Price of Ransom (40 page)

For an instant, Hawk was amazed that he had missed her entrance onto the courtyard. Her fragrance was shot through with the brilliance of virtue and generosity and compassion, and rich with the perfume of idealism. It took him a moment to
see
her, but everyone else was staring as she came up to their tables.

She had unbound her hair. The myriad braids, beaded and hanging to her waist, were gone—vanished into a huge cloud of black hair. Like the void of space, it encompassed her entirely.

“Paisley!” It took him a moment to sort out the voice. It was Jenny. “What happened to your hair?”

Paisley brushed at her hair. “I took ya binding off,” she stated in a preternaturally clear voice. “Be it came to me, min, as here in ya green grass land, ya Ridanis have no reason to bind their hair. I mean to keep it unbound, for ya reminder. Min Belsonn.” She regarded him with her steady, sure gaze—much of what she was, he wished to be, but was too self-doubting to become. “I mean to go over ya way with you, whether or not ya
Hope
goes. If Jehane be not ya real Jehane, if he have no mind to bring ya Ridanis up where they mun go, then it be
my
trial to help them come here. To ya League. For ya green grass land be here. And it be wrong o’ me if I do not tell them that they can come. For they can come here, can’t they?”

“Well, yes.” Deucalion sounded, not uncertain, at least, but surprised.

“But Paisley.” Lily stood up. Hawk could smell the sudden flush of sorrow in her. “But that means you’re leaving us.”

Paisley’s own regret echoed Lily’s sadness. “Yes, min. Be it you know well enough it hurts me sore to leave you, but you will understand that I mun go, if I can.”

“Yes,” Lily replied, soft, “I understand. And I’ll encourage min Belsonn to take you. You will take her, won’t you, Deucalion?”

Under such threat, Deucalion could only shrug. “Of course. I still think, Lily, that you—” He hesitated under her glare. “Never mind. Whatever happens, I’ll need a representative, who knows Reft space.”

“I think it’s a shame,” said Jenny.

“How can you say so, min Seria? I mun do my duty.”

“No, not that. Of course you have to go. I just think it’s a shame about the braids. I always thought they were so pretty.”

Paisley hesitated. For the first time, Hawk scented something else about her, a bouquet that he hadn’t ever been aware she possessed—vanity. “Sure, and mayhap after ya people have been sent home, mayhap then, it wouldna’ be so wrong o’ me to weave ya braids back in.” She thought about this a moment. “For then it would be ya choice, not ya binding.” As if this settled something within her, she sat down at the table next to Deucalion and launched into an interrogation of his intent and plans and methods in regard to the expedition to Reft space.

Up above, a shutter closed, and Hawk caught on the breeze the faint whiff of the salt of tears.

Jenny laughed and rose. “Care to go for a walk, Lily-hae? I don’t think I need to endure this. Off to bed with you, Gregori.”

“But—”

“That’s an order, young man.”

“I’ll go up with him,” said Yehoshua quickly.

“No, why don’t you come with us,” Jenny replied. “Gregori?”

The boy murmured agreement and left. Hawk slipped into the shadow of a line of hedge as Jenny and Lily and Yehoshua came out to the gate.

“Damn my eyes,” swore Jenny. “But I should have guessed she’d take it upon herself to save the whole damn Ridani population.”

“It’s funny,” Lily mused. “When I first met her, she told me an old Ridani story, about how they got out to Reft space and how they would be saved by Jehane. All the Ridanis thought that Alexander Jehane was
that
Jehane. But he just took the name because it served him to do so. Now I wonder if Paisley won’t be the real Jehane.”

“I wish her luck,” said Yehoshua.

“Yes.” Lily lifted her gaze to stare at the stars. “Because she’s a lot like Robbie Pero. She’ll need it.” She paused and looked around, and Hawk felt her attention center to him again, doubt, fierce protectiveness, and troubled desire. “Where’d Hawk go? Do either of you see him?”

“No.”

“No. But he can’t have gone far, Lily-hae. I think Farhad has an electronic leash on him. She always seems to know where he is.”

“I think I’ll just check, though,” Lily replied. Her doubt mingled with worry and the faintest hint of anger as she walked away from Jenny and Yehoshua.

“Where do you think he went?” Yehoshua asked.

