Episode Six: Nothing Actionable
Part One: Being Right for the Wrong Reasons
By that night, after a long day of restless dreams, all I know is that more than anything what I want is to tangle myself up in Peitho and forget all about Pepin and magick and wars. The only choice I want to make is to take her and disappear. Forever.
But I can't do that, can I?
She wouldn't come.
It is remarkable how similar this night is to those two previous. If I didn't know better, I could tell myself I'd never left Verona. That these nights were just dreams.
I guess I still could, for that matter. Not that it would do any good. The End is coming, whether I acknowledge what day it is and where I am on the oblate spheroid or not.
We're laid out in the grass. I'm reclining with my arms crossed behind my head so that really only they are touching the tree at all. Peitho is lying with her legs wrapped around mine, head and hands against my chest.
I am thankful that there legitimately are dangerous items in my jacket, so it wasn't noteworthy or suspicious when I took it off before lying down. Wouldn't want her cutting herself – or finding the Figurine.
“Did you dream of him today?”
“You know I did,” I tell the stars.
“Did you learn anything new?”
“Peitho—“
“Robert. This is my last chance, is it not? By this time tomorrow, we will have arrived and Pavia and you will have gone your way.”
“...Right.”
“Did you learn anything new?” Peitho repeats, obstinately.
I look down at her with just my eyes, not moving my chin.
“No.”
“Why not?” Her voice... is like a wife's – chiding.
“Peitho— You just don't understand what you are asking of me.”
“Don't I?” Her voice is defiant, but she doesn't even flinch from our embrace. “Did I not spend this morning pontificating about what I am asking of you? How did I not convey—“
“You're right. Sorry I said— That's not what I meant.”
“It's what you said.”
“You're right.”
“If the answer, Robert Longshore, Philalitheia and Seeker of Truth, is because you don't want to – be a man, say so. You do not need to fear my judgment.”
I roll my eyes.
“Will you?” Peitho's voice is suddenly very small. Maybe her mouth is buried against my side or something. “Tonight— For me?”
The sigh pushes itself from my lungs. I hadn't meant to, but didn't exactly try to stop it, either. I wish in this moment that I had a Draig. It's a nice night to get a little stoned.
R – So he doesn't have to answer her questions.
I – So he doesn't have to feel her guilt.
R – His guilt for not helping her.
Even my thoughts have resorted to side-eyeing me and gossping about me where I can hear. Am I really that terrible?
“You want me to risk... dissolution in Pepin's psyche,” I say. No matter ho many times I articulate it, I'm not sure it will ever sound any less insane.
Peitho shrugs. “If that is what is even happening. You said yourself you don't believe in magick. If there's no magick happening—“
“And if I'm wrong and you're right and I'm not practiced enough—“
“It might not even be what's happening. What if there is no danger, only reward?”
“But whom is the reward for? Me? Or you?”
“Is the Truth not enough reward, Philalitheia?”
I look down at her. She is challenging me – but not to the death.
R - Is the Truth not enough reward?
It is – or was, once. Now....
I'd do a lot to have a woman like her like this – forever. The voice of Genoa's tavernmaster suddenly echoes in my mind.
“Why'd ya leave? Shepherdin ain't a bad life for a man. Get good with that sling or a bow or strong enough to hold a spear n shield – make ya nough coin to buy a wife n take her back to them sheep n raise ya some lil Robbies. That's a good life for a man. Decent. Honest.”
“You don't think I'm decent and honest?”
I hear my reply. And for the life of me, I do not remember this talk. This was not the sort of thing we talked about. I turn from that thought to—
You can get ideas in your head with no conscious articulation, the sort you can only trace to their source long after. I got one of these in this moment.
“What are you going to do when you get the Rod back?” I ask.
“What am I going to do? Take it home to my family. Why?”
“Just like that?”
“It is why I exist, Robert.” Peitho says this like it really is that simple.
S – It must be nice.
R – To know what you are?
