Choices (23 page)

That day, the messages went back and forth in
the signal station with dizzying frequency. The Eris situation was
becoming a crisis. Viceroy Zichmni sent messages to Landgrave
Andrade, who replied, often by bouncing an immediate return signal.
Lord Roger Zichmni, Dominic and all the ‘Graven were drawn into the
negotiations. I took a message from Dominic myself, admirably, as I
thought, resisting the urge to say something personal as I received
his words in my brain through the scope, repeated them carefully,
and sent them on. Had I behaved any less than professionally I
would have been dismissed from further shifts, a disgrace that no
restitution could expunge. But I had some sense now.

Dominic and I would be traveling soon: that
is, if this problem allowed him to follow through on his
invitation. I had forced his hand, I realized, had pressured him to
extend the unusual offer. An atheist, a reluctant convert to the
religion of my lover and his world, I appealed to Astarte and Isis
myself.
Please
, I prayed,
help me get to Aranyi. Let
me go on being Amalie a little longer
.

Two weeks later, Dominic came to me in my
sleep, woke me and said that he was setting out that morning. He
was up and on his way while we slept in at La Sapienza after the
sunrise ceremony. He must ride to Aranyi, to mobilize for action
against the rebels who were threatening the ‘Graven Realms with the
Eris weapon, but he would break his journey at La Sapienza to take
me with him. He would reach La Sapienza by evening, and I must be
ready to travel early the next morning.

I am ready
, I said, half asleep,
wondering if what I heard in my mind was reality or a dream. I had
tempted fate, had already packed my few belongings a week ago.

I will expect you to be
, Dominic
said, touching me forcefully, almost painfully, so that I felt the
impression in my mind hours later when I arose, as he had intended,
and knew it was not a dream.

I was pacing in the great hall before supper
when Dominic was ushered in by a phalanx of aide guards. He was
dressed for war, a heavy leather breastplate buckled over his black
and gray uniform tunic, and he carried a helmet of hammered steel
plates. There was a sharp intake of breath as he saw me for the
first time in Eclipsian clothes. “Amalie,” he said in that
extraordinary voice—the musical clarity of a trumpet with the
bass-baritone roar of the ocean. “It gladdens my heart to see you.”
He smiled down at me, speaking formally, choosing ceremonial
language to counteract our explicit emotions.

In our six months of separation I had not
been able continually to visualize the height of him. Coming closer
I saw that my head reached, as I had estimated in our last
simulated encounter, only low on his chest. My ears were at the
right level; I perceived, even without
crypta
, the
reverberations of the pounding of his heart.

His eyes with their third lids lowered were
as I remembered, silvery and piercing. It was like looking into a
mirror that reflected, not my face, but my soul. “Margrave Aranyi,”
I said, able now to answer him in his own formal language,
deliberately using his title, breaking the gaze that threatened to
turn me inside out. “I am thankful you made the journey
safely.”

He had a gift for me. I opened the worn
leather box to find a hair ornament, a comb that Eclipsian women
use to hold their coil of long hair in place over their concealed
necks. This one was made of spun glass, delicate filigree forming
an intricate geometric design, and studded with precious
stones.

By now I understood the significance of
glass, Eclipsis’s first manufactured product, its most precious
substance, the material of prisms—the objects that elevate
crypta
from an intrusive emotional glitch to a powerful
tool, capable of building civilization and destroying it. The
ornament had the patina of centuries; this was an heirloom.

I felt Dominic’s eyes on me, his mind poised
for my answer. I had been about to say such a beautiful thing would
be useless to me, that I intended to get my hair cut as soon as I
was back in Thendara. Instead I said, “I cannot accept such a gift.
It is too valuable.”

Dominic frowned. “My grandfather gave it to
my grandmother at their betrothal,” he said. “And his father before
him gave it to his bride.”

What did he mean: “betrothal,”
“bride”?
I had offended him, my carefully thought-out words
taken as an insult, although he was the one saying things he should
not. I fingered my short hair. “But you see,” I said, “it would be
wasted on me.”

He smiled at that. I wished I could live
always in the glow of such radiance. “Keep it,” he said. “Keep it
until it is not wasted. Then let me know whether I should take it
back.”

