A Company of Heroes Book Three: The Princess

by Ron Miller

  “But Rykkla, I don’t know. There’s something inside me that gets angry at how Gyven feels. I don’t know if I want to be worshipped. I’d much rather be liked.”

  “Well, there’s a lot truth to that. He acts like you’re Musrum’s own sister.”

  Bronwyn’s eyes suddenly narrow. “Not Kiskelim?”

  “No, the other one. Gyven’s like Thud, I guess. Do you have any idea where he’d be today if it hadn’t been for you? Try to imagine it . . . Horrible! He’d just be a beautiful vegetable, a kind of god-like turnip. Anyway, Gyven would rather suffer his love in silence than sully your precious ears with his affections. He’s an unreformed Romantic.”

  “So am I!”

  “No you’re not. You’re just sentimental. Don’t confuse the two.”

  “But how can he make love to me and at the same time be afraid to tell me that he loves me? And if he loves me as much as you say, why hasn’t he been to see me?”

  “Because he loves you so much, idiot, and because you’ve as much as shut him out, as you do everyone about everything. I suspect that you’ve never been able to see much beyond your own troubles; if you do, it’s only to unfavorably compare the depth of someone else’s worries with your own. You’re the most empathy-less human I’ve ever met. I doubt that it’s even occurred to you to imagine what Gyven must be feeling, or anyone else for that matter, you’re so wrapped up in your own self-importance. You’re just going to have to take the initiative with him, that’s all I can tell you.”

  “Oh, Rykkla. I wish it were that easy. But before I can take an initiative, I have to decide if I really, truly want the man. I don’t even know for sure if I want to be in love with anyone.”

  “It is that easy, Bronwyn. Instead of worrying about how things might turn out, jump in and find out. That’s one of your biggest problems: you always want an ironclad guarantee of how things are going to turn out before you even start. If you’ve learned anything at all, I’d have thought that you would have figured out that you can’t do that. Come on with me, you’ve been moping around this room for long enough.”

  “I’ll be down later, I promise.”

  “You’ll come on now. Professor Wittenoom wants to see you.”

  “Wittenoom? What does he want?”

  “How would I know? And even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you. You’ll just have to come along and find out.”

  Wittenoom is waiting in one of the palace’s libraries, browsing through a shelf of books, when Bronwyn comes in. Rykkla leaves her there, closing the doors behind her. The man is dressed all in black, with a scissor-tailed coat and high, stiff collar, and looks entirely professorial.

  “What an extraordinary collection,” he says.

  “What’s that?”

  “These,” he replies, gesturing toward a bookcase that is filled with scores of large, handsomely bound volumes.

  “Oh, those. Those are my brother’s.”

  “Extraordinary. If it were my field, I’m sure there’d be a paper in it.”

  “Rykkla told me that you wanted to see me.”

  “Yes I did, indeed. I’m only waiting for . . . ah! Here he is.”

  The double doors swing open again to reveal the statuesque figure of Gyven, dressed in morning coat and striped trousers. A single pearl glows in the midst of the black cravat that billows beneath his high collar. His face has lost much of its sharp-edged cragginess, like a broken piece of granite will when exposed to the elements long enough. His hair is a sweep of polished obsidian, his eyes sparkling slivers of hematite, his teeth like deposits of travertine. He looks like the Ideal Man in the W. K. Hartmann and Co. menswear advertisements (not a few of which a younger Bronwyn had clipped from the magazines and saved, savoring the impossibly god-like profiles) and the princess feels her heart skip arhythmically; her breath catches in her throat.

  “Princess!” he says. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning, Gyven,” she replies, her voice unnatural, Rykkla’s preparatory arguments still too fresh for either comfort or cool thinking.

  “Good morning, Gyven,” echoes the professor, looking down upon them from over his pince-nez. “I’m glad you could come.

  “Princess, I’ve been led to understand that you’re at something of loose ends, if I may say so?”

  “I suppose you can.”

  “I have a proposition to make. I’d like to invite the both of you to come back to Toth with me.”

  “Toth?” Bronwyn repeats in surprise. “Why, professor?”

  “For one thing, I’ve always been impressed with your interest and aptitude in the sciences. I’d like to invite you to come and stay at the Institute and observe and perhaps even join in our work . . . whatever pleases you. I'm sure your uncle would support you.”

