by Sharon Shinn
“I didn’t hear you ass-kissing with a bunch of sweet words last night when the shower broke down.”
“Different thing entirely, man!” broke in a new voice. “We can fly starships to the end of the universe, but we can’t keep the water hot on the home world that rules three hundred planets in the Interfed? Isn’t there a basic flaw in this equation?”
“New Terra does not, strictly speaking, rule Interfed,” drawled a young man called Aster. “The three hundred worlds are voluntary members who send representatives to the council and agree to its decrees, hence the phrase ‘federated planets’ as opposed to, for instance, ‘feudal nations’—”
“Oh, shut the fuck up, Aster. Nobody asked for a civics lesson.”
“Must make each day a learning experience,” Aster said. “Even simple minds like yours may progress if properly massaged.”
“Yeah, well, you know what you can massage. You do it every night, too, probably.”
“Nah, he pays for it.”
“Shit, when’s the next shuttle leave? Swear to God, Drake, if you’ve made us late again tonight—”
“I wasn’t late last night.”
“No, Doberman was. Hurry up and eat, damn it.”
“Leave without me,” he said, but he began shoveling the food in faster. Joetta, the redhead beside him, grinned and refilled his water glass.
“Don’t choke on your food,” she said. “I don’t believe any of our hotshot flyboys here would trouble to call you a medic.”
“But you would, sweetheart, wouldn’t you?” Halvert leered at her.
Joetta tossed him an identical grin. “Wouldn’t for you, baby, but I might for him.”
There was a chorus of appreciative whistles and catcalls. “Hey, the Ice Lady melts down,” someone called. “Get her while she’s hot, Sayochild, the mood doesn’t take her often.”
Drake stuffed the last forkful of food into his mouth and eased to his feet. “I’m ready,” he said. “Let’s go.”
The eight of them filled their own section on the shuttle, and they continued their boisterous inane chatter for the whole sixty-minute ride to the moon. Despite her comment to him earlier, Joetta spent virtually the whole trip up snuggled next to Halvert while he absent-mindedly wrapped one arm around her waist. Drake sat near one of the windows and watched the night sky unfold.
They arrived on Scarlatti and went jostling down the street in a noisy, aggressive group. The main boulevard of the spaceport city was a single pulsating strip of neon. It was alive with interplanetary travelers—Moonchildren, merchants, mercenaries, laborers, cargo loaders, space junkies—all on foot, all calling out greetings, invitations and challenges. It was early yet, so most of the traffic looked happy. Later in the evening, the mood could turn ugly fast. Not that Drake cared. He wasn’t here for entertainment, anyway. He was here for distraction.
“How about Cosmos?” someone suggested, naming a favorite Moonchild hangout.
“Nah, too loud. What about Dickens and Jane?”
“Talk about loud!”
“Well, shit, what do you want to do? You want to talk or you want to drink?”
“Well, I’d like to hear myself swallow when I am drinking, you hear what I’m saying?”
“I want to dance,” said a blond girl whose name, Drake thought, was either Bette or Beth. Her suggestion was universally voted down.
“What about it, Drake? Where do you want to go?”
“Doesn’t matter to me.”
“That’s what I like about this boy,” Aster commented. “He doesn’t care about anything. We could douse you with fuel and set you on fire and you wouldn’t do a thing, would you, Lieutenant?”
Drake smiled at him. “I’d hold onto you till you went up in flames,” he said pleasantly.
Doberman aimed an imaginary weapon at Aster’s head and squeezed the trigger. “Pssssooo!” he hissed, imitating a laser’s distinctive wheeze. “Right between the eyes he got you.”
“How about Murphy’s?”
“Yeah, Murphy’s. That’s good.”
“Sure, Murphy’s.”
They headed that way and entered in one untidy mass. Drake didn’t see much difference between Murphy’s and Cosmos for noise level, but it was all the same to him. They found a table big enough to accommodate the whole group and proceeded to order several rounds of drinks. Doberman spotted someone he knew across the bar and tossed peanut shells at her until he hit his target and she looked up in irritation. When she waved her hand as if to brush him away, he laughed boisterously.
