Beyond the carriage windows the dark shapes of cedars and Aleppo pines drifted past, the city's amber glow catching in glimpses between their trunks. A warm haze hung over the city. Sophie pulled her travelling cloak tighter about her shoulders, and tighter again.
Jean sat opposite, studying her face in the soft light of the carriage lamp. The silence between them was drawing taut as a fiddle string.
Sophie drove her fist against the upholstered seat.
"Stop!" she shouted to the driver. "Here!"
The carriage halted at a lookout point near the very summit of Colle Alto.
Sophie threw the door open and leapt out.
Below them Ardentia spread wide. Darkness had swallowed the detail, wiped the colour, leaving only a scatter of lights. Specks of magelight pricked the black across the city, deceptively warm stars on velvet.
On the opposite hill the imperial quarter blazed. Hundreds of windows, lamps on colonnades. The Regia never slept.
Further beyond the harbour, the ragged brushstrokes of light along Via Ardens glowed. The clubs and bordellos of the endless pleasure quarter were only just waking up.
At the very heart of the city, the bright point of the Quatre della Sapienza observatory shone.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Sophie turned to Jean. "From far away, everything looks beautiful."
She stood at the parapet, staring at the city lights. Her shoulders shook.
"That look," she choked. "The way she looked at him..."
She slammed her palm against the parapet stone.
"Like he was a cockroach!" She spun, tears shining on her cheeks. "And him? He sat there and smiled! 'Son-in-law of the great Duke Benjamin Rosen.' Oh, gods!"
"Sophie..."
She raised a hand.
"Eighteen cursed years I've watched this!"
She began to pace, chopping the air with her hand.
"She smiles at him over breakfast. And in the evening she shuts herself in her rooms and weeps. She thinks I don't hear? I hear everything!"
Sophie stopped and hugged herself.
"And he..." She swallowed a sob, wiping tears with her sleeve. "'Our family'" — she mimicked her father's tone — "'our position.' Ha! What position? It's HER position! It's HER family! He's just... an appendage!"
She dragged her hands across her face.
"It sickens me, Uncle. This circus." Barely a whisper. "'Dear, you are still too young.' Too young for what?"
She went quiet, staring somewhere past the city lights.
"As a little girl, I used to sit on his lap. I'd pull at that stupid beard of his, and he'd laugh... and she'd laugh. Was it real? Or was I just a dumb brat?"
Jean went to her and took her in his arms. Sophie set her face against his chest, and her shoulders shook in a long silent weeping. They stood like that for some minutes. Below them the city lived its life; lights winked; somewhere a faint music carried. The evening breeze freshened and brought with it a heavy sweet scent of night violet.
Sophie drew a deep breath. She stepped back and wiped her face with her sleeve.
"That scent..." She turned toward the bushes by the parapet. "Grandmother always said you were like a night violet as a child. Caught a cold from every draught."
Jean's smile was rueful, a memory walking for a moment in his mind.
"Eleanora said a great many things. The dwarves hold that the night violet stands for the overcoming of hardship. For a return. I should think that belongs to you more than to me."
Sophie went quiet, wiping the last tears.
"My research..."
He listened.
"...you figured it out in my room, or before?"
Jean set his hands on her shoulders. Sophie leaned into him.
"Why did you hide the fact that you were the one running the expedition?"
Sophie lifted her head, searching his face. Her eyes were still red.
"Do you remember when I was little and you told me the legends? 'The Fall of the Legion.'"
"The night the sky caught fire, and the world was changed for good." He quoted the old line, and the long evenings came back to him, a small Sophie climbing into his lap and asking for a story about the old times.
She stepped to the parapet and pointed down, to the pale domes of the academy.
"That's where I tried to find answers."
She picked up a stone and hurled it toward the city over the edge.
"The professors waved me off. 'Immaterial,' they said."
Another stone went out.
"But it mattered to me! Who are we? Where did we come from?"
Jean stood beside her. Below, the city glowed, grand and beautiful. He pointed to the Regia and the imperial palace.
"They decide what's important and what isn't."
"The Emperor? The Council? A pack of idiots fighting over power. Who cares what happened five thousand years ago?"
Jean picked up a smooth stone and launched it in the direction of the imperial hill.
"I expect that lot are too busy licking His Imperial Majesty's boots to care about some old tale."
Sophie turned her face toward him, pale in the light of the rising moon. Nightjars had begun their evening rattle.
"Archaeology digs back five thousand years. Scraps, fragments, and beyond that, nothing. As if..."
"As if someone wiped it clean," Jean finished.
Nodding, Sophie plucked a sprig of night violet and turned it in her fingers, still talking.
"I created a pseudonym. Sergio Lofi." She squeezed the flower, and petals began to fall. "A girl would have been laughed out of the room."
Jean watched the purple petals drift.
