by Sharon Shinn
She looked confused. “But couldn’t one of the mine technicians have handled the repairs?”
“Under normal circumstances, yes, but there was also a malfunction in one of the nuclear generators at the compound, and—”
“Well, I see, I’m glad we had you to spare,” she said, waving a hand politely to stop my explanation. “It does seem hard on you, though, to have to spend your whole night bent over some—some machine instead of sleeping in your bed.”
I smiled. “That is what I came to Fieldstar for. To bend over malfunctioning machines. It was quite exciting, I assure you.”
“Really. Well. I’m glad.”
“Mr. Ravenbeck did say I could be excused from the evening entertainments for the next few days, as a payment for my extra work.”
“Oh, but Jenna! You were having so much fun!”
“I do believe I need the quiet for a few days,” I said.
She would have protested again, but Genevieve called on her attention. I managed to eat my food quickly and escape from the room.
The rest of the afternoon was quiet as, with an economy of motion necessitated by my shortened workday, I checked all my generators and cleaned out waste-disposal systems and did a quick survey of the forcefield wall. Everything seemed in order in our corner of the world.
Toward dinnertime, I made my way to the part of the manor dedicated to Ameletta, consisting as it did of a schoolroom and a connected playroom. In the latter, I found Ameletta and Janet Ayerson practicing a poem that Ameletta was to recite for Mr. Ravenbeck’s guests that evening.
“There you are, Jenna. We heard you had quite a thrilling time of it last night,” Janet greeted me.
“I’m not sure that is the word I would use, but it certainly was eventful,” I said with a little laugh. “And now I have been the most slothful woman alive and slept half the day away. I am sure I do not know how I will persuade myself to fall asleep tonight.”
“Oh, I fancy boredom may lull you into a dreamlike state,” Janet said somewhat dryly. “Give yourself half an hour in the company of our guests, and you shall be quite ready for bed.”
“Ah, but I have been excused for a few days,” I said.
“How did you manage that?”
I manufactured a delicate shudder. “The strain on my nerves last night. Too much for me to bear. I need a respite.”
She laughed. “Then I shall hope for another emergency tonight that will require my special services!”
Ameletta looked from her tutor to me and back to her tutor. “But Miss Starborn is not to join us tonight? She will not hear me recite my poem!”
“I will listen to you right now, before you go down to dinner,” I offered. “That way you can practice your elocution.”
“But it will not be the same! I wanted you there with us!”
“Ameletta,” Janet reprimanded.
“I think you will find you perform quite well without my participation,” I said, touched but completely unmovable. “Come! Speak your poem for me now.”
After a few more moments of sulking, she complied, reeling off an animated rendition of a few verses about a child explorer who discovered gold on a distant planet. Janet and I both applauded and praised her when she was finished—and she did an excellent job, for she was a born actress—and this served to rescue her from the sullens.
Just as I was complimenting her again on her memory and her delivery, the little girl interrupted me. “But Miss Starborn! I forgot! What was in the package that arrived for you today?”
I glanced at Janet. “Package?”
The tutor nodded. “Did you not receive it? It was delivered by special courier this morning.”
“In the bustle of preparing the meal, Mrs. Farraday must have forgotten,” I said. “I cannot imagine who would have any reason to contact me here.”
“One of your friends from Lora?” Janet guessed.
“All of them send mail by stel-route. I access all my letters on the terminal in my room.”
“A gift from one of them, perhaps.”
I smiled. “We are not so close that we exchange presents. I must find Mrs. Farraday at once.”
But that task was easier set out upon than achieved. At first I could not locate the housekeeper; then, when I tracked her down in the wine cellar, she was deep in conversation with the cook and Mr. Ravenbeck, discussing the liquors to accompany the evening’s meal. I did not like to disturb such a conference, so I returned upstairs to await her-and ended up missing her again as she slipped by me up the back stairwell to search out a special tablecloth in the linen storerooms. Soon, of course, the frenzy of serving the meal began, and once she was settled at the table with the other guests, I certainly could not approach her. I ate a quick meal in the kitchen with Mary, Rinda, and Genevieve, the whole time feeling my soul seethe with impatience.
Thus it was rather late into the evening, and Mrs. Farraday was still in her bustling mode as she oversaw the evening cleanup, before I had a chance to ask the seneschal about my parcel.
“Oh, my heavens! I forgot to give it to you! she exclaimed. ”I put it in my room for safekeeping. It is on my dresser, a small brown envelope. Just go in and retrieve it.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Farraday.”
Ordinarily I would not have liked to enter anyone’s bedchamber unaccompanied—I have such a deep need for privacy myself that I hesitate to intrude upon anyone else’s—but under the circumstances I felt justified. So I went to her room, crossed directly to the dresser without glancing curiously about me, and snatched up the parcel without pausing to look at more than my name on the label. Not until I had marched down the hall and closed the door on my own room did I really examine it to see where it might be from.
