by Sharon Shinn
“Because I couldn’t let you go without telling you—without thanking you—I wanted you to know that I did indeed cherish the gift you gave to me last night,” she said. “My life. Something I never thought that I could cherish again.”
“Can I see you again,” he asked desperately, “before I go?”
“To what end?” she asked gently. “We have told each other everything there is to tell.”
For a moment longer, he kept his eyes fixed on her face, willing her to change her mind, but that unbreakable mask of serenity had settled again over her brow and cheeks. He would have to be content with giving her back her life, he knew. The rest of the voids in her heart would have to be filled slowly by others, long after he was gone. He did not have enough time to change her.
“I love you,” he whispered at last, and turned on his heel and left.
* * *
* * *
He stayed another day, and then another, but he did not see Laura again. He presented himself at the Triumphante temple three times on each of those days, but the ermana, he was told, was receiving no visitors. Jovieve as well was unavailable the first few times he called. He could not force his way in, and so he left.
Raeburn clearly wondered why he lingered but found a passably diplomatic way to word it. “Got a stel-letter from Captain Rolf on Fortunata,” he remarked to Drake on the evening of the second day. Drake and Raeburn and Leo were having a meal together, the first one in weeks that the three had shared. “Asking me if you might be returning her Blue Devil sometime soon. I wrote back, said I thought you’d be on your way to Fortunata any day now.”
Drake nodded and sipped his wine. “Not tomorrow,” he said. “Morning after. It gives me the best axis for Fortunata.”
“And then to New Terra?”
“Commercial starship.”
Leo made a face. “The slow boat. It’ll take you a month.”
“Not quite. Long enough.”
Raeburn looked pleased. “Could you hand-carry some papers for me? I don’t want to transmit them over the starwaves.”
Drake raised his brows. “You having any luck on the Interfed issue?”
Raeburn was a little smug. “I’ve had some promising meetings with la senya grande the past few days. Also Ruiso. They’ve put their heads together and come up with some interesting conditions, but I think the council on New Terra might buy the plan.”
Drake resisted the urge to say in an offhand way, “Oh, the stipulations about drug-running. I know all about them.” Instead he said, “Sure. Give me whatever papers you want.”
So he stayed one more day, but it did him no good. Lusalma told him at the Triumphante temple that Diadeloro had returned to the Fideles.
“She has?” he said. “For good?”
“I don’t know. But she’s not here anymore.”
He nodded a little absently. “And senya Jovieve?” he asked with an effort. “Is she not here anymore either?”
The dark girl smiled up at him. “She is busy at the moment,” she said. “But she asked if you could please come back later this afternoon? She has something to give you.”
“Yes. Of course. I’ll be here.”
So he went directly to the Fidele temple, but Laura was not receiving guests any more than Diadeloro was. He considered asking to speak to the abada—to say farewell and to take the chance that he might accidentally run into Laura—but his heart was too heavy to entertain the idea of making polite conversation. He left, knowing he could not go back.
It was late afternoon when he returned to the Triumphante sanctuary, where Noches directed him to the gardens. Jovieve was kneeling on the ground, pruning a lush bush of red flowers that looked like exotic roses. Their scent, however, was wilder and stronger.
“I’m glad to see that you do some work around here,” he greeted her. She laughed and came to her feet.
“I’m so sorry I’ve been out these past few days,” she said, coming over to kiss him on the cheek. He had automatically taken her hands in his, and now he looked down at her, holding her hands and smiling.
“You have dirt all over your face,” he said, and would not release her when she attempted to lift a hand to brush it away.
She laughed up at him. “Fine. Let this be your last glimpse of me, muddy and grimy as an old peasant.”
“Whatever else you remind me of,” he said, “it’s not an old peasant.”
She led him to a stone bench half covered by a hedge of purple flowers. They sat side by side, still holding hands.
“I was so afraid you would leave before I had a chance to say goodbye,” she said more seriously. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
“I should have been gone by now,” he said, “but I couldn’t bring myself to go.”
Jovieve nodded. “Deloro still won’t see you?” she asked.
He managed to shrug. “Can you blame her?”
“I wish she would,” Jovieve said. “I wish—” She sighed.
“It’s all right,” he said.
“No,” Jovieve said with surprising energy. “It’s not all right. You came here as a man closed and dark, doubting love and doubting the goodness of the gods. And now you leave—finding and losing love—and you will be more bitter and more closed than ever. What’s the good of breaking you open if you’re only more hurt when it happens?”
“You’re wrong,” he said. “I mean, you’re right, that’s how I came, but that’s not how I’m leaving. I am—she is—I found Laura, and I saved her life, and because of me she still exists, the heart and core of my universe. I don’t know how to say it. I think maybe I was guided by the hand of Ava. I think when I leave Semay, I will be a little more willing to concede the existence of miracles. Love and faith. They haven’t made my life easy, maybe, but they’ve made it richer.”
“But it makes me so sad,” she said.
“Well, and it makes me sad, too,” he said. “But I wouldn’t undo it if I could.”
