Under this pleasant, relaxed demeanour that Lucas presents to all around, someone of high Water (is Solange?) might sense a restlessness, an impatience, a strange sort of constrained energy that has Lucas prowling the decks late at night, or very early in the morning, swathed in a heavy overcoat, while the morning mist has not yet been burned away by the sun.
[OOC: timeframe--this takes place the morning after their first night on board.]
Solange, her bulky cableknit sweater pulled down over the tops of her hands to keep them warm, crosses her arms against the wind and walks up to stand behind him. "Whatever you do, don't look down," she cautions.
For a moment he stiffens - perhaps, lost in thought, he has not heard her approach, or perhaps the morning sea drowned out her footsteps.
"I never look down," he says. "Always out ... across ... "
He falls silent. In profile his face looks fixed and set. Cold, perhaps ... and from more than the stiff breeze that his colour is turned up against. The wind is making his dark hair stream back - the usually hidden ear is visible, the ugly red slash that sliced it all too apparent.
Solange find herself staring at the ear out of curiosity, thoughts of family healing rates flitting through her head. Shouldn't it be healed by now? Her eyes narrow.
After a long time, without turning his head, he asks, "And how is the good doctor this morning?"
This would be an excellent time to practice her "not letting Lucas get under her skin" techniques. She takes a long breath and lets it out slowly. "He was fine when I left him last night," she replies cheerfully. "Described the medical supplies provided on ship as barbaric and primitive, but he'll cope. And you? You seem...preoccupied."
"You could say that," he says. He reaches into the inside pocket of his overcoat and slides out a cigarette case - gold, and bearing the Sant Cyr crest. He flips it open and reveals a row of black cigarettes tipped with gold, which he offers to Solange, angling the case to shield the contents from the spray.
"Do have one. If you're lucky, you'll get the one I rolled in opium - my own little wager with Fate."
Solange smiles but shakes her head, declining. "So what's on your mind? Is it something I can help with?"
Lucas takes one for himself and slides the case away again, taking out a flintlock lighter and lighting it. He slips the lighter away, and takes a draw on the cigarette.
"Not opium," he says to Solange, although he still stares out to sea. "My luck ... again."
He turns now, a full 180 dgrees, so his back is to the railing, and the sea is behind him.
"I was calculating how many Shadows must lie between me and my family," he says, almost conversationally. "Do you ever do that? Did you ever do it, with your Doctor?"
Solange looks at him guardedly. "Yes, I suppose I did. It's...complicated."
She deflects the conversation back to Lucas. "I suppose you could always trump your mother and see how they're doing."
Lucas gives a little laugh. "I suppose I could. If I had a Trump of her."
Solange shrugs. "You can borrow mine, if you like."
His dark eyebrows lift. "Thank you. I didn't realise you had one of my mother."
She smiles. "The trump deck was a gift from my father after walking the pattern. Do you want it now?"
"Later," says Lucas. "Later will do. But thank you."
He starts to move now - the early morning chill seemingly having penetrated even his overcoat. A brisk walk ...
"Perhaps my mother would have had a gift for me for walking the Pattern too," he says, "had I waited to find out. As it was, she seemed more likely to throttle me than to reward me."
Solange raises an eyebrow at him, the wind blowing strands of blonde hair about her face. "Did you walk without her permission? Just up and do it?"
Lucas laughs, a little bitterly. "Au contraire. Maman returned from a visit away to discover that in her absence, I had decided to have my portrait painted by an artist known as M.le Diable who promised me a painting like nothing I had ever seen before. He was right - although at the time I thought it an exercise in rather dreary realism. It was only later I learned he was more commonly known as Brand."
Both of Solange's eyebrows lift, threatening to disappear into her hairline.
"On her return, it took Maman about half an hour to grasp what was happening, and then she hauled me to Amber, much to my indignation, and - en effet - threw me onto the Pattern. I believe we have rarely - if ever - exceeded the level of mutual vituperation we rose to on that occasion. I must be the only person to have ever walked the Pattern literally shaking with anger. I shoved my way through each Veil in turn so I could resume yelling abuse at her."
Solange looks out over the water and smiles. "I can picture that. At least your anger was a strong enough emotion to carry you through the ordeal--probably even helped, truth be told." She looks back at him. "But Brand? Really? When..." Solange pauses, a thought suddenly occurring to her. "How was the timing? Could you have been Brand's original subject for the whole 'stabbing on the Pattern' trick, only to be later replaced by Martin?"
Lucas shrugs - a fatalism that seems very French. "Peut etre. I might have been dupe, or tool. At the time, perhaps it simply amused him to pander to my self-conceit which, as you may have observed, is boundless."
There is a note in Lucas voice, almost as though he is jeering ... but the subject of his contempt is not Solange.
It is himself.
Solange smiles at his joke, but then the smile fades at the tone of his voice and is replaced by a bemused regard. "Why, then?" she asks quizzically. "Why are you like that?"
"Why are any of us the way we are?" he counters. "We take what we have, and we use it for protection. We defend ourselves, perhaps by becoming paranoid, perhaps by becoming better than all our kin - although that's a tough one. Perhaps by espousing a cause. Perhaps by devoting our lives to the pursuit of the trivial until it appears the all-consuming."
He pinches out his cigarette and turning slightly, pitches it into the sea.
"Sometimes ... it takes an action by another to show us the truth."
Solange watches him curiously but keeps quiet.
"Adonis," he says briefly. "He gave his life to save his children. And I ... "
A beat.
"Shall we have breakfast?"
This touches a nerve with Solange. "It was a fool's death, Lucas. It accomplished a respite, nothing more. He threw his life away."
"At least he was prepared to," says Lucas softly. "He didn't put his own sorry hide first."
She narrows her eyes. "I don't believe you would. You may think so now, academically, but I think if something was mortally threatening your children, you'd stop it any way you could."
