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Marisa has always found airships have a serviceable quiet about them. The thrum of the engine discourages casual conversation and distracts from casual thoughts. It facilitates an inner peace she maintains, in day to day life lived on the ground, through force of will alone.
The contents of her trunk go much further than the airship, towards bringing her peace.
She flips the latch and stares down at her wayward daughter, no longer capable of fleeing her care. It’s a melancholic peace, the innocence of her in sleep with that tiny, still-changeable bit of herself curled neatly in a circle, like a furry little serpent who might, at any moment, awaken and begin eating his tail.
She pulls off one glove with trembling fingers, reaching down to stroke Lyra’s cheek. “My darling Lyra. You’re fine now. We’re out of danger. I’m taking you somewhere entirely safe.”
And with the even, shuddering beat of the airship whispering around her, she might have missed the tiny intake of breath at her words, but her monkey misses nothing, and in a flash of golden fur, he’s bounded from the bench and flung closed the wooden door behind which an uninvited guest has been lurking.
There’s a look of utter shock and terror about her, one which quickly resolves into the sort of determination Marisa most often sees on those brandishing a weapon, but Doctor Mary Malone has nothing about her person save the clothing she wears and a rucksack at her feet, which her monkey is already dragging out of arm’s reach.
“You haven’t really got Lyra in that, have you?” she breathes, equal parts disbelief and accusation.
Marisa rests a protective hand upon the lid. “How did you get aboard my ship?” she asks lightly, skewering the woman where she stands with her eyes alone, but keeping her voice balanced, pleasant.
“Well, I walked up the ramp,” Mary says, then shakes herself, like she didn’t mean to say that. Marisa smiles. She has often found, when confronted with one who wishes a fight, that the quickest way to set them off balance is to invite, instead, a casual conversation.
“My my,” she offers. “I really must have a word with our guards. Won’t you sit?” She gestures to the bench where her monkey has thoughtfully left her the closer cushion.
“Not until you tell me what you’ve done with Lyra,” she says, and it’s just a little too loud for Marisa to allow.
She stands, crosses around the other side of the trunk, and gets very, very close to the woman from the other Oxford. Slowly, so as not to incite a scream, she raises one gloved hand and presses it across Mary’s pale, frowning mouth. “Hush,” she says, and despite the indignation she sees in Mary’s eyes, the woman lets her do it, muttering a muffled question against her palm.
Marisa considers her options. There are several, none of which are particularly appealing. She can deal with Mary on her own, but she has had no foreplaning, and the woman has no dæmon to speak of, so she cannot rely on her most trusted assassin for this work. She can call in the guards of the Magisterium which surround them both even now, but it is unlikely they will dispose of their stowaway before she has a chance to speak Lyra’s name aloud again, and that would well and truly give up the ghost. And that after all she put into reuniting with the airship, finding a big enough trunk, presenting the precious parcel to cart back aboard as nothing more than her luggage, wincing with every bump it took on its way to her quarters. After all, knowing what she knows now, and suspecting others know, too...
The third option is perhaps the least appealing, but the most likely to succeed. “Yes,” she says, keeping her voice low and utterly empty of confrontation. “Lyra is in there, sleeping peacefully.”
Honesty, even partial, is not her favourite weapon. And yet.
“How else am I to keep her safe from those aboard this ship who mean her harm?”
Mary’s eyebrows draw together, and Marisa can feel the formation of tiny, silent questions against her hand. She waits a moment longer, searching her eyes for a glimmer of gathering deceit, but she sees only confusion, and concern. Slowly, she lifts her hand.
“How am I supposed to know you aren’t the one who means her harm?” Mary asks pointedly, but she keeps her voice low.
“I am her mother.”
“Well, that means very little when it comes to having locked a little girl up in a steam trunk.”
Marisa forces a strained laugh, beginning to gravitate towards a persona she thinks of as ‘the woman in the room.’ “I didn’t have any other option,” she says, letting her voice flutter just a bit. “If you’ve come here, you know something of the bigger happenings around my daughter, and you must understand, I want nothing more than to get her home safely. If I could do that any other way, I assure you—”
“—Oh, assure me, do you? Seeing as the last time we met, you snooped about my office, lied about who you are, what you do, why on earth would you think I’d take your assurances now?”
It is always a risk, to sit first, but it is also a maneuver. She settles close to her monkey, leaving room, still, should Mary choose to take it. “I didn’t lie to you,” she says evenly.