He wanted me to let my hair grow long enough
to use it. Beyond that his thoughts were unclear, a mix of the
fierce desire we felt in each other’s presence, a longing for
something he could not put into words, an impatience to break
through some barrier I could not identify.

If it was a betrothal gift, if he was asking
me to marry him, he had not said so. He could have asked me for a
lesser kind of marriage, not ‘Graven, and I would have accepted
gladly, knowing it would be like a Terran arrangement, lasting only
as long as we both wanted it to. But all he had done was to give me
this damn antique, undoubtedly worth more than my savings and all
future earnings put together, probe my being with those eyes of
his, and smile at me in a way guaranteed to turn my mind to
mush.

“All right,” I said, with as little courtesy
as I had accepted his invitation to Aranyi. “I will keep it until
my hair grows out.” I could be as dishonest as he was. What
difference did it make? I would be long gone by then, to Eclipsia
City or even farther, and I would leave his heirloom behind, like
my dream of a career as a sibyl.

Once I accepted his gift, Dominic’s manner to
me changed, becoming distant, formal: the correct behavior of a
nobleman with his betrothed. He disliked my Terran name of Ms.
Herzog, and avoided using it. He called me “young mistress,” the
term for a woman who has not yet married, although such women are
usually half my age. He bowed to me but did not touch me, not even
to exchange a chaste kiss or a brush of fingertips. I knew without
having to worry about it that he would sleep in town that night
along with the guards who had accompanied him from the city, and
would not stay here to tempt us both to another indiscretion.

Edwige invited him to supper, and he sat with
her at the high table while the rest of us sat below, the others
eyeing me surreptitiously, hoping to discover the truth of our
relationship. Since I could not wear the hair ornament, they could
not guess. And since I did not know myself what I had agreed to,
they could not read it in my mind, even supposing they had been
rude enough to try.

After supper Dominic asked to speak with
Edwige alone. They were not in her study long. When they emerged,
Edwige had an overawed look, something I had not thought it
possible for her face to show.

“Margrave Aranyi informed me that you have
agreed to travel with him to his home,” she said. It was a
question, but stated flatly, as a fact, as Dominic must have
presented it to her.

Her look of concern aroused a feeling of
exasperation in me, as my months of frustration found an outlet.
“You told me to ‘visit’ him,” I said, pleased at the double
meaning. “Don’t be angry that I took your advice.”

Edwige motioned me into her study. She
scrutinized my face, my clothes, my entire outside, before looking
into my mind. “I have been unkind to you,” she said, sighing
heavily as she spoke. “I tried to make you into one of us, into
‘Lady Amalie.’ But you are still Amelia Herzog on the inside.”

Her words troubled me; her fear for me, going
off with Dominic, was contagious. I wanted to reassure her, and
myself. “You’ve been very kind,” I said. “You did your best. It’s
not your fault that I’m Terran, and different—”

“No, it’s not anyone’s ‘fault,’ ” she said.
“But he sees you as ‘Lady Amalie.’ Margrave Aranyi thinks of you as
Eclipsian. He said so to me, just now.”

I could picture Dominic’s aversion to
discussing this subject. “Dominic hates it that I’m Terran,” I said
in a brittle, artificial voice. “He blocks it out, as much as he
can, the way I blocked out my feelings of empathy.”

Edwige gaped at my honesty, stood up and
planted herself in front of the door. “Stay here,” she said. “You
don’t have to go with him.”

It was getting late, and I wanted to go to
bed. I would have to be up before dawn, earlier than for the
morning’s first signal shift. “No,” I said, “I don’t have to go
with him.” Nervous tension inspired a flow of eloquence. “I can
stay here and do a dull job, as boring as anything I ever did on
Terra, until I die young of old age, gray and worn out at fifty
from unrelenting tedium. I can marry someone who makes me sick when
he touches me, the way everyone does except Dominic. I don’t have
to do something that I might enjoy. But I want to.” I shouted it,
tired of speaking in minds, howling my words with the miracle of
it. I had finally found something I really wanted, and could have.
“
I want to!
” I yelled, “
I want to!
”
until Edwige slapped my face.

