Second Quadrant, Crestoria (Seat-Planet of House Rouge)
A week before the score
The boy stared out through the window, his sister's voice a distant echo.
Crestoria's exosphere, at that altitude, laid a violet film over the void. It was less a fog than a veil, something thin and present, making the stars seem closer and, at the same time, unreachable.
Lacrosse rested his forehead against the cold glass. His reflection gave him a face slightly out of register, as though the pane disagreed about where to place him. His blue eyes looked paler than usual. Or perhaps it was the light. For an instant he had the sensation that the eyes in the reflection were not even his, that they were watching him with an expectation he could not satisfy. The discomfort was mild, like a chill that ran along his arms, leaving him with the vague awareness of not quite matching himself. His fingers, laid upon the crystal, felt the cold with a new intensity, as if the palace wanted to remind him of its solidity. Beyond the glass, the sphere's violet sheen blended sky and emptiness into gradients that shifted with the smallest change in light.
"What are we?"
More than a thought, it was an echo, an unshaped form, a voiceless memory from an infinitely distant time. He had asked that question; of that he was certain, though he did not know to whom. It reached him from an unknown place, trailing images he could not catch.
His mind slid past the window, following the luminous thread that ran through the Opulence from end to end. A vertical axis, thin, blinding, cut through the heart of the crystal-palace like a gem strung on a wire. It descended toward Crestoria, where blue plains spread beyond sight, and rose toward Renoir 11, the moon orbiting higher, quieter, farther. Lacrosse had seen it up close only a few times. Each time it had seemed too still to be real. From there it looked almost like a disk painted onto a dark canvas. He found himself wondering whether that axis was the only bond between surface and moon, and whether, without it, the two spheres would drift apart forever.
"We are life."
Someone answered without his insisting. It left a familiar sensation on his skin, like recognising a sound without knowing where it comes from. A quick flash, warmth passing through his chest.
The boy parted his lips slightly, as if to give shape to something. The reflection in the glass did the same, but with a faint delay. He meant to speak, yet the words dissolved before they could leave him. It was like having a language in his mouth he did not know well.
"Lacrosse? Wake up!"
He shook his head, embarrassed. "I'm sorry... I got distracted."
Clarisse watched him with her thin brows arched. She leaned against the doorframe, one shoulder tilted, as if her body felt no need to keep perfect balance. Her red hair fell like incandescent silk down her back, in orderly lengths braided through jewels that reflected the stars. On her high right cheekbone, House Rouge's Author's Signature traced its fine raised lines, alive as if newly drawn, running across her pale, lean face, along her sinuous, slender arm, all the way to her long, elegant fingers: nails and fingertips red, as though she had just finished finger painting. Lacrosse noticed, almost to distract himself from the unease in his chest, that among those marks a light seemed to flow of its own accord, like veins of molten metal beneath the skin.
"I can see that," his sister replied. "As I was saying... don't argue with Selena about Futurism... now the poor girl has fallen victim to currents I've never even heard of, and it's supposed to be a good thing! But instead, it seems she's become unbearably closed-minded."
"Perhaps... she's just busy..."
"Please. As the Discipline of Protection, I'm quite sure her schedule is very free these days. I'd happily leave her the position of the Poetesse..."
"Really?"
"No," Clarisse said, firm. Then, seeing his absent look, she fixed him with an inquisitive stare. "Well?"
Lacrosse let out an awkward little laugh. "I..."
His sister lifted a hand with easy grace, as if to say she understood. After four years, Lacrosse had learned what Clarisse meant when she made that gesture: depending on how quick her hand was, or how sharp her face looked, it could mean stop, reassure, or cut it short. This time it was a blend of the first two.
"It is not a problem, mon coeur. I trust your sincerity in listening, even if your thoughts sometimes fly rather higher."
Lacrosse turned back to the window. "We... are already high up."
Clarisse blinked beneath mulberry-shadowed lashes, and you might have sworn her crimson eyes brightened for an instant, as if snapping a photograph.
"Oh. You're right. Bien joué." She turned her face with theatrical emphasis, letting her long hair fan out and baring the clean line of her jaw. Light struck the weave of her hair, and for a moment it looked like threads of gold.
"Oh?" Lacrosse tilted his head, even more confused by his sister's apparent delight.
"You bested me. I may declare myself proud to have taught you rhetoric," she said, her voice smooth.
"You did?" he asked, frowning. He remembered language lessons, games, conversations where Clarisse corrected him and laughed at his turns of phrase, but that word didn't quite fit those memories.
Clarisse turned back to him, resting her chin on her hand. "Certainly. Since you've been here, who else would have taught you our tongue, hm?" Her voice was a caress, but beneath it lay a shadow of pride.
"Um... I think those are two different things..." Lacrosse ventured, not truly wanting to contradict her.
"Language is the foundation of rhetoric, don't you think? At least, I began there, and it served me well. You may begin as you please. Would you rather pelt people with indistinct sounds until they change their minds?"
He cleared his throat. "No, I think I'll start with the same thing..."
"Good."
Lacrosse snapped his eyes to her. "Should I learn it too?"
"It seems obvious. Do you think I'll indulge you forever, bringing you along to work merely to watch? To keep me company but contribute nothing?"