Lucas laughs. "Oh, don't credit me with a nobility I don't possess, Solange! Maybe if in some improbable Shadow we were savaged by a lion or some foul emissary of Chaos, then I'd interpose my willowy form to protect them. But if thought, and calculation, and politics come into it ....
"I had the choice then, and I chose to protect myself ahead of the children. I stood outside the walls of Amber and wrestled with the dilemma. Should I stake all, to save them? I chose not to."
Solange frowns.
His smile twists. "It's as well you know my measure as well as I know it myself before we go any further."
"What stakes, Lucas?" she asks, looking for clarification.
"I could have got into the Castle," he says quietly. "But to do so ... would have revealed more than I wanted to reveal. So I chose ... to gamble their safety."
He turns suddenly, to gaze at the sea again. "I'm dangerous to the people who love me, Solange."
"I guess it's a good thing I don't love you, then," she replies cynically. "I should be perfectly safe." Her expression hard, Solange turns partway away and hugs herself tighter against the wind. Then she laughs incredulously. "Why are you telling me this, Lucas? I could rat you out. Your 'gamble' would have been for nought.
"Yes," says Lucas. "You could. And do you know what? I'm not sure I care anymore. The stakes I've been playing for ... no longer seem worth it. Not compared with what I was prepared to throw away."
She studies him out of the corner of her eye, not completely convinced. "And what brought you to that conclusion?"
Lucas hesitates, then turns his back to the sea. He reaches into his overcoat and brings out his cigarette case once more, flipping it open to reveal the black and gold cigarettes. But this time he inserts a nail into a hidden groove on the left side of the case. A click ... and then a hidden spring opens it to reveal a narrow hitherto hidden compartment. Inside are a few familiar squares of pasteboard, but the design of the topmost trump is in a hand Solange does not recognise.
It shows Lucas' study in Amber.
Solange turns back around to face him. She looks at the card, then up at Lucas. "You've been studying trump? This is your secret way into the castle?"
Lucas hesitates - and then nods. "In a manner of speaking. You could say I'm a student of trumps. And yes, this was my way in."
He reaches a little way down the slim pile and withdraws a single card, then snaps the case shut.
Solange wonders what trump he withdrew, but she can't see the front. She comes back to the conversation-at-hand, still confused by a point. "You still haven't answered my question. What brought you to that conclusion? Why the change?"
Lucas is staring in front of him.
"I've told you, Solange. Adonis died for his children. I wasn't prepared to risk this coming out for the sake of mine. I put my own security above theirs. The force of the contrast was ... striking."
Ah. And now they've come full-circle, back to the beginning of their conversation. She marvels over the interconnectedness of things, that someone dying--something she considered so tragic--could have such positive repercussions. And such repercussions they must have been to manage to reach inside that impenetrable shell Lucas surrounds himself with and touch his heart.
Not wanting to diminish his confession with her own inadequate words, Solange nods and says nothing.
He turns and smiles at her, a little bleakly. "Here. You should have this. We don't know what lies ahead and - for what it's worth, we may need to rely on each other."
His statement gets a slight smile from Solange. Relying on each other was something she assumed, and yet it was something he thought he needed to clarify. Would she ever really understand him?
She can now see that the trump is one of Lucas himself.
She accepts the trump and studies it.
Lucas is dressed in subdued dark clothes. The style is not so good as that of the drawing of the room, as though the artist is happier with landscapes rather than portraits. Or possibly beautifully rendered interiors are his forte. But the artist has captured Lucas' half-smile perfectly.
The back is - perhaps inevitably - the St Cyr crest.
"If you can reciprocate," he says, "so much the better. I have a certain wariness about ... ah ... accepting trump calls. The only one I know in existence was found among Brand's papers by his younger son. Who, for reasons of his own, seems to be determined to hang on to it."
"Interesting," Solange replies, still studying the trump. It's hard to tell if she's referring to the trump or his statement about Ambrose. She looks up. "I can't reciprocate, sorry. The only trump I know of myself is the sketch Ossian did that's hanging in the trump booth."
She adds his trump to her own deck and replaces the deck back in her pocket. "Thank you. It's a generous gift. Perhaps...well, perhaps you'll even let me keep it after this is all over." Solange blinks, wondering if her statement sounded forward to him. It almost sounded forward to herself, as if she was implying their relationship had more than just formal aspects. But they were friends, weren't they? Could someone of the opposite sex just be a friend to Lucas? That's certainly all she was trying to imply, nothing more. But would he take it that way? Or not?
A faint blush rises to her cheeks.
If Lucas sees it (and, being Lucas, he probably does) he is far too gallant to comment. But it is doubtless stored away for later reference.
Feeling suddenly awkward--a feeling that's becoming all too familiar to her of late--she changes the subject. "So...are you self-taught, or has Ossian been giving you lessons?"
"If Ossian has been giving me lessons," says Lucas, "they haven't been in trumps."
Solange is half-tempted to ask...but doesn't. Her imagination is already far too vivid. She smiles politely instead.
"If you wish, I think I can probably make a trump of you between now and our destination. There's not a great deal else to do ... "
The smile widens, transforming her face, and Lucas can catch of glimpse of the sun angel she's named for. "That would be...I'd like that. Thanks."
Lucas smiles back, his own cold mood perhaps a little thawed by the sunlight. "It will be a pleasure," he tells her. "But be prepared, though. When I draw a trump, somehow it seems ... as though I go deep into the soul of the subject."
Solange's express is dubious, wondering exactly what that means.
He sheakes his head. "It's one of the reasons I find rooms easier than people. Another is probably that I have a draughtsman's eye. A third ... " The smile grows wider. "Unless you've strayed into a remarkably strange Shadow, the room is less likely to wonder how you came by a trump of it ...
"Now - shall we have that breakfast?"
"Certainly," Solange nods. "I think I smell kippers."
After a leisurely breakfast of kippers (Lucas discourses amusingly on the need for unsalted butter to dot their golden hides, and the preference for a sprig of flat-leaved parsely as decoration over a sprig of dill)...
