Context (110 page)

NULAPEIRON
AD 3422

Wondrously
soft, her hand in his. Glistening grey, her sparkling eyes he had thought would
remain unseen. Those beautiful lips.

Facing each other across a low
table, seated on comfortably upholstered lev-stools, holding hands in a deep
communication needing no words.

It was her.

‘Elva…’

She smiled, blinking away tears.

‘I thought we were lost,’ she
said. ‘Forever.’

‘That couldn’t happen.’

‘No.’ Her grip tightened on his
hand. ‘We won’t let it.’

Earlier, when he had come round,
she had fed him: taste explosions bursting with liquid sweetness in his mouth.
The physical organism, starved, fed without allowing talk; but his gaze had
remained fastened on her even as he nourished himself like an animal,
gripplefruit sticky with juice on his hand.

But when she had finally stopped
him eating—knowing the dangers of gorging himself too soon after his extended
fast—he had allowed her to take away the food for now, despite the urgency of
his hunger’s demands.

He trusted her.

Elva. At last...

Trusted her with everything.

Washed
and dressed in clean pale-grey tunic and trews—the uniform of prisoners taken
to act as vassals for a time—Tom felt his thought processes revitalize as his
blood glucose rose. All sorts of barriers and barricades had fallen away in his
mind: the inner defences he had shored up against fear and loneliness and
disappointment, not daring to let his feelings out in case he never saw her
again.

But Elva was here, she was real,
a fantasy made fact, and this time he was going to hang on to her, despite the
danger.

It was like hanging over an
abyss, dangling from a solitary handhold, with only one chance for survival and
happiness: never to let go.

‘I’m not the woman you knew, Tom.’

‘We all change,’ was the only
reply he could make.

‘See here?’ Letting go of his
hand, she rolled up her tunic sleeve. ‘This wasn’t me.’

When she put her hand in his again,
he raised it up and softly kissed the rippling white scar which ran up the
inside of her forearm.

‘It’s part of you now,’ he said.

‘But I saw Litha get cut, playing
with a broken blue glass bottle when our parents weren’t watching. I was
there.
I bandaged the wound. I can remember how her hot blood smelled like copper.
We were seven SY old, my inseparable twin sister and me ...’

When she turned away there was no
sobbing, but soft silent tears trickled down her cheeks: in mourning for the
sister she had effectively destroyed, displacing Litha’s consciousness when the
entanglement system decohered, and all of Elva’s thoughts and memories slammed
into Litha’s brain, even as Elva’s body dropped dead in Tom’s arm and the Seer
looked on, powerless to prevent the disaster he had just created.

What had it been like for her,
suddenly to be in a distant realm, surrounded by strangers who thought they
knew her, and knowing above all the price Litha had paid for her being here?

But it was what Elva said next that
caused the hairs on the back of Tom’s neck to rise, his skin to grow chill.

‘Sometimes I dream,’ she told
him. ‘And not always when I’m asleep: waking images of places I’ve never been
to, of people I’ve never seen ...’

Tom swallowed.

Finally, there was only one
possible response.

‘You
are
Elva. And I love
you more than I can say.’

‘I
was never really recruited into the Grey Shadows,’ she said later. They had
moved onto a couch, in a chamber lit by glowflitters hanging close to the wall
tapestries, and she sat on his right so they could hold hands. ‘Mother and
Father were part of it. Litha and I just naturally, as we learned more and more
of their purpose, became involved ... Were we stupid, Tom?’

‘No.’

‘I worked genuinely hard, as an
astymonia officer and in LudusVitae. But the Shadows wanted to stay in the
background, not openly commit themselves to LudusVitae’s cause, even though
their objectives were largely the same.’

Tom nodded. The infighting
between different covert groups had at times threatened to destroy any
effectiveness the umbrella organization of LudusVitae might have had.

‘But Litha...’ She looked away,
then back at Tom. ‘She was in deep cover, in Earl Draufmann’s Palace Guards,
rising through the ranks faster than me. The pact was, if we came across
knowledge that looked vital to the Shadows, if there was any risk at all that
we would not be allowed to bring it back without hindrance ...’

‘You were as willing to sacrifice
yourself’—Tom shifted on the couch, staring hard at her: trying to convince
Elva of her own bravery—‘as she was.’

‘I don’t know. How can I ever?’

‘You gave up a huge amount, even
so.’

‘I thought I’d lost you ...’

Draufmann Demesne had been at the
core of Blight territory, one of the original manifestations in the world: a
seed-growth of malevolent influence which spread, eventually becoming the vast
infection which now threatened everything. Elva had communications facilities—code
drops and couriers, nothing high-tech and therefore open to subversion—but no means
of leaving.

Not without abandoning her
mission totally. Her
sister’s
mission: that was what made escape
unthinkable.

‘But now you’re here,’ she said, ‘we’re
going to have to get out.’

It was what Tom wanted, though he
had no illusions about the dangers they would face in trying to leave this
dreadful place.

‘What about your superiors?’ he
asked. ‘Can you simply drop out of the Grey Shadows network?’

‘Perhaps. But I’d rather take
back the price of my passage.’ With a bleak half-smile: ‘There’s stuff here
worth dying for.’

But
before that, Elva had a guest for dinner, and Tom could only watch and suffer
as she flirted with an enemy senior officer who had a non-military conquest on
his mind. All the while, Tom held back the trembling desire to lash out, to
strike the throat and claw the eyes, bringing the bastard the Fate he
undoubtedly deserved.

It started when a chime sounded,
and Elva ran a hand through her hair and stood up, flustered.

‘There’s a ... cleaning kit. In
the kitchen chamber, there. Perhaps you ought to ...’

‘Don’t worry.’ A too-tight smile
stretched Tom’s face. ‘I know how to be a servitor.’

Elva closed her eyes for a
moment, composing herself, then nodded abruptly and went to receive her
visitor.

When the doorshimmer dissolved, a
large florid man in dress uniform stepped inside. His greedy eyes, and the
small wrapped present he handed Elva, were mere details: Tom hated the man on
sight.

But Tom bent to his cleaning
tasks with tense familiarity, remembering how to carry out menial tasks without
ever looking his betters in the eye.

‘Ah, Herla, my dear.’ It was Elva’s
cover name, and it sounded strange. The officer took her hand and kissed her
cheek (as Tom winced, unseen, at the moist invasive sound). ‘Beautiful company,
elegant surroundings. What more could a man ask for?’

‘Careful, Major.’ Elva set the
present down upon a crystal table. ‘You’ll turn my head.’

‘That would be nice, if you’ll
allow it.’

The urge to crush his throat was
almost overwhelming. Tom moved on, polishing a shelf by hand,

‘Hmm. I see your unit is damaged.
I’ll just send for a—’

‘No, no.’ Elva laid her hand upon
her visitor’s arm. ‘It’s quite efficient, and I find the asymmetry
aesthetically pleasing.’

She’s talking about me.

‘Symbolically? As a visible mark
of inferiority? Interesting.’ The man gave a liquid chuckle. ‘Perhaps I’ll
commission a holosculpture, depicting them all in that light.’