by David Weber
Normally, she would have traveled with Daivyn and Irys, although she had complete faith in Tobys Raimair and Hairahm Bahnystyr, who officially headed their security details. This time, however, she’d stayed home, ostensibly to assist Gahrvai in the expansion of the Royal Guard in the face of the growing royal family, so it made sense for the two of them to continue to share breakfasts. Technically, she was an officer of the Imperial Guard, not the Corisandian Royal Guard, but she’d been detailed to Manchyr for over six years now. In that time, she’d become one of the Royal Guard’s own by adoption, and as a seijin, it was reasonable for her to remain in Manchyr, available to Gahrvai if he needed her, especially when all her royal charges would be safely in Merlin’s hands from the moment they stepped off the ship in Cherayth. Of course, the real reason she’d been left home was that with Irys, Hektor, and Phylyp Ahzgood all off to Chisholm, the inner circle had wanted at least two of its members in Corisande in case something came up.
Something like the carnage in Harchong, for example, she thought darkly. But for all its grimness, the thought was fleeting, banished by something else as she heard the gentleness in that question.
“Mostly, I guess, because there’s not much point,” she said finally. “The only person who’d really understand is Merlin, and I don’t have to discuss it with him.” She quirked a bittersweet smile. “After all, I am him.”
“No, you aren’t,” Gahrvai disagreed, spooning a portion of the scrambled eggs onto her plate before he served himself. “You started as the same person. I understand that—intellectually, at least; my brain still has a little trouble processing it. But you’re very different people now, Nimue.” The badly scarred cheek he’d acquired the day of Hektor and Irys’ marriage pulled his quick grin off center. “For example, I can’t really imagine Merlin as a woman.”
“He’s not.” Nimue shrugged. “Now at least. Not even in his own mind, I’m pretty sure. I mean, I can’t be positive about that, and in the Federation, it wasn’t unusual for people who had last-generation PICAs to experiment with shifted genders. I was never tempted, though. I guess I’m pretty firmly heterosexual. And because we used to be the same person, I know Merlin had never been inclined to experiment that way before it was his turn to wake up in Nimue’s Cave, either. But his PICA’s chassis’s height meant he didn’t have any choice but to reconfigure himself as a man … and it looks like he’s still just as heterosexual as I am, if in a somewhat different way.” She shook her head with a smile. “I’m happy for him—happy he’s adjusted so well, I mean. He’s way too tall to ever pass as a woman on Safehold, even if he wanted to. Which, now that he’s found Nynian, I can’t imagine him wanting!”
She took a slice of toast and passed the bread basket across to him.
“It must be odd to realize there’s someone else—a man, in this case—who has all of your memories and life experience right up to the moment you opened your eyes here on Safehold,” Gahrvai said, spooning marmalade onto his own toast.
“I’ll admit, it’s not something I ever expected,” she conceded. “It’s … comforting though, in a lot of ways. The Federation—everyone and everything Nimue Alban ever knew—is dead.” Her eyes turned shadowed. “It’s good to know there’s someone else who remembers them the way I do. It’s sort of like they’re not really all gone as long as someone remembers them.”
“I can see how that could work,” he said thoughtfully. “I haven’t been through anything remotely like that—not on that scale. But we’ve all lost a lot of people right here on Safehold since the start of the Jihad. And you’re right. As long as we remember them, they’re not completely gone, are they?”
“And then there’s Nahrmahn,” Nimue said dryly, deliberately injecting humor into the conversation, and smiled as she watched him laugh.
“Nahrmahn is … unique, in so many ways!” he agreed. “I imagine there were quite a few people—electronic personalities, I mean—back in the Federation, but somehow I doubt any of them were quite like him.”
“I think that’s a fairly safe assumption.”
“But, then again, I don’t think there was ever anyone quite like you, either,” he said. “Back in the Federation or here on Safehold.”
She stiffened because that gentleness was back in his tone.
