Chương 39: Chapter Thirty-Nine: In Which She Gambles Everything

"You watch people rather closely, for someone who insists she isn't the interesting one in this friendship," Alice said carefully.

"Somebody has to." Nell's tone stayed light, but there was an edge beneath it now, faint enough that Alice might have missed it a month ago. But not anymore.

"This city doesn't forgive a woman who isn't paying attention. You'd know that better than most, these days." That was not quite the answer that Alice expected… or wanted. Nell studied her for a long moment before continuing, something unreadable moving behind her eyes.

"Wouldn't you rather ask me something more interesting?" she said finally.

"If you're so keen on testing what I know." There was a small, quick almost-smile.

"Go on. You've had that look about you half the evening, like a woman burning with questions she's not sure she should ask. Ask one properly, for once." Alice's pulse picked up despite her own attempts at self-control. It was an opening, she recognised that immediately. One deliberately offered, whether Nell meant it as a means of trust and closeness, or simply because she enjoyed watching her hesitate. Alice couldn't yet tell.

But it was an opportunity, and she had spent enough of the last several weeks starved for exactly this kind of chance that turning it down now, with her life at stake and the new information on Nell herself, felt suddenly like a luxury she couldn't actually afford. Her principles for not putting herself in one's debt notwithstanding. Still, even if she let go of some of her caution, she had not yet lost all sense.

"All right," Alice said slowly, choosing her words with great care.

"Why are you a match girl?" Nell blinked, obviously not expecting that particular question, of all the ones available to her.

"What?"

"You," she said and gestured all over Nell.

"Why all this… the matches, this street, this life. It never seemed to fit you quite right, if I'm honest. Not the way it fits some of the other girls out there." Alice kept her voice light, though the question underneath it was not light at all.

"I've wondered for a while." Something shuttered, briefly, behind Nell's eyes, there and gone before Alice could properly name it.

"Are you sure that is what you wish to ask me, Alice Darling?" she said when she opened her eyes, gaze deadly serious and cold. The room felt heavier somehow. [Threat Detection] – Passive. It wasn't the fire, which had burned down to almost nothing, or the cold creeping back in through the window frame. It was something underneath the air itself, a pressure she had no name for and every instinct screaming to respect regardless.

Every part of her body that had learned over two months of genuine, repetitive danger exactly what a threat felt like, was telling her to be very still and say nothing further at all. Her hand twitched, once, toward where her knife would have been if she'd thought to keep it on her body that evening, and her eyes drifted toward the pillow where it now was hidden. She made herself stop the motion before it finished, because some deeper, older part of her already understood how useless the attempt would be.

She knew, in that instant, with a clarity that had nothing to do with reasoning and everything to do with something far more primal, that if Nell wanted her dead, she would simply be dead. Perhaps, she wouldn't even necessarily become aware of the moment it happened, the way a candle doesn't feel itself go out.

Whatever sat across from her in that single worn chair, wearing a friend's face and a friend's voice and two months of carefully accumulated trust, could very likely end her before her body even realized what happened and she understood with a sudden cold and total certainty, that the only reason it hadn't already, was that it had simply chosen not to. That certainty, most of all, was what calmed Alice enough, to speak without her voice shaking. It wasn't dying that she feared, after all.

"Yes, Eleanor," she said. The silence between them was somehow even heavier than before and Alice's fingers were freezing cold and yet disgustingly sweaty at the same time, but she tried hard to keep a steady outward appearance and thought she had managed quite well. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Just as she began to wonder whether the thrown challenge of using Nell's actual name was too reckless a gambit, that feeling, the one that triggered every fight-or-flight instinct she had, disappeared. Nell smiled, eyes somewhat thawed.

"We all have roles to play," she said, simply, as though that settled the matter entirely.

"Mine's this one, for now. It suits me well enough." Roles. The word landed harder than Nell could have intended. It caught against everything Alice had already feared. It immediately brought in mind Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a title that belonged to a book that didn't exist in this world, worn on her own status screen like a costume she hadn't chosen. She had often wondered, deep in the night and sometimes even early in the morning, whether her own name had ever been entirely hers to begin with.

Or whether it had simply been the shape some larger hand had decided she needed to fit. But Nell likely hadn't meant that way.

