Harry Turtledove - Fox and Empire

"And who says the gods no longer give us as many miracles as we'd like?" Gerin said. Once, a long time before, his sarcasm had amused her. Now she just tossed her head, waiting for him to say something of consequence. Holding back the anger was harder. With an edge in his own voice, he said, "I'm sorry it's been hard for you. It didn't have to be, you know. You could-"

"Could what?" Elise broke in. "Could have stayed? That would have been harder yet. Why do you think I left?"

"My best guess always was that you left because you got bored and wanted something new and didn't much care what it was," Gerin answered. "As long as it was new, that would suit you."

"You were the prince of the north," Elise said. "You were having a fine time being the prince of the north-such a fine time, you forgot all about me. I was good enough for a brood mare, and that was that."

One side of Gerin's mouth twisted in what was not a smile. "I needed to do everything I did, you know. If I hadn't done what I did, odds are neither one of us would be here hashing this out now. The Trokmoi would have swallowed up a lot more land than they did."

"That's likely so." Elise nodded. "I never said you weren't good at what you did. I just said you paid more attention to it than you did to me-except when you wanted to take me to bed, of course. And you didn't pay all that much attention to me then."

"Not fair," he said. He hadn't seen her for twenty years, and yet she knew how to get under his skin as if they'd never been apart. "I never looked anywhere else. I never wanted to look anywhere else."

"Of course not," Elise said. "Why would you? I was handy. `Come here, Elise. Take off your skirt.' "

"It wasn't like that," Gerin insisted.

"Oh, but it was," she said.

They glared at each other. Gerin was convinced he remembered things just as they'd been. Elise, obviously, was as convinced her memory was straight and his crooked. He had no records, not for something like that. He sighed. "It's done. It's over. You made sure it would be over. Have you been happier since than you would have been if you'd stayed with me? I hope so, for your sake."

"Decent of you to say so, though talk is cheap. I've seen how cheap talk is, over the years." She pursed her lips. "Have I been happier than I would have been if I'd stayed behind? Every once in a while, much happier. All together? I doubt it."

The answer held a certain bleak honesty. Gerin sighed again. He was tempted to walk out, walk back to the encampment, and spend the rest of his life pretending he'd never run into the woman who'd borne his oldest son. But that thought brought up another one, one he needed to ask about for Duren's sake: "Do you have any other children?"

"I had two, both girls," she answered, and then looked down at the ground. "Neither one of them lived to be two years old."

"I'm sorry," Gerin said.

"So am I," she said, even more bleakly than before. When she raised her head once more, unshed tears glittered in her eyes. "You know you take a chance loving them, but you can't help it."

"No, you can't," Gerin said. "I've had three since who lived. We lost one."

"You've been lucky," Elise said soberly. She studied him for a moment, then repeated herself in a different tone of voice: "You've been lucky."

"Yes, of course I have," he replied. "I've been steady, too."

He could see she didn't understand what he was talking about. When he'd known her, she'd been ready to turn her world upside down at a moment's notice. That was how the two of them had come together. He doubted she'd changed much since. That made her steady, in an unsteady way.

"You've been lucky," she said yet again. "You sound as if you were even lucky enough to find a woman whose temper matches yours. I didn't think there was any such creature."

"You threw me aside," he said. "Of course you wouldn't think anyone else might want me."

"That's not-" Elise paused. She was relentlessly honest. "Well, maybe it is true, but not all true."

"However you like." Gerin shrugged. He could feel how tight a grip he had on his temper. It struggled and writhed in that grip, too, the way Van did when they wrestled together. As the Fox did with Van, he felt it liable to escape at any moment. To try to hold it in check, he asked, "Did you find a man who matched your temper?"

"Several of them," she answered. Given how steadily changeable she was, that saddened the Fox a little but didn't surprise him. Elise scowled. "The latest one threw me over, the son of a whore, for a woman who couldn't have been more than half his age. If he hadn't left this place in a hurry, I'd have slit his throat for him, or maybe slit him somewhere else."

She sounded like Fand. Gerin thought she would have done it if she'd got the chance, as Fand would have. He asked, "How is what this fellow did to you any different from what you did to me?"

He probably shouldn't have said that. He realized as much as soon as the words were out of his mouth, which was, of course, too late. Elise had been scowling at the latest man to disappear from her life. Now she scowled at Gerin. "I never pretended Prillon didn't exist."

"I never pretended you didn't exist," Gerin returned.

"Ha!" Elise tossed her head. The tone flayed meat from the Fox's bones. He hadn't had that tone aimed at him in a long time. She went on, "No one is so blind as the person who thinks he sees everything."

"That's true," Gerin agreed. He saw that she was applying it to him. She had not a clue that it also applied to her. Even after his remark, she didn't apply her own comment to herself. The Fox shrugged. He hadn't expected that she would, not really.

"It hardly seems fair," she said. "I've struggled all this time, and what have I to show for it? Nothing to speak of. And you-you've just gone on and on and on."

"You were the one who left," Gerin answered with yet another shrug. "I didn't put you on a boat in the middle of the Niffet and heave you over the side. I would have…" He broke off. He wouldn't have been happier had she stayed. For a little while, he might have been. Over the long haul of years, he was happier the way things had turned out.

Her mouth tightened. She must have realized what he'd been about to say, and why he hadn't said it. "You may as well go," she said. " There's nothing left at all, is there?"

"No," he answered, even if that wasn't quite true. The thing that had been dead inside him for twenty years stirred, like a ghost at sunset. But even ghosts, drawn by the boon of blood, that tried to give good advice only howled unintelligibly, like the wind. A man who listened to the wind instead of his own mind and heart deserved to be called a fool. Gerin pretended not to hear this ghost, too.

"Would you like another jack of ale?" Elise asked with brittle politeness.

"Thank you, no." He'd seldom been so tempted to drink till he couldn't see. He thought for a moment, then said, "If you like, I'll send a messenger up to Duren, to ask if he wants you to come stay at the keep that was your father's?"

"It's Duren's through me," Elise said angrily. "Why shouldn't I simply go and stay there, if I so choose?"

Gerin ticked off points on his fingers. "Item: I am not the lord of that holding. Duren is. Item: I do nothing to take a hand in his affairs without his leave. Item: you left Fox Keep when he was barely able to toddle. Why are you sure he'd want to see you now?"

"I am his mother," Elise said, as if to a halfwit.

Gerin shrugged.

Her eyes blazed. "I remember why I left Fox Keep, too. You are the most cold-blooded man the gods ever set on the face of the earth."

Gerin shrugged again.

That made Elise angrier. "To the five hells with you," she snapped. "What would happen if I left on my own and traveled to my father's holding-my son's holding-by myself?"