Solange rolls her eyes and digs into the breakfast.
...Lucas takes a sketchpad, a box of water colours and a small camping stool to a secluded part of the deck. His practical sailing gear has been put aside for the moment, and he wears a cream linen suit with a curved collar, a white shirt with an old Harrovian tie and a panama hat. The jacket he carefully removes and hangs on a convenient hook on a mast, before he takes out a small pipe, filling it with some aromatic tobacco, and lighting it while he waits for Solange.
And our style reference today is Visconti's Death in Venice.
Solange wanders his way after awhile. Her practical sailing gear is still on, and along with the cableknit sweater she wears a dubious expression with a curious slant at Lucas's impromptu setup. The dubious expression she carefully removes as she passes the mast near him, so that when he sees her she's smiling brightly instead. "I do like the smell of tobacco smoke," she comments idly. "Reminds me of Father."
Lucas smiles. "I assure you, any resemblance you see between us will be fleeting," he says.
The smile grows. "No doubt."
"Now - given the time at our disposal, my plan is to make a trump sketch - but a fairly durable one. One that should last five years or so. It will take a few days, so choose a position to pose in that will be comfortable - and that can be recreated in a cabin if inclement weather dictates we need to finish below decks."
He waits for her to choose a suitable position.
"Oh, I think between you and me we can manage not to have inclement weather," Solange replies as she glances around herself. Her gaze settles on the railing. She shrugs marginally and moves over to lean up against it. Not exactly the most comfortable of positions, but she'd rather be standing than sitting for hours on end--she can see more this way.
Her back against the rail and slouching slightly, Solange crosses her arms and gazes directly at Lucas. "Will this do?"
"Wonderfully," says Lucas. He selects a graphite pencil from the other side of his watercolour box and makes a few rapid lines on his sketchpad.
"Now," he says, "tell me something about yourself. Some little, trivial thing that is peculiarly Solange."
Her mind perhaps still on breakfast, Solange replies, "I have a terrible sweet tooth. I really liked Gouter's pain au choclats. They were...quite delectable." It's apparent from her sudden dreamy smile that she's remembering the little pastries filled with chocolate. "Is that too trivial?"
"Au contraire," says Lucas, his dark gaze intent on the sketchpad. "It gives me the clue to the long sinuous line of your throat." He makes just such a mark and then looks up at her and smiles.
"I have sent Gouter to Xanadu - he should be in transit even now. One imagines that he will already have taken over the galley of whatever vessel is fortunate enough to bear him, and that he will currently be doing wonderful things with limes."
That elicits a chuckle from Solange.
"Now - tell me someting else ... something you remember from your childhood, perhaps."
His attention returns to the sketchpad.
"My childhood?" Solange spreads her hands briefly and tucks them back across her chest. "I was fostered out to Lord Worth and his wife, as you probably know. Spent a lot of my childhood at their house in Garnath getting into trouble with my foster-brother Matthew."
She breaks into a smile. "I remember one afternoon Matthew broke a vase, one of Mama's favorites. He'd been running in the house even though we'd both been expressly forbidden to do so. He convinced me to confess to the crime for the sum of a penny, which he had in his pocket."
Solange shrugs. "I was young, maybe four or five, and thought it a fair trade at the time."
Lucas is silent for a moment - from the movements of his pencil, he appears to be adding some shading.
Presently he asks, "Why do you think you singled out that incident? Does the punishment you received stand out vividly? Or is it the memory of a time when someone tricked you, and you resolved not to allow it to happen again?"
She laughs. "It didn't quite work out the way Matthew intended. I confessed to the crime, then turned to the doorway where Matthew was listening in and in all innocence demanded immediate payment from him. Mama punished Matthew for bribing me and I got pie for dessert that night. Pie was good, but what I really wanted was the penny.
"I'm not sure what made me think of it...think of Matthew...I miss him." She shrugs again and looks away. "Do you...or did you...have any siblings, Lucas? On your father's side?"
"He may have had little side-slips he preferred not to speak of to my mother," says Lucas. "If so, I never knew. He died before I was of an age to be told such things, I suppose. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say we had other things to speak of for some years before his death. However, this drawing is about you. Tell me more of Matthew."
It's a half-minute or so before she responds. "He was older by about six months, and as the older sibling--and also as the boy, since I was only a girl--thought it his duty and right to be better than me at everything. It really annoyed him when he wasn't. I could run faster. I've always been a good runner. But he was better than me at climbing trees."
She pauses again, remembering. "Matthew was dark. Dark hair, dark eyes...sometimes dark personality. I was the light one, always smiling, always laughing. I had a good childhood." Solange smiles then, partly embarrassed, partly feeling guilty, as if a happy childhood was a forbidden fruit for most of her cousins that she--through nothing she did or was--alone was allowed to eat.
"It helps," agrees Lucas, smoothing a line over what is presumably, by the angle, her cheek-to-be. "Did you have pets? I have a pure white cockatiel, I remember, a very handsome fellow."
"We had a pony when Matthew and I were young. His name was Mister Hobbs. The indignities we put that pony through...I dressed him up in flowers and hats and capes and made him come to tea...Matthew would pick up a long pole and try to make Mister Hobbs his jousting charger...You should've seen Matthew. He was so serious holding that long pole, but he was too tall for the pony and we had to let the stirrups way out. Then Mister Hobbs was too fat to really run, so he did this sort of wobbling trot..." Solange chuckles. "Poor Mister Hobbs. He earned his feed by the end of the day, no doubt.
"By the time I was nine or ten, I started pleading to learn to ride a real horse. Father arranged for both Matthew and me to take riding lessons. I was glad Matt got to come along. He would've made my life miserable had I gotten to do something fun like that and he hadn't, but I was glad for other reasons. I wanted Matt to be happy."
"Would you say that's a thread that runs through your life?" asks Lucas, his tone almost idle ... and yet ... nothing about this process seems really idle. "Do you always want people to be happy, cos?"
