The Lady in Lilac

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"My mother forged an alliance with the Bazaar. That's how she came to learn the Great Signs, the tattoos no one wears. We must return to London. That is - please can we return to London? Please. We must find Penstock, who watches the secret wicket-gate of the Bazaar."

-Maybe's Daughter

Millicent Clathermont, also known as the Lady in Lilac or just "Lilac", is the gifted tattooist behind many of the Clathermonts' Great Game designs.

Who Was She?

"I have no inclination to modesty. Yes. Yes, my husband does his best, but at the beginning, he handled the clients and the... messages... and the art was mine. It was the messages on the skin that came to the attention of a Power. A wonderful Power."

Millicent's studies in Correspondence tattoos led her to discover the history of the Bazaar and the Neath; she was invited to Penstock's Wicket, where the Bazaar lives. And then, she fell in love with it.

"I learnt -- the real me learnt -- to tattoo in all the colours of the Neathbow, did you know that? And then I came to the Nadir. For a similar reason to you, I suppose, but passing in the opposite direction as it were. And I sloughed me off like a snakeskin."

She abandoned Mr. Clathermont to follow her own path, and began traveling the Neath to continue her studies in tattoos and the Great Game of the stars.

One of her many voyages was to the Chapel of Lights, where she studied the mind- and body-altering tattoos borne by its worshippers. Lilac also traveled to Parabola at some point and had an affair with a tiger king called Maybe. This produced a girl known only as Maybe's Daughter, who has now grown up to be a talented engineer.

QUEEN OF INKS

Along her journey, Lilac descended into the Cave of the Nadir and sacrificed much of herself in order to be infused with irrigo. This made her immune to the deadly effects of sunlight on ordinary residents of the Neath, and also immune to being found because anybody who sees her will forget her once she's gone. The part of her that she sacrificed is still in the Nadir, where it guards a blood-red candle.

Where is She Now?

"I am that part of her that does not remain. That part that never learnt to love a monster."

Lilac is now traveling on the Surface, once again to study tattoos, but she descends to the Neath each Feast of the Exceptional Rose to collect love stories for her beloved space crab. Occasionally she may appear to zailors whose nightmares have overcome them, though it's unclear if this Lilac is a hallucination or not.