We glared at each other in the dim,
after-supper light of oil lamps flickering in their glass chimneys.
Suddenly we both laughed. Edwige rubbed a gentle finger over the
red mark on my cheek, and said, “I don’t think you had a real
choice, after all.”

“No,” I said. “But thank you for trying to
give me one.” We forgot we were telepaths, sibyl and unworthy
scholar, and hugged tightly, oblivious to the sparks and prickles
of
crypta
.

In the corridor all my coworkers and fellow
scholars were lined up, waiting to say their goodbyes. The shouting
match they had heard made little difference. Once Dominic had
arrived they had known what was coming. Even Matilda was resigned
to the fact that I would do this thing over all objections.

Dominic had spoken to Tomasz while I yelled
at Edwige. Now Tomasz looked at me curiously, if not with his
former friendliness, at least with something closer to respect.
“Margrave Aranyi has offered Alicia and me honorable restitution,”
he said. “And I have accepted. I absolve you of any debt.” I bowed
my head, at a loss for the proper words. Tomasz whispered, “He is a
lucky man,” and smiled, and I felt tears coming I could not
control.

Alicia, still recuperating, said merely,
“Perhaps you have found your family after all.” Then Tomasz helped
her upstairs to bed.

The others took their turn, so generous
despite my repeated failures and the trouble I had given them, that
we were all crying by the end of it. Raquel, after reciting a
tongue-in-cheek blessing from the goddesses, assumed a somber
expression and said, “Now you will have a chance to drown in that
ocean you love so much.” She used the modern word that has only the
one meaning:
drown
. In the emotion of the moment, smug in
my certainty that she had misspoken despite her usual verbal
precision, I did not correct her.

Cassandra, a native of the mountains, warned
me that I was entering a land of harsh climate and even crueler
people, and hoped I would be vigilant. She finished with an
extended ritual phrase, wishing me a long life of prosperity and
many children. They were the traditional words to a girl at her
betrothal, but I missed this allusion like all the others.

Matilda dismissed my apologies apologize for
abandoning my duties as overseer. “You are running from a small
danger to a greater one. Even I wouldn’t want to be alone with
Margrave Aranyi when a weapon like Eris is being used.” Not liking
to end on this ominous note, she forced a cheerful smile and said,
“We will be neighbors soon.” The Ormondes, whose eldest son she was
marrying, own the nearest independent holding to Aranyi. “Perhaps
you will dance at my wedding.”

Only Paolo embraced me. He kissed me long and
lasciviously with open mouth, unnoticed by the others in the
affectionate farewells, and touched me mentally in a most indecent
way, saying, “Give that to Margrave Aranyi for me.”

My wits were dulled by the late hour and the
sadness of the goodbyes, and I had no clever response to make. “I
will,” I said.

“Oh, Amalie,” Paolo said. “It was a
joke.”

“I know,” I said, hating to leave my friend
on bad terms. I smiled and put my arms around him. “But I will be
happy to pass your message along. Perhaps you should repeat it, to
make sure I have it correct?” I said, as if on the signal
scope.

Paolo laughed at that and gave me a brotherly
kiss on the cheek instead. “Dominic Aranyi will do very well
without my help. Tomasz was right for once. Your companion is a
lucky man.”

Drusilla Ladakh and the rest of the
youngsters had stayed up late as well. Her friend Rosalie and the
two others in her class had gone home months ago in a brief moment
of good weather, their six months up, and replacements had arrived
in their stead. Perhaps not surprisingly, Drusilla showed promise,
and was staying on. She examined me eye-to-eye, a little taller
than me now, the
Christer
ornament she wore gleaming at
her breast. I noticed, as one focuses on minor details at
inappropriate moments, that there was a human figure on the cross,
arms spread along the horizontal bar in what looked like some form
of torture.

Drusilla squinted with concentration, using
her gift in an attempt at communion without physical touch, like a
sibyl. I no longer held a grudge for her adolescent spite,
obliterated by more recent unhappiness, and Drusilla had matured.
Whatever it was she saw in me, she said, “I wish you joy in your
choice. You deserve it.” Remembering her religion, she added, “May
the Threefold God protect you,” moving her hand in furtive
benediction.