“What makes you say that?” she asked slowly.
“I’ve been thinking it for quite some time,” he replied a bit obliquely. “Actually, I’ve been thinking about it since the first day I met you standing outside Irys and Hektor’s door!” He snorted. “I couldn’t decide whether I was more pissed off because no one had told me you were coming or because you’d managed to waltz right through all of my security arrangements without a single soul even spotting you.” He shook his head. “Little did I realize that you were even more of a seijin than the seijins!”
“Well, I told you Merlin and I had certain unfair advantages. But what’s brought this up this morning, Koryn?”
His smile faded, as if he’d realized she wasn’t going to let him evade her question. Or, perhaps, as if he didn’t want to evade it.
“Because it’s taken me until this morning to get up the courage to bring it up,” he said, looking across the table into her eyes.
“Am I that fearsome?” She tried to make it a joke, but she didn’t fully succeed, because the look in his eyes … frightened her.
“One of the most fearsome people I know,” he told her. “And not just because I know you could slice and dice your way through the entire Royal Guard any time you chose. I mean, I suppose that is a bit … sobering. But it’s not really part of how I think of you. Not anymore.”
“How do you think of me, then?”
“As the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met,” he said, and there was no banter at all in his tone.
She stared at him across the table, and the heart she no longer had raced as she felt herself falling into that dark, steady brown gaze. Then she shook her head.
“I’m not,” she said. “I can think of a dozen women right here in Manchyr who are a lot more beautiful than I am, Koryn.”
“Far be it for me to tell a seijin she’s wrong, but you are. Wrong, I mean, as well as the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.”
“Koryn, I’m not even really a woman,” she said, and wondered why she’d put it that way even as she said it.
“In the words of Lieutenant Raimair, that’s dragon shit, Nimue.” His voice was firm. “You just said Merlin is a man, and he is. One of the most masculine men I’ve ever met, actually. I sometimes think that’s because he was once a woman and it gives him a perspective most mere men can never have. But you, my dear, most assuredly are a woman.”
That long vanished heart seemed to leap in her synthetic chest at the words “my dear,” but there was enormous pain behind that leap, as well, and she shook her head again, harder than before.
“Don’t go there, Koryn,” she said quietly.
“Why not?” His voice was equally soft, but his eyes held her.
“Because you’re talking to a machine with a ghost living inside it,” she told him sharply. The bitterness in her own tone shocked her, but she continued unflinchingly. “It’s not a woman, it’s a machine. One I can configure to pretend to be anything I want it to. I’ve been a man, just as much as Merlin, when I needed to. I can’t make myself taller or shorter, but what else would you like to see, Koryn? A brunette? A blonde? An old woman?” She cracked a laugh. “Oh, I can pretend on a lot of levels, Koryn. A last-generation PICA is fully functional, after all. But whatever it might look like at any given moment, it’s only a machine pretending it’s a woman!”
“I wasn’t talking about the purely physical,” he said calmly, “but I’m well aware of your … chameleon abilities. I’ve seen you being those other people, remember? And I’ll admit that, in some ways, that makes you even more fascinating to a simple Safeholdian boy. But I’ve seen the file imagery of Nimue Alban, too. Aside from the hair color—and the he
ight—you’re identical to her, and I don’t want anything else. Mind you, I’d feel the same way about you however you happened to look at the moment—well, except for the man part, maybe. And the reason I would is that I’m not talking to a machine with a ghost living inside it, however … configurable you may be. I’m talking to an artificial body with a person inside it. A soul inside it, just as much as there’s a person or a soul inside me.”
“Really?” She looked down at the piece of toast in her hand, then waved it almost angrily as she looked back up at him. “This isn’t even fuel for me, Koryn. I’ve got a fusion reactor inside me with years’ worth of reactor mass. I could walk across the bottom of the damned ocean without breathing for months, much less eating! This is just raw material to be available the next time I change into someone else entirely.”
