Context (73 page)

And
later still:

Tom was standing naked beside a
floating table, drinking water, when he heard footsteps, and hurriedly pulled
on his trews. In the bed, Sylvana laughed prettily, though she tugged the
smartsatin sheet up around herself.

‘There’s no need,’ she said, as a
short grey-haired servitrix came into the chamber, and immediately headed for
Sylvana’s discarded clothes.

‘Just the robe, Alystra.’ Sylvana
gestured. ‘Leave the rest.’

Quickly, the woman folded the
robe, draped it across her forearms, and left. At no time did she look up or
address Sylvana or Tom.

‘No need for modesty.’ Sylvana
patted the bed. ‘Come back...’

Tom stared at the doorway for a
moment, then sat beside the Lady he had dreamed of so often, for so many years.

‘You’ve no idea,’ she murmured,
stroking Tom’s stump with her fingertips, ‘how hard it is for me to see this.’

‘Remove an arm.’
Lady Darinia’s words.
‘Either
arm will do.’

Tom exhaled, letting the memory
go.

‘You saved my life, Sylvana.’

She smiled, and Tom closed his
eyes, fixing this instant forever in his mind.

‘Darling Tom ...You’ll join the
Academy officially, won’t you?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The Academy. I know Cord would
really like you to.’

‘I haven’t seen Corduven.’ Then,
deliberately softening his tone: ‘Sorry. I didn’t realize this was a
recruitment operation.’

‘Perhaps a little more than that?’
Sylvana laughed, but pink spots grew on her cheeks. ‘Ah, Tom, I’ve missed you.’

‘And I can’t believe you’re real,
my love.’

He kissed her.

But
that was not the end of the subject.

‘It seems a low-key position,’
she said. ‘Trainer and adviser. But they’ll expand the role as you gain—’

‘Sylvana. I’ll place my expertise
at the Academy’s disposal, all right? It’s what I’ve been doing since I got
here.’

‘Tom, don’t be ... I’m glad,
anyway.’

‘OK.’ He reached out and touched
her long golden hair. ‘What is it you’re really trying to say, Sylvana? I’m out
of practice with multi-layered conversation.’

‘Been slumming it, my darling?
Ah, it’s just...’

‘Just what?’

‘You know they ship combat
casualties back here, some of the worst ones.’

There had been no reason for Tom
to visit the med complex, but he had heard something of its renown.

Nothing like a war to improve
medical techniques.

‘I know,’ was all he said.

‘As an attached officer, you
could ...You see, their regrow-vats are second to n—’

Tom was off the bed and standing.

‘No.’

‘But—’

An unwanted vision flashed across
his mind:

A one-armed black-clad figure
leaps through an archway, kicks low, hits a second trooper with a rapid
combination, throws a high spinning kick ...

‘Elva. Didn’t you know I’d come
back for you?’

He turned away.

‘Don’t ask, Sylvana. Just do not
ask.’

‘Ask what?’ Petulance insinuated
itself into her silver voice for the first time. ‘Ask you to heal yourself?’

Tom took a shuddering breath,
trying to calm himself.

‘What is it, Tom, that won’t let
you take the chance to finally look normal, for Chaos’ sake? Don’t you think
th— ?’

Her words slammed into him like a
sickening blow.

‘Normal?
Me?’

Tom’s harsh laugh bounced back
from the chamber’s elegant walls, and she shrank away, staring at his face.

‘Do you know half the things I’ve
done, Sylvana?’

But that wasn’t it.

It
was not the little-girl twist to Sylvana’s normally flawless mouth, the
frustration in not getting her own way, nor the arrogance with which she had
assumed he would automatically fall in with her plans. Nor was it the way she
had ignored the servitrix’s presence, treating the woman like some inanimate
tool, no more worthy of consideration than a chair or a lev-tray.

It was not even the way she
acknowledged Tom now as a peer because of his title, where formerly he had been
chattel, purchased and utilized for his owners’ benefit.

No, it was his own stupidity
which galled him: that, and the harsh realization that nothing—nothing at all—had
changed.

Elva ... I’ve betrayed you,
again.

There was no fever to blame this
time, apart from his old fiery obsession with a noble beauty forever beyond his
reach.

Not forever.

But had he not already identified
the one constant factor in his life?

‘I know what you’ve done, Tom.’
Quietly: ‘And so does Cord.’

Redmetal poignard, sinking in to
the hilt...

‘How he deals with that’—Tom
hardened his voice, remembering everything the Oracle had done—‘is up to him.’

He bent to retrieve his tunic.

‘Sylvana, I’m sorry. This was
perhaps not a good idea.’

She watched silently as he
fastened the seal, then shook her head.

‘I should have known better,’ she
said, ‘than to show you pity.’

And that was the barb which
finally got through.

‘Pity? What
was
this? An
exercise in charity?
Noblesse oblige,
my Lady?’

He looked for his cape, found it.

‘I didn’t mean today, Tom. I
meant—’

‘What? Come across for the
cripple, and he’ll be so grateful he’ll—’

‘Damn you to Chaos, Tom
Corcorigan!’

And then it was too late to
clarify misunderstanding, to look for justification.

‘I’ll see you around, Sylvana.’

He stormed out of her bedchamber,
out of her apartment, stalked down corridors with rage and self-disgust
pounding in waves. Nobles and servitors alike stepped aside at his approach,
reflexively sensing the volcanic madness swelling inside him, huge and
uncontrolled, threatening to burst forth in torrents of hot, sticky blood.

~ * ~

39

TERRA
AD 2142

<Story>>

[12]

Saarbrücken
Fliegerhorst—
the
words were blurred by tears—
war heute mit einer Micronuke teilweise zerstört.
Die tödliche Explosion hat am wenigsten zwölf Offiziere und Studenten
niedergemetzelt, und vielleicht mehr als ein hundert anderen verletzt...