"In the blood-memory recording of a captured elven warrior, I found a mention of sanctuaries of the old gods." Sophie breathed in the scent from her palms. "Sanctuaries that existed before the 'War in the Heavens.' I think that's what they call the Fall."
"And you found her." Jean tipped his head toward the carriage where Kali sat.
Sophie just hefted another stone in her hand.
"A witness from the age when humans had their own magic. Or their own gods." Putting her whole body into the throw, she sent the stone sailing into the sky.
Jean picked up a stone and held it out to her.
"But demons are servants, not sovereigns." He slipped into his habitual mode, probing her theory for weak points. "Where did the gods go, then?"
She spoke faster, words tumbling over each other.
"I'm hardly the first person in thousands of years to ask the question. Why are all the ancient temples 'abandoned' or 'cursed'?"
Jean kept silent, letting her talk.
"Kali isn't the only one." Sophie stood, her silhouette sharp against the night city. "I found mentions of other sanctuaries. If we study them, we might find someone else."
She turned toward Riva di Marmo, dived her torso down, and whipped her free leg into a vertical split. Pivoting on the ball of her foot to catch the momentum of the spin, she launched the stone toward her family home with a powerful, sweeping swing.
"Impressive," Jean noted. "But I doubt it will reach the estate."
"All my life I've watched people live inside lies," she said, softer, and there was no arguing with it.
She took his face in both hands.
"What if our entire civilisation is the same kind of lie? What if we've forgotten who we were?"
Jean covered her hands with his. Warmth spread through his chest. Admiration for this extraordinary woman who had once been his small niece. He broke a small sprig from the night-violet bush glowing in the moonlight and held it out to Sophie.
"These flowers only bloom when everyone else is asleep." He placed the stem in her palm. "You search for truth in the dark, while everyone else stumbles through it blind."
Sophie looked at the flower.
"I will always be on your side," Jean added.
"I know, Uncle. I always knew."
She pressed the flower to her chest and put her arms around him.
"Then you'll help me?"
"I swore to set us free. And if that means plundering a hundred cursed temples or binding myself to every ancient goddess in existence, I am ready. I'm with you to the edge of the world."
The night violet sharpened on the air. The air around the bush began to shimmer.
"Clever girl," said a familiar voice.
Kali sat on the parapet beside the flowering bush. They had not seen her get there. Her bare feet dangled over the drop. She had plucked a blossom and held it to her nose.
"The flower of secrets and dreams." She breathed in the blossom, eyes half-closing.
Sophie was still holding the sprig Jean had given her. Kali noticed it and nodded her approval.
"You want to uncover secrets, child?" The demoness held out her own flower to Sophie. "Then get used to the night. Most answers hide in the dark."
Sophie took the second flower, beaming.
"I'm ready! Tell us!" She turned to Kali. "You were there, you saw it. What happened?"
"Yes, I remember the time before the War in the Heavens." Kali sounded faintly amused. "I remember when your world looked... different."
"Why should we search for scraps when you know the truth?" Jean pressed.
Kali circled them.
"My darlings," she stopped before them, "the truth is not a set of facts you can simply recite."
"But you remember," Jean insisted. "Specific events. People..."
"Can you explain to a two-year-old how the economy of the Empire works?"
"Of course not," Jean conceded. "He simply wouldn't understand."
"He might even lose his mind from the incomprehensible flood," Kali went on. "Your minds are the same way. They are not yet ready to hold what I know."
"Then how do we prepare?" Sophie asked.
"Knowledge earned through your own labour can never be taken from you or twisted. What is merely told is easily forgotten or doubted."
She approached Sophie and touched a finger to her forehead.
"When you have gathered enough pieces of the mosaic, when your understanding has ripened, I will open to you everything I remember."
"And then?" Jean asked.
"Then my truth becomes your truth."
The demoness stepped back and leaned her hip against the stone parapet, her eyes never leaving them.
"But the truth may hurt more than the lie, child. Are you certain you want to learn the dark secrets of this planet and of your ancestors?"
Sophie opened her mouth, but the words caught in her throat. She looked at Jean.
He said nothing, staring at the city lights below.
"I've spent my whole life looking for the truth," Sophie said at last. She squeezed the flowers in her hand. "Because the only thing worse is wandering the dark with your eyes closed."
Jean took her hand.
"I feel the same."
Sophie and Jean looked at each other.
"There are maps of other temples. Ancient texts." She was steadier with every word. "We start with those."
"Tomorrow," Jean added.
Kali smiled, and Jean stood beside her. The bond hummed warm between the three of them. He took her hand too.
"And what if we don't like what we find?" Sophie asked.
Jean squeezed both their hands, and Kali spoke.
"I will be your companion on this journey. When you are ready to hear the truth, I will tell it."
Silence embraced the three of them. Somewhere in the harbour, a solitary bell struck.