“If I asked you to stay a few more days,” she said, “would you?”
“I can’t,” he said. “I’m pushing it as it is.”
“If she asked you to stay,” Jovieve said, “would you?”
He opened his mouth to answer, and closed it without speaking.
She nodded and changed the subject. “I have a present for you,” she said, “but you’ll have to let go of my hands.”
He released her, and she reached into a pocket of her tunic. He was pleased beyond measure when she pulled out the gift, a small globe of crystal on a thin gildore chain.
“An ojodiosa,” he said, bending down so she could slip it over his head. He held it up to the sun and watched the light cascade through its hundred tiny facets. “Who carved it?”
“Tomas. He put your name in it, too, because I asked him to. I wanted Ava to know who this was for.”
“Thank you,” he said, and kissed her quickly on the mouth. “You have given me so much.”
“Well, I’m la senya grande,” she said, laughing. “He gave me a discount.”
“That’s not what I meant.” He hesitated a moment, feeling awkward, but determined to speak his piece anyway. “I’ve never known anyone like you. I don’t think anyone has ever cared for me quite the way you have. I don’t even know how to say it. I’ve had friends before and I’ve had lovers, and those relationships have gone pretty deep. But you—I think you’re the only person who’s ever changed my soul. You’ve made me different. I think maybe you’re the best friend I’ve ever had.” He paused again. “And I’ll miss you.”
“You can always come back,” she said. “I’ll be here.”
“I will, I think,” he said. “Someday.”
“Until then, Ava be with you.”
He kissed her again, harder this time. “You will be with me,” he whispered. “Maybe it’s the same thing.”
* * *
* *
*
Lise had elected to join them this night for a farewell dinner, while Raeburn pleaded official business. It was unexpectedly convivial, three Moonchildren and three bottles of wine. Lise was in terrific spirits, Leo was low-key but charming, and Drake had steeled himself against depression. They drank and danced and told combat stories, and walked back to the hotel arm in arm. Leo turned off to his room first, and they arrived at Lise’s door next.
“You could come in for another drink,” she said. “I think I’ve got something stashed away.”
“I’m flying a Blue Devil back to Fortunata in the morning,” he said. “I think I’d better draw the line here.”
“You didn’t drink that much.”
“Like I said, I’m flying in the morning.”
“Blue Devils fly themselves.”
“I’m a nervous pilot.”
“I doubt it,” she said. “I don’t think anything makes you nervous.”
He smiled down at her. “You do.”
She smiled back, more speculatively. “Wonder if we’ll ever run across each other again,” she said. “Years from now, on some other mission.”
“Probably,” he said. “The Moonchild forces aren’t that large.”
“I’ll work on my wiles,” she said. “And next time I’ll win you.”
They were both laughing. “Give Benito my love,” he said, “next time you see him.”
“You’ve got to give it to me first,” she said. He bent down and kissed her on the mouth, a more lingering kiss than he intended. She was smiling when he raised his head. “Yes,” she said dreamily, “next time I’ll win you.”
He laughed. “I’ll be gone in the morning,” he said. “Ava te ama.”
“Tu tambien.”
Back in his room, he spent half an hour packing his clothes. He had not brought much with him and had very little to take away. No, that wasn’t true. He had brought almost nothing with him, and was taking so much away that it would take him months to sort it out. He went to the window and gazed sightlessly at the street below.
Four weeks on Semay, and he had learned everything.
He thought about Lise a moment, wondering if he really would see her again and what he would do about her if he did. On the other hand, he was pretty clear on his friendship with Jovieve. She was closer to him than a lover; if he never saw her again, or if he returned annually to pay homage to Ava, he did not think the relationship would change. Like the amulet she had given him, she would stay with him always. She had become a part of him and could not be rooted out.
As for Laura . . . That, he realized, was a desire he would carry with him to the grave, through one glittering star system to another. He had told Jovieve the truth, though he had not put it very succinctly. The fact that he had saved Laura’s life had given a purpose and focus to his own life. She existed—apart from him and unavailable to him—but she was alive, and so the universe made sense. The stars cohered around a central point, the suns and the planets wove orderly patterns against the numbing blackness of the night. He had brought her back from the brink of death and so he too had a part in that vast mathematical arabesque. He had put his hand out and spun his world into orbit. No man could ask for a clearer directive, a more compelling reason to be glad he had been born.
He had been thinking of Laura so strongly that when the knock fell on the door, for a split second he thought she must have been drawn to him by the intensity of his concentration. He glanced at the clock before he strode across the room. Past midnight. Must be Lise, come to bedevil him for one last time.
But it was Laura.
He stared at her for a moment, collecting his thoughts. For a moment he even wondered if he was hallucinating. But no, he would not have imagined those fading bruises on her cheek and the definite line of the scar across her throat. “Laura,” he said wonderingly and then a second time, asking for confirmation: “Laura?”
“Cowen,” she said. “May I come in?”