Solange's eyes narrow. "It's not really in my power to make everyone around me happy, is it?" Less of a question, and more of a statement. Her expression turns guarded. "Trying to do so is a sure path to disappointment. At least that's been my experience in the matter."
"Tell me about a disappointment," says Lucas - and his voice is softer than the hypnotic swish of his pencil on the paper ... the soft susurrus of graphite on paper seems louder than his voice, louder than the sough of the waves, louder than the remote plangent cry of sea-birds far overheard ....
Solange gazes at him, listening to the pencil mark the paper, finding herself involuntarily caught up in the process. For a moment, she and Lucas are the only two people in the universe, separated--or was it joined?--by the stroke of pencil on paper.
Then she blinks, snapping herself out of the reverie, and once again hears the seabirds cry and smells the fishy tang of the water and sees the sailors moving about the deck and feels the hard rail against her back.
She blinks again. "Disappointment?" she repeats, her voice sounding strange in her own ears. "I...um..."
Kyril looking at her as she takes a drink of the red wine, Father striking his leg in frustration as he sits in his wheelchair, Aunt Felicity gazing at her disapprovingly over the top of her teacup, Mama dressed in black and turning away, Matthew touching her face...
Solange startles. The cry of the seabirds is clear again. She passes a hand over her face, then tucks it back under her arm. "Ask me a different question, Lucas," she says quietly.
He raises his head and looks at her. His eyes are so very dark ... strange that Flora's son should have eyes that are so very dark. For a moment they seem unfocussed - as though he is looking not at her, but through her, seeing inside her, seeing deep down to her core. Then he shakes his head slightly, and he is just Lucas, indolent, spoilt, bitchy Lucas.
"We can do this," he says, "or we can spar on the deck and stretch our muscles. Or we can hand a line off the back of the ship and fish. Or we can ignore the fact that you have supplied your own after-dinner comforts and retire to my cabin for a rousing session of hows your father. But if we do this - we do it properly."
The wind tugs the sails. The fair breeze blew. The white foam flew. The furrow followed free. So.
Lucas looks down at his sketchpad again.
"Tell me about a disappointment, Solange," he says quietly.
Solange glares at him, lips pursed together, chin lowered and color high. "Fine. You want a disappointment?" she snaps. "Prime example, the disappointment in his eyes when I told him I didn't want to see him anymore. What I didn't tell him was that it was because I was afraid I wouldn't still love him when he was eighty-three as I did when he was twenty-three. I was selfish and self-centered and weak and I regret terribly I ended it for those lame reasons. Can you put all that in the trump? Will you remember that everytime you use it?"
"Possibly," says Lucas, his eyes intent on the pad, as he makes what appears a hard definite line with a long sweep of the graphite pencil. "Possibly not. What matters is that you remember it."
He looks up at her. "I've said - this is about you, not about me. Do you think if you hand this trump to someone else - Vere, say - he will see all this in your face? He'll just see a trump of his sister - a way of reaching you.
"But unless I know what makes you you, I can't make the trump at all."
He holds her gaze for a long moment, before he returns his attention to the pad.
She regards him back, uncertainty and mistrust co-habitating equally in the now tense lines of her shoulders. Did he really need to probe this deeply to create a trump? Or was it a ruse, was he playing her? Was she just being naive about this whole thing?
"Tell me about a moment of perfect happiness."
Solange closes her eyes in annoyance at the abrupt yank on her emotions as Lucas travels from one extreme to the other. Control. She must regain it before her reactions got completely out-of-hand. Lucas is creating a trump that could prove immensely valuable in the upcoming days. This is ultimately a Good Thing, and she is the one in control of what she tells him and what she doesn't. And she doesn't have to tell him everything.
She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, not looking at him, but looking past him to the open sea.
"The morning following my succesful completion of walking that glowing monstrosity in Amber's basement. After waking up I went to see Father. His smile was so big... I remember him standing in his study when I came in. Standing. He told me how proud he was of me and gave me my trump deck as a present. He hugged me, and his arms were so...huge...I was swallowed up in them. I felt safe, like nothing bad would ever happen again. Ever."
She frowns, breaks her stance to scratch her nose, then folds her arms across her chest again. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have snapped at you."
"You're being remarkably restrained," says Lucas, making a few more swift lines. "How did you lose your virginity?"
Solange coughs suddenly, her hand coming to rest against her chest. "Bite me," she tells him when she can speak again. "You don't need to know that."
Lucas looks up at her - and then grins.
"It can be very revealing," he says. "All right - we'll leave that for now. Just one last question for this morning ...
"You've told me your greatest disappointment. Now ... what's your greatest regret?"
A memory of Matthew flits into her mind, but she squelches it and smiles at Lucas. "No, we're done for the morning," she states, pushing herself away from the railing. "May I see what you have so far?"
"Certainly," says Lucas.
He holds the sketchpad out so that she can see it.
Arms still crosssed, she steps forward to study it.
At first it seems to be several connected lines, some shading ... an abstract, random patterning on the page. Not yet a portrait - not even really a sketch ...
And then ... something. Perhaps he changes the angle a fraction, perhaps the light catches it in a different way, perhaps she shifts her head.
But suddenly she is there, there, captured on the paper - the lines of her face, her hand resting on an invisible rail, the strands of hair blowing across her face, staring out at the viewer ... and the expression in her eyes is the intensity she sees in the morning mirror before she puts on the face she will wear to the world.
A blink.
It is just lines on the paper again.
Lucas flips the cover over, closing the pad.
Fascinating. Solange straightens up and regards Lucas with a mixture of uncertainty and awe. She understands better the whole "don't take my picture, you'll steal part of my soul" fear she's encountered with some people. Her arms remain crossed.
"Early days," he says. "I suppose sex is out of the question. Shall we spar instead?"
