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“So… d’you think that was real, or…?”
Ragatha, furious and exhausted and fixing strands of red yarn that’d frayed on that stupid slide from that stupid fake office, smiles. ”What do you mean?”
“Inventing a whole fake exit to keep us away from the real one,” says Pomni. “That’s exactly the kind of **** Caine would pull, right?”
Ragatha opens her mouth, shuts it before what do you want me to say? can escape.
Once, at a gala when she was fifteen, a family friend had offered to get her a drink. A side-glance at her mother’s pursed lips changed her no to a yes. Then the question of what kind, what she liked and didn’t—the man’s face, her mother’s, his again—until Ragatha, fifteen and stupid, had blurted: “Is there a right answer?” Her mother laughed, then wouldn’t speak to her for two days. She’s learned, since.
The Circus, at least, has fewer people whose wants and hurts and expressions need managing. Until today she’d known how to answer this question for each of them. Is there an exit? Gangle needed tempered optimism; Zooble cynical commiseration; Kinger a tightrope between hopelessness and hope that’d take him where his wife couldn’t follow. Jax… wouldn’t ask. But he'd almost abstracted today. And isn’t that on her? Her one talent is making people happy, and she can’t even manage that?
“Um, Ragatha…?”
Case in point. She’s forgotten Pomni. Pomni the outsider, stubborn and thoughtful and so easily likable in a way Ragatha can’t figure out; Pomni who she’s failed. Pomni whose expression is unreadable, save for annoyance. With her? No. With this horrible day. But maybe also her?
“I don’t know,” says Ragatha, too-cheerful. “What do you think?” A terrible answer, but it’ll buy her time to understand. To get it right.