“And you eat it because you enjoy the flavor,” he countered. “That’s a very human motivation, and maybe that means you do need it for more than just raw material. But it’s also completely beside the point. And the point is that I’ve always admired and respected you, even when you were ‘just’ Seijin Nimue. When I found out who you really are, what Nimue Alban sacrificed for you to be here at this moment, doing what you’re doing, what I felt was a lot more like awe. Over the last several months, though, I’ve discovered I feel something else, as well.”
She looked at him, refusing to speak, not certain herself why she felt so frightened, and he let the silence linger for two or three seconds before he reached across the table and touched her wrist gently.
“I’ve discovered I feel something I never expected to feel,” he told her. “I’ve discovered that you’re not just my colleague, not just the avatar of Nimue Alban, not just a seijin, and sure as hell not just my friend.”
“Don’t, Koryn,” she said softly, almost pleadingly. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Tell you I love you?” She flinched, but he only shook his head. “I hate to say it, but I can be a bit slow sometimes, so it surprised me, too, when I realized. It’s true, though. I do love you, Nimue Chwaeriau. I’m sorry if that upsets you, but there’s not much I can do about it.”
His smile was whimsical, but his eyes were dark, dark as they bored into hers.
“Koryn, you don’t know what you’re saying. You don’t know what you’re saying it to!”
“Yes, I do. Maybe better than you do.”
“You think so?” she asked harshly.
She activated a PICA function she hadn’t used since the moment she first awoke in Nimue’s Cave, then reached up with her free hand and peeled away her entire face. A skull looked out at him, the planes of its structure shimmering with the bronze tone of Federation synthetics, not the white of human bone, and her gleaming sapphire eyes made it look even more inhuman as they looked back at him from it.
“This is what I am, Koryn!” the lipless mouth below those eyes said.
“And your point is … what?” he asked, never looking away, never flinching.
She stared at him, and he met that stare levelly.
“Do you really think I could have spent the last three years learning about the Federation and its technology without understanding that the woman across the table from me—the woman I’ve realized I love—wouldn’t exist without it? That if it hadn’t been possible for Owl to build the body you live inside, I never even would’ve met you? Of course I understand that, Nimue! And how could I possibly think that whatever it took for me to meet you is anything but a miracle? That you’re anything but a miracle? Good God, woman! Do I look like an idiot?!”
She stared at him, still holding her face in her hand, then shook her head. A tear glimmered at the corner of one of those eyes as her PICA’s autonomous programming responded to her emotions.
“Koryn,” she said, “there are any number of women—real women, flesh and blood women—who would love to love you. But I’m not them.”
“Are you telling me you don’t feel anything for me?” he asked levelly. “Because I think I may not have been the only slow learner in this room, and I think you do. I think you may not have let yourself think about it, but I think you do.”
She sat motionless, the perfect electronic memory of a PICA spinning through five-days, months—years—of conversations over this very table. Of planning sessions for the Royal Guard even before he knew the truth of what she was. Of jokes and laughter. Of the way she’d found herself turning towards the door when her more than human hearing recognized his stride coming down the hall. Of the … happiness she’d come to relax into when she was with him.
“I—” she began, then stopped. Shook her head.
“You’re my friend,” she said finally, and her voice sounded uncertain somehow, almost tentative, even to herself.
“Among other things,” he said. Then he gave her a smile that was more lopsided than his scarred cheek could have accounted for. “Do you think you could put your face back on?” His smile grew a little broader. “It’s hard to read your expression when you don’t have one.”
“Which?” She astonished herself with a spurt of laughter. “An expression? Or a face?”
“Both. It’s sort of hard to have the former without the latter,” he pointed out, and she realized he truly was totally relaxed, comfortable with the gleaming synthetic skull she’d just showed him.
“All right,” she said, and used both hands to replace the artificial skin and muscles she’d peeled away. She smoothed the seam with her fingertips, triggered another command, and the hairline join vanished as the nanotech fused “skin” and “muscle” once more. Then she crossed her arms and looked across the table at him.