I did not immediately recognize the handwriting, though the return address, as Janet had expected, was Lora. I ripped open the package to discover, inside, another envelope with a letter wrapped around it. The note was from my old tutor, Mr. Branson, and it was brief:
“Jenna: This arrived for you yesterday, and I am sending it on to you as quickly as I can. I hope all is well with you in your new position. Noah Branson.”
I was glad now that I had conscientiously informed my previous employers of my new address, or otherwise this mysterious envelope never would have made its way into my hands. Or was I glad? For the envelope itself bore the return address of Baldus.
My only thought was that my aunt Rentley was dead.
Slowly I opened the envelope and spread out the single typed sheet inside. It read: “Miss Starborn: I regret to inform you that your aunt Sofia Rentley is quite ill, and may in fact be dead by the time you receive this missive. Although everything has been done to ease her from this life, she has been unable to rest completely. Again and again she has expressed a desire to see you once more. I have told her I would look for you and, on her behalf, beg you to come to her bedside. I do not believe you have long to deliberate over this matter, and I urge you to come quickly if you can come at all.” That stark message and a scrawled, nearly indecipherable signature, were the only words written on the page. Embossed on the top of the sheet were gold letters proclaiming that the message was sent from the law offices of Kafster & Macking.
I read the letter again.
I had not seen my aunt, my harvester, my commissioner, since I was ten years old. I had thought of her so rarely in the intervening years that now I had a hard time conjuring up her face, her voice, her mannerisms. At one time I had thought I would hate her so fiercely that my final words would be a malediction upon her soul, and now I found myself surprised to learn, or be reminded of, her given name. Sofia. No one had ever addressed her by that term in my hearing.
It is hard to either despise or forgive a woman you do not even know.
I sat for a long time in the gathering dark, not bothering to get up and turn on the lights of the room when the exterior light of the sun dimmed and disappeared. I was not so much remembering as testing, sending tendrils of inq
uiry through my muscles, to my brain, seeking the bruise or the injury. There were places I shied away from, experiences I refused to relive, even for this exercise, but most of those shadowed places were blurred and indefinite, too insubstantial to support nightmares. My aunt would die tortured by guilt and remorse if I did not go to her bedside; she would suffer, she would grieve. Her pain would escalate as the hour of her death grew nearer, while my own indifference would slowly erase even the troublesome images in my memory. She would grow darker as I grew lighter, and her death would not trouble me in the slightest.
But I had it in my power to bring a fellow human being rest and comfort. And only I, of all the people living in the universe, could bring such gifts to her side.
I have a great capacity for enduring cruelty, but none for inflicting it. I stood, flicked on the room lights, and turned on the computer in the corner of the room. In a few moments I had checked the cost and availability of passage to Baldus. Tomorrow morning, quite early, a transport left Fieldstar for the great shipping hub of Hestell. From there, I could catch a commercial liner straight for Baldus, a semi-direct route that would get me to Aunt Rentley’s bedside within three weeks. I punched in the requests that would hold my place, and went downstairs to seek out Mr. Ravenbeck.
I came upon a scene of much noise and merriment. Someone had brought in a music-sim machine and hooked this up in the library. When I entered, Mr. Fulsome and Melanie Ingersoll were performing an upbeat duet that seemed to require them to also perform some sloppy dance steps, their arms about each other’s waists and their feet moving in sync. Bianca Ingersoll looked bored by the exhibition, but everyone else in the room was laughing, clapping, and urging them on. Mr. Taff, in fact, had jumped to the top of a sturdy table the better to convey his enthusiasm, and was shaking both fists over his head in a gesture of congratulations.
I paused in the doorway, hoping to discover Mr. Ravenbeck without having to venture deep into the room. Unfortunately, he was all the way across the room from me, leaning over Mrs. Ingersoll’s chair and apparently confiding some secret in her ear. She did not look pleased at whatever news he had to impart; her gaze, wandering around the room, actually came to rest on me. I pointed at Mr. Ravenbeck then pointed at myself. For a moment she stared at me, as if debating whether or not to convey my silent request, then she tugged on his arm and gestured in my direction. He spun around, evinced great surprise, and bounded across the room to join me.
“Well, Jenna? Have you recanted? The delightful sounds issuing from the room have made you regret your hasty decision to abandon our evening entertainments and come in to offer us your own rendition of some suitably tasteless cabaret melody?”
I smiled faintly. “Hardly that. May we go someplace where we can speak with some hope of hearing each other?”
In a few moments, we were installed in the breakfast room. We could still hear the music from down the hall, but muffled and at a distance, it had a sweeter, more wistful sound.
“You alarm me,” Mr. Ravenbeck said, when I declined his suggestion that we each take a seat. “I fear you come on serious business.”
“Not calamitous, but certainly not frivolous,” I acknowledged. “Mr. Ravenbeck, I must go away for a month or two.”
He had turned away as if to straighten an errant chair, but at that he swiveled back in astonishment. “What! Go away! Where? Why? For so long! I do not know that I can allow it.”
“I do not know that you can stop me,” I said gravely. “My aunt is ill, in fact dying, and I must be there to ease the end of her life.”
“Your aunt! You have no aunt. You have no one, you told me so yourself.”
