Near + Far (32 page)

The quarters they had for me were luxurious by any standards: thick stone walls cushioned by woolen tapestries that showed chimeric monsters and soldiers with shoulder-mounted mortars.

"Those are rawr," Avi said.

"That's not how I pictured them," I said. "Do they really have three heads?"

"Yes, some of the ones furthest in the mountains," he said.

A thin man dressed in mauve corduroy and leather stood in the doorway, watching me. When I turned towards him, he looked away.

"This is Stentor," Avi said. "He will assist you with dressing and serve you at the table."

I was surprised and said so. "You cannot provide me with a woman to assist me?"

"It is not a thing a decent woman would do," Avi said, his tone unapologetic. "Stentor is without family and is well paid for his labors."

"Very well," I said.

Upstairs the bed was a mass of feather comforters. Before I could go to sleep, Stentor insisted on measuring me with a small paper tape.

"I don't intend to wear native clothing," I said in warning and he shrugged.

"I'm just doing my job, milady," he said. "I just give them the tapes and then you can tell them no, eh?" He chuckled drily.

I shrugged and let him circle my wrist, my arm, my waist, my neck, my bust, my hips. He wrote numbers on the tape. Then he walked me through the basics of the water closet and left. I took off my clothes and crawled into the bed. The linens were chilly at first, but warmed quickly. I could hear the wind howling against the fretted lines of the shuttered window, and a pane rattling at intervals.

I slept sporadically, falling in and out of sleep, dreaming of the last few moments of planetfall, the corrugated surface plummeting up at us, and then catching myself as somewhere outside there was a crack of thunder. I opened my eyes to see lightning illuminate the room like a photographer's flash, a brilliant image that sprang out at you, then lingered in one's darkening vision. The monsters capered on the wall in afterthought, prancing in menace.

At dawn, oyster-colored light washed in through the shutters to paint slats of brilliance across the gray floor. I opened the shutters and leaned out.

The house was towards the upper end of a hill. The window looked out over a long sweep of stone houses and far far beyond, circular towers that sent soot-laden dark columns into the air. Overhead, two smoke-colored birds circled each other silently.

There was a knock at the door and Stentor entered. He had several dresses across his arm, and carried a bag in the other. I shook my head.

"My clothing will function," I said.

"This is a formal occasion." He laid the dresses on the bed: one was a cobwebby gray silk that managed to be concealing, for all its filminess. The other two were brown and black and made no bones about their respectability. I touched my blue jumpsuit and dialed the color down to black. Tweaking the cuffs lengthened them and made the shirt blousier. The neckline was equally easy to adjust. But Stentor still did not look happy.

"Respectable women ... " he said.

"Respectable women live in harems here," I said dryly. "Believe me, I have no desire to be a respectable woman."

He stood there, frowning at me.

"I let you take my measurements last night so you wouldn't get into trouble," I said. "But I warned you at the time, I wouldn't wear native dress."

He shrugged and gathered up the dresses. But rather than removing them from the room, he hung them in the wardrobe flanking the bed and set the shoes and undergarments on the appropriate shelves. He left the room.

The shower had multiple heads that protruded from three sides, spraying a hot, soft mist on my body, and the soap was soft and scented with some sort of spicy floral. I rinsed my jumpsuit at the same time to make sure it was fully charged and clean. Out of the shower, I touched its electrostatic tag and let it dump its excess moisture in the sink.

I wore an everlasting white rose at my throat. I had packed it in my reticule along with necessities like my datapad and my fresher. The Institute had made it for me.

Avi was not impressed by the outfit, I could tell by the impatient hover of his eyebrows. But he handed me into the motorcar and followed me in.

We drove through dark, winding streets and outside of town, where the stars stretched overhead, up a long stretch of mountainside. We passed through several checkpoints along the way; each time the driver passed up his identification. At the third point, a soldier peered into the car, looking straight at me. He shouted something over his shoulder and was greeted with a burst of laughter. I folded my hands in my lap and looked out at the trees beside the road. Avi snapped something at the driver and we moved along.

We were high enough that snow fell outside the car on the shaggy, humped trees that clutched at the rocky hillside. Finally we drew up outside a high iron gate, capped with black arrows that pointed up into the snowy sky. A pair of soldiers checked the driver's identification and waved us through once the gates shuddered and opened.

The house was high-ceilinged and ablaze with lights. Off to one side several men sat in a circle with guitar and drums, sending out a light, easy melody. Several men danced with young girls near the players, but most of the women were clustered in the parlor, chattering with each other. Their high, light voices were like birds, but they stilled as we stepped into the main hallway and the outliers caught sight of me.

An elderly woman in steel gray caught my eye. She stood, looking at me, but before she could move forward, the General was there, bowing. He offered me his arm and swept me into another room, where a circle of men in uniforms and dress clothes waited to bow and shake my hand in turn.

They settled me onto a well-upholstered chair, and a liveried servant brought glasses of thin, bubbly wine and crackers spread with meat paste. Our talk was inconsequential—inquiries after my journey, or how I liked my accommodations.

I waited for a woman to be brought forward to meet me, but several hours passed with no such move. I drank my wine and nibbled on the crackers. Finally I stood and asked my way to the necessary. A servant guided me halfway, then hovered an unobtrusive few steps away as I entered.

I waited fifteen minutes, but no other women came in. Finally there was a soft knock from the servant on the door. I washed my hands and exited. When I left, I did not make my way back to the room where I had been seated, but instead went to the parlor.

