A Company of Heroes Book Three: The Princess (28 page)

The double doors swing open again to reveal the statuesque figure of Gyven, dressed in morning coat and striped trousers. A single pearl glows in the midst of the black cravat that billows beneath his high collar. His face has lost much of its sharp-edged cragginess, like a broken piece of granite will when exposed to the elements long enough. His hair is a sweep of polished obsidian, his eyes sparkling slivers of hematite, his teeth like deposits of travertine. He looks like the Ideal Man in the W. K. Hartmann and Co. menswear advertisements (not a few of which a younger Bronwyn had clipped from the magazines and saved, savoring the impossibly god-like profiles) and the princess feels her heart skip arhythmically; her breath catches in her throat.

“Princess!” he says. “Good morning.”

“Good morning, Gyven,” she replies, her voice unnatural, Rykkla’s preparatory arguments still too fresh for either comfort or cool thinking.

“Good morning, Gyven,” echoes the professor, looking down upon them from over his pince-nez. “I’m glad you could come.

“Princess, I’ve been led to understand that you’re at something of loose ends, if I may say so?”

“I suppose you can.”

“I have a proposition to make. I’d like to invite the both of you to come back to Toth with me.”

“Toth?” Bronwyn repeats in surprise. “Why, professor?”

“For one thing, I’ve always been impressed with your interest and aptitude in the sciences. I’d like to invite you to come and stay at the Institute and observe and perhaps even join in our work . . . whatever pleases you. I'm sure your uncle would support you.”

“Oh . . . that's something I never considered. And I take it you're inviting Gyven, too?”

“Have I taken a liberty?”

“Oh, no! No! You haven’t! That would be just fine . . . That is I mean . . . “

“It would be the greatest pleasure,” interrupts Gyven, with a slight bow that the princess thinks is more than a little sardonic.
Have they orchestrated this so well? Am I
that
obvious?

“Wonderful!” says the professor. “You'd be welcome to stay as long as you like, of course. We've got projects under way that I was unable to explain to you when you are in Toth last year, projects I would think you'd find fascinating.”

“I'm certain I will, Professor.”

“You recall those rockets that proved so effective during the siege?”

“They were wonderful.”

“Well, there’ve been certain experiments,” he continues, lowering his voice conspiratorially and melodramatically. “Theoretical work and suggestions that perhaps they could be utilized for transportation.”

“You're talking about
rockets?”
she asks, mystified.

“Certainly! And, not many people are privy to this, Princess, but there’s some theoretical work has been done that suggests the rocket effect works just as well in a vacuum!”

“But there'd be nothing for the exhaust to push against!”

“I know that. I don't pretend to understand all of the concepts but it opens very exciting possibilities!”

“It does?” she asks, puzzled.

“Professor,” interrupts Gyven. “May the princess and I have a few moments to discuss this privately?”

“Oh, yes! Yes, of course! Of course!” He gathers his papers and notebooks into a crumpled bundle. “I'll show you later what I've just been sent from the Institute.”

“Of course, Professor,” Gyven says, reassuringly. “Thank you very much.”

As the doors shut with a thump behind the scientist, Gyven turns to Bronwyn.

“You look different.”

“And you,” she agrees, with wholehearted approval.

“I think that we’re both different; I mean, it's more than how we look, don't you think?”

“Yes. When I look around the palace now, I feel like a stranger. I find myself wondering whose memories I have of this place; they don't seem like mine. The old Bronwyn seems so alien to me now.”

“I have virtually no memories of
any
life before meeting you. Until then time and existence had drifted past me like a grey mist. In a very real way, my life began when we met.”

“I didn't like
you
very much!” She laughs.

“It didn't matter to me, and I admit to giving you good reason. But I was like a newborn child. I knew nothing.”

“Are you really going to Londeac with the professor?”

“Only if I'm going with you,” he replies.

“There's really nothing left for me here, is there? Not even a throne.”

“I have nothing at all, except you.”

Bronwyn turns and goes to one of the tall, narrow windows.
What am I doing?
She feels as though she should be making some sort of plan for her life, establishing a new set of goals, a new sequence of development, creating a blueprint for her new existence.
But look what my ambitions have cost me so far. Should I spend the rest of my life going from goal to goal, each one seeming disappointingly inadequate once I achieve it, seeing only what lies ahead and in the meantime missing everything that is going on around me?

And am I going to end up bitter and resentful for the things that I missed? instead of grateful for the things that I received? I ought to know by now that life will never come fully up to what I expect of it. Can I, for the first time in my life take a chance on the unknown? No goal, no purpose, no plan, just . . . see what happens? Enjoy the journey for its own sake, wherever it's taking me?

I have no idea.

She turns back to Gyven. The tall, craggy man has been waiting patiently, a slight smile turning up one corner of his wide mouth, his thick black hair perpetually disheveled, one arched black brow raised in question. He seems so very tall and strong, like an enormous iron spike driven into the floor.

To Gyven, the Princess Bronwyn is the most desirable thing he hs ever seen, and if he had thought so once, he is more than ever certain now. He admires and is attracted to her seriousness, her intelligence, her perseverance, her loyalty, most of the qualities that Bronwyn herself would argue against, except perhaps intelligence. (It would eventually come as a disturbing surprise to the princess that it had never occured to Gyven to consider her beauty. He had in all his life acquired no standards for human ideals of comeliness, and for years, it turns out, all human women looked pretty much alike to him.) It's certainly possible that Bronwyn's experiences have changed her, one can only hope so . . . but time alone would tell if that is so. She is a stubborn woman. He is also aware of a void in her that he perceives himself filling as neatly as the last piece in a jigsaw puzzle.

Her thin summer dress, a deep emerald green, illuminated by the window behind her, is a verdant cloud in the midst of which floats a sinuous, bifurcated shadow. Her hair shines in a rubicund aureole that surrounds a face that appears to be self-luminous, with eyes the lustrous green of the spectral lines of copper. She does indeed, he suddenly realizes, possess an indefinable
something
that sets her apart from the women of the Kobolds.

She takes the few steps that separate them, places her hands on either side of his face, which feels firm and cool to her, and, thinking to herself,
what the hell
, says for the first time in her life to anyone, “I love you.”

“I love you, too, Bronwyn,” he replies easily and without hesitation.

“Are you really ready to go to Londeac with me?”

“I've followed you this far; I'll follow you anywhere.”

“I don't want you to
follow
me anymore, Gyven. I want you to be with me.”

“Your only worry from now on will be getting rid of me!”

“I'd never do that!”

“I'd go see the Weedking with you, Bronwyn.”

“I'd rather go to one of the moons, if you're going to be melodramatic, Gyven.”

“Which one?”

“I've always liked the little one best.”

“All right. We'll go to the little moon together.”

“And how are we going to get there? In one of the professor's rockets?”

They laughed.

THE END OF BOOK THREE