That gets a wicked, dangerous smile from Solange. "Certainly," she growls, meeting his eyes. "I'd be more than happy to kick your butt." She brushes past him to go retrieve her sparring equipment from her cabin.
There is another sketching session that afternoon - a short one (Lucas says irasicbly that no-one can be expected to concentrate on a trump when quite so many muscles are hurting from a vigorous round of sparring).
The following day they have two more sessions - and one of sparring. The sketching goes well, but Lucas is focussing on Solange's clothes and the surroundings. He still asks questions, but the tone is lighter - and Lucas is more forthcoming himself. He is willing to talk about growing up as a member of the Ancien Regime - and he recalls, with some fondness, his mother's rose garden at their chateau (he is asking about favourite scents at the time).
On the third day they run into some rough weather - nothing alarming, but too wet to make posing or sketching on the deck a pleasant prospect.
"We can work in my cabin instead," suggests Lucas. "Or yours, if you would prefer. I'd prefer not to have an audience, though."
"Is there a reason you need to work in private?" Solange asks, looking at him askance. "I mean, well, we can probably shift the rain away and stay on the deck." By the tone of her voice, it's clear this is what Solange wishes to do.
"If you'd prefer," says Lucas equably. "The Captain was talking of refilling the rain barrels however - if you want to shift so that we can ensure full water barrels and a good strong following wind, be my guest. I do need to do some work on your face today, though. It might be best to be uninterrupted."
His reason for wanting to be uninterrrupted sounded reasonable. She shrugs. "All right. Your cabin, then. I'm sure you have more comfortable chairs."
Lucas does - but he doesn't allow Solange to sit on one. Instead he poses her against the sideboard and takes up his own statiion on the arm of a chesterfield that has, inmprobably, been inserted into his cabin.
"Right," he says, and takes a soft-leaded pencil from one side of the paintbox. "Tell me about when you first learned you were an Amberite."
He is not looking at her, it seems. His whole attention is focused on the sketchpad on front of him.
Solange gazes into the middle distance between them, remembering, and smiles wryly. "My sixth birthday. We'd had a party and that man had come, the one that Papa said was my Uncle Gerard. He visited every once in awhile and he always brought presents and played with Matthew and me. We thought he was great fun.
"Anyway, he'd come for the birthday cake. Afterwards, Matthew and I were sent off to play while Papa and Uncle Gerard went into Papa's study and smoked cigars and drank whisky." She smiles as if there's another story there, but doesn't pursue the tangent.
"So Matthew and I decided to play hide-and-seek. My turn to hide came and I thought it'd be clever to hide in Papa's study while they were still in there, as Matthew wouldn't think to disturb them. So I did, crawling in along the floorboard and settling behind the stuffed chair with none the wiser.
"Papa and Uncle Gerard talked, and I was only half-listening because I didn't understand most of what they were saying, but I heard my name mentioned. Uncle Gerard wanted to know if there'd been questions about me, and Papa replied that there'd been no questions at all, that no one knew I wasn't his child."
She pauses, then shrugs. "I didn't understand. Who was my papa, then, if he wasn't? Was mama still mine? Was Matthew my brother? I was devastated and I sat there behind the chair and cried. I was only six, after all.
"They called for me later, to say goodbye to Uncle Gerard, and I walked out from the study with tears and snot all over me. There was a big hullaballoo as the adults tried to determine what was wrong. When I repeated what I'd heard, Papa became angry because I'd been in his study eavesdropping. I didn't know what the word meant, but from the way he said it I gathered it was a pretty heinous crime. That started me crying again," Solange smiles.
"Uncle Gerard scooped me up then and took me back into Papa's study and while he wiped my face explained that he was my father, and that he wanted me somewhere where I had a father and mother and brother because he couldn't provide those things, and that it was a Big Secret.
"Thus, I found out I was an Amberite...although it was several years after that before I better understood what that meant...and it wasn't until I walked the Pattern that I really understood what that meant."
"I wonder if even then we truly understand," says Lucas thoughtfully. "In a way - that's just the start. And some of us walk it very young - or without the training of what the Pattern truly is. Look at Lilly - how old is she? Eighteen. And yet she probably knows more of the implications of Pattern than I did, and I was at the end of my third half-century when I walked. Of course, by then I had reckoned there was something a little different about me. More than looking remarkably well preserved for my unprecedented age within the Shadow. Of course, it was also obvious that Mama was of the same stock. She was, in some ways, my indication that I wouldn't absent-mindedly one day slash a portrait I had grown bored with and promptly wither away into a heap of dust on the gallery floor."
He adds a careful, feathered line and says, "You're lucky in having Gerard as your father. I'm sure that pride in your walking the Pattern was mirrored by the care he took in preparing you."
He draws another line in the silence that follows, and then looks up at her. "Solange?"
She startles out of her pensiveness at Lucas's words and looks up at him. "Hmmm?"
"I was just complimenting you on your father," says Lucas, amused.
And she was just musing that Gerard went from being her uncle to her father and back to her uncle again. "Oh...right. Thanks," she smiles. "He's been a blessing in my life, no doubt."
He lowers the pencil to make another line on the page, and then hesitates, the point a fraction above the paper. He frowns, looks up at Solange, and then down at the paper again, still not making any mark.
"Something wrong?"
"No," says Lucas, starting to draw again. "No ... probably not."
He sets his pencil to the paper, but there's a new tentativeness in the line. After a moment, he pauses again, frowns at the mark, sighs, takes out an eraser and carefully removes it.
"Tell me about your mother. What you know of her."
Solange shifts, then goes back to her original position. "I know nothing about her, really." Which is true. Mostly.
Lucas sighs. "So ... I just leave a hole where your nose should be, do I?"
He puts the pencil down and looks at her. "Gerard must have told you something. He's like that."
He looks in the paintbox and selects a different pencil.