Aster grabbed Bette (or Beth) without asking permission and hauled her off to the tiny dance floor, where they proceeded to gyrate together in a very suggestive fashion. “Better watch it, Aster, she’ll climb into those tight pants!” Halvert shouted at them loudly enough to be heard over the music and the width of the bar. Bette heard, at any rate, because she responded by grabbing Aster’s buttocks and drawing him right against her body. The Moonchildren back at the table howled with merriment.
Drake smiled faintly, shook his head and glanced away—straight into the eyes of the druglord Brandoza, sitting twenty yards away from him across the room.
Instantly, he felt the random colors and noises of the bar fall away from him. He was taut, calculating, professional. Brandoza was an outlaw of no small repute, and for him to risk coming this close to New Terra argued a recklessness so great as to be hardly credible. True, Scarlatti was not patrolled as strictly as it could be, and every day outlaws docked and took off from its crowded bays, but not pirates of Brandoza’s stature. Not without a mighty good reason.
“ ’Scuse me,” Drake said, coming to his feet.
“Someone you know?” Joetta asked.
“Old friend.”
Brandoza was sitting alone at a booth equipped with a privacy screen. When Drake slid onto the seat across from him, Brandoza activated the screen and the nearly invisible opalescent shield came shimmering down. They studied each other a moment in silence.
“Surprise, surprise,” Drake said.
Brandoza nodded. The druglord was dressed as he had been on Semay, with a quiet elegance that bespoke power and intelligence. His long hair was drawn back from his face into a severe braid that hung over one shoulder almost to his waist. He looked to be drinking nothing stronger than water.
“I was hoping to run into a friend,” Brandoza said.
“I’m hardly that.”
“Someone who might listen to reason, then,” the pirate amended.
“What brings you to New Terra?” the Moonchild asked. “It’s hardly tourist season.”
“I have a package to deliver, and New Terra was the destination.”
Drake looked his disbelief. “You accepted a package—to be delivered here? Haven’t you checked your status lately in the Moonchild files? You’re a very wanted man.”
“I think you will find this package worth your while to investigate,” the outlaw said unemotionally. “If I were you, I would look it over before I called in the Moonchild brigades.”
Drake glanced over at the table of his cohorts. Not only those seven, but more than half the patrons of the bar were Moonchildren. He would only have to yell for assistance, and the bar would be alive with bodies. Even drunk and disorderly, Moonchildren were formidable fighters. But Brandoza, of course, knew this. Undoubtedly he had his own men strategically placed inside and outside the tavern, similarly ready to attack on command. Despite himself, Drake was intrigued.
“What could you possibly have to turn over to me,” he said, “that could be worth the risk you’ve taken to come here?”
Brandoza smiled slightly. “Something that will do you a lot more good than it will do me.”
“What’s your price, then? This item must be pretty hot.”
“I was paid,” said the outlaw, “well in advance.”
Drake’s brows shot up
, but Brandoza did not elaborate. The Moonchild’s mind was racing. Well. The most likely possibility was that the pirate’s “package” was human. A defector from the government of a hostile planet, or a criminal wanted by Interfed who had somehow stumbled into a trap of Brandoza’s making. But it could be information also that the Semayan had to sell—maps, plans, details from the governments of a hundred nonfederated worlds. Certainly Drake could hardly refuse to take a look.
“What if I don’t like what you have to give me?” Drake asked. “Will you take it back?”
“You’ll want it,” Brandoza said. “I guarantee it.”
Drake nodded, still unsure but ready to gamble. “Where do I pick it up?”
“I’ll send it to you. Where are you staying?”
“On-planet. At the Transient’s Dorm. Room 3057.”
“Do I need to have a key?”
“Are you the one coming?”
“Oh, no. An emissary.”