“Who the Hells knows,” Jenny replied. “I’ve never seen a person as changed as he is now. I don’t think he can be cured.”

The dark bulk of Yehoshua’s shoulders moved in a shrug. “Maybe he doesn’t want to be. Void knows he’s gone through more than we can imagine. Dr. Farhad let a few things slip on the trip out here. Not much, but enough.”

“I didn’t know you felt so much sympathy for him.”

“Don’t you?”

Hawk could feel the warmth of her grin as a fragrance on the air. “Of course I do. I liked him too well before to give up on him now. I just—”

“You just?”

“I just wish it wasn’t so hard on Lily. Can’t you feel the edge in her, all the time, since he came back? Like she’s not sure whether she’s glad to have found him. He can’t be what she expected. Not now. Hells, even now that I’ve gotten to trust that pack of je’jiri on the
Hope
, I’ll never really feel completely comfortable around them. Did you see the way everyone stares at him? He’s got to notice. He’s not blind. And I know Lily does.”

“What can she do? If she’s mated to him—” But Yehoshua halted, as if the subject he was encroaching on now was fraught with complications. And the scent of his love for Jenny suddenly overwhelmed the common night smells.

“Which reminds me,” said Jenny casually—but not casually at all. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you, Yehoshua.”

“Yes?” He smelled hopeful, scared, nervous, and excited all at once.

Jenny laughed. She was sure of herself, without being disagreeable about it. “You know damn well, Yehoshua. I just can’t decide whether your restraint does you credit or not.”

There was a silence. A train whistle sounded in the far distance, calling as if to its mate. Yehoshua’s breathing changed. Hawk took in a sharp breath, feeling what sparked between them. Yehoshua’s reply was not spoken, but had it been shouted it would have been less jarring to Hawk. He slipped several steps back until he came up against the stone wall of the courtyard, the hard, cold stone pressing into his back.

The two forms, Jenny and Yehoshua, molded together for a long, drawn-out space, and then, abruptly, separated.

“Did you hear something?” Jenny asked, sounding almost nervous, and then she chuckled. “I’m as jumpy as a novice,” she murmured. “Maybe I can talk Paisley into taking Gregori into Dr. Farhad’s room.”

“Jenny …”

“You don’t want to?”

“You know damn well—” Yehoshua broke off.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you lose your temper before.”

“I’m not losing my
temper—
damn it, Jenny.” There was another silence. “Oh, all right,” he said at last. “Go and ask Paisley. She of all people will understand.”

“I suppose she will,” replied Jenny. Her scent, as she walked away, Yehoshua fast at her heels, was quite smug.

The last stragglers from the pub filtered away into the night, singing some ancient tune in perfect four-part harmony. Paisley and Deucalion broke off their conversation and headed inside, but as the door shut behind them Hawk heard her begin to talk again. The exhalation of desire coming off of Jenny and Yehoshua faded, too, as they went inside. The innkeeper sang in a soft, gorgeous baritone as he wiped off the tables, and his song faltered, and then started up again, when Bach joined in. The light click of Dr. Farhad’s fingers on her com-slate ran as an undertone to their singing.

The aroma of moisture on the grass, the perfume of closed flowers, the piercing sweetness of cool air, all caressed him. Out across the green, water lapped against the shore, clean and fresh. Even the stone against his back had a musty, pleasant smell that reminded him of the cool, rock shelters he had slept in with his mother on spring nights, when he was a child.

Where had she gone? He lifted his chin and tilted his head from one side to the other, scenting, and caught her trail on the tarrying end of a breeze. And went hunting.

In this place, she was an easy quarry. He cornered her by the pond, where she stood on the thin white shoreline, staring at the stars as they rippled on the wind-stirred surface. Her bouquet was mixed of constancy, quickness, and the quiet confidence of a master of the art, but underneath it, wearing away always at her being, the core of restlessness that led her never to be satisfied entirely with what she had, and what she was. Her head lifted to gaze upward at the night sky, not as dark as space, nor as brilliant with stars. Breeze pulled at the strands of her hair. She was, not at peace, but for the moment content and yet still questioning, wondering, what she could do next. She was not thinking of him at all. Suddenly her scent changed again, and she turned.

“Kyosti.” She regarded him with astonishment. Her fragrance mixed and altered and blended as he watched her, confusion and pity and fear, and desire the sweeter for being touched by wonder. “The moon,” she said at last. “It’s rising behind you.”