"I'm a draughtsman. I signed the contract. I draw .. what I see - in all its truth. No matter how awkward, how ambiguous, how incongruous. And this is a trump, not just a pretty portrait for your walls. If I screw up - it could be dangerous. If what I represent isn't the true you, then ... well. Imagine you have an open contact and you invite a person to step through. To you. Only what's on the card in front of them isn't the true you. It's something ... close. Close enough to allow a conversation ... but a more intimate connection ... ? I don't know. Where would they step through to? A Shadow you? To nothingness - like those dragonriders are meant to experience?"
He shakes his head. "If you're a habitual liar, it could be easier. I could ... allow for that. I could build it into the image. But someone who won't talk to keep a few private places hidden? That's harder."
Solange frowns at him. "The damnable thing about this, Lucas, is that I've no idea if you're lying about my need to disclose my...secrets..." she waves the word away, as though to try to prove to Lucas it's of little importance to her. "You're not exaclty who I'd pick as a confidante."
"The first requirement of a confidante, as I understand it, is confidentiality," he says. "Look how closely they are linked etymologically ... or do I mean entomologically? No matter. Discretion is the first requirement, and of that you can be assured. I keep secrets - as long as they're not given to me in the form of a delicious morsel of gossip with the breathless attachment of the label, "Now, promise - you won't tell a soul!"
She smiles despite herself and looks down at her feet.
He makes what looks like an idle squiggle on the paper. Then he looks up at her.
"You're trusting me to make a trump of you. Now ... you have to trust me to do it properly. Let go ... and I will catch you - capture you.
"And what passes between us ... will remain between only us."
She looks up from her feet and nails him with her gaze. "I have your word on that? I'm serious. Lucas."
"Upon my honour as Saint Just," says Lucas, using his family name. "Or I can swear by Kolvir, if you prefer. Or a Pattern Oath."
Another squiggle on the paper.
Solange sighs. "All right. Gerard isn't my father. My Amber parent is his sister Ysabeau. Have you heard the name?"
Lucas' expressive eyebrows lift. Whatever he was expecting, it doesn't seem to have been that - and his pencil makes a jagged line on the page. He frowns down at it, as though intending to erase it - hesitates, as though recognising its worth, and starts to feather it instead.
"The name, yes," he agrees. "Not a lot more. I think Maman said she was the one who never could co-ordinate her jewellery - but please don't take that personally. How much do you know?"
She shakes her head. "Not much, like I said. Apparently she was pretty headstrong. Father...Gerard...Hell, I'm still going to call him 'father,' dammit...told me she wanted to be a Ranger like her older brother Julian, but Corwin and Oberon wouldn't hear of it. She was eventually banished under 'heavy displeasure.' Father said she went back to the Isles. She died there, giving birth to me."
Lucas glances at Solange, and then draws for several minutes in silence.
Her expression isn't unduly agitated. Apparently she's comes to terms with the situation. She says nothing during Lucas's silence.
Eventually he says, "Death is not inevitable, you know. For Amberite mothers. Maman, for example. Llewella. Fiona's brood. Deirdre.
"For human mothers, the incidence may be ... more unfortunate."
Again a long silence and the drawing seems to intensify under his hands.
Solange spends the time musing what effect an agitated trump artist would have on the trump being created, if any.
"Solace ... bore two children in rapid succession. That was ... careless."
Solange studies Lucas for a moment, wondering about the relationship he has with Solace. He professes to love her and yet he goes off and commits adultery. On a regular basis. And yet...and yet the odd, tender statement on occasion escapes his mouth...or he commits a loving gesture to Solace or their children. She doesn't understand.
"On the other hand," Solange offers, "can you imagine your life without Phillipe?"
"I can remember life without Philippe," says Lucas. "And not so long ago, either. In fact, I cherish vivid memories of a time where a well developed sense of paternal responsibility simply meant ensuring that the foundling hospitals to which the brats were conveyed were well-endowed.
"But if you ask me whether I can envisage a future without Philippe ... then yes, I can. But I am becoming increasingly aware that there is very little I wouldn't do to ensure that eventuality did not come to pass.
"However, at the root of your questions lies another. Would I have sacrificed the possibility of Philippe if it would have saved Solace? Or will I account Solace's death not entirely in vain because I will be left with Philippe? And when did you stop beating your wife, Lord Lucas? It is, you see, a question that is impossible to answer because it contains a pre-supposition; in this case that I was fully aware of the consequences when Philippe was conceived. I wasn't.
"So who was your father? Do you think he faced a similar dilemma?"
Solange blinks at the abrupt change of topic. She didn't realize Solace was ill enough that Lucas believed her death an inevitability. She wants to ask him about it, to clarify things, but he apparently doesn't want to discuss it anymore. She must remember to ask Hannah or her father about Solace next time she talks to one of them.
She looks down at her hands. "I honestly don't know who my father was. I don't know if Ysabeau knew going in she would die in childbirth, or if she did, if she told him. Perhaps someday I'll go to the Isles and see if I can find out more information.
"Have you found my nose yet?"
"It's there in all its adorable snubness. You'll have to be careful who you give this trump to - there'll be a real danger that they'll just want to kiss your sweet proboscis."
Solange rolls her eyes good-naturedly.
"The remaining feature I have to tackle is that generously curved underlip ... you've never felt the urge to visit the Isles before now? I realise not everyone shares my own fascination with genealogy ... after all, we can't all be descended from the Merovignians. Actually, after all this time, we probably can ... But no matter."
He looks up at her.
She shrugs. "Father said I'd be considered a goddess there, due to being Ysabeau's daughter. Not sure all that goddess-thing entails, but I'm also not eager to find out. That and things just keep coming up so visiting goes further down on my to-do list." Solange glances in the direction where, through the walls and down the way, lies the ship's infirmary.
Lucas follows her gaze for a moment, and then says lightly, "Everyone should exeprience being worshipped as a god, you know. I tried it myself, at one point - I wanted to see if it appealed. And I must say, it rather did. But one could grow bored with being capricious and wilful. Although it might take eons.