S – To think you know why you exist.
“I see. That's what Pepin made you – what your Sister made you – by stealing the Rod?”
Peitho goes still on my side.
Had that not been what she meant?
“You could say that,” she says a moment later, slowly, as though what she meant to say was, That's one way to interpret it – a way I had not thought of yet.
“Is that not how you have explained it?”
“It is. Yes. Or near enough. He – they – made me this. And until the Rod is safe, this is whom I will be.”
“And you have no say in this – no choice?”
“Of course I do. I make the choice to be this. I could fight it – resist being what they have made me. I could make myself something else. But where does the fish go who fights against the net?”
It is impossible, now, for me not to look down at her. When I do, I find exactly what I expect to: Peitho looking up with me, that knowing filling her face. The Well? Am I wrong? challenge glowing in her eyes.
“Until it's safe,” I repeat her, musing, looking at the stars once more. This could be an answer to her question – rather, the answer to when the fish should act to escape the net. But it is not. I work it around in my mind to shape it that way – like one shapes and prepares for a lie. But Peitho offers no counter. So I ask: “And after that? What will you do?”
I can feel Peitho working this question in her mind: she relaxes, molding her body once more to mine.
“I cannot know. I will no doubt go back to the life I had before. Until I am needed as I am now.”
“Until it is no longer safe.” This makes me twist my lips and frown a little bit. “Will you marry?”
“I cannot say. I... the truth is that I do not expect to live much longer, Robert – ...one way or the other.”
I – And last night was about not dying having never kissed a boy.
S – Hm.
I – Would it be worth staying to help her keep from dying a virgin?
R – Assuming she wants the help?
“I... see.” I say. She had said as much, hadn't she?
R – More than a few times, at this point.
I – She really is a damsel in distress. What are you going to do, hero?
“Tomorrow is—“
“The last day before Pavia,” Peitho cuts me off. “Yes. I'd better convince you to stay pretty soon – or at least to look into the mind of the man I am chasing – or risk losing you forever.”
My heart feels as hard as stone, hearing her say this. I can hear in her cadence, in her tone, that she is trying to tease, trying to joke – there is, after all, a little truth in every joke, and it has been my way up 'til now to laugh at the worst of her behavior....
It would feel so much better, I would feel so much less like an asshole, if I would just agree to stay with her. But—
“There's something that's been bothering me, I say.”
Apparently unaffected by the sudden and unexpected change of topic, Peitho asks:
“Yes?”
“If your goal is to retrieve and return the Rod to hiding— Why is Metus involved at all? Surely if the Venatores Maleficarum are aware of you they should agree that your goals are in alignment.”
In the movie version of this moment, this is where the camera would pan down from my face to Peitho's – and in the movie she would be making a suspicious face. But this in not the movie, and I'm not telling what she actually did – it was nothing, she didn't react at all. Maybe in the novelization.
“Unless they are not,” Peitho says simply.
“Obviously they're not. You both want the Rod hidden, though. I don't understand their involvement. Because— The thing that's suddenly eating at me is why would they choose this war, this battle, to deploy the Rod – and why would the Venatores choose this confluence of events to announce their re-naissance.”
“That's not a word.”
I make a noise in my throat and shrug. “Every word was made up by someone. Who's going to remember my made-up words?” I was being flippant, and then the question hit me – hard. Like a brick had suddenly fallen from Heaven onto my belly.
Who would remember me?
S – If Peitho's family are right? Will I just be gone when I'm dead?
I – And you're about to be dead a whole hell of a lot sooner than you thought you might be last month.
R – Clock's ticking, big guy.
“Rob—“ Peitho makes a noise in her throat. “Has it occurred to you that Metus may in fact be lying to you?”
“Of course it has. Priests aren't infallible – mad ones especially so.”
“Right. Then isn't it more likely that in fact he wants us out of the story so he can take the Rod for himself – and whatever opportunities that particular power opens for him?”
“I don't think so, no,” I say, my voice a little defiant.
