My Own True Love (24 page)

"Please, God," she whispered, as she turned and walked back to stand beside the wagon, "don't let him be dead."

"Dead," Lewis said when he came back a while later.

His voice was bleak and tired. She couldn't see his expression in the darkness. She didn't ask for details, or what they were going to do about it. She just balled her fists into tight knots. She felt as if she should do something but she didn't know what. Crying for Sandor wouldn't change anything. When Lewis picked her up and carried her into the
bardo
she didn't make any protest. She could feel him shaking in reaction and found herself hugging him tightly as he put her down on the bed.

"Stay here," he said as he stepped away. "I'll be back as soon as we bury him."

Stay here, she thought, rubbing the ring as Lewis went away. Of course. Where else was there for her to go?

******************

She slept for a long time. She knew it was a long time because there was daylight coming in the
bardo's
tiny window when she woke up. She felt better. Her dreams had been full of nightmares, but the nightmares had driven away the demons that had been torturing her waking thoughts lately. She didn't approve of wallowing in self-pity. It was time to get her life straightened out.

The wagon rumbled onward over a rough track as she washed and quickly re-dressed in her rumpled clothes. When she looked out the window she saw that last night's snow had been no more than a dusting. It wasn't preventing the caravan from traveling away from Sandor's unmarked grave.

At least she assumed it was an unmarked grave. She supposed she should jump out the back of the slow-moving wagon and go say a word to his widow. Then she decided it could wait until they made camp. There were a few things she wanted to say to Lt. Lewis Morgan right now.

She went to the front of the wagon, pushed aside the heavy canvas curtain separating the driver's seat from the living quarters, and sat down beside him on the driver's box. He automatically passed a folded quilt to her.

He waited until she'd tucked the covering around her legs before he asked, "How are you feeling?*'

"Tired," she admitted. "I don't know how long I slept, but I feel tired."

"Like the weight of the world's descended on you?" He nodded. "I know." Lewis sighed. "I'll miss the old thief."

There was genuine regret and affection in his words. Sara wished she could deny the "old thief" part, but Sandor had not been the most honest of men. Or sober. Or clean. Still, "It's your fault he's dead," she said, with less anger than she'd thought she would.

"I've been thinking about that," Lewis replied. He looked straight ahead, paying careful attention to the rising road. They'd passed through only one village so far today. The inhabitants had stared at them in sullen, angry-eyed silence. He was alert for trouble. Besides, he didn't want to look at the Rom girl beside him and see hatred looking back at him.

Sara had been prepared to sermonize. Instead she asked, "So, what have you been thinking?"

"I've been thinking that you were going to accuse me of being responsible for his death. And you did."

"You are," she said. "He'd be in London now."

"Drunk on cheap gin while he sent his wife out begging."

"But he wouldn't be dead if it weren't for you and the ambitions of the British Empire."

"I'm fighting a war, Sara," he answered wearily. "I'm not interested in my country's ambitions, just stopping Napoleon's."

"Right," she granted. "You're a good soldier."

"Sailor," he corrected. "And I'm not responsible for Sandor's death." He risked a quick glance. Her face was hard with anger, but maybe she didn't hate him. He sighed.

"You got him—us—into this."

"But a Polish border guard killed him. It was a
gajo
who killed him."

"Yeah, but—"

"Do you hate the
gajo,
Sara?" he asked on a quick, desperate breath.

"No!" she answered. The word was a knee-jerk reaction of her twentieth-century self. After a short, painfully thoughtful pause, she said, "Sometimes."

"Me, too. Sometimes."

"You are a
gajo.
"

"I know." He wished she'd reach out and touch his hand. He wanted some contact from her. When she didn't, he said, "That guard just thought he was doing his duty. I have to remember that."

"You're just doing yours," she was quick to reply. Before he could.

"Yes."

"It's all your fault." She banged her fist on the seat between them. "None of this would have happened if you hadn't dragged these people across Europe as your cover. We're all just camouflage to you. We don't mean anything to you."

