Context (72 page)

He practically ran out of his apartment,
black cloak billowing, servitrices dropping into startled curtsies as he
barrelled past them, and was outside.

Streams
of water arced overhead, forming silvery arches in the air through which tiny
pastel-coloured fish with attenuated tendrils swam. There was soft sweet music,
a mossy fragrance which hovered at the edge of one’s perceptions -and, seated
amid the elegance, the Lady Sylvana.

Her skin was pale ivory beneath
the platinum glowglobes’ light, her long golden hair bound up with silver cords
and fastened with ruby clasps. She wore a morning gown of silver and cream
which left bare her arms and flawless throat; a tiny faux-moth of silver and
diamonds fluttered above each shoulder.

‘Tom.’

She held out her hand without
rising, and Tom touched her fingertips with his own as he bowed and softly
kissed the back of that smooth, perfectly formed hand.

Then he sat down on the floating
soft-cushioned chair opposite her, and for a long moment they regarded each
other without speaking.

Sylvana had lost a little weight.
Unfashionably thin: it served only to enhance the ethereal quality of her
presence. For Tom, she was suddenly the world’s focal point, as if all reality
led inwards to where she sat: real, tangible, around whom the air almost
vibrated with excitement.

Elva. ..

But this was here and now.

‘You saved my life, Tom.’

Even her words were mellifluous
song, liquid and beguiling.

‘Good, my Lady ... An you had not
saved mine, so many years before, I’d not have had the opportunity.’

Sylvana shook her head.

‘But at such cost...’ She did not
look at his left shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Ah, Sylvana.’

‘You know ... I can’t forget the
way you looked, when you dropped from nowhere onto the cruciform where I
knew
I was going to die. There were things I realized, in that moment, that I
had never allowed myself to think before.’

Tom swallowed. He did not know
what to say; could not have spoken if he did.

‘Well, then.’ Sylvana leaned back
and gestured a column of small tricons into being above the tabletop. ‘What
would you like for breakfast?’

‘To tell you the truth’—Tom took
a breath, released it—’food is the last thing on my mind.’

‘Some daistral, then.’

‘That would be nice.’

They
sipped from jewel-ringed cups, and when Tom shivered at the sweet taste
overlaid by whiganberry and drime, it seemed that Sylvana did the same.

He had not realized that the
simple act of taking daistral could be so sensual.

For a time they talked about
history, engaged in wordplay as innocent as in their youth; they might have
been back in the Sorites School, during a break between Lord Velond’s exacting
tutorials.

Finally, when the daistral was
finished and Sylvana made as if to rise—Tom stood quickly, and the majordomo
appeared from nowhere—he thought his heart might break: the ending of a perfect
moment.

Then, ‘I need to go back to my
place,’ she said. ‘Will you walk with me, Tom?’

‘I— Of course.’

A tiny smile touched her full
rose-pink lips.

‘My Lord Corcorigan, I take
nothing for granted.’

He
walked alongside her, on her left, as they passed through a lemon-tinted
glassine tunnel, then a stone garden with slowly morphing gargoyles, and came
out upon the esplanade.

Sylvana slipped her arm through
his.

Finally, they rose up a polished
golden ramp, walked the length of a marble gallery, and stopped before tall
doors of gold and rubies, where a discreet tricon indicated this was Sylvana’s
home.

Tom looked at her.

“Thank you. I’m—’

She stopped him with a gentle
smile.

‘Don’t you want to come inside?’

On
a diamond table at the side of her bedchamber stood a tricon cast in white
metal: Epimenides’ paradox—
this statement is a lie.

Tom remembered the day Corduven
had given it to her.

Her dress slid from her shoulders
as she turned to him, arms outstretched, and old memories slipped away as he
took her incredible softness in his arm and kissed her. Her lips were silken,
absorbing him.

Her nipples were button-round,
pink as though blushing; these, too, he softly kissed.

‘Oh, Tom…’

It
was
a dream; it was
reality.

‘My love.’

His tunic degaussed, shed in
segments onto the floor.

Fell on the bed together.

Her fingers were in his hair, and
she whimpered, and he was inside her, a miracle. Their very cells cried out for
merging, fusion into one transcendent entity, pulsing together, united with the
universe, the cosmic expansion—
yes, my darling—
and the nova explosion
which blasted all history apart—
now, yes, now—
and brought them into a
new and different world.

Staring
into each other’s eyes.

‘No-one, Tom, has ever
focused
on me like that.’

‘Years of pure thought.’ He
kissed her nose. ‘Self-discipline, logosophical—’

‘Ha.’ Her smooth, perfect arms
enclosed him. ‘Come here, my pure-thinking Lord.’

Later,
entwined upon the bed:

‘It’s serious, Tom.’ Suddenly
solemn, the music of her voice. ‘The Blight, I mean.’

‘Is it?’ Dreaming, still.

‘I mean’—with her fingertip
running down his sternum -’its incursions are spreading. More than— Ah, no.
Yes. No. Not now ...’

‘What?’

‘Oh, Tom ...’