Of course. The actress has defined her role. It is now time for her to take a new stage and ensure her performance captures the attention of the right audience.
Certainty, however sharp, is only the plan for the battle, not the battle itself. Catherine knew that declaring herself an "Oracle" was one thing, but convincing a skeptical world was another. One wrong word, one prediction too vague, and she would be just another charlatan selling false hope to the desperate. She had to be infallible.
She spent a full day in her sanctuary, not sewing, but creating the tools of her new trade.
With stiff cardboard bought from a scribe and inks of different colors, she crafted her own deck of cards. They resembled no known tarot. Instead of Kings, Queens, and Fools, she painted symbols that held meaning only for her: a taut golden rope, a shattered mirror, a hand sewing with threads of light, an eye drowned in darkness, a cage whose bars morphed into birds.
It was the alphabet of her vision, codified on cardboard.
The next morning, she chose her stage.
Not a dark alley, but the Square of Scriptures, a bustling plaza bordered by the Scriptorium on one side and the offices of various magistrates on the other.
It was the crossroads of the city's ambitions, a place where the secretaries, clerks, assistants, and servants of powerful men came for a breath of air, for lunch, or simply to peddle the latest gossip. It was a hub of information, a network of whispers that traveled up to the most important ears.
She set up a small folding table, covered it with a simple black velvet cloth, and sat down.
She wore her dress of night and indigo, her dark hair falling freely over her shoulders. On the table, she placed only her enigmatic deck of cards. And she waited.
She called out to no one, solicited no customers. Her silence and stillness were her greatest advertisement.
In the midst of the square's hustle and bustle, she was an island of strange calm, and people began to notice her.
They pointed, whispered, intrigued by this apparition who had appeared out of nowhere.
Finally, a man approached, pushed forward by the curiosity and skepticism of his companions. He was a young clerk from the Tax Office, his thread of arrogance shining with a bilious green.
"So you're the new marvel?" he said in a mocking tone. "Read my future, seer. Am I to become rich and powerful?"
Catherine slowly raised her eyes to him, but her inner gaze was fixed on the web of his threads. She saw the green of his arrogance, but also a secret, shameful red thread that connected him to his superior's wife.
She saw a small knot of dishonest gray threads connected to his department's cash box.
She did not answer his question. Instead, she drew three cards from her deck and placed them on the table. The first showed a key entering the wrong lock.
The second, a gold coin falling into a pocket with a hole. The third, an empty bed stealing the warmth from a room.
"You seek wealth in another's garden," she said, her voice a barely audible whisper.
"But every flower you pick leaves a muddy track to your own door. Be warned, for the gardener is a jealous man, and he is noticing his coins are not being counted correctly. Your future is not a question of wealth, but of whether you will still be here to see it when the sun rises tomorrow."
The clerk's mocking smile vanished.
A deathly pallor washed over his face. Every word, every metaphor, was an arrow that had struck the heart of his most shameful secrets.
He backed away, tossing a few copper coins onto the table with a trembling hand, and fled without another word, under the stunned gaze of his friends.
The silence that followed was more eloquent than any shout. The story spread across the square like wildfire. Within an hour, a small crowd had formed at a respectful distance from her table.
She gave two more readings that day.
To a servant girl, she spoke of a hidden love letter under a floorboard, a secret that tormented her.
To a guard, she spoke of his daughter's illness, not in medical terms, but by describing "a pale flower losing its petals in the shade," and advised him to seek a cure "not from the apothecaries, but near the living water west of the city."
Each reading was terrifyingly accurate.
She never gave names, never stated raw facts. She painted pictures, metaphors that were a thousand times more personal and unsettling to those she addressed.
As evening fell and she began to pack away her cards, she felt a new gaze upon her. A different kind of gaze. Cold, analytical, devoid of the simple curiosity of the others.
A black carriage, bearing no coat of arms but of an ostentatious elegance, had stopped on the other side of the square. A middle-aged woman got out.
She was dressed in an immaculate gray livery, that of a majordomo or the governess of a great house. The threads emanating from her were of steel gray, vibrating with discipline and assessment.
The woman crossed the square and stopped before Catherine's table.
"My masters have heard of your... unusual talents," the woman said, her voice as crisp and unadorned as her attire. "
They are great collectors of rarities. They would like to judge the quality of your art for themselves."
It was not a question. It was a summons.
Catherine looked up at her, her face a canvas of mystical serenity. The whisper had reached the right ears. She had been scouted.
Without a word, she nodded her head, a slow, graceful movement of consent. The first door of the Gilded Cage had just creaked open.