“You don't?” Peitho seems surprised – that I'm willing to take a hard stance on this? Or that Metus might have an unshakeable faith and character?
I'm thinking, now, of what I saw in my NDV – if I could believe it at all: Metus, being made, through an horrific act of violence, perfect, as the Ninth/Grand Magus called her. Made perfect.
R – Are you really going to think about this now?
I – He's falling into it again.
I am. And I'm not sure I'm resisting it.
I'd seen Metus's sarcophagus open itself.
R – You've seen a lot more than that.
S- But... how? What were they actually doing?
“I think that what Metus is— I don't think either of us would really recognize or understand it. I think— I think that the way they made Metus Metus has made him...” I pause. It's strange, now. If I'm right and the girl I saw die was Metus, then I should not be calling Metus he – I should be calling her she. I wonder about this. “Whatever it is, Metus is faith unshakeable. He believes in his mission, in the raison d'etre of his Church—“
“You use so many strange words. Raison d'etre?”
I sigh. “Maybe I'm making it up, too. The core philosophical reason for the existence of his Church – he believes in it the same way that you and I believe that the sky is blue and the grass is green and that Right is Right and Wrong is Wrong. The precepts of his organization—“ I almost said order, but restrain myself, “are his precepts. He is, I am afraid, the Metus in the same way that—“
“I am Peitho,” Peitho cuts in, punctuating the I, then taking her time with the rest. “ Yes. I understand.”
“Do you?” I look down at her. She meets my eye, waiting. “I was not, but— Are you suggesting that somehow you and Metus represent – what, you represent Order and Chaos? Instead of a little angel and a demon – or whatever – on either of my shoulders, I have... I have a Metus and a Peitho?”
“I would not say it in that order, no.”
“Then you would say that Metus is representing Order somehow and you are – you're, what? Chaos?”
“That is not what I was saying, no.”
“Is that what you would do?” I ask. “Would you take the Rod and use it for yourself?”
Peitho sighs and I can feel her eyes rolling. “I told you, I would – and am going to – take it home.”
“No, I understand that, Peitho. But if the roles were reversed. Say a Church artifact was stolen and for whatever reason you'd gotten it in your head that you needed to be involved. The why is irrelevant – you're involved, it's not your relic. Do you steal it and use it for yourself?”
“Do I?”
“Do you? If Metus takes the Rod and uses it, he is turning his back on nearly nine centuries of tradition, of Faith.”
“What am I using it to achieve in this scenario?” Peitho's voice is intrigued.
This question really makes me think. “I'm not sure.”
“What does Metus want?” Peitho's questions are so obvious, I feel almost stupid for not having better answers.
“I don't know.”
“You don't know? What has he told you?”
“He hasn't told me anything – not about his motivations.”
“But he's told you plenty about mine.”
“Enough.”
“Enough that even here, with me now, like this, you don't fully trust me.”
“Has it occurred to you, Peitho, that you could be lying to me? Using your body to manipulate me into putting my guard down so you can shoot me in the neck with another poisoned crossbow bolt?”
“It has. But all I can do is assure you that that was a one-time event.”
“And how can you do that?” I crane my neck to look down at her.
She doesn't look back at me. Just shrugs. “I only had the one bolt.”
I see.
R – Then it all really was staged.
I – From Francis offering you a crown to Regina's death.
R – Scripted. But by whom?
I lay my head back against the tree, nodding to myself in that Ah, yes – of course way you do when you hear something you should have already guessed.
“I think,” Peitho says, “that what you want me to argue is that if it were not my artifact I would take it. That if I were me but from another faith I would desecrate another god's power and memory to lift myself to hero – or higher – status. Am I wrong?”
“I don't want you to say anything.” I argue.
“You say that. But the conversation is not a good one if I tell you that if I were me but from another faith I would still be as devoted to my faith and the sanctity of all faiths as I am. You would argue this, the possibility of it, and I do not feel like—“ Peitho sighs as though the prospect of this line of conversation was too taxing to describe with words. “I would return it to my Church for safekeeping. Let the Church, the Matere, make the choices which impact a whole people, a whole world, history – and its telling.”