"As a contrast to that, I next travelled to a hideously puritanical Shadow where everyone wore deepest black and the longest possible faces imaginable. Although I had a rather amusing time there too. I introduced an intoxicant into the religious ritual - a powerful euphoric. Just as a variant at first, you know - a new sacred mystery. A cult grew up - and, of course, spread like wildfire - because it was tres amusant. Soon the whole Shadow was a much, much better place - and I was being asked to parties all the time.
"Then I made the mistake of lacing the euphoric with an aphrodisiac. I believe the religious wars continue to this day.
"Do you think it really is just low on your list of priorities?" He adds a dot that could be a small blemish on her chin. "Or is the place where your mother died in bearing you somewhere you would prefer to avoid - for perfectly understandable reasons?"
"I'm not sure. I haven't really thought about it. I only found out about Ysabeau recently, and since then there's been the coronation, and Xanadu, and still the issue of father's legs, and so on, and so forth." She pauses a moment, considering the question, then adds, "The Isles scare me on some level. It's the whole goddess thing. I'm afraid of what I would do with that sort of power. Father said it corrupted Ysabeau...why wouldn't the same happen to me?" She shakes her head. "I'd just prefer not to find out."
"Interesting," murmurs Lucas, tracing a long, curving line - it seems to be a suggestion of an ear. Whar she has said seems to give him the opportunity to sketch for a while in silence - well, not exactly silence, for Lucas hums half under his breath. Were Solange familiar with Shadow Earth in the late twentieth century, she might recognise a Jacque Brel song - Ne me quitte pas.
Eventually he sets his pen down, and leans back and stretches.
"Enough for today," he says. "Unless ... "
"Unless what?" she asks, not moving.
"You are ready for me to capture your eyes," he says softly, his own eyes dark and intent.
Solange prickles. "What deep, dark secret are you going to ask about this time?" she replies darkly.
He sets down the pencil and leans beack in his seat, gazing at her thoughtfully.
"You could start," he says, "by telling me what makes the fires that burn there so hot and angry when I press close. What bruise is it, Solange, that's never entirely healed?"
She frowns at Lucas, annnoyed at his perception. "How much of the trump is left to do?" she asks.
He turns it round so she can see it clearly. The background is almost finished, and coloured - the deck, the sea behind. And her figure is drawn in some detail; her hands seem caught in mid gsture - half a breath, and they will move again. And her hair ... her hair is perfect ... lips, cheeks, nose, ears ... no mistaking her at all.
But where her eyes should be ... there are two blanks. The effect is rather sinister.
"Heh. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul." Solange shifts her position a bit and catches Lucas in her gaze. "All right. You want a good secret, I'll give you a good secret. But I want something in return."
He laughs. "You already know something you could hang me out to dry with - if not hang me outright. What more do you want?"
"More. I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult for you to come up with another interesting story.Tell me...tell me why you sleep with other women while married to Solace?"
"Beacuse they're there," said Lucas tranquilly. "And because they're willing. And Solace knows that however many beds I pass through, I will always come back to her. Do you think that because I've entered the virtuous state of matrimony there should be no more cakes and ale? That's a rather unfashionable attitude to hold in Amber."
"And yet...and yet...it's not all right with you if Solace decides to partake of the 'cake and ale'. Isn't that called a double standard?"
"It depends on the flavour she chooses," says Lucas, his pencil resting on the page. "In her condition, it would be safer for her to forgo the cream horns in favour of the sponge cake, one feels. If Paige - or, indeed, your good self as you seem so concerned for her sexual well-being, were to instruct her in the fine arts of sapphism, I would have no particular objection. Indeed, I can envisage circumstances where I might be induced to become a participant."
The smile he gives her is perfectly amiable.
She grins back, a "yeah, you keep on dreaming that" sort of grin. "By that reasoning, you yourself should only be sucking the filling out of the cream horns, rather than taking a small bite out of every petit four on the dessert plate."
"I can resist anything," says Lucas, "except temptation. And I enjoy my fair share of cream horns too ... "
"Her condition aside, if she should suddenly develop a taste for, say, spicy sausages...you wouldn't object?"
"Oh, I think I would," says Lucas. "Spicy sausages have a habit of lingering on the breath. Besides ... they rather betray themselves, don't they? Everyone knows when you've been munching on the chorizo.
"Do you have a secret yen for the spiced, then, cos? I thought your little takeaway seems pretty but worthy. Steady and reliable ... but will he make you laugh? Will you even smile that often in his company?" He regards her thoughtfully. "Look me in the eye, Solange, and tell me which of us has made you smile more on this voyage ... your doctor or me."
Solange leans toward Lucas, dangerously close, and looks him in the eye as bid. "There's a dessert called tiramisu. Translated, it means 'pick-me-up.' As legend goes, it was a favorite of the courtesans, who needed a "pick me up" to fortify themselves between their amorous encounters. I know it was _our_ favorite fortifier--the heavy zabaglione cream spread over the coffee-soaked ladyfingers is exquisite on the tongue--and Kyril made it very, very well. You could say he has a talent for such things...but, then again, he's always been good with his hands. He is a doctor, after all."
She straightens and smiles pleasantly. "I think we're done here for now. Good day, Lucas."
Solange leaves.
After their last sketching session, Lucas ... waits.
He is, as ever, a charming and courteous companion. He talks amusingly at shared meal-times - he offers games of cards on wet days, willing to teach obscure games and learn them too. If some of these games could, just possibly, be played for interesting forfeits, Lucas makes no such suggestion but instead invents fantasy fortunes that they can win and lose over the wardroom table. During the day, he is available for sparring, or for discussions about anything and everything. At the same time he is unobtrusive; he seems to know just when to withdraw and leave Solange and Kyril alone. He seems on excellent terms with the crew - several times Solange comes upon him with a group of the sailors not on dauty, sitting on piles of ropes in the foc'sle for example, enjoying a low-voiced conversation with much laughter, while one or another plays an accordion. Sometimes these conversations seem to drift off into song; not just rousing shanties but plaintive, plagent songs of the seafarers life and losses. Then Solange will hear Lucas' voice too - a pleasant tenor in the lower range.
