At least Martha is gentle about it, to the extent that Martha can be gentle.
She is keen enough to notice that I am, at most, a bystander to this incident. “His Highness would have steamrolled past anyone at that desk, be it you, Laurie, Nigel, or even Pym himself,” says Martha.
“What’s going to happen to him?” I ask, dreading the answer. “Mr. Pym, that is?”
“Peter is in a…hazardous situation.” Martha leans forward, resting her chin upon her folded hands. “Legally, he has done nothing wrong. He was, indeed, instructed to purge Prince Edgar’s personal files on direct order of Her Majesty, so he does not need to defer to anyone else. On the other hand…his conduct has breached the core tenets of our department, far beyond simply violating a guideline or two. His disregard for procedure puts all of us at risk. He neglected to inform me, his manager, of his assignment. He acted directly against the interests of his client, pitting two members of the Royal Family against each other. And he conducted the assignment with such secrecy that, when his client discovered it, he flew into a rage that could have hurt you or my other clerks—an entirely preventable incident, had Pym simply followed the proper procedure.”
“Can he be arrested just for that?” I ask.
“You are asking the wrong person. I can refer you to the Crown’s solicitor, if you really want to know.”
My business ventures in my past life trained me to be highly suspicious of lawyers. The last thing I want in my life is someone whose job is to ask invasive questions. “Um…no, thank you.”
“Regardless,” Martha continues, “I will not be contesting his arrest because I have questions—as, I am sure, do you. I want an investigation. I want a trial. I want the Crown to know precisely how close they were to total civil war last night.”
Civil war. The words send a chill down my spine. Did this incident happen in my last life? I have no way of knowing. If Pym suddenly started hoarding Edgar’s personal papers right after I was hired, I would suspect that it had something to do with me, but I have no idea when the hoarding started. Based on the signs of decay—mold, water damage, fading—I suspect the files must have been in Pym’s office for weeks, perhaps months. So it couldn’t have been me…right?
Martha is quiet for a long time. I can tell she is studying me, and since I was spacing out, I have no idea how long she has been at it for.
“You puzzle me, Miss Odric,” says Martha. “You were so self-assured in your interview. I don’t see that stubborn, scheming girl anymore.”
I sit up straighter, but I still feel small under her gaze. I have realized how little power I have here. There was a time in my life I could talk my way into anything and out of anything, when I could command ships with the wave of my hand, when I was beholden to no man and no law. That time is over; or perhaps, it never existed. The resulting helplessness is paralyzing.
“I’m afraid,” I say quietly. “I don’t like… not knowing. But I suddenly fear what will happen when I try to find out.” What horrors lie beneath the lid of Pandora’s box?
Martha raises an eyebrow. “And what is it you wish to know?”
“How much this has to do with me.”
Again, Martha pauses for a very, very long time. Slowly she stands, wandering towards the window. As the chief of records, her office is the most spacious, with a first floor view out to the palace garden. Even though the last of the fall colors are nearly gone, with only weak, yellowish-brown leaves clinging to the trees, Martha still has the nicest view of the whole department. It is the same view I have from the tiny garden window of my basement bedroom, just larger, and higher up.
“May I ask you something, Eloise?” she says.
“Of course.”
“What do you know about your father? Speak truthfully. There is nothing you can tell me that I do not already know.”
It is my turn, now, to fall silent. I look down at my hands. I weigh my options very carefully. As I always suspected, Martha knows everything. When I interviewed for this position, it was to my advantage to feign ignorance of my parentage. Now, if I pretend not to know Edgar is my father, it only makes things more complicated. Martha might withhold information from me, or if she suspects my dishonesty, lose trust in me. I take a deep breath and bite the bullet.
“Prince Edgar is my biological father,” I confess. “My mother had an affair with him when they were teenagers. They eloped. She conceived a child. The Crown annulled their marriage, my mother left the castle, and I was born without ever having met my father.”
“Have you always believed this?”
“No. For years, I thought my mother was crazy.”
“So did you lie during your first interview?”
“I withheld only the parts of the truth that I was uncertain about. But I didn’t lie. I never wanted to apply to this position as Imogen’s daughter, or as Edgar’s bastard; I don’t want to be affiliated with their reputations. I want to be judged on my merits, not their misdeeds.”
This is, again, the truth, with some parts withheld. I hope it will be enough for now. Martha turns to face me. “I see. You understand, though, that this incident makes such a distinction impossible.”
“I do.”
“You asked earlier, ‘how much does this have to do with me.’ I assume you meant the stolen records. Do you still want to know?”
“Yes.”
“Almost all of them.”
I am silent. The answer is not a surprise. I suppose I knew it all along.
“Yet…as you have undoubtedly heard, His Highness has requested you to work as his senior clerk. This position would come with benefits. You would have an office, a schedule, and a significant pay raise. That being said…although Edgar does not know who you are, you know who you are. Can you still work diligently under his direction?”