A hush fell on the room again as I entered. I stood there, looking around at them as they stared back. The elderly woman made her way over to me. She had a hawklike, craggy face and her eyes glittered at me in something like approval.

"I am Dame Ilias," she said. She curtsied and I mimicked the gesture, the two of us inclining our bodies to each other. She paused, glancing at the doorway, where the General had appeared. "Perhaps you will do me the courtesy of paying a visit in two days, in the afternoon? We will have an early supper. Tell Avi and he will bring you."

"Very well," I said. The General called to me and I returned to his side to be guided into the men's room again.

When the men finished dancing with the young girls, they escorted them back into the parlor and returned to the room where I was. One made his way over to me.

"You are enjoying the music?" he said. He leaned over and helped himself to a cracker from my plate. "May I bring you more wine?"

"Yes to the music, no to the wine," I said. "The latter is not necessary. Watch." I held out my glass and a steward moved forward from where he hovered and refilled it.

He chuckled. He was a pretty man, with dark black hair that matched his tilted, amused eyes. He had the handsomeness of youth, smooth skin and lips. I drank from my wine and looked at him as he looked back at me. The two of us stared at each other until the General said something from across the room and the other man suddenly dropped his eyes.

"I am reminded of my rudeness," he said. "But I thought perhaps where you come from, eye to eye contact is not the same as it is here?"

"It's not," I said. "I find it unsettling that no one will look me in the face, to tell the truth."

He smiled, and his gaze slipped across my face before returning to the carpet. "I am called Jorie, Victoria."

"Jorie," I said.

"Ah, never has it sounded as sweet as on your lips," he said, and looked surprised when I laughed at him, then laughed as well.

"Yes, I suppose that sounded foolish," he said.

"I'm not a thirteen year old to fall for that sort of flower," I said. "Speaking of which, your partner over there is trying to catch your attention."

He kept his back turned to the young girl he had been dancing with, his eyes moving from thing to thing, touching my face for the briefest of moments on each pass, before it slipped away to the carpet, the punch bowl on the table, the wide windows that showed the swirl of snow past the darkness outside. She was thin and pale, dark-haired. She bit her lip as she saw me looking at her and turned to speak to her companion.

"Go pay her a little attention," I said. I let my eyes touch his chest, his neck, his cheeks, before I dropped my voice. "Then come back to me and speak more extravagance."

A spark of silent delight touched his eyes before he turned to do my bidding. I smiled to myself and watched the room.

The bell rang, and the General offered me his arm to take me into dinner. To my disappointment, I was flanked by the General and Avi. Jorie was some twenty people down the vast wooden table from me.

The table was littered with slaughtered animals, like the gustatory aftermath of some woodland battle. Most of the animals had six limbs; their mouths were invariably stretched around pieces of fruit that had been roasted.

I ate sparingly for the most part, but found a cheese and smoked fish dish that I liked.

"Ah, that's one of my favorites," Avi said, helping himself and me. "My mother used to make it on my birthday, because I loved it so. It's called Rimmoah. It looks as though they made this just for you, but we will share it."

There was a smokey tang and richness to the dish that I relished. I ate, listening to the General to my right, discoursing on a battle with the hill tribes.

"They left decent civilization behind a century and a half ago," the other man said. "They deserve no consideration, but you act as though they had equal diplomatic weight as real countries and intercede on their behalf, making peace between them."

"Their councils are invariably naïve," the General said. "We do them a kindness by offering them shelter. And as they deal with us more and more, they will take on our customs and be assimilated."

"If they do not end up influencing us," the man grumbled. "My daughter studies with a tribesman's daughter in her schooling, and comes home with strange ideas."

"You will be speaking before the Mayor and the Council," Avi said in my ear.

I nodded irritably, wanting to hear more of what the General was saying. "Yes, yes, I know." I tried to turn my attention back, but Avi pulled at my arm.

"Don't ... feel ... well," he gasped, breathing hard. His breath smelled like cheese and rotten peaches. Two servants hurried over just in time to catch him as he writhed backward, falling off the upholstered, high-backed chair. His groans echoed across the room over the clatter of dishes.

A servant knelt beside him even as one of the other guests hurried over, fumbling with the pouches at his belt.

"What has he eaten?" he said, looking up from Avi's agonized face.

"Mainly that," I said, and pointed at the cheese and fish just as the first convulsion of pain hit my stomach. The room whirled in dizzy waves and I tried to break my fall to the floor with my arms but failed.

How much later it was when I awoke, I didn't know. There was sunlight shining in the window—late morning? As I stirred, a chime sounded. Seconds later, Stentor entered. He helped me sit up, and brought me a mug of steaming, licorice-smelling tea.

"What happened? How long have I been sick?" I asked.

"Two days," he said. "The doctors have been to see you several times. They said that if you made it through last night you would probably live."

"What about Avi?"

"He didn't make it."

"Do they know who did it?"

"Someone in the kitchens. They're still investigating, but the woman committed suicide in her cell. Some disgruntled servant, perhaps, with an imagined wrong."

"Is this common, people being poisoned?" It would have been nice if that had been mentioned in the datasheet.

"Sometimes people kill other people. This is an unfortunate, human thing. When we catch them, we punish them. Do you not have murders, in your advanced society?"

I looked at him. Purple tiredness bloomed underneath his sagging eyes. "You've been up all night."

"Two days running," he admitted.

I was touched. "Thank you."

He shrugged. "The doctors said you should rest this afternoon, but that (again, if you should live), you should be ready to give your presentation within three days. They have suggested that you spend the first two of those days in bed."