Mary’s eyes dart from her to the trunk and back again. If she makes any sudden movements, Marisa may have to rip out her throat with her bare hands, and she finds she rather intensely hopes not to have to do that.
“I looked you up, and there’s no such woman as—”
Mary’s piercingly blue eyes lock on hers.
“Oh. Wait. Of course. You’re from Lyra’s world.”
All at once, she’s a different woman, no longer wire-tight and ready to spring, but tired, heavy-limbed, sinking down onto the seat beside her. “I don’t know why that didn’t occur to me until now. I just thought, with all the people coming through my office all of a sudden, most of them asking after her… It was like she had a pack of wolves out on her tail. I assumed—”
“—the worst,” Marisa finishes for her. “As you were right to.”
Mary looks up at her imploringly. “Can I see her, then?”
Quelling an instinctive urge to bite out, “No,” she carefully stands and crosses around in front of the trunk. She unlatches it again, then lowers the lid fully behind it, allowing Mary to peer inside while rising only slightly from her seat.
“Well I’ll be,” she breathes. “That’s really her in there. When they guided me here I worried I might be getting further away but… Here I am.”
Marisa carefully replaces the lid, then the lock through the latch, studying Mary’s face intently all the while. “Here you are. And I find myself still wondering why.”
Mary tightens up again, shoulders rising. “How about you tell me first a little bit more about why you’re doing this. If everyone else here means her harm, why’ve you brought her right into the thick of it?”
Under Mary's scrutiny, Marisa finds herself experiencing several of the same, strange, discomforting emotions she felt in the woman’s office. A curious admiration for her impertinence, that she will say things so entirely lacking in tact without embarrassment, without fear of repercussion. A terrible sort of envy, that another woman dares to speak of her daughter with such care in her voice, a woman against whom her daughter holds no grudge, who perhaps even sees her affections returned without such… pain, such history, getting in the way. And another thing, an even more terrible sort of want , to be able to reach out, wrap her hands about this woman’s incomprehensible being and squeeze out the life that has made her, the fire that burns in her, to gorge herself on it until she, too, has tasted absolute unrepentance before lesser men, or perhaps merely tasted that pale, lovely skin.
She clears her throat after too long a silence. “Do you have children, Doctor Malone?”
“Oh, heaven’s no. I’ve a darling niece and nephew, and my work, and that's about what I've wanted."
“Then I do not know whether you’ll understand me exactly when I say this, but you are an intelligent woman, and you have… family. Lyra means… everything to me. She was not safe in your world, nor the one we are leaving, and while she is not safe here, she will be, where we are going. I can tell you less in more words, but you must believe me when I say I can do no more or less than I am doing here today.” Atop the trunk, her fingertips are pressed so hard against it they’ve gone white, stark against the shimmering gray lacquer across each nail.
“I don't like it." Marisa can see that Mary is still unsettled, but not unmoved. "Why do they want to hurt her?” she presses, glancing at the closed wooden door, and Marisa knows she's won.
“Because they are afraid.”
“Of Lyra?” she asks, disbelieving.
“Of what Lyra might mean for our worlds.”
For a moment longer, Marisa stays where she is, crouched on the floor in front of her triumph, her secret, her own fear. Then, she rises, brushing her hands off on her skirt.
“Come, it isn’t safe for you here, not dressed as you are. Someone could walk in at any moment.” She hesitates, then holds out a gloved hand, palm down.
Mary stares at it, then slowly takes it, allowing herself to be steered around the trunk as though in a careful arc across a ballroom floor.
“Let’s make a deal,” Marisa says, tucking the scholar’s hand into the bend of her elbow, patting it twice, then keeping it carefully, deliberately pinned there as she leads her down the slim corridor to the more private of her two makeshift rooms aboard a ship not explicitly prepared for her presence. “You help me keep her safe, and I’ll see to it you make it off this ship in one piece. Can we do this for each other?”
“You’ll answer some questions for me, then?” Mary’s voice has opened, earnest curiosity slipping out into the air. “There’s so much I don’t understand, yet, about…” She waves her unclaimed hand, gesturing aimlessly at the shivering walls, the following monkey, before her eyes land and lock on Marisa’s own.
Her lips curl. “Anything you ask.”
Padding along behind them, a golden-furred tail coils idly about Mary’s ankle, and Marisa’s stride falls a step out of beat with the airship’s constant hum, then recovers.