"You do," he answered sharply.

"Yeah," she said bitterly. "I'm the bimbo in your private James Bond movie."

"What?"

"My role in your life is sex toy," she explained slowly and carefully. "Concubine for the duration of the adventure. Bed warmer. I'm not blaming you for that. I let it happen." She banged the seat again. "Why don't you take the responsibility for this, Morgan?"

The sky overhead was iron gray and ugly, dotted with ravens. Ice on the road crunched beneath the horses' slow footsteps. The countryside, empty fields and barren woods, was anything but inviting. "I helped your people get here," he said. "This is Bororavia, the place they wanted to be. If you want me to take responsibility for helping your people do exactly what they wanted, I will. Gladly."

"But your reasons—"

"Hardly altruistic," he agreed. "But I meant them no harm."

"No," she said. "You didn't mean them harm. You didn't give a damn about them one way or another."

"True," he admitted. "I didn't."

"You'd do anything you had to."

The accusation in her tone burned like fire. "Yes."

"You'd have sent me to the hulks without a second thought."

He nodded. "You didn't mean anything to me."

"We're all just a means to an end for you."

"Yes. Yes. Yes." He wanted her to stop telling him the truth. "Enough," he said. "We both know what I am."

"Yes," she said, her throat constricted with pain. “Bastard."

He looked at her straight on for the first time. "We both know what I am," he said again. "But what are you, woman from the future? Who are you? Are these people yours any more than they are mine?

And," he added before she could respond to the fear in his bright eyes, "just how much of all this is that ring you're wearing responsible for?"

As Lewis's words sank in,
Sara shuddered. A chill crept over her, deeper than the one brought by the November wind. "Good questions," she had to acknowledge. "Who am I?" She thought about it for a minute, putting thoughts about the ring on hold. "I'm a
Rom of the Borava tribe," she said at last. "Only I was born in St. Paul, Minnesota."

"Which is somewhere in North America," he surmised.

"Yes. I don't think there's been any European settlement there this early in the nineteenth century. I’m not sure. My family came to America after the Communist takeover after World War Two."

"Communist? World War? The second one?"

"How complicated do you want this conversation to get?" she asked.

"I don't want to know the future," he said. "At least no more than I need to know about you."

"Fine with me," she agreed. "So, my father's family moved to America. My grandfather's family, well, we used to own a small circus. Maybe it's this one because we had it for generations, I don't know. A lot of my relatives who were in the circus were killed during the war."

"World War Two?"

"Yes. Some were resistance fighters. Some—" She struggled with things she wanted "to tell him, things that had relevance to her life in ways he could never understand. How could she explain concentration camps when she couldn't really comprehend them herself? "The world hasn't gotten better," she said,

"just more organized. No, things are better in the future, I refuse to be cynical and depressed about some of the bad things. There is more justice, better quality of life. But I'm trying to tell you about me."

He gave her a subdued version of his glowing smile. "Go on."

"The Borava tribe isn't as into the
mirame
taboos as some other Rom."

"Really?" he asked skeptically. "I hadn't noticed."

"What about Molly?" she defended.

"That's your doing," he told her. "They wouldn't have taken her back if you hadn't talked them into it."

"I think it's because we interpret our Rom heritage in a more liberal manner than some other tribes.

We won equal rights in Bororavia during the rev—early on," she concluded hastily, remembering that the revolution hadn't happened yet. Might not happen the way things were going. "Anyway, there are plenty of
gajos
in my background. My father married an Irish girl from St. Paul, and I'm their spoiled-rotten only child. I went to the University of Minnesota, worked for an accounting firm—I think you'd call me a countinghouse clerk. I own my own place. Playing guitar is my hobby."

He looked surprised. "You're not a professional musician?"

"No."

"You should be. I mean that as a compliment," he added hastily.

"Thank you."

"You attended university, you say? In this Minnesota?"

"Yes."

He didn't challenge her words further. "You have a husband? Suitors?"

"Neither."