He stepped back and she stepped inside, brushing past him. The room had been only dimly lit before she arrived, but she brought the light with her, moving in a private, glowing sphere of her own. He shut the door and stood there, watching her roam through the room.
“Did you walk here?” was the first thing he asked.
“Yes. Don’t lecture me.”
He shook his head. “If you had called me, I would have come to get you.”
“I didn’t know I was coming here.”
“I hear you are back with the Fideles.”
She made an uncertain moue. It occurred to him that he had never before seen her look even slightly unsure of herself. “For a time. For now. I feel strange there.”
“As if you don’t belong?”
“As if the peace of Ava is still there but it will not settle on me. I can’t explain it.”
“You can’t settle anywhere, apparently,” he observed, for she still prowled restlessly around the room. “Aren’t you going to sit down?”
She smiled at him briefly and did not answer. She had gone to look out the window and stood with her back to him. He knew from long experience that the view held few attractions. He sat on the corner of the sofa and watched her.
“How are you feeling?” he asked at last. “I see your bandages are off.”
“My bandages,” she said, “were too ugly to wear. People treat you like an invalid when you have a cloth wrapped around your throat.”
“So you’re feeling better,” he murmured. He did not know Laura in this new mood, edgy and a little humorous; he was on the alert.
She swung around to face him. “Well, don’t I look better?” she demanded.
He nodded wordlessly.
She smiled and looked away. “When I was a Triumphante novitiate,” she said, “there was a man who used to come visit Jovieve. I think he was a student from Saville and the criados had sent him to Jovieve for tutoring. He was a beautiful boy—all the novitiates were crazy over his blue eyes—but shy. Really shy. You could tell by looking at him that he had never been with a woman. We used to do what we could to make him blush. We would tell him how handsome he was, and we would accidentally brush up against him while we were talking to him . . . Poor boy. Once I arranged for him to find me, weeping, in the garden. He was too soft-hearted just to walk away but of course he didn’t know what to do. He kind of patted me on the back and said, ‘What’s wrong? what’s wrong?’ about twenty times. I told him that the girls had been making fun of me because I was ugly.”
She laughed softly. She was looking out the window again, but he could see her profile. The smile still lingered on her lips. “Well, of course, he had to tell me that I wasn’t ugly. I said, ‘But I am! I am!’ and he said, ‘No you’re not, really you’re not.’ And I said, ‘But what about my face? What about my eyes?’ and I made that poor boy tell me, item by item, that I was beautiful. Hair, eyes, mouth, face, hands, body. He did it, too. He was really a sweet soul.”
“I always thought you must have been the devil’s own handful,” Drake remarked.
“Oh, I could be merciless,” she said. “Smiled like a saint, Jovieve used to say of me, laughed like a sinner.” She glanced back at him over her shoulder. “I was not always as grim as I have been since you’ve known me.”
So that was why she had told him the story. A small example, a nugget of her sparkling past. But he had known without the telling. “And now?” he asked. “Is there some hope for the Diadeloro who used to be?”
She sighed and began pacing the room again. “I don’t know, I don’t know,” she said. “I feel such guilt and such remorse—whenever I feel my heart start to lighten, these awful feelings of shame fall over me again. I feel—heavy, physically. Weighted down. Unforgivable.”
“You said Ava had already forgiven you,” he said. “You must learn to absolve yourself.”
“Something Jovieve said . . .” she b
egan, and then paused.
“What did she say?” he prompted.
Laura shrugged and moved back toward the window. “I told her—about Franco, about Julio—how it was all my fault that they died. And of course those other women—all six of them, Cowen, all killed because that man was looking for me. I think I still must not have assimilated that—how much I am responsible for those deaths. And once I realize that—”
“You aren’t responsible,” Drake said forcefully. “How can you say that?”
“That’s what Jo told me,” Laura said softly. “She said, ‘Guy Saberduce killed your brother and Guy killed Julio. You did not lift the gun or pull the trigger or order it done. You did not do it, and the sin is not yours. It is Guy who will be judged by Ava.’ ”
“Well, she’s right. And even Guy didn’t kill the priestesses. That was all Dapple.”
“Yes, but—” She shook her head. “I am still coming to terms with the idea that my life in some way brought about the deaths of other people.” She spread her hands. “But since I talked to Jovieve, it does not seem as terrible as it once did. It’s as if she has lifted the grief from me. I don’t know how. She can’t make me believe that these things didn’t happen, but she has stopped them from haunting me. I feel—free, somehow.”
“Forgiven,” he said.
“Maybe. The Triumphante gift.”
“Next,” he suggested, “you will allow yourself to feel joy again. And then I won’t recognize you.”
She slanted him a backwards look. “Won’t you?” she murmured, and began moving around the room again. She paused before the mirror, glanced inside it, moved on. At the wicker dresser she came to a complete halt, almost absently running her fingers over its surfaces and knobs. Her roving hands picked up his wristbadge and set it down, his laser and set it down, the letter from Jovieve. This she held a fraction of a second longer than the other items; then she laid it too aside.
“It’s from Jovieve,” he said, when he saw what she had been holding.