As for the trump ...
He says nothing. And his silence seems to say that this, this final act must wait till Solange herself is ready.
Solange is amiable toward Lucas during this time, but she mentions nothing about the trump for several days. Then one afternoon, when the wind is low and the weather fair, she appears in front of him, arms crossed and already glowering.
"We need to finish this damn thing, I know," she says without preamble. "Someplace more private than the deck."
Lucas gives a little bow. "But of course," he says politely. "My cabin or yours?"
"Yours worked so well last time. Let's go there again."
Lucas bows again and allows her to proceed him to the cabin. He is too perfect a gentlemean, perhaps, to allow himself even the smallest of smirks. Or perhaps it is just that he has sparred enough with Solange know to know precisely how dangerous that would be.
Once in the cabin he moves to his former position and takes out his sketchpad and painting box, selecting the pencil. His manner is controlled, businesslike.
"Let's try a change of tactics," he says. "Rather than my questioning you, let's start with your telling me something that you never wanted to share with anyone."
"Doesn't it amount to the same thing?" she asks wryly, raising an eyebrow. "Nevermind. I just want to finish this."
Solange takes her customary position up against the sidboard. "Look, Lucas, I know what I'm about to tell you will finish the trump. It's been in my mind since you started questioning me on that first day, and it keeps coming back up in my head. So I'm going to tell you...I'm going to be matter-of-fact and unemotional about it...and it stops here. If word of this gets out, it will greatly upset Father and Papa and Aunt Felicity and I will come looking for you with murder in my heart. Do you understand? I want your word that this stops here."
"Of course," says Lucas. "You have my word that it will be forgotten - just as completely as you will forget who it was who created this trump."
He smiles pleasantly. "I have no desire whatsoever to spend my next few decades chained to an artist's easel in Amber or Xanadu, grinding out pretty pictures of our kith and kin. Nor is this a technique that will work with many of them ... if I am forced to invite Brennan, say, or Jerod, to share the innermost secrets of their hearts with me in order to get a true trump of them, I suspect my life expectancy will become shorter than my wife's. Let alone Martin."
"All right, it's a deal. Remind me to ask you sometime why you don't get along with Martin. But not now." Solange runs a hand over her face and sighs. "All right."
Lucas raises his eyebrows slightly, but says nothing.*
She's quiet for a moment, ordering her thoughts, then looks up at Lucas. "My foster-brother Matthew. You remember me describing him? Dark hair, dark eyes, sometimes dark personality..." Solange trails off. Her gaze lowers to her feet and she starts chewing on her bottom lip. After another quiet moment she continues, "I also told you that Matthew was envious of me. Thought because he was older and because he was a boy then he should be better than me at everything. Well...one thing he was never better at getting than me was attention from others."
She looks up at Lucas and shrugs. "I don't know why. I suspect it had to do with his personality. He tended to be pessimistic. I was the happy one. I think people naturally gravitate toward that. Anyway...
"Matthew's way of dealing with this--and I really only figured this out later, looking back--was to try to get me to pay more attention to him than I paid attention to others. It wasn't hard. We were alone a lot of the time and I really did adore him. So.
"When we became teeenagers...well, you asked me who I lost my virginity to. I lost it to Matthew. He wanted...that...and I gave it to him. I wanted to make him happy."
"Often a good reason for going to bed with someone," says Lucas, who has been sketching very swiftly throughout this. "Although one that usually has unforseen consequences. Either the person is not made happy, but only more miserable. Or the other person is made very happy - you've given them the most addictive drug ever and you're suddenly their lifeline, their salvation, the source of their fix. And they cling ...
"What was the result with Matthew? Did it happen just the one time?"
Solange sighs. "It was more the latter situation than the former. We had...repeat performances. A few times. Then Mama caught us. That...was unpleasant. There was quite a row. Soon afterwards, Father sent me off to school at Lauderville. I suspected a connection and Mama confirmed it when I confronted her. She did say that she didn't give Father the true reason...not for my sake--because, obviously, it was _all my fault_--but because she wanted to preserve her family's reputation.
"So I was shipped off to Lauderville. I wasn't talking to Mama at the time and my relationship with Matthew was strained. The next time I came back to Amber was for Matthew's funeral. He died in the Burning of Garnath...did you know that?" Her voice has become flat and unemotional.
"I remember," says Lucas. He sketches for a while in silence and then asks, "So ... what is your greatest regret? That you slept with him, or that you went away so it was never truly resolved? I imagine that going away like that must have been something of a relief ... which presumably adds to the feeling of guilt ... "
He raises a hand and touches the corner of his left eye. "Just ... there."
She blinks and looks at her feet. "I regret more sleeping with him. It was foolish and I didn't think through to all the consequences." For that may have been part of the reason Mama killed herself, she thinks, but doesn't voice.
"Interesting you should perceive others as seeing it as all your fault," he goes on, applying the pencil lightly once more. "It was, of course - most of the things we do are our fault.
She shrugs. "Granted."
"But you you seem to harbour a feeling of resentment. Is that the case? Is your relationship with Aunt Felicity rather more complicated than you like to portray?"
"I think you have enough psychological fodder to finish the trump," Solange concludes, clearly not wanting to talk about it anymore. "I further think it's time for me to go back to my cabin and break into one of the whisky bottles I brought."
He gives a little bow.
"If such is your wish, my lady," he says. "And yes, I can finish the trump - although I shall think you a meanie if you don't ask me to pop by if for a snifter later."
His dark eyes rest on her face once more - the face he has been studying for so many days.
"And your secrets," he says softly, "are as safe with me as mine are with you."
She smiles wryly. "Indeed."
Last modified: 11 January 2006