"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic." -- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

Death was conspicuous by her absence for the rest of the day. Kilan began to think she was deliberately ignoring him so he wouldn't be able to ask Sorőwe's advice. Then, at last, she deigned to appear. She didn't even bother to approach him directly, oh no. He only became aware of her presence when the distant sounds of a tastaft[1] being played drifted from the room that had once been Varan's.

At first he thought it was Varan's ghost. He promptly dismissed this thought as nonsense. Death had assured him that there were no such things as ghosts.

"Sometimes some of the Reapers get bored and decide to have some fun at mortals' expense," she had said. "Sometimes mortals simply imagine they see what they want to see. But once I take a soul, it can never come back to the Land of the Living unless I allow it to."

Assuming she had been telling the truth, something he had come to doubt in light of recent events, whatever he was hearing was not caused by a ghost. So, what was it? Særnor was the only other person in the family who played the tastaft, and he never went near Varan's former rooms. To the best of Kilan's knowledge, the rooms hadn't been disturbed since Varan's marriage.

The playing continued. It didn't have a discernible tune; it sounded more as if someone was idly plucking at the strings in no particular order. Kilan listened, his head on one side. Had one of his younger siblings found their way into Varan's room?

At last his curiosity got the better of him. He made his way down the corridor separating his room from Varan's and tried the door. It opened, to his surprise; he thought Arásy had locked it after... well, after.

Dust sheets covered all the furniture in the room. An empty vase sat on the middle of a sheet-shrouded coffee table. He couldn't understand how it had been left there when the servants were taking away his sister's belongings. Had it simply been forgotten?

The tastaft stood in a corner by the window. The evening sunlight wormed its way through the blinds that covered the window and sent beams of light across the room, plunging the corner into shadow. If he squinted, Kilan could make out a dark shape standing over the tastaft. He took a step forward, and realised who it was.

He looked at Death. She looked at him. Her fingers continued to dance over the strings.

All the insults and accusations he had wanted to throw at her had suddenly vanished and all he felt was a sense of great tiredness.

"I called you," he said, unable to think of how else to begin.

Death nodded once, never taking her eyes off him. She regarded him as if he was a skittish horse that would bolt if she made the slightest move. "I heard."

"You didn't answer."

"No." She didn't say it as if she was sorry. Nor did she try to offer any explanation.

What was he supposed to say in a situation like this? Take me to see my great-grandmother twenty times removed so she can tell me if I need a divorce from the anthropomorphic personification who I really shouldn't love and who I'm probably not legally married to anyway?

"I apologise, I suppose." Death spoke as if the words physically pained her.

"For what?"

"For..." She waved a hand as if to encompass the entire mess they were in, "everything. For marrying you without making sure you were proposing to me."

"So you insist we are married, then."

"Yes."

"In that case, I want a divorce."

"Why?" Death looked at him as if he was a difficult mathematical equation. "Let's review the facts. One: you believe you love me."

"Against my better judgement," Kilan agreed. "And I'm trying to talk myself out of it."

"Two," Death continued, "we are at present married. Three: considering fact one, why do you want to change fact two?"

"Because this isn't right! Technically, you're not even a person! And I'm quite sure that whatever this..." He searched for the right word and finally settled on "fiasco is, it's not a legal marriage."

"I don't see why it shouldn't be," Death said thoughtfully. "I've been married to mortals before. The Gbowasay civilisation on the planet Yarzadr had an entire religious ceremony where they selected a young man to -- well, they thought it was symbolically -- marry their Goddess of Death so everyone else would be granted long life. It didn't work, of course, but they never seemed to realise that."

Kilan tried to work out what in the name of all the gods this had to do with his present situation. He gave up in despair.

"Take me to your land," he said instead. "I want to ask Empress Sorőwe how we can get a divorce."

Death looked mildly uncomfortable. An awful suspicion dawned on Kilan.

"We can get divorced, can't we?"

"Yes," Death said. "I think."

"You think? Don't you know?"

"I've never gotten divorced before!" Death protested.

"Maybe you should have," Kilan muttered, remembering her comments about her many husbands. "Let me make myself perfectly clear. We will be getting a divorce, and I do not want to hear one more word to the contrary."