He was silent for a few moments. "You're wealthy and independent, then. Are you happy in Minnesota?"

She didn't challenge him on his assumption of her wealth; by his standards she supposed she was.

Happy? "Yes," she said. "I have a good life."

"Then you'll be going home come St. Bartholomew's Day."

His words were more statement than question. She didn't know how to respond, but the words came out before she could think about them. "No. I'll be staying in Bororavia."

Staying. He breathed a silent prayer of thanks. She'd be staying. He hadn't known until this moment how badly the thought of her disappearing tore at his soul. She was staying. He wanted to ask her why she'd be staying. He wanted to hear her say it was because she loved him, but he felt too fragile to risk her giving a different answer. So he just nodded. "What about the ring?" he asked instead.

The ring. It was time she got some answers from the ring. Sara looked down at the silver band tightly circling her finger. The stone winked alertly up at her. "Well?"

"People don't make magic. Magic makes people," was its cryptic reply.

"Oh, that's very clever. Excuse me," she said to Lewis. "We have to talk."

"We are talking."

"Not us. Me and the ring."

"Ah," he said with a nod. "Yes. That might be wise."

So,
she thought angrily at the ring,
don't 1 deserve more than fortune-cookie philosophy?

"Certain events need to come to pass. My duty is to see that they do. You and Lewis are the means to achieve those ends. I cannot work without help. I had to find humans who can cope with magic. Most people can't, you know."

No, I didn't know. You could have asked for volunteers.

"You have to be chosen, you can't volunteer. You do get to live happily ever after as a by-product."

Right.

"Besides," it added, "the other Sara wished to save her people as well as her own soul. I need you to do that."

Sara rubbed her temples. "I definitely don't want to hear this."

"What?" Lewis asked.

"It wants me to lead an uprising against the mad duke," she told him. Lewis gaped at her.

"Tell him the rest."

She folded her hands in her lap. "And you're going to help," she concluded in the most rational tone she could manage. "We're going to be the Heroes of the Revolution. I know," she said as he continued his openmouthed stare, "I don't like it either. But I think we're stuck with it. It's part of this magic we're caught in." Oddly enough, having said it out loud finally, she began to feel more comfortable with the notion. "Not that I have any idea how to run a revolution. The most politically radical thing I've ever done was join the Nature Conservancy."

"What revolution?"

"The Bororavian one. Jt hasn't happened yet. My father's always said it didn't make the headlines when it happened because Napoleon was bigger news. The revolution will make Bororavia the most progressive area in the Baltic. I hope that means we get indoor plumbing soon," she added wistfully.

Lewis made a skeptical noise. "Revolutions don't bring progress."

"Of course
you
prefer the status quo, you're an aristocrat."

"Life isn't as easy for the aristocrats as rabble-rousers seem to think."

"Oh, yeah? How many meals have you missed?"

Before he could answer, Hadari, who had been riding a little way ahead of the caravan, turned his horse and came up to them. Lewis brought the wagon to a halt at Hadari's gesture. "What?"

"The village we're headed for," Hadari said, "Jurmla. It's in the river valley just over this hill. I remember the place." Hadari looked back nervously.

"But?" Lewis prompted.

Hadari shook his head. "It's been burned to the ground," he said. "Not a building standing. No one in sight. We all had family in Jurmla,* he went on worriedly. "What has happened to them?"

Lewis swore fiercely at this ugly news. While he spoke Beng and some of the other men came up to see why they were stopped. Hadari quickly explained. Everyone began to talk worriedly and all at once.

Sara listened anxiously. Finally she said, "If Rom villages are being burned, it's time we got off the road. Why don't we camp in the woods above the river for tonight? Then Toma and I can scout for hidden ways."

"Hidden ways to where?" Hadari asked.

"I don't know. Away from the burned village, at least."

"We need to head toward Duwal," Lewis said. "The capital will be a good place for a circus."

"Countryside might be a better place to hide," Beng said.

"Hide from what?" Lewis pointed up the road. "We don't know why that village was destroyed."