A Mischief in the Woodwork

CHAPTER 42

Avante, Bridge Builder

I was walking by the window in the front room when I saw her through the gap in the curtain, standing outside – the Ambassador. A double-take seized me, and I stopped, looking again. Thinking at first my mind had surely played a trick on me.

But the woman herself indeed stood there, a ways shy of the porch, looking at the door as if in consideration. Her golden train was gathered and shortened for the trip, somehow supernaturally hemmed up to contain its endless folds.

I put my basket of laundry down on a shelf and went, bemused, to the door. As it creaked open she looked in at me, and I wandered out onto the porch to address her. Or allow her to address me. Whichever it was, or perhaps neither at all, for I could not imagine why she had come – especially fully visible and politely waiting outside as she was, rather than spiriting herself in and out at will as she had the last time, authorized to run whatever secret errands in people's houses that she pleased.

"Ambassador," I greeted her first this time, my gaze quizzical.

And she actually smiled at me. It was subtle, still, but used to her more dominant nature, I recognized it for what it was.

"What are you doing here?"

The smile was replaced by a businesslike manner, and she acquiesced and spoke her piece: "I am here because your two months are up."

Oh. There was that, wasn't there? I had given up on Tanen for good when he failed to return over the course of another few days, but that didn't mean my deal with Death was resolved as quickly. The deadline had still stood, and all the time leading up to it.

I was not certain what I felt, reminded of the reality of that deadline and knowing my time was officially up. Truthfully, I was not sure I wanted to explore those feelings.

"I understand," I said, looking down. "I did what I could."

The Ambassador gave me a moment, and then piped back up. "Well," she said. "The rain has flooded my ravine – restored it to a brimming thing of life. So I'll be off, now."

My head came back up. "You're...leaving?"

"I am not some sea-serpent, Avante," she pointed out, as if it were obvious she was loyal only to the handful of forms I had witnessed her take. Horse, yes; snake, that too – but never some creature of the depths. "No, it is a station much more befitted to an Ambassador of Calypso, now, I dare say. I'll be moving on."

"Where to?" Somehow, I had never imagined that that Ravine would ever not belong to the Ambassador for the Angel of Death. I supposed if she was only there for a purpose, eventually that purpose would be fulfilled, but still... It seemed a place that would ever be haunted by her. She was such a vital part of its essence.

But it was flooded, now, and evidently such could really change things.

"Wherever I am required next," she replied.

"And – the others?" I wanted to know, remembering the mysterious and nameless ambassador I had encountered in that fortress on the far outskirts of the city's soul. How many others were there? Had the rain changed things far and wide, for everyone?

"The Great Butterfly will be moving on as well. Lesser keepers may stay behind, for a time, but none that you have had the pleasure of encountering thus far, so they needn't be worried about."

I recalled the butterfly effect that had built the fortress on behalf of my unknowing, page-turning fingers, where I had felt it in the walls of the place. "The Great Butterfly... Was that ashen keeper his ambassador? Is that who I encountered when I retrieved Bailin from the edges of the city?"

A keen, amused, yet guarded look pricked her eyes, suggesting I was on to something. "You ought to have shaken her hand, if you were so curious," she advised rather than answering, and I resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn't get a straight answer. But the fact that she didn't deny it, consistent with my suspicions, might have been confirmation enough.

With that, the Ambassador was turning to leave, our business evidently complete.

"Ombri..." I said before she could go. "How..." What I wanted to say was 'How is she?', buy of course that wasn't the appropriate question.

"What I was able to tell you upon acceptance of the deceased girl still stands," the Ambassador told me. It would have to be enough.

I nodded, slightly.

She continued to take her leave, her hem dragging a pattern in the dirt as she turned, twisting about her form – but stopped herself this time, casting one more glance over her shoulder. "Your name," she mentioned. "It has come to me. It rang throughout the city today, bridge stones ringing with a cataclysm of finality. You are 'Avante, Bridge-Builder'."

Something swelled in me at the bequeathing of the name – some piece of my soul that perked up hearing its name spoken for the first time.

Then our business was truly finished, and the Ambassador for the Angel of Death walked away across the field, the heavy wake of her gown flattening the weed stalks that hadn't already been hampered down by the rain.