“Koryn, maybe I do feel something more than just friendship. But it’s not what you need. I can’t give you what you need.”
“So Merlin can’t give Nynian what she needs?” He leaned back, folding his own arms. “Strange. They seem very happy together!”
“But—”
She stopped again, with no idea what she’d started to say, and his eyes were warm and gentle. She felt herself falling into them and dug in her heels. He didn’t understand. Not really. He couldn’t, and—
“Nimue,” he said, “stop being afraid.”
“Afraid?!” she said sharply.
“Afraid,” he repeated.
“Of what?” She felt almost angry now. “Of you?”
“Of the Gbaba,” he said, and she twitched fully erect in her chair in complete surprise.
“What do the Gbaba have to do with this conversation?” she demanded.
“They have a lot to do with the reasons Nimue Alban never let herself love someone,” he said unflinchingly. “Not the way I love you. Not the way I think you may have let yourself love me without realizing it.”
She stared at him and realized her lips had begun to tremble.
“Nimue Alban was going to die,” he told her. “She was going to die, and so was her entire world and anyone she let herself love, so she didn’t let herself. Not the way she could have. The way a person as special as she was should have. Do you think I wouldn’t realize it had to be that way? I can’t begin to truly understand how terrible that knowledge, that decision, must’ve been, the kind of emotional and spiritual scars they had to leave, but I know it was terrible and I know there are scars. I only have to watch you and Merlin, see how deeply you feel, how incredibly, fiercely protective you are, to understand that much. You knew you’d be dead before you were forty, and so would anyone you’d let yourself love. Tell me you didn’t build barriers. Tell me you didn’t wall away part of yourself just so you could continue to function, kill a few more Gbaba, before they murdered your entire species!”
Another single tear trickled down her synthetic cheek, and he reached across the table to wipe it with a spotless linen napkin.
“I can’t begin to imagine what that was like. Maybe I see a shadow of it in the possibility of the ‘Archangels” return, but not the reality. But even though you’re still Nimue Alban in every
way that counts, you don’t live in her world. You live in mine—in ours. This world doesn’t have to end. It may, as far as we’re concerned, if the ‘Archangels’ come back and undo everything we’ve accomplished, but it doesn’t have to. This isn’t a threat we can’t possibly defeat, and we sure as hell don’t know we’re doomed! And even if we were, it wouldn’t matter. I love you, and that’s what matters. Not how long we have, not whether or not your body’s synthetic. And not whether or not you deserve to be loved when you’re still alive and all the people Nimue Alban did love are dead.”
She twitched as if he’d struck her. And, in a way, he had, because she’d never thought about it that way.
Never realized he was right.
“I talked to Nahrmahn a few weeks ago,” Koryn told her. “We were talking about the first Siddarmark campaign, when Merlin came up with his insane, brilliant plan to send ironclads fifteen hundred miles inland on the canals. That was so out-of-the-box the Temple boys never saw it coming. How could they have?! But has Merlin ever discussed that winter with you?”
“No…,” she said slowly. “He gave me a download, a summary, of it. We’ve never really discussed it, though.” She tilted her head. “Why?”
“Because we almost lost him,” Koryn said softly. Her eyes widened, and he shrugged. “I don’t know if even Merlin realizes that, but it’s true. He blamed himself for this—for all of this—and he hated himself because of all of the people he’d personally killed. The people who never had a chance of surviving against him. He wouldn’t talk about it, wouldn’t admit it to anyone else, but the guilt and the pain inside were consuming him, Nimue.”
Her nostrils flared as she remembered all the times Merlin had shouldered her aside, the way he’d taken the burden of bloodshed out of her hands so often. She’d realized from the start that he was protecting her from the kind of blood guilt he felt, but she hadn’t realized that guilt had burned as deeply and with as much power as Koryn was describing.