“Well, I have her, and she needs me, and I must go to her.”
He peered down at me. “And if I accede to this request, will you at some point in the future produce sisters and brothers and parents who also need you at some inappropriate hour? For in my experience, once you have found one relative, you invariably are petitioned by hundreds.”
I accorded this sally the faint smile it deserved. “There is my aunt’s son, but I don’t believe he could exert any claim on me that would move me to action. She is the only one.”
“And what does she need from you that you alone can provide?”
“Absolution,” I said.
He started back in the manner of an edgy horse come suddenly upon a snake in the road. “And this is something you are capable of dispensing? Like fever medicine and good advice? I thought it was the province of priests and deities.”
“She needs me and I must go to her,” I said again, suddenly tiring of all these word games designed to make me doubt my resolution. “It now remains for you to tell me whether or not there will still be a position open to me when I am free again. Such knowledge,” I added with a certain coldness, “will aid me in my packing.”
He gazed down at me a moment in silence, his face grown serious and a little sad. “Why, Jenna, I am only teasing,” he said softly. “It is just that I learn so little of you from you that I take every occasion to see what I can needle out of you, quiet closed little thing that you are. Of course you may go—and of course your post will be held for you. We could not manage without you. I do not know how we will manage these two or three months that you plan to be gone.”
“The mine technicians will cover for me, I am sure.”
“That is not what I meant,” he said.
There was another small silence.
“When do you leave?” Mr. Ravenbeck asked finally. “How will you travel? What is your destination?”
“There is a shuttle from the spaceport tomorrow morning. I will take that to Hestell, and go by commercial liner from there to Baldus. The length of the voyage is what will take so much of my time. I do not anticipate that the visit will be long.”
“And how will you pay for your ticket?” he asked next. “It cannot be an inexpensive journey.”
I tilted my head up; I was not about to ask for charity. “I will draw upon the salary that has been deposited to my account.”
“An advance could be made to you,” he suggested. “Against your future earnings.”
“I believe I have enough to cover my expenses,” I said stiffly.
“But not much more than that, I would guess,” he said shrewdly. “In fact, this unplanned trip must come close to wiping you out.”
This was very nearly true, so I said nothing.
“If you will not take an advance, I have very little hope of persuading you to take a loan,” he said, reading me quite rightly. “And yet, I cannot understand why not! According to your philosophy, if we are all equal, you have as much right to my money as I do—or as a dog does, or that oxenheart tree outside.”
Again, he managed to elicit from me a faint smile. “I believe we are equal in our souls and our bodies,” I said. “I do not believe we are equal in material possessions.”
“Well, I can’t see why not, since that’s the only useful way to be equal,” he said, unimpressed. “Give me as much money as the next man any day! And I’ll be content to know that his soul sits on a much higher dais than mine in heaven.”
“And yet, it is not your philosophy that rules my behavior, but mine,” I said. “And I require nothing from you.”
An idea had occurred to him. “But what if—what if—yes, I have it! What if I commission you to bring back something for me from Baldus ? Then, since I am sending you on a job-related excursion, I must naturally incur all or at least some of your costs. Very well, then! Jenna, as your employer I command you to journey to Baldus, leaving immediately, and there procure for me—something. I shall think of it in a moment. And in pursuit of this task I shall pay for your passage to Baldus and all of your meals, besides.”
“This might be more believable if there were anything on Baldus that any reasonable man might wish to acquire,” I replied. “But since there is nothing that I can think of, I cannot imagine that you will be able to simulate a desire for anything it cultivates or
exports.”
“Nonsense, people must live there for some reason. You were only a child when you left—what could you possibly have known about agriculture or commerce? Let me think a moment. Baldus, Baldus—for what is it well-known?”
He frowned down at me ferociously while he cudgeled his brain. I kept an impassive countenance, certain he would not be able to come up with anything. But suddenly his face cleared and he looked down at me with a beatific smile.
“I have thought of it! I need a bottle of their aprifresel wine,” he said triumphantly.
“Their what?”
“Aprifresel wine. It’s hideous, actually, very sweet, made of some local plant crossed with apricots or some such nonsense. But I must have a bottle. I cannot live another day without it.”
“Well, even if I carry out this commission for you, you will have to live deprived for at least two months, since I will not be back with it before then,” I observed. “But if it is so dreadful, I cannot believe you actually desire it, and I will not purchase it, and I will not accept your money.”
“No, I do want it, I want it above all things. I can sell it for two or three times its worth to Harley Taff, for he collects such things. His wine cellar contains an amazing variety of vintages collected from all over the civilized universe. He does not care about drinkability, only rarity. And I can assure you, there are very few individuals on Fieldstar who have bottles of aprifresel wine.”
“Then perhaps it is Mr. Taff I should be going to, for he might be willing to pay me an even higher salary for fetching such a treasure for him,” I said solemnly.
Mr. Ravenbeck looked ludicrously crestfallen. “Jenna! You would not do that! And rob me of the chance to play the gallant! It was my solution, after all. I ought to be allowed the satisfaction of acting upon it.