He did not turn to look at it; he would far rather look at her. But some dim memory stirred within him. Like a voice heard through muffled layers of cloth, or from down a far distance, he heard words, and it sounded rather like his own voice, and yet not his voice at all. But he repeated some of the words, even though he was not sure what they meant. “‘Now she shines among Lydian women as, into dark when the sun has set, the moon, pale-handed, at last appeareth.’” The pungent smell of garbage being turned out into a can distracted him, and he faltered.

“The wheel of the night,” she said, her voice so low it almost seemed not to come from her at all. “The honor that patterns you. You once told me that you looked your best under the kinnas wheel.” She hesitated, and he felt from her the unexpected perfume of tenderness. She took two steps closer to him and slipped her hand up to cradle the back of his neck. “I’d forgotten.”

He leaned in to her and dipped his head, as was the honored custom, brushing her cheek with his so that she could mark his scent as he marked hers. Something, the movement perhaps, caused her to hang back a moment, uncertain, and then she breathed in sharply and embraced him without reservation.

From across the green, he felt Dr. Farhad sigh and get up and leave. Only Bach, the last presence left in the courtyard, remained, quiet, his metallic scent underwoven with the counterpoint of joy.

L
IGHT WOKE HER. THIN
panels of brightness striped the bed and the blankets and the long lines of Kyosti’s body in an alternating pattern of light and dark. She lay in bed, a little irritated at waking so early, and a little amused that, in retrospect, it would never have occurred to her to close the blinds, because the idea of a sun rising above the horizon in the morning was not one that came habitually to her. A programmed hour in which lights were turned up from low to high, signaling the beginning of the most active shift, perhaps; it was the life she knew best.

Some time after she had fallen asleep Bach had come into the room. Now he rose from the chair on which he had settled for the night and sang, softly,

Brich an, o schönes Morgenlicht,

Und lass den Himmel tagen!

Du Hirtenvolk, erschrecke nicht,

Weil dir die Engel sagen,

Dass dieses schwache Knäblein

Soll timet trost und Freudesein,

Dazu den Satan zwingen

Und letztlich Friede bringen!

“Break through, oh lovely light of morn,

and let the heavens dawn!

You shepherd folk, be not afeared,

because the angel tells you:

that this weak babe

shall be our comfort and joy,

thereto subdue the devil

and bring peace at last.”

Lily slipped out of bed and, pulling on her tunic, padded to the window, pushing aside the blinds. The shutters were open, and she could see down into the courtyard and out onto the green. Someone was awake before her: Paisley, staring at the sun’s line as it rose above the low, stark hills. A rattle sounded from the kitchen—the innkeeper and his help, stirring now to prepare for the day.

Lily smiled. Unfastening the window, she eased it open and leaned out over the casement. As if she had heard the movement, Paisley turned and looked up and waved. Lily waved back. After a moment, she put on the rest of her clothes and went downstairs to stand beside Paisley at the gate, watching the sun rise. Bach followed her down. They said nothing for a long while, content in silence. Bach sang a muted hymn, solemn and proud.

“You don’t blame me for it?” Paisley asked at last. “It be you, min Ransome, that I be sorriest to leave. If it weren’t for you, I would never have come here, have seen such things, to know what I mun do. What I
could
do.”

“Then I’m glad I brought you, Paisley. It’s a far cry from Unruli Station, though, isn’t it?”

Paisley nodded, stricken to unusual reticence by the thought of just how far a cry it was.

“I’ll make sure that Deucalion understands that you’re the official emissary. I don’t want any misunderstandings about that. Especially when you get back to Reft space. You have to make sure he understands that Reft space—that Jehane—”

“I reckon I know what manner o’ man Jehane be, min. I will tell min Belsonn, as often as I may. It be up to him to believe me. Certain he’d believe you better. Be you ya fair sure you won’t be coming?”

“No, we won’t be. It’s not the right direction for the rest of us to go in, I don’t think.”

“But ya service. Ya tribunal. You don’t mean to be ya spy, surely? What else can ya
Hope
do?”

Lily closed her hands about the cold iron of the gate. Dew wet her palms. “I’m beginning to have an idea. I think it will be too reasonable for the tribunal to refuse, and too valuable. I just need to do a little more research.”