His thin lips parted and hovered there. He had been accompanying Clarisse for a long time without doing anything; suddenly he felt the shame of being useless.
Clarisse's own lips, red, full, curled up slightly. "I actually could. I don't dislike the idea of keeping you around to witness how impressive your sister is in theatre and at court."
She tilted her head, eyes pinned on her brother. "Or you could become my little assistant."
Lacrosse frowned. "I... don't see how."
Clarisse leaned toward him. "And why not? I can ask Mother; she shouldn't object."
"I don't think I'm capable."
"Mmh..."
"I've seen what you do... it seems hard."
"And why so?"
Lacrosse looked back out through the window. "It feels like everyone thinks different things about everything... they've had a whole life to believe them... I haven't. It feels hard to impose your point of view."
"Oh, it can certainly be."
Lacrosse fell quiet. Between them, the glass reflected lights that seemed to darken, broken by a distant noise, a soft rustle that ran through the Opulence palace like a vibration barely felt. A group of people passed in the side corridor, speaking low. Lacrosse tried to catch fragments, but the words blended: "alert," "guests," "east level."
Clarisse followed his gaze, then returned to studying him. She had a particular way of tilting her head when she tried to read people: there was no judgement in it, only an unhurried curiosity, as if every answer were an equally valid variation.
"Everyone thinks different things, yes," she conceded, idly tracing a finger along the raised red line on her arm.
"But you..." Lacrosse began, searching for the right words. "When you write, or act... when you defend the House in court, and the rest... aren't you trying to convince them?"
Clarisse laughed briefly, like a snowflake touching the ground and vanishing. "That's a tedious word, convince," she said, drawing the syllables out and tasting the sound. "If you think you must fix other people's minds into a shape you like, then you've understood nothing."
When Lacrosse dropped his head, Clarisse placed a finger beneath his chin and lifted it, making him keep his gaze on her. The touch was warm and cold at once, as though her fingers belonged to no precise temperature.
"But be not worried, mon coeur. I myself understood nothing for a very long time."
Lacrosse felt the weight of that confession more than he'd expected. There was a pause in which neither spoke, his sister holding his face in silence. Light fractured over a group of figures crossing the gallery below; their cloaks of red and white and gold looked like quick brushstrokes, and their voices dissolved into an echo that never reached the siblings. Lacrosse watched them move, their ease, the way they naturally filled space. He, instead, always felt a little out of alignment.
"I think I'm more comfortable, knowing that even you don't understand everything," he admitted at last, with the shadow of a smile.
"Oh, is that so?" Clarisse removed her finger from his chin and rolled her eyes. "I said I didn't understand. I did not," she scoffed. "That certainly doesn't apply now."
"I'm sorry," he murmured.
"And even if it did, it seems natural. We build on what we know, of ourselves and of others."
"Should you be able to know others?" Lacrosse asked.
Clarisse gave two quick claps. "Very good. But before that, you must know yourself."
He nodded slowly. Her words floated in his mind like capsules on the axis: rising and falling, stopping midway. He wondered how many of his convictions were truly his, and how many had been built day after day out of what he'd heard.
"That is the most difficult part of life, indeed," Clarisse continued. "To move in the dark this world has thrown us into, to use only the light our ideas produce, knowing full well those lights can illuminate illusions and lead us astray."
Lacrosse leaned back slightly, trying to follow her. The notion of seeing falsehood in the world unsettled him, especially after the void that preceded his life.
"And those illusions are errors, mon coeur. Being in the wrong. Indeed, our ideas can be wrong, because we do not know ourselves enough, or we do not know others enough. But do not fear..." Clarisse drew her face closer to his.
"...for if you ever discover you are in the wrong, you may always change your mind. You may always begin again."
"I can always begin again..." Lacrosse repeated slowly. "...It's been a long time, being in the dark."
"I know. Now you will go on, but there may come a moment when you must start from zero. Or rather, you may do so. You may do so as many times as you need."
"Won't I leave something behind?"
"You certainly will. But that is part of it. You must decide whether it's worth it or not. Do you want someone for whom you must always remain the same?"
"I don't know... maybe it would be better, someone who doesn't change."
Clarisse chuckled. "That's selfish. Would you steal someone's future?"
"I didn't say that..."
"It's what it means."
Clarisse didn't raise her hand; she didn't make a dramatic gesture. She simply stood there, light cutting her face in two, gold on one side, shadow on the other. In the silence that followed, a dull sound rang somewhere in the palace: metal striking metal, an announcement. The rustle in the Opulence's walls grew louder, like a breath drawing deeper.
"It seems we have guests."
Lacrosse tilted his head slightly. He would have liked to stretch that moment, but something in the air was changing. The colour of the light shifted; the shadows lengthened; and the window's edge caught a reflection of Renoir 11 that looked larger. A capsule slid along the thread, slowly, as if carrying a heavy message.
"You must keep asking questions," Clarisse said all at once, looking away. "They keep you alive, you know. They're among the first things you need, to make light."
As she walked away, Lacrosse watched the pale, smooth perfection of her back, left bare by her white dress streaked with red brushmarks.
He remained alone in the room for a moment, staring at the glass.
"What are we?"