Robert Redick - The River of Shadows

Neeps’ hand closed on his elbow. “At least let Marila go first, Pazel. She’ll tell you if it’s all right to go in there.”

“Damn it all, leave me alone!”

Pazel wrenched his arm away. But as he turned he found the passage blocked by Mr. Fiffengurt. “Pathkendle!” he said. “And Undrabust too. What luck. I have a little job I need your help with.”

“Now?” said Pazel.

“Right now,” said Fiffengurt, strangely anxious. He bent closer, and spoke in an ominous whisper. “Urgent business. The hag’s cat, Sniraga. She’s alive.”

“I’ve heard. I’m sorry.” Pazel began to slip by, but Fiffengurt lurched in front of him.

“You don’t understand. She’s in the bread room. She’s slipped inside, the little monster.”

“So what?” said Neeps, briefly forgetting his own efforts to stop Pazel cold. “Best place to put her if you ask me. That’s no blary emergency.”

“We don’t even have any bread,” said Pazel.

Fiffengurt turned his gaze from one to the other. He looked confounded by their response. “Why! Anyone could tell you-a cat, loose in the-Oh, blast you both, come along! That’s an order!”

Fulbreech sat in the chair by Thasha’s writing desk, hands on his knees, his pale face troubled. “All of them,” he said, “believe that my intentions toward you are… dishonorable?”

“Yes,” said Thasha, “entirely.”

She sat cross-legged on her bed, in an old pair of red trousers and a loose white shirt of Admiral Isiq’s. “I don’t care, Greysan. I don’t care what they imagine.”

He shook his head. “You should care. They love you dearly, Thasha.”

They were sharing a glass of water and some dlomic biscuits. They had not touched since she led him into the room. The desk was cluttered: jewelry, creams, pencils, knives, a whetstone, the admiral’s flask, the Merchant’s Polylex. Behind all these, the softly ticking mariner’s clock, Ramachni’s doorway from his own world into Alifros.

The wind had risen. The night would be cool. Against the hanging oil lamp a weird Southern moth tapped hairy antennae; its huge shadow wriggled on the bedspread. Thasha was looking down at her hands.

“Not like this,” she whispered.

They were both very still. “Of course,” he said, “what I feel for you is different.”

Thasha smiled.

“But I have been blind-blind, and selfish. These evenings with you, learning of your life, hearing your dreams: Thasha, I’ve been drunk on them. But now I fear your friends are talking about us, and not just among themselves.”

“Let them.”

“No,” he said, “that won’t help, making enemies. Your good name is priceless, even though our society is reduced to one mad ship, hung out to dry in an alien port.”

“You say all that because you think you have to.” Thasha touched a hole in her trouser knee. “But I know what you’re feeling.”

“Do you really think so?”

Thasha nodded. “I know you’re… impatient.” She laughed, trying to make a joke of it, then blushed and had to look away. He smiled too, generously.

“Are you afraid of something, Thasha?” he asked.

She looked at him shyly, then glanced at the Polylex. “In Etherhorde, in Dr. Chadfallow’s house-you know he was a family friend-there was a book about Mzithrini art. Did you know that the Old Faith has nothing against showing… men and women?”

“Lovers, you mean?” Fulbreech squirmed a little. “I may have heard something about that.”

Thasha paused as if to steady her nerves. “I used to take out that book whenever we visited. There was a painting of a sculpture in a Babqri square. Three women on their knees, reaching desperately for a man being lifted away by angels. He’s beautiful, naked of course… and he’s forgotten the women; his eyes are on the place the angels are taking him, some other world, I suppose. But when you look closer you see that the three women are really just one, at three moments in life. Young, and older, and very old, shriveled. And the name of the sculpture is If You Wait He Will Escape You.”

Thasha looked at him, blinking nervously. “I’ve been dreaming of their faces. Greysan, you must think I’m crazy-”

“Nonsense.”

“I’m afraid you’ll escape me.”

She sat there, trembling, and then his hand closed over hers. Neither of them speaking. His fingers rough and warm between her own.

“Impatient.” Fulbreech gave her an awkward smile. “Perhaps that is your delicate way of saying vulgar. Listen, darling: I would sooner die than insult you. Only it seems I can hide nothing in your presence. Not my dreams for our future, certainly. And not even”-he took a deep breath-“dreams of another kind.”

He flinched; surely he had gone too far. But Thasha’s gaze only softened, as though she had known this was coming and was glad the wait was over. She reached out and gently touched his face.

In the torchlight from the quay she saw struggle in his eyes. They were traveling her body, but now and then they stopped, uncertain. Some idea, some duty maybe, giving him pause.

“Later the others will be here,” he said.

Thasha stood in one smooth motion. She raised the water glass and drank it dry. Then she set the glass beside the Polylex and blew out the lantern.

“Later we’ll have to be quiet,” she said, and sat astride him.

She used her mouth as she never had in any previous kiss. She heard him gasping, felt his hands on her thighs, his legs moving beneath her. She sat back trembling. The struggle was almost over.

“You don’t know who you’re dealing with,” she said.

“No?”

“I was raised by Syrarys as much as my father. She came out of the slave-school on Nurth. She was trained in love. I spied on them for years. How she moved, what she said. I saw how she… made him happy.”

“You can’t have known what you were seeing.”

“I was at the Lorg School, too.”

“Learning to be a wife?”

Thasha didn’t answer. Slowly, watching him, she unbuttoned her shirt.

Fulbreech was motionless. Thasha’s lips were parted, her face almost stern. When his own hands moved at last she put her head back and closed her eyes. Do not think. That is crucial. Do not let it be real.

He was atop her; she lay back and put a hand in his hair. When his kisses became more urgent she squeezed her left hand into a fist. The wolf-scar on her palm, self-inflicted years ago, felt suddenly raw and unhealed.

Voices in the outer stateroom. Greysan froze, cat-like, his chin an inch above her breast. “It’s Hercol,” she whispered. “Damn him, damn him. Why can’t he just stay away?”

“Bolutu as well,” he said, frustration in his voice. “Thasha darling, we can be careful-”

“No!” she whispered. “I can’t, I’m sorry, if they heard me, I’d-”

Fulbreech could not catch his breath. He began again, and she stopped him instantly, her hand tight on his wrist.

“They don’t know you’re in here,” she said. “Just stay with me, Greysan, stay right here and hold me. And later, when they’re asleep-”

He looked at her. For a moment she thought he’d gone beyond the reach of words. Then a sigh of anticipation passed through him, and he settled by her side.

In the bread room, Neeps was pounding on the door. “Fiffengurt! You’ve blown your gaskets! Open this blary door!”

“Not possible, Undrabust,” came Fiffengurt’s voice. From the sound of it he was seated with his back to the sturdy, tin-plated door. They had already heard him telling puzzled sailors to mind their own business.

“What in Pitfire did we do?” shouted Neeps.

“You didn’t do anything. Just calm down, now, save your breath. And speaking of breath, you’d better snuff those lanterns. That’s an airtight room.”