Drake handed over his wristbadge, a breach of regulations so major as to earn him a court-martial. “He can get in with that. The rooms are clearly marked.”
Brandoza pocketed the bracelet. “Gratze. I think you’ll be pleased.”
Drake hit the retract button and the shield lifted. “Hope so. When can I expect your—emissary?”
“Sometime tonight. Late. When will you be back?”
Drake smiled. “I’ll make an early night of it. Say, midnight?”
“Midnight it is.”
Drake nodded curtly and strode away. He had had to resist the most ridiculous urge to part from Brandoza with the words of the ritual benediction of Ava. Not until he had rejoined his compatriots did he realize that the whole of his speech with the outlaw had been conducted in Semayse.
* * *
* * *
The others tried to persuade him to stay, but Drake left shortly afterward to catch one of the early shuttles back. “An assignation,” he told them when they pressed for reasons. Predictably, they greeted this pronouncement with whistles and applause. He grinned and left them.
Back at his dorm room, he found two sealed envelopes leaning up against the door, with his name written on the front and Comtech listed as the sender. Inside the room, he turned on the desk lamp and opened both packets. The first was a formal notification that he had been granted his leave request. The second packet contained a handful of letters that he read, one after the other, without bothering to sit down. His personnel file was full of letters like these, all sent to Comtech to praise him for his handling of some difficult affair. The abada, Ruiso and Benito had written standard if apparently sincere letters of praise and gratitude; Jovieve, of course, had infused a bit more of her personality into her communication. It made Drake smile just to read her warm, idiosyncratic phrases—until he came to the second-to-last paragraph.
“By now, you may be aware of a proposal I have made to the Interfed council concerning the establishment of a narcotics task force in Madrid,” the letter ran. “I would like to make a further extension of this proposition: If he is willing to return, and you are willing to make the assignment, would it be possible to appoint SAO Cowen Drake to the head of the narcotics commission? Naturally, his wishes should be consulted first, but I am convinced that his presence would ensure a smooth relationship between the Moonchildren and the government representatives of Semay . . .”
Drake let the letter fall from his hands without reading Jovieve’s closing remarks. The room was too bright. He turned off the light and stared hard out the window, hoping for some inspiration in the lights either above or below the horizon line. But the stars were nearly indistinguishable above this bright city, and the lighted windows of the man-made structures glowed with no benign intelligence of their own.
No question he could have the assignment if he wanted it. Interfed was so eager to make this deal that Jovieve could probably name the entire cast of players, from diplomats to drug specialists. Which meant Drake could return to Semay if he wished, and live there for a very long time.
He continued to watch the uninteresting lights in the streets below him. Would he go? No, the real question was: Would Laura consent to see him if he returned? Because if the answer to that was yes, then the answer to the first question was decided. Would Laura want him back on Semay, within reach, able by the power of his presence to disturb the delicate balance of her life? Or would she shut him out more completely than if he was a galaxy away? He was afraid to write and ask her the question, because he was afraid of what the answer might be. And she had not written him yet, not in the four weeks he had been gone from Madrid, and he did not know if she was even willing to think of him again.
He was still standing with his back to the door when the soft knock sounded. With a start, he remembered that he was expecting someone, but he no longer had a great deal of interest in Brandoza’s mysterious emissary. “It’s not locked,” he called, still looking out the window. “Come on in.”
She stepped inside, bringing light with her, and then he knew. For a moment he was incapable of either speech or movement. “Laura,” he said at last, and turned around.
She was a pale presence against the dark room. He could make out the sheen of her hair and the misty color of her dress. Her arm moved, vague against the shadows. “Is there a light in here?” she asked.
“Wall switch. Behind you to your left.”
She moved again, and the room filled with light. He had been wrong about the dress. She wore instead form-fitting trousers and a tunic, and her long hair was pulled back from her face in a loose braid. She looked young as a girl.
“You seem surprised,” she said. There was an undercurrent of laughter in her voice.
