Now, things were different. The manor itself had not changed, perhaps, but Cordelia had. She was not here only with Lucie, embarking on a clandestine mission, but rather surrounded by her friends, her family, her husband, and her parabatai. She would not have minded had it been snowing. In this group, she could not help but be content.
The ground had been hard, rocky, and difficult to dig out; it had taken them most of the morning—even trading turns with the shovels—to hollow out a rectangle in the ground that would fit Jesse’s old coffin, which was balanced precariously at the edge of the hole.
They had brought picnic baskets—though they did not intend to picnic here—and had made inroads into the ginger beer; everyone was a bit sweaty and dirty, and the boys had all stripped off their jackets and rolled up their shirtsleeves. James had done a great deal of the digging, which Cordelia had enjoyed watching. He consulted briefly with Matthew now, and, apparently having decided that the hole was big enough, he turned to the rest of the group: Lucie and Jesse, Thomas and Alastair, Anna and Ari, Matthew （and Oscar）， Cordelia, and Grace.
“All right,” James said, leaning on his shovel like the gravedigger in Hamlet. “Who wants to start?”
They all looked at each other—a bit sheepishly, like children caught breaking a rule. （Well, not Anna. Anna never looked sheepish.） But it had been Matthew’s idea in the first place, so in the end all eyes fell upon Matthew, who had knelt down to ruffle Oscar’s head.
Matthew looked amused. “I see,” he said. “Very well. I shall show you how it’s done.”
Oscar barked as Matthew strode up to Jesse’s empty coffin, its lid thrown back. The trees cast the shadows of leaves across it, and across Matthew’s green waistcoat. His hair had grown long since the winter, almost touching his collar. He had been training hard and no longer looked too thin. There was a depth to his smile that had not been there when Cordelia had first come to London; it had not been there even when they had been in Paris together.
With a flourish, Matthew slid a bottle of brandy from inside his waistcoat. It was full, the dark amber liquid flashing gold in the sun. “Here,” he said, bending to lay it in the coffin. “I don’t think that anyone will be surprised by my choice.”
Cordelia doubted anyone was. When winter had turned into spring, they had all felt as if they were finally coming out of a long darkness into light. It was Anna who had first remarked that in summer, they would be scattering from London, separating each of them from the group who had been their support through the long months after January. James and Cordelia would be going on their honeymoon, Matthew on his voyage; Alastair and Thomas would be off helping Sona move back into Cirenworth （her desire to move to Tehran had rather miraculously evaporated after a months-long visit from her family following Zachary’s birth）， and Anna and Ari would soon be in India. Life was resuming, however much they had all changed, and to mark the occasion Matthew had suggested this ceremony, in which each of them would bury a symbol of the past.
“It doesn’t need to be something terrible,” Matthew had said. “Just something you wish to let go of, or regard as part of your past, not your future.”
He had smiled a bit ruefully at Cordelia when he had said it. There had been a distance between them since January—not a distance of hostility or anger; but that closeness she had felt with him in Paris was gone, the sense of how well they understood one another. Paradoxically, Matthew had only grown closer to James, and to Thomas, and even Alastair. “You have to let his heart heal,” James had said. “That can only be managed with a bit of distance. It will resolve itself in time.”
A bit of distance. Only Matthew would be going a great distance, very soon, and for how long, Cordelia did not know.
Matthew rose, brushed off his hands, and sauntered over to throw a stick for Oscar. Oscar bounded across the grass, stopped, and sniffed the air suspiciously.
Squaring her shoulders, Ari came up to take Matthew’s place. She wore a simple rose-colored day dress, her hair pinned in a loose chignon. She held up a folded sheet of paper, slightly charred around the edges. “This is the letter my father wrote in his attempt to blackmail Charles,” she said. “To me, it symbolizes a standard he held me to, one to which he did not hold himself. This is what my father wanted me to be—a false image. Not who I am. Not who I hope he will someday learn to be.”
As she dropped it into the coffin beside the brandy bottle, her eyes were sad. Maurice Bridgestock was still in Idris, having been stripped of his role as Inquisitor. He would soon be traveling to Wrangel Island, a lonely place where he would take up the task of guarding wards. Mrs. Bridgestock had applied for a divorce, but far from seeming despondent, she appeared liberated by her new independence, and had welcomed Anna—and all of Ari’s friends—into her home. It was a warm and happy place to visit, but Cordelia could not blame Ari for regretting what had happened to her father, or wishing he had been a better man. It was a feeling she herself knew all too well.
Thomas was next. A paradox, was their Thomas—he bore the marks of the loss of Christopher more visibly than any of the rest of them, in lines beside his eyes that had not been there before and were unusual in someone so young. （Cordelia thought they gave him character.） But there was also a new peace to him. He had always seemed to be trying to make himself smaller in a body he found ungainly; now he was at ease, as if he at last saw himself the way Alastair saw him: tall and graceful and strong.
Like Ari, he held up a piece of paper, though this one was not slightly charred; rather, it was extremely charred. “I shall bury one of the very earliest attempts at fire-messages,” he said, “in which I may have penned some regrettable things.”
Alastair smiled. “I recall that one.”
Thomas let the paper fall. “It represents a time when I didn’t know what I wanted.” He looked at Alastair, the connection between them almost palpable. “But that is no longer the case.”
Alastair took the spot after Thomas; as they passed each other, their hands touched lightly. They were always touching—Alastair straightening Thomas’s tie, Thomas ruffling Alastair’s hair—much to Sona’s amusement. Cordelia found it quite sweet.
As Matthew had, Alastair held up a bottle, though this one was small, with a block-printed label. For a moment Cordelia wondered if it was alcohol—perhaps he was putting away thoughts of their father?—before she realized it was not that at all. It was an empty vial of hair dye. Alastair dropped it into the coffin with a wry smile. “A sign,” he said, “that I have discovered that my hair looks much better in its natural state.”
“Don’t rubbish blonds,” said Matthew, but he was smiling as Cordelia moved to take her brother’s place.
Alastair nodded encouragingly at her as she went to stand beside Jesse’s coffin. She looked out at her friends, feeling oddly as if she were onstage, though with a far friendlier audience than the Hell Ruelle. She sought Lucie’s smile, and then James’s, before taking a deep breath and reaching for the empty scabbard at her waist.
She drew it free, looking at it consideringly. It was truly a thing of loveliness. Steel like silver, inlaid with deeper gold, etched with runes and leaves, flowers and vines. The light that filtered through the branches above illuminated its beauty.