***
Devra felt someone shaking her shoulder. “It’s time,” somebody whispered in the darkness.
They’d all slept in their clothes, so getting ready to leave amounted to little more than rubbing their eyes and putting on shoes before, very quietly, following Mikal. The cloaks he passed out to them were welcome in the chill morning air, but Devra worried that they’d be an encumbrance if they had to run.
“With these cloaks,” Mikal said, “you won’t have to run. They’re made of military grade chameleon fabric. If you think somebody’s noticed you, turn your face away and hold perfectly still. The fabric will look like whatever you’re standing in front of.
And with the benefit of the cloaks, the way to the harbor was quite straightforward; they simply avoided the broad avenues like Peace and Prosperity Street in favor of the narrower, winding streets out of the main traffic flow.
Suddenly Mikal stopped, and in the half-light Devra could see a harbor wharf with a freighter, riding low in the water, beside it. “This is as far as I go. Tell the captain my name, and give him the cloaks; he’ll arrange to get them back to the café.”
Devra felt a sudden, irrational pang of disappointment. It was silly to feel bad over the actual moment of parting, when she’d known from the beginning that Mikal wouldn’t be coming to Esilia with them. Not at all sensible of her.
“Just one more thing.” Edging around Lars in the narrow street, Mikal put one arm around Devra and kissed her very thoroughly. Head swimming, she returned his kiss with no thought of being sensible. But she should have. It hurt terribly when he released her.
“I’ve been wanting to do that for –” He stopped. “How long have you been working at the café?”
“Seven weeks and two days.”
“Right. Then I’ve been wanting to do that for seven weeks and three days. Ever since you stopped in our doorway and I told you not to block the entrance.”
He was away in the shadows before Devra could say anything. But what was there to say?
EPILOGUE
Devra felt just a little bit lonely in the first weeks of her new job. Esilia required all refugees to attend orientation talks and to complete online courses in civics, history, and current events. Because she and Lars and Julle had started at the same time and were all living in the temporary refugee shelter, she’d been able to think she was learning all she needed about Esilian life without actually interacting with any Esilians. On the basis of their test scores and previous education, all three of them had been offered scholarships in a condensed course aimed at bringing scientists and students from Harmony up to date with current science. Lars and Julle had taken up the offer; Devra hadn’t.
“You’d get through it easily,” Lars had encouraged her. “Even if you only did the undergraduate course, you could qualify to teach again.”
“Teaching,” Devra said, “was the work the Ministry of Labor assigned to me. I don’t have to do it now… do I?”
Lars looked troubled. “No, but what are you going to do?”
“Get a job as a baker. Apprentice, if I have to. I had more fun in seven weeks at the Green Cat than in two years of teaching secondary school.” And it had had nothing to do with the company there.
Getting a job should not be difficult; she just had to find a place where the management would evaluate her work by examples rather than by credentials. Devra was pleasantly surprised to find that this attitude was more the rule than the exception in Esilia, and surprised again by the salary that one of the city’s premier café-bakeries offered her. Having spent her life in a system where lodging was assigned as part of her job, she was somewhat less pleasantly surprised to discover how much of that salary would go to paying rent on an apartment near a public transit line into central Travis.
The work was all right. She might not have the autonomy she’d enjoyed at the Green Cat, but right now she wasn’t ready for that; she needed to learn Esilian tastes and Esilian specialties. And she had well-defined hours without the frantic edge that came with three people working in a café that needed at least five. She understood now why Vess had been so reluctant to hire enough staff; every employee was one more pair of eyes to notice the same incongruities she’d noticed.
But now that Lars and Julle were off at a provincial university doing their accelerated make-up course, Devra became aware that she wasn’t quite acculturated enough to make friends with her Esilian colleagues. It wasn’t any big problem, just a lot of minor changes. They stood too close when they were talking to her, and they talked too loudly and emphatically; and she didn’t get most of their jokes; and whenever two of them got together, they launched into passionate debates with no concern whatever for Harmony.