“Surprised is not a strong enough word,” he said.
“I thought you would figure it out when you saw Brandoza.”
“My mind was moving on an entirely different track.”
“I had to come,” she said. “And he owed me a favor. He was very gracious about it, too.”
“Considering that it’s worth his life to be caught within this star system,” Drake said dryly, “he was gracious, brave and crazy. When did you leave Semay?”
“Two weeks ago. I was afraid you already would have been assigned somewhere else and that I wouldn’t know how to find you. But Emil—”
“Emil?”
“Emil Brandoza—he said you would only arrive here a few days ahead of us.”
“Four days,” Drake said. “But if you really left two weeks ago, you made excellent time. Wonder what he’s flying.”
At first she had come only a few steps beyond the threshold, but now she wandered forward in an offhand, uncertain way. “Does it matter?” she said.
His throat was dry. He shook his head, since he could not speak.
She stopped again and laughed up at him. “At least tell me you’re glad to see me.”
Now he was the one to come closer, but not too close. Disbelief still made him wary. “I don’t know how to converse with figments of my imagination,” he said. “Tell me something to make me believe you’re real.”
“I had to see you again,” she said. “Because when you left, nothing in my life seemed real anymore. Does that make sense?”
“Oh yes,” he said. “What did you do after I left?”
“I couldn’t stay with the Fideles,” she said. “So I went back to the Triumphantes. And that was better, but it still wasn’t right. I could have—oh, I’m good at locking my soul away, I could have stayed at either temple for the rest of my life, but I couldn’t be happy at either place. And I thought—it seemed to me—that I couldn’t be happy anywhere unless I was with you. And that after all these years, maybe it was time I was happy again.”
“You,” he said, very gently mocking. “You believed you deserved happiness?”
She smiled. “Jovieve says—”
“Ah, of course. Jovieve.”
“Jovieve says that no one deserves happiness—that is, happiness is not something that is deserved or earned. She says happiness is a gift from the goddess, like beauty is a gift, or musical ability or intelligence. She says that to throw away a gift from the goddess is truly a sin. And you know, there are not many things that Jovieve considers sins.”
Now he was close enough to touch her. He gathered her hands in his, slowly, and carried them to his chest. “I’m leaving in a few days for Ramindon,” he said. “Will you come with me?”
“Yes,” she said.
“But after that. If I want, I can be reassigned to Semay. Jovieve requested my presence on a task force there.”
“Semay? Really? I would like that. But it doesn’t have to be Semay. I would go anywhere else they sent you. I don’t care where as long as I’m with you.”
“Tell me why,” he said.
“Because I want to be with you. Because you make me happy. Because you make me whole. Because I love you.”
“And Ava? Once you thought you couldn’t leave her behind.”
“I brought Ava with me,” she whispered.
He had no more questions. Almost formally, he put his arms around her and laid his mouth upon hers. They fit precisely, curve to hollow and lip to lip; he felt finally complete. His arms tightened and he kissed her with a rapidly increasing hunger. The depth of her response rocked him off-balance. There was amazing strength in her arms. In a moment, it was hard for him to tell who was holding up the other, which of them brought to this embrace the greatest reserves of tenderness and power. He knew that he would never be whole again without her and that the dizzying spiral of the universe had for him collapsed to one central point—fixed, unvarying, and standing within the circle of his arms.
Photo © Lou Bopp. All Rights Reserved
Sharon Shinn is the national bestselling author of the Elemental Blessings novels (Unquiet Land, Jeweled Fire, Royal Airs, and Troubled Waters) as well as the Shifting Circle novels (The Turning Season, Still Life with Shape-shifter, and The Shape of Desire). Her first novel, The Shape-Changer’s Wife, was a nominee for Locus’s Best First Fantasy Novel of 1995. She has won the William L. Crawford Award for Outstanding New Fantasy Writer, and was twice nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. She has also received an RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Award and won RT Book Reviews’s 2010 Career Achievement Award in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy category.