'Having a role to play' was a common expression and it generally wasn't supposed to be taken literally. She thought about pushing further, dissatisfied with the response after she had put so much on the line, prepared to be struck down for revealing some knowledge of Nell's identity. Before she could, however, Nell continued, "You truly know how to choose your questions, asking ones I can't answer." Hearing that, Alice hesitated. In the end, she decided not to push.

Asking further risked revealing considerably more than she was prepared to tonight, in exchange for an answer she wasn't certain Nell could safely give even if she wanted to. The word ' construct' did not usually mean great things regarding one's independence.

"Sometimes, you remind me very much of my Alice," Nell said, eyes looking past Alice herself, at some unknown point beyond her. She did not know how to take that response at the moment, so she let it go, not wanting to dwell any further on how her predecessor had been, and instead reached for a smaller, safer direction, one that didn't require Nell to say anything at all about herself directly, yet still one that Alice really wanted the answer to.

"I visited a guild branch recently, but I found their resources quite lacking" she started.

"Is it true that Probata and above have no real choice in the matter? Crown or Church, and nothing else on offer?" If Nell was surprised at the abrupt change in topic, she didn't show it. Instead her eyes sharpened, no longer looking past Alice, but at her instead. She considered her words for a moment, and continued, "The Compact holds itself a bit apart from that, officially. Not entirely outside the Crown's administrative system, but there's more room to manoeuvre within a guild's walls than most people realise.

Still, less room than the pamphlets would ever tell you, however." She looked up, something almost gentle entering her expression.

"Don't fret yourself over it too soon. It's a fair way off yet, if it comes at all." She then smiled slightly.

"The future could be full of choices. I'm still here, aren't I?" Alice went very still. It was such a small sentence, offered so lightly, and yet it sat in the room afterward with all the weight of something enormous. It was an admission dressed up as reassurance, or a reassurance dressed up as an admission, she genuinely couldn't tell which. I'm still here.

Almost as if it meant that it was possible to still be standing there, whatever she was, whatever rank she held, even if the Church or the Crown might have wanted otherwise. Did that mean that Nell was unaffiliated with either? Was she a match girl because she was in hiding from these higher authorities or because she belonged to a third group that passed unseen by them? Something in Alice's chest loosened unexpectedly at that.

Whatever else Nell was or wasn't, even though there was a chance that she simply was acting out her role, playing to a script and simply lying about her loyalties, she had still handed over a piece of comfort Alice hadn't known how badly she needed it until just now.

"Thank you," Alice said quietly. Nell waved that off with a small, unworried shrug. Alice had gotten the feeling over the past few weeks of their closer maybe-friendship that Nell didn't really care for gratitude, whether due to indifference or discomfort, Alice was not sure. Nell prepared to leave not long after that, the last of the tea gone cold and unfinished between them, the fire burned down to little more than a low red glow in the grate.

"You look done in," Nell said, pausing at the door, hand on the frame.

"I'll let you rest. But Alice," she turned back, and for a moment, despite everything Alice now knew or suspected, looked entirely like a woman worried about her friend.

"Whatever's got you spooked, whatever it is you're not saying, tonight or any other night… I can always at least listen."

"I know," Alice said, and found herself surprised and frustrated at how much she wanted to mean it.

"Thank you for coming by." Nell studied her a moment longer, then nodded once and let herself out, footsteps fading down the stairs and into the ordinary evening noise of the house below…

"Nell!" Alice not-quite shouted, and then embarrassed at her own rudeness, went down the steps where the woman had stopped to look back.

"Something wrong?" she asked.

"Is it Nell?" Alice asked in return, once she was close, close enough to whisper. Nell appeared confused for a moment before her eyes widened. She took a moment to speak, before whispering back, "Yes. Yes, it is." She looked at her for a bit longer, and then left. Alice could hear Mrs. Hatch's voice calling something about supper, a door further down the hall closing. She returned upstairs, locked the room behind her and sat on the bed, opposite the chair where Nell had sat, just as before.

She sat there alone in the dark for a long while afterward, the empty cup still in her hands, thinking over everything she now knew and understood almost none of. One thing was certain. Regardless of Nell's honesty or dishonesty, her plans or her goals, Alice had no choice in the matter and even less control. With her position in this relationship, vulnerability was her only weapon. And she would need to use it carefully.