by Sharon Shinn
“Now,” he said. “I want the entire story.”
She seemed calmer now, or maybe it was just shock; the events of the evening had been a bit much for him as well. She sipped from the cup of wine and haltingly told her history.
“There was a man I knew once,” she said. “I was a young girl, ten years younger than he was, but I—he was handsome and all the girls liked him and so did I. He lived down the street from us, from my family and me, and he was wild and he had money and all the girls wanted to be seen with him. Well, you know how it goes.”
“He seduced you,” Drake said.
“Oh no. Not then. I’m talking about when I was a teenager, twelve and thirteen years old. But I was flattered when he would talk to me, and sometimes he brought me gifts and I—well, you understand, I was so high-spirited then. I knew, I had always known, that I wanted to serve the goddess. I wanted to be a Triumphante. But also I was, I thought I was, in love with this man that everyone was in love with. He became sort of my ideal of men—handsome, charming, happy. I knew that I would never forget him.
“Well, Guy moved away—somewhere—and I grew up and I joined the Triumphantes. And I was still a little wild, they said, but not a bad girl, you know—I just—well, I was full of fun and energy. And a few years passed and I loved my life and I was happy.
“Then—oh, six or seven years ago—I was visiting my mother and she was complaining about how Franco—my brother—was gone all the time and she worried about him and how he might be getting into bad company. ‘Bad company?’ I said. ‘Isn’t he just hanging out with the neighborhood boys?’ And she said yes, if you considered Guy Saberduce a neighborhood boy.”
“Wait a minute,” Drake said, for the name rang a faint bell. “Guy Saberduce. Guy isn’t his real name, is it?”
“No, it’s Guillermo, but everyone called him Guy.”
“He’s dead now.”
“I know,” she said. “I helped kill him.”
There was a brief moment of silence. Drake thought she shivered, but he was afraid she might misconstrue it if he put his arm around her to give her warmth. “Go on,” he said.
“Anyway, so I learned that Franco had been hanging around with Guy and his friends—they were all much older than Franco but at the time I didn’t think much of that. I didn’t think at all. Franco came in and I started teasing him—reminding him how much I had been in love with Guy when I was a girl—and asking him why he couldn’t introduce me to Guy now that I was a grown woman and had a chance of making an impression on him. And Franco said he would, and a couple of weeks later he had me come with him when he was meeting Guy for dinner and—and—well, so I thought we fell in love.” She was silent again, struggling with tears or memory.
“And maybe we did fall in love,” she said, more softly. “Later, when I came to hate him, I thought that he was just playing at love, but much much later, when I had come to forgive him, I thought that perhaps he had really cared for me. He said he did, and why should he lie? But it is hard to believe that someone who has harmed you ever truly had good intentions toward you. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now anyway.”
“It matters,” Drake said gently. “Because if you think he was lying to you when he said he loved you, you won’t be able to forgive yourself for being a fool to believe him.”
She gave him the ghost of a smile. “Yes,” she said. “I have had to forgive myself for even more than I had to forgive him for.”
“And you have not entirely succeeded at that.”
“No,” she said. “But I believe Ava has forgiven me, and that is the point from which I start.”
“Tell the rest of the story.”
“So. Well. Gradually I learned why it was Guy had so much money, and where he traveled when he was gone from Semay, and what he did . . . terrible things, things you wouldn’t believe if I told you.”
“I am familiar with most forms of human corruption,” Drake said. “I would believe you, but you don’t have to tell me now.”
“So we quarreled, of course, although at first I thought my influence was strong enough to cause him to repent, to change his way of life. Naturally, it wasn’t. So I broke with him, refused to see him, and tried to turn Franco away from him. Franco—to this day I don’t know how much he knew about Guy and how much he closed his eyes to. He and I argued constantly, because I never left him alone, I never gave up on him the way I gave up on Guy. And to make everything worse, our mother was very ill and during the middle of all this, she died. I was—” Laura shook her head. “I didn’t think anything so terrible could ever happen to me again. I was wrong, of course, but at the time—well.
“About this time, I met another man. He was a sweet boy, just up from the country, come to the city to make his fortune. I could not have found someone more different from Guy if I had sifted all the sands of Semay. We were—he was—I don’t know if I was truly in love with him, but he calmed me. He was so kind to me, he made me believe that there were such things as goodness and beauty and tenderness. All this time I was still fighting with Franco and hating Guy, and Julio was the only thing in my life that made me happy. And then—”
She paused and shivered again. This time Drake moved closer and wrapped his arm around her. She neither pulled away nor sank into his embrace. Through the light fabric of his coat around her shoulders, he could not tell if her body was generating any heat at all.
“Guy killed Franco,” Drake said. “But I don’t know why.”
She did not even seem surprised that he knew that. “Yes,” she said. “But it was my fault.”
“That can’t be true.”