Death made a noise that sounded like "Bloody stubborn Caranilnavs". Kilan pretended not to hear.

~~~~

Kilan wasn't sure what he had been expecting Empress Sorőwe to look like. Something like her statue, he supposed; tall, imposing, stern-looking. The exact opposite was true. The Empress was short, not at all intimidating, and very young in appearance. He remembered now that she had only been twenty-one when she died. She hadn't even been a native of the Carann Empire, as her dark skin, curly hair and strangely non-slanted eyes proved.

There was no denying, however, that she knew a great deal about laws. The walls of her chosen dwelling place were lined with shelves of books on the laws of this planet or that country, this republic or that empire.

"Oh dear," she said when he told her his predicament. "You have gotten into a pickle, haven't you?"

"It's all Death's fault," Kilan said. Behind him, Death made an offended noise. He turned to glare at her. "That's the truth, and you know it."

"And you want a divorce," Sorőwe continued.

"As soon as possible," Kilan agreed. "I'm supposed to be getting married for real in a month."

Sorőwe frowned thoughtfully and went over to one of the bookshelves. She took a thick tome from the shelf and carried it over to the table in the middle of the room, where she opened it and began to flick through it. "Marriage contracts, marriage annulments, remarriage after spouse's death, remarriage after divorce, concubines and multiple spouses... divorce! Here we are."

She ran her finger down the first page, her eyes darting to and fro over the text. Her frown deepened as she turned the pages. A sense of foreboding took root in Kilan's heart.

"What were the exact words you used in your... wedding ceremony?" she asked, looking up.

"I just recited my vows, and when I got to the part about "do you agree to be my wife?", she said "I do" and insisted that meant we were married."

"Oh dear."

In Kilan's admittedly short life, he had never known anything good to follow the words "oh dear", especially when said in such a worried, yet resigned tone.

"Please tell me I'm not actually married to her." He didn't quite beg, but he came close.

Sorőwe cleared her throat. "This is an extremely difficult situation. For one thing, I am not entirely sure you are married at all."

"We are," Death said.

"So you say," the former Empress agreed, "but you'll forgive me if I doubt your word."

Kilan had to resist the urge to laugh at the insulted look on Death's face.

"To the best of my knowledge," Sorőwe continued, "a case like this has never arisen in the Carann Empire. There are tales of similar mix-ups happening on other planets with different wedding ceremonies, but this is unusual because instead of ambiguities in the actual wedding ceremony, it is a case of a misunderstanding during a rehearsal.

"The question we must first answer is, does merely a person answering "I do" to wedding vows not aimed at them in the first place result in that person being married to the person who spoke the vows? I am inclined to believe the answer is "no", since the person speaking the vows -- in this case, Grand Duke Kilan -- was unaware anyone else was present and did not consent to this marriage."

"You're forgetting something, Empress," Death interrupted. "You're approaching this as if I were a mortal bound only by the intentions behind words. But to immortals, the intentions behind words do not matter. The words themselves are the only important thing, and by that standard we are married."

"And you're forgetting that I am mortal," Kilan said snappishly, "and so the intentions behind words, as you put it, do matter."

Sorőwe nodded gravely. "The fact one of you is mortal and the other is not further complicates the case. Let's assume, then, that both of you are right."

"How under heaven can both of us be right?" Death growled.

"More easily than you'd think. This is a situation for which there is a precedent: namely, when a clash between different cultures means that a couple would be considered married in one culture, but would not be in another."

Kilan tried to translate that into language he understood. "So... what you're saying is, we're married by Death's standard, but not married by mine?"

"Exactly."

"Then how do we get divorced if we're only half-married?"

Sorőwe turned a few pages, muttering under her breath. "Let me see, now... Causes for divorce... It says here the only recognised causes for divorce are adultery, neglect or abuse. But of course, that only applies if a couple are married without a shadow of a doubt. Is there nothing in this book on how to be sure someone is actually married?"

She flicked through the book until she reached the index at the end. Then she turned back to whatever page number she had chosen. "Ah, here we are. 'A marriage is only a true marriage after consummation, and preferably after the birth of a child as proof of consummation.' Obviously the birth of a child part does not apply here, but--"

"Neither does the consummation part," Kilan assured her.

"In that case, there is no doubt about the matter. You are not truly married by the laws of the Carann Empire."

Kilan felt the urge to perform a victory dance. This urge was promptly squashed by Sorőwe's next words.

"Unfortunately, you are married by the laws of the Land of the Dead."

Kilan's jaw dropped open.

"Please tell me you're joking," he pleaded, at the same time as Death exclaimed, "That must be nonsense! How can we be married and not married at the same time?"

Sorőwe shrugged helplessly. "This, I'm afraid, is why you should always make sure there is no conflict between the laws of your respective countries before you get married. The only thing I can suggest is that you officially get married in the Land of the Living so you can be considered married in both worlds, then get a divorce there. I doubt it is possible to get a divorce in the Land of the Dead; I have certainly never heard of it happening."

~~~~

"No."

"But you heard her!"

"My answer is no."

"You want a divorce. How do you expect to get one if we aren't married by the laws of your land?"

Kilan whirled round to face Death. "And how, pray tell," he asked through gritted teeth, jabbing a finger at her to emphasis his point, "would I explain to my parents that I had to delay my marriage to the Duchess so I could get married to someone they've never met and divorce her immediately after the ceremony?"

"You wouldn't have to explain at all," Death said patiently, as if she thought he was being very silly. "We could elope. Or we could just have sex -- if I understood correctly that would validate our marriage just as well -- but from the look on your face that idea repulses you, so elopement is the simplest solution."

Kilan made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "Why me? Why, out of the thousands of people on this planet, did you have to interfere with my wedding?"

Death shrugged. "It's almost morning. I'll leave you now; I have an appointment in Esergot. You can tell me tonight what you've decided."

She disappeared, leaving Kilan to reflect on the catastrophe his life was turning into.

Maybe he should just tell his parents the truth. It could hardly make things worse, after all.

Chapter Footnotes:

[1] tastaft = A musical instrument something like a cross between a harp and a piano.