Diligently? Absolutely not. I know what Martha is hinting at here. She does not want me to become a second Pym, working directly against Edgar’s interests by colluding with other members of the Royal Family. I do not know what Pym’s relationship with Queen Philomena was, nor what her orders to him were, but I know what a lead looks like. If I become Edgar’s senior clerk, the absolute first thing on my agenda will be to reach out to Her Majesty. So this fear of Martha’s is a guaranteed certainty. If I become Edgar’s senior clerk, I will absolutely be using that position against him. In no way will my work be the diligent representation that Martha desires of a senior clerk.
But I have just seen what happens when a senior clerk works against his prince. I will be carted off to the dungeons in chains, undoubtedly to rot beside Pym until the end of time. If I seek knowledge about my father, then taking his clerkship is the perfect opportunity. But the risk is so high, and the costs so great…
So I tell the truth. “I don’t know,” I tell Martha. “His Highness…frightens me. He dances on the edge of madness. I don’t want to be falsely accused—” ( or rightfully accused, I add privately) “—of working against him. Especially if he finds out who I am.”
“And he will,” Martha agrees. “If this madness goes much further…it is a near certainty that he will.”
I nod solemnly. “I know.”
“Then let me grant you this. A counteroffer.” She sits down again and begins to write on a piece of paper. “I don’t often do this. You have worked here a little under one month, so I have little assurance of your abilities, beyond your near-supernatural penchant for getting into trouble. But I selected you for a reason, Eloise, and it is that I see incredible potential in you.”
Is this the choice Pym mentioned? Was he serious? I wait as Martha continues writing, and as the document gets longer, my nerves grow stronger. Finally, she finishes writing and hands the parchment to me.
“I intend to retire in five years,” she tells me. “At that point, I will appoint you as chief of records. Your tenure would be for life. Your pay will become equal to mine. The position also includes title to a small plot of land—technically, you will be a baroness, though I have found that this title holds little weight compared to ‘chief of records,’ anyway.”
It is little more than a handwritten scrap of paper, but all of the formalities of a contract are present: her signature, the terms, and the conditions. I will inherit Martha’s job on the sole condition that I turn down Edgar’s offer and remain a junior clerk until she retires or otherwise leaves the position. Still…
“I need this offer typewritten,” I tell her. “And in triplicate. I also require the weekend to think it over, so I will be taking tomorrow off. If my time off request is denied, I will ask Thorunn to throw another cart at me.”
Martha raises her chin. Then the ghost of a smile—the most smile that I have ever seen from her—flickers across her face.
“There she is,” she says. “There’s that stubborn girl I hired.”
I leave the office with the handwritten offer folded between my hands. Martha has promised a typewritten copy by the end of the day, and in the meanwhile, has ordered me to get some rest. I have no objections to this. Having been awake all night and most of this morning, I am ready to collapse and forget the world for hours.
On my way to my bedroom, I pass by Pym’s office again. Two maintenance workers are hard at work outside of it. They are affixing a single sheet of plywood to the doorframe. I had expected them to replace the door, but instead, they are nailing it shut altogether, sealing away the stolen records—and the secrets they hold—indefinitely.
MEMORANDUM
RE: Regression Returns Strategy, Revision 3
DATE: November 13, 489 AR
The original strategy: buy elysium, make money, get the fuck out of Saol Eile.
The revised strategy: buy elysium, find out what Prince Edgar knows about elysium, sabotage all of it, make money, get the fuck out of Saol Eile.
The current strategy: pace my room until I wear a hole in the floor.
What the fuck is even going on anymore? And how is this typewriter turning into my personal diary? I have never kept a diary. Is this what it is like? Perhaps I should drop the to/from header — these are just being folded up and tucked away in the inner lining of my bookbag, anyway. Though I suppose, if the game is getting so dangerous, I should just take a page out of Pym’s book and start burning these memos.
I am tempted with the cruelest and most agonizing choice of my life. What I wanted from this position was to get an insider’s look upon the financial decisions of a prince, but I am over a month into my employment and have nothing to show for it. Now, I have just been handed all of the knowledge I seek on a silver platter — the same silver platter upon which Pym’s severed head was served just a minute ago. They haven’t even bothered to scrub off the blood.
I should be afraid. It is a gift and a threat, all at once. Edgar assumes that I am just some unremarkable girl, naive and pliable, ready to be molded like clay at his command. His first act is to strike me with fear of retribution. “If you step out of line, if you defy my orders, and if you try to destroy these files, you will also be marched out of the records department in chains.” But in equal weight to the fear is a burning curiosity. Martha admitted it herself.
It’s me. Those files are about me.
There are only two things holding me back from accepting that position — that I am virtually defenseless if I take it, and that I still do not know what my father thinks of me. Whether he knows of me is no longer in doubt. Those records are mine. What remains to be seen is whether he is so protective of them out of fear, anger, or something else entirely.