“It’s true. I—Franco had some money of Guy’s, he was a courier, he was supposed to deliver the money to somebody else. Drug money or whore money, I don’t know exactly. I—I stole it from Franco. I thought if Franco didn’t have the money, Guy would be so angry that he would show his true viciousness to Franco, that Franco would realize what a terrible man Guy was and would break with him as I had. I really believed that. Franco was furious with me, but even he was not afraid. He thought that all he would have to do would be to explain it to Guy, and Guy would be patient with him—with me—would find a way to persuade me to return it. But he—but he—”
She couldn’t go on. She was shaking violently now, and she buried her face in her hands with a single, heartbroken sob. Drake put his other arm around her and held her close.
“So he killed Franco, hiring some of his off-world connections to do it right,” the Moonchild said, just to get the words said, to get past this part of the story. “And, when that didn’t impress you sufficiently, he killed Julio. And shortly after that, you testified against him in a court of law, and he was sentenced to death after a prison term on Fortunata.”
She nodded, so that he could feel the motion of her head against his chest. “And you left the order,” he continued, “because you could not bear the guilt of what you had done. And you were willing to destroy yourself in the barrios of Madrid—but Ava stopped you.”
She nodded again. With his arms around her, he could feel the subtle shifts of her body. He could sense how she drew herself inward, imposed her control once again upon her muscles and her grief. Now she lifted her head from his chest and drew a little apart from him, but he still sat close enough to keep one arm around her waist.
“And yet I don’t think the story of Guy Saberduce has ended for you,” Drake said, speaking as gently as he could. “I have thought all along that Diadeloro was somehow bound up in this case, and now I’m sure of it.”
“But Guy is dead,” she said, and she was in command of her voice again, or almost. “And he was the only one I testified against. He was the only one who would have—who would have wanted to kill me.”
“The prison records say he is dead,” Drake said. “I have learned that records are not always accurate.”
For a split second she looked
wretched with fear, but then her face eased. “But Guy would recognize me,” she said. “He would have no reason to kill other priestesses in an attempt to find me.”
Drake nodded. He could not help himself; he reached out a hand to smooth away some of the pale hair matted against her face. “As a matter of fact, I don’t believe he’s the one we’re looking for,” he said. “And I don’t think our murderer’s primary motive is a desire to kill you.”
“But—what—”
“He wants the money, of course. I assume there was a lot of it?”
“Thousands and thousands of credits,” she said. “Too much for me to even count.”
Drake nodded again. “That’s it, then.”
“But—” she said again, then stopped. “I mean, who—”
“One of his associates from that time, maybe, newly released from prison.”
“They would recognize me, too, most of them.”
“They were all neighborhood boys like Franco?”
“No—well, some of them were. Some of them were—horrible men, awful people.”
“Off-worlders?”
“Yes, a lot of them . . . But they all knew me. Well enough to recognize me on the street, even five years later, I would think.”
“Somebody else, then. Maybe somebody that Guy told about the money. But the money is the key to it.”
He stopped, because there was a strange expression on her face. “By the way,” he said, “what did you do with the money?”
“When I stole it from Franco,” she said, “I sent it to a woman I knew. In Saville. Another Triumphante. I thought that perhaps Guy’s men would search the house, or even the temple, though I don’t know if they ever did . . . And much later I wrote to her and asked her to send it back to me. I had never told her what was in the package, you know, just asked her to keep it for me until I wanted it back. She never even touched the original paper I had wrapped it in.”
“Ah,” Drake said. “That explains the postal box you rented.”
She looked up at him with wondering eyes. “Is there anything you don’t know?” she said faintly. “How did you find that?”
“Basic police work,” he said, smiling down at her. “I have only one more question, but I know the answer to this one, too.”
“What is it?”
“You told Guy about the crystal, didn’t you? About how the ojodiosas are engraved with the names of the priestesses who wear them?”
She drew back even farther, and he let her escape from the protective circle of his arm. “How did you know about that?” she whispered.
“I have been on your trail for weeks now,” he said, still faintly smiling. “I have learned everything I can.”
She shook her head. “I showed him—because he loved crystals so much. He even had two of the smaller stones that the criados sell to the very wealthy. He loved the goddess-eyes—loved anything in crystal. He even had my portrait carved.”
“In crystal?” He remembered the glass portrait of Corazon he had seen in Felipe Sanburro’s home.
She nodded. “It was the fashion about seven or eight years ago, but it was so expensive that very few people had it done. Guy, of course, had money to spare and so he commissioned the carving. I knew I shouldn’t allow him to do it—Ava’s priestesses, you know, do not believe in having their likenesses taken—but he wanted it so much and I was excited by the idea, although I knew it was wrong—”
“Where is this crystal now?” Drake wanted to know.
“I have no idea. He wouldn’t give it back to me. I asked Franco once if Guy still wore it—”
“Wore it?”
“Yes, he had it put on a chain, much like my goddess-eye pendant, and he always wore it, at least when we were together. Anyway, I asked Franco and Franco said no, but he could have been lying because he knew I would be unhappy if it were true . . . Guy may have sold it or destroyed it or kept it—there’s no way of knowing. He was capable of anything.”
“You never said,” Drake observed after a moment, “what exactly you did with the money.”