“Do you really mean that?” I wonder aloud.
“I do.” No hesitation. Just simple admission.
“I feel like... I feel like I don't believe you, Peitho. I feel like you're saying that because you think that's actually what I want you to say.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I already told you—“
“What do you think of me, then?” she asks? There is no bite to her tone.
“What do I think of you? Do you mean— I think that you would take it. I don't know that you would use it for your own purposes – to make yourself a god— I don't think so. But I do think that you would take it. I think you would think that you could protect it better than whomever it was stolen from. I think that you would be able to convince yourself that you were doing it for the good of your family. That you could protect it the way you protect them.”
“Is that what you think?” I can feel Peitho's eyes on me. “That I am that arrogant? - or is that what you think Metus would do?”
Peitho's voice is less defensive than I had expected, but there's something else there, too. The half-quiet of an appraisal made uncomfortably accurately.
“Arrogant?” I blink, look down at her. “ I had not meant to imply that you are hubristic.” Had I meant that was what Metus would do?
“Do you, though?” she presses. “Think I am so arrogant that I could decide what should be done with an artifact which has existed for longer than my pathetic animal brain is even capable of comprehending?”
“Well...” I have to think about this one. And, by the choice of her words, I might want to choose mine carefully. She is, as I have reminded us both tonight, still the woman who could have easily killed me – twice – in Genoa. And, for whatever advantage it might offer her, she is technically on top of me.
“It depends,” I admit. “I don't like to think about what it must be like to think that we can make decisions for other people.”
I can feel in that hollow space between us, that whatever which is causing the vortex of gravities and energies and information and emotion and and and— The indescribable thing that is happening with us, I can feel in it that Peitho had not expected this response.
“What does that mean?” she asks, relaxing noticibly.
“It means that I don't – I don't like to think about what it must require for a king to be a king, or for a Pope to be a pope, or whatever. What it must be like to be a father, to make so many decisions for your young children. So much of what they will become as people is directly related to how you treat them as a child. Do you realize that?”
I look down at her, but she's not looking at me. Which— If she really thinks she's going to be dead in the next few weeks or months or however soon, then the thought of kids and raising them— Well, I can't speak to her – and should never speak for any woman's – feelings vis-a-vis motherhood. I try to empathize. I probably did not choose a great example – or I accidentally chose the most poignant.
I stumble, but keep talking.
“You can watch kids. Around the time they're able to walk and talk and act for themselves, they're already acting just exactly like their parents. Its eerie, like seeing a little pantomime of a person following them everywhere they go. But it's beautiful, too, when it works right.”
“What does this—“
“Right. My point is that I don't like to think about making choices that will impact another person's choice. That's – well, it's tyranny in a lot of ways. You would say that Order is tyranny, I can already hear it. I can imagine you telling me to just let everyone do whatever they want, to follow their hearts, their dreams. To find their best versions of themselves and to live their best lives. And of course.
“But do I also think you're the kind of person who says, 'Damn the consequences,'? No. I don't. I don't think you would be here if you were that person. I think you would have gone after your sister without me if you were that kind of person. Because you clearly didn't – and don't? – want to be enlisting my help.”
Peitho is quiet for a long time, and I let her. Saying these kind of things is always uncomfortable to me. If you're wrong, your whole credibility as a wizard – or whatever – is shot. Which – sure of whether I want the credibility or not – when your profession relies on what credibility you can cobble together, you'll take it, even if it's as someone you don't want to be. But it's worse if you're right.
People hate you when you're right about them.
“You think that Metus and I are the same, don't you – only opposites. You think we're flip sides of one coin.” She falls silent for the space of time it takes to make a Hmm in your throat, and when she resumes, he voice suggests she had, in her mind. “And maybe we are.”
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