is watch. It all depends on her now.

Sturrock pinches the bridge of his nose – needless to say, dripping with sweat – before addressing Marisa. Whether he’s contemplating his career, or wondering if the two of them decided to team up specifically to wear him down, Asriel would understand.

‘Yes, Mrs. Coulter?’

‘Let him do with the child as he pleases.’

What are you doing.

‘Again, Mrs. Coulter, any elaborations?’

‘None,’ she shakes her head. ‘Except that I have no intention of being a mother to, as Lord Belacqua so eloquently put it before, a bastard born of sin.’

What are you doing, goddamn you.

She stands there. Just stands there, with whispers and looks touching her face, her clothes, getting under it and branding her a monster. An adultress, twice sinner, a mother who left her child. They would be more merciful if she just played her cards. Everyone loves a sad story with a mother and a child somewhere in it, and none more that the church folk. She doesn’t leave them a chance to be merciful.

In her eyes, shards of sea-blue, so familiar it sends a violent thrust through his heart. The ones forever mixed into the blue of their daughter’s. And suddenly, Asriel finds himself nodding to her in the same hidden gesture she did.

That’s right. Hit harder. I know you can.

The golden monkey stirs. Behind her stand, Marisa is a mask of cold elegance. Right next to her, her soul withers in a white-knuckled grip. Then she blinks, and her sea-blue goes completely blank, and she looks away.

‘Is that your official request, Mrs. Coulter?’

‘If need be, yes.’

The Cardinal gives out an exasperated sigh. Then bangs a gavel.

‘So be it.’

***

The very last thing they do is sign the orders.

Marisa sways when she takes the first step, but simply because she spent hours on her feet, hardly moving. Not because she’s afraid of walking toward the inevitable end.

She doesn’t look at Asriel. He doesn’t look at her.

They’ve said all they wanted, agreed on all they needed, and lied the living souls out of themselves in the process, painting each other all colors of monstrous. The tainted mess left on the courtroom floor has nothing to do with what they really were. And that, perhaps, is the most victory they can share. With nobody knowing the truth, they might forget it too. Forget there was ever love at all.

Ugly, grotesque versions of them that will leave the room shouldn’t make it too hard.

Asriel is the one to leave first. Stelmaria follows him quietly, a ghost of a man and ghost of a daemon.

His signature is right there on the paper. Marisa hardly even reads what is above. She’s not to approach Lyra or visit the Jordan College, that much she heard from Sturrock’s lengthy speech. The rest, she couldn’t be bothered with.

She signs a confident ‘M’.

A less confident name, not yet understanding why.

Then shivers.

For whatever reason, her hand is aching to write ‘Delamare’. I love you, sea creature. Taking a deep breath, Marisa has to spend a good minute closing her mind, sealing it up for good. Resorting, ironically, to the very thing she and Asriel created together.

Marisa Delamare drowns at sea. From its depths, a creature emerges, as enigmatic and obscure as the black waters that have turned its blood cold all the way through to the heart, and its beautiful embrace is deadly.

The creature’s name is Mrs. Coulter.

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