She glanced up at him, and he thought he actually saw a smile on her face. “I gave it to the Fideles,” she said. “That was the day I walked into the Fidele chapel in the barrios and felt Ava’s love for me again. I had brought the money and I just intended to leave it in the offering basket at the front of the chapel, but I found that I could not leave once I had entered. Until that moment it had never occurred to me that Ava could forgive me for the terrible harm I had brought to my brother and Julio, and I had had no intention of staying even long enough to pray. But I could not leave the chapel. It was not just because I had brought the money there—not just because I had made some small atonement, however insignificant in the face of what I had done—she loved me. Me. No matter who I was and what I had done. She loved me and she wanted me to live. And she wanted me to serve her for the rest of my life.”
Drake did not know how to answer that. For all he knew, it was true. Certainly Laura believed the goddess had saved her life—and Drake was almost willing to swear fealty to Ava just for that one simple act. For if Laura were not alive—but then, of course, he would never have known that she was not alive—
He put his hand out to her again, very lightly touching her on the arm. “Come on,” he said. “It’s nearly dawn. We’ve got to get you home.”
She allowed him to pull her to her feet and even helped him gather up the food and fold the blanket. Back in the car, he let the motor idle until the heat came on. He was feeling chilled straight through.
Neither of them spoke again until they were only a few blocks from the temple. “One more question,” Drake said then. “Why didn’t you ever let Jovieve know you were alive? She still grieves for you.”
Laura shook her head. “Because Diadeloro is not alive,” she said. “I’m not that person and I don’t want to resurrect her.”
“But she loves you,” Drake said.
“I can’t give her back the love that she would deserve,” Laura said carefully.
Drake thought that over briefly. “That’s not what you mean,” he said. “You think you’re the one who doesn’t deserve love. You think you’ve forfeited your right to it.”
“Well,” she said tiredly, “I have.”
“If that’s true,” he said, “why does Ava love you?”
“Ava loves everyone.”
Even more softly he said, “And why do I love you?”
She was silent.
“Or don’t you believe that I do?”
“I think,” she said, and hesitated. “I think,” she went on, “that you are a gallant man—a chivalrous man, with all the old connotations of that word. You think that I am—am a lady in distress, and you want to rescue me. And because you have suffered, you think that you can understand my suffering. You think you can break through—you can make me feel again.”
“Well,” he drawled, turning the car down the road to the temple, “I haven’t done so badly so far.”
She smiled briefly. “There’s no future in loving people who are hurt,” she said. “If you heal them, they don’t need you anymore. If you don’t heal them, they destroy you. I think I have destroyed enough men in my life.”
He pulled up in front of the temple and almost slammed the car into park. “You’re wrong,” he said, turning to face her. There was little starlight, and no light coming from the sanctuary windows, but her own blond hair made an aureole around her face, and he could see her by that. “I love you because of your courage, your amazing strength, your intelligence and your will to survive. I love you for all that buried and strangled passion you have so painfully laid aside. I look at you and I see a woman seething with energy and life—and a woman so strong that she can lock all that energy and life away. It is not for your suffering that I love you, though it makes me want to reach out and comfort you. It is for your soul that
I love you. And it is for your soul that everyone else has ever loved you. And for your soul that Ava loves you. Diadeloro. You are a woman made of light.”
“A woman in flames, maybe,” she said. “Your mistake.”
He started to reply, but she flung up a hand. Her other hand was on the door; clearly she did not plan to stay around for an extended discussion. “I can’t hear another word,” she said. “I am more exhausted than I can say. Thank you for your escort to the spaceport tonight. You probably saved my life.”
“Since it means so much to you,” he said, “you’re welcome.”
She smiled again. “It means more to me than I realized,” she said. “So it was truly a gift. And now—now that you know so much—what will you do? How will you find the killer, after what I have told you tonight?”
He rubbed a hand across his face. This was not the way he wanted the conversation to turn. “I’ll go to Fortunata in the morning,” he said. “Or, whatever, in the afternoon. It’s already nearly morning.”
“And in Fortunata?”
“I’ll find out what happened to Guillermo Saberduce.”
“But you’ll come back?”
He stared at her almost with defiance. “I’ll come back,” he said.
She touched her fingers to his lips and pulled her hand away. “Ava te cuida,” she said. “Ava guard you.”
He raised his eyebrows. “She doesn’t love me anymore?”
Laura stepped from the car but leaned her head back inside to answer. “You need protection more than love just now,” she said.
“Just because you do,” he replied, “doesn’t mean I do. Te amo, Deloro.”
“Walk with the goddess,” she replied, and closed the door, and left.
* * *
* * *
Fortunata had not changed much, and Drake still didn’t like it. He had taken the slow commercial transport, which left Semay late in the evening and arrived in Fortunata at eleven in the morning, thirty-six hours later. He felt neither relaxed nor rested when the ship finally made planetfall. Much of the time he should have been slumbering, he had been thinking about Laura instead, and those thoughts were not calculated to help him sleep.
