Elizabeth Moon - Hunting Party

Heris stared at her, disoriented by the double-change of direction. “Petris . . . ? Oh.” So Cecelia had noticed. At once the exaltation left her, as quickly as if someone had pulled a plug in her heart. She could go back, and he could go back, and they might serve on the same ship . . . but they could not go back to the past hours. Not ever. She tried to imagine him as a civilian . . . husband . . . but that would destroy him. “Oh, my,” she said, hardly hearing her own voice. “I didn’t think.”

“Most people don’t, in your position,” Cecelia said. “That’s why I mentioned it, before you go and tell the others. You can go back . . . but you don’t have to.”

Didn’t she? She could hardly breathe for a moment, in the alternation of possibility and impossibility. She could not give up her chance in the R.S.S. again—she could not give up Petris. She could not ask him to give up his career, as miraculously restored as her own, but if either of them . . .

“Damn,” she said. It was all she could say. She sat down suddenly, and Cecelia made a show of turning away, preparing something to drink, offering her a steaming cup of some brown liquid. . . . She should know what it was, but she couldn’t recognize anything.

“As a classical maiden aunt,” Cecelia said, not looking at her, “I am qualified to give useless advice, which you are free to ignore. You love that man, and he loves you; that was obvious when I first saw you two together. You can’t be together in the Service, and neither of you will be happy as a civilian partnering the one who stays in. If you do go back, Heris, be sure you’re never on the same ship . . . You know that.”

“I know that.” Her lips felt numb—was it the drink? Was she going to faint? She never fainted; it was ridiculous. But her skin remembered his touch; her ears remembered his voice, the sound of his breathing, the beat of his heart when her head lay on his chest. She wanted that, wanted it more than anything . . . except her commission, her ship, her crew . . . which she couldn’t have, if it meant him.

“I still need a captain,” Cecelia went on. “I need new crew members—you told me that. If you choose not to reenter the Service, you would have a place with me.”

And Petris would become just a crew member on a rich old lady’s yacht—she could not see him being happy with that. He had taken as much pride in his career as she in hers. He would not settle for less.

“You ought to ask him,” Cecelia said, as if reading her face. “You didn’t ask before, and look where that got you. Give him the chance, now, while you have the chance . . . while you are, for the moment, free.”

It was true. She had not thought she had a chance, before; she had taken the commander’s way, the solitary way, and had not asked anyone, and because of that Lepescu had been able to ruin her and her crew. This time she could ask him. She stood up, nodding to Cecelia without saying a word—she could not have said a word—and went to find Petris.

He was staring out to sea, staring at the island on which he had been hunted. “Looks pretty from here,” he said as she came up.

“Yes,” she said. Her throat closed on more. He looked at her closely.

“What’s happened?”

She couldn’t answer; tears flooded her eyes. He reached for her, hugged her close, his lips in her hair. “Heris . . . Heris . . .” he breathed. She gulped, tried to calm herself, and finally choked the lump down.

“Lady Cecelia has intervened,” she said finally. Her voice came out thin, unlike herself. “With the Service.”

“You’re getting your commission? Good.” His arms loosened, and she heard the effort in his voice. “I hoped you would—they ought to have that much sense.”

“They’re reversing all the disciplinary actions,” she said. “All the survivors will be reinstated, with all records cleared. It would probably have happened anyway, but Lady Cecelia—”

“Has connections. I’m glad she cares that much—you must have impressed her.” His arms dropped from her shoulders, and he stretched. “Well. Back into harness for us, eh? And—”

Heris stared at the sand. “We don’t have to go.”

“Eh? Of course you’ll go—you’re not meant to be a yacht captain.”

“She said I should give you the chance. The chance I didn’t give you before.”

He stared at her; when she looked up, his gaze was fixed on her face. “What do you mean? Are you saying—?”

“Petris—” She used his first name deliberately. “Petris, there is a choice. If we go back, you know—you know it would be best if we never serve together. But if we don’t go back—”

“You love it,” he said. “Your family—the Serrano Admiralty—” She had heard that phrase before; it was inevitable for a family that had produced admiral after admiral through many generations. She had never considered how they might look from underneath—from out to sea, like a great cliff wall made of stars and flags, with no safe beach to land on. She felt herself a rock loosed from that cliff, now rolling in the surf, being broken into fragments the cliff would no longer recognize.

“My family,” she said slowly, “have already endured the worst: a Serrano resigning under a cloud rather than face a court. They will abide my decision, one way or the other . . . or they will not, and I will abide their decision. I don’t know what they’ll do, but I don’t fear it. Your family?”

“Mine.” He stared past her now, at the island again. “Farmers and small merchants on Vonnegar’s World; I was the outlaw there, too. Ran off to join the military, like kids have always done. . . . Wouldn’t walk behind a plow or pull onions if I could see stars. They wouldn’t mind—they gave me up for lost when I told my uncle Eth what I thought of farming. I couldn’t go back and ask for land, that’s sure. But away—I can do what I want.” A quick glance to her, then away again. “I liked my work.”

“I know that. You can have it back; that’s what Cecelia told me. She’s got you all cleared.”

“Ah . . . yes, but it can’t be the same. Not just us, the whole thing. Some of ’em died, through this; I can’t forget that.”

Heris felt cold. They had died because of her, because she had left; she already knew that. If he couldn’t forget, he probably couldn’t forgive either, and last night had been . . . last night.

But he was looking at her again, this time steadily, eye to eye. “But what did you offer as an alternative? You said if we don’t go back—”

“We could both work for Lady Cecelia. On her yacht.” Of course he had already said she wasn’t meant to be a yacht captain, and of course he wasn’t meant to be on a yacht’s crew either, but she had to ask.

“You must like her a lot,” he said, “even to consider it. What do you . . . do?”

She could tell he was avoiding the familiar terms, like “mission.”

“Lady Cecelia travels,” she said. “From the existing records of past voyages, she travels widely, and from the events of the first weeks I worked for her, her yacht has harbored smugglers . . . without her knowledge, of course.”

“You’re sure of that.” It was not quite a question.

“Yes. She’s stubborn, opinionated, and all the other things you expect from a rich old lady, but she’s honest.”

“Like you,” Petris said, without a smile. “No wonder you get along. So—you’ll continue?”

“It depends.” Even as she said it, she wondered if it did depend on his decision. Oddly, she now thought of going back to the Service as a kind of defeat. Someone else had fought her battle for her; someone else had bought her commission back. She hated that. Bad as Lepescu was, some would always mistrust her loyalty; she would never be the unflawed Serrano in clear line of succession to an admiralty. Even her family would have reservations. She did not realize she had said some of this aloud until the end. . . . “—and I would rather take an honest salary from her than a commission restored with her influence. So . . . it’s either stay with her, or look for something else, and I have no reason now to leave her. At least not until I’ve straightened out that crew.”