“You’ll get used to it,” the girl who worked behind the counter comforted her. “You know the saying, wherever you have two Esilians, they’ll form three political parties.”
“I didn’t know it,” said Devra, “but I can certainly believe it!” And she thought wistfully of Mikal, who had been, all right, too loud and too emphatic, but who wouldn’t let her retreat quietly into harmonious silence as her present colleagues did. And it was pointless to think about people who were an ocean away and planning to stay there; she would do better to concentrate on how to make an Esilian fruit braid.
In her evenings off, she sat in what her landlord laughingly referred to as a “garden” attached to her miniscule apartment – a square of baked red dirt with a privacy fence around it, and a flourishing Stinking Billy garlanding one side of the fence. Here she puzzled through ancient history for an hour at a time, and then rewarded herself with an hour of reading the classical poetry that she was beginning to understand better and better.
She was deep in Xanadu with Kublai Khan when the noise got too close to ignore. “Oh, discord it!” said Devra, who hadn’t yet learned to swear in Esilian terms. That was the most hideous noise she’d ever heard – and it was coming closer all the time. If that was what Esilian ambulances sounded like, she would tell them they could tone it down a little; people wouldn’t just cede right of way to something making that ghastly howling, they’d throw themselves off bridges to get away from it.
And now it sounded as though it were right in front of her building, and still coming closer, which was impossible.
“May I come in?” asked a familiar voice over the siren. It – he – seemed to be right outside the garden gate. Devra threw it open and Mikal came into the garden, lugging some sort of metal crate that was making the noise.
“What is that?” Devra gasped.
“First things first,” said Mikal, and kissed her.
“And what are you doing here?”
He kissed her again, taking his sweet time about it and leaving Devra so light-headed she wasn’t sure she could stand up if he let her out of his embrace.
“You’d better sit down,” Mikal said at last, and guided her back into the chair she’d vacated. “And I’ll let this beast out. He doesn’t like being in a box. He’s been telling me about it ever since we left port.”
He lifted a latch on the front of the crate and whisked his hand back just in time to avoid being bitten. Scat erupted from the crate in a fury of gray fur and claws, threw himself against the far wall, circled the garden twice without touching the ground, and finally settled down on Devra’s feet, looking plumper and sleeker than Devra had ever seen him.
“You came all this way to bring me my cat?”
No, Scat said, he came to bring me to my person. What’s to eat?
“Well,” Mikal said. “Esilians feel strongly about people living up to their responsibilities.”
“So after all these months, you suddenly felt impelled to make me take him?”
“I had to wait for my replacement,” Mikal explained. “And train him. And train the new waiter – they sent two people, so the café will be slightly less understaffed now.”
Devra took a moment to process this. “Your replacement.”
&n
bsp; “That’s what I said.”
“Does that mean –“
Yes, he’s staying, said Scat. He’s been talking to me about you for a week.
She felt unsure of herself. Mikal hadn’t told her – yet – that he meant to stay. She opted for safer ground. “Of course I’ll take care of Scat, and it was awfully good of you to bring him, and I hope he didn’t bite you too much while you were putting him in that crate.”
“Oh, those are mostly healed,” Mikal said cheerfully, “and one of the crew loaned me a pair of elbow-length leather mitts to use when I was changing his litter box and refreshing his food and water.”
“Are you trying to make me feel even more indebted to you?”
Mikal looked at her hopefully. “Is it working?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Good, because Esilia expects you to take care of all your responsibilities. And considering that I’ve quit my job and crossed the ocean on your account –”
This time the kiss went on until Scat swiped his claws across Devra’s bare ankles.
“I’ll try to be a well-behaved responsibility,” Mikal said. “Scat may be a little more trouble. Especially in a couple of weeks.
“Why then?”
“Didn’t you notice how fat he’s getting? He’s pregnant.”
Eating for six, Scat informed her. Where’s the food bowl?
Awakening (Harmony Book 2) Page 21