  “Oh . . . that's something I never considered. And I take it you're inviting Gyven, too?”

  “Have I taken a liberty?”

  “Oh, no! No! You haven’t! That would be just fine . . . That is I mean . . . “

  “It would be the greatest pleasure,” interrupts Gyven, with a slight bow that the princess thinks is more than a little sardonic. Have they orchestrated this so well? Am I that obvious?

  “Wonderful!” says the professor. “You'd be welcome to stay as long as you like, of course. We've got projects under way that I was unable to explain to you when you are in Toth last year, projects I would think you'd find fascinating.”

  “I'm certain I will, Professor.”

  “You recall those rockets that proved so effective during the siege?”

  “They were wonderful.”

  “Well, there’ve been certain experiments,” he continues, lowering his voice conspiratorially and melodramatically. “Theoretical work and suggestions that perhaps they could be utilized for transportation.”

  “You're talking about rockets?” she asks, mystified.

  “Certainly! And, not many people are privy to this, Princess, but there’s some theoretical work has been done that suggests the rocket effect works just as well in a vacuum!”

  “But there'd be nothing for the exhaust to push against!”

  “I know that. I don't pretend to understand all of the concepts but it opens very exciting possibilities!”

  “It does?” she asks, puzzled.

  “Professor,” interrupts Gyven. “May the princess and I have a few moments to discuss this privately?”

  “Oh, yes! Yes, of course! Of course!” He gathers his papers and notebooks into a crumpled bundle. “I'll show you later what I've just been sent from the Institute.”

  “Of course, Professor,” Gyven says, reassuringly. “Thank you very much.”

  As the doors shut with a thump behind the scientist, Gyven turns to Bronwyn.

  “You look different.”

  “And you,” she agrees, with wholehearted approval.

  “I think that we’re both different; I mean, it's more than how we look, don't you think?”

  “Yes. When I look around the palace now, I feel like a stranger. I find myself wondering whose memories I have of this place; they don't seem like mine. The old Bronwyn seems so alien to me now.”

  “I have virtually no memories of any life before meeting you. Until then time and existence had drifted past me like a grey mist. In a very real way, my life began when we met.”

  “I didn't like you very much!” She laughs.

  “It didn't matter to me, and I admit to giving you good reason. But I was like a newborn child. I knew nothing.”

  “Are you really going to Londeac with the professor?”

  “Only if I'm going with you,” he replies.

  “There's really nothing left for me here, is there? Not even a throne.”

  “I have nothing at all, except you.”

  Bronwyn turns and goes to one of the tall, narrow windows. What am I doing? She feels as though she should be making some sort of plan for her life, establishing a new set of goals, a new sequence of development, creating a blue
print for her new existence. But look what my ambitions have cost me so far. Should I spend the rest of my life going from goal to goal, each one seeming disappointingly inadequate once I achieve it, seeing only what lies ahead and in the meantime missing everything that is going on around me?

  And am I going to end up bitter and resentful for the things that I missed? instead of grateful for the things that I received? I ought to know by now that life will never come fully up to what I expect of it. Can I, for the first time in my life take a chance on the unknown? No goal, no purpose, no plan, just . . . see what happens? Enjoy the journey for its own sake, wherever it's taking me?

  I have no idea.

  She turns back to Gyven. The tall, craggy man has been waiting patiently, a slight smile turning up one corner of his wide mouth, his thick black hair perpetually disheveled, one arched black brow raised in question. He seems so very tall and strong, like an enormous iron spike driven into the floor.

  To Gyven, the Princess Bronwyn is the most desirable thing he hs ever seen, and if he had thought so once, he is more than ever certain now. He admires and is attracted to her seriousness, her intelligence, her perseverance, her loyalty, most of the qualities that Bronwyn herself would argue against, except perhaps intelligence. (It would eventually come as a disturbing surprise to the princess that it had never occured to Gyven to consider her beauty. He had in all his life acquired no standards for human ideals of comeliness, and for years, it turns out, all human women looked pretty much alike to him.) It's certainly possible that Bronwyn's experiences have changed her, one can only hope so . . . but time alone would tell if that is so. She is a stubborn woman. He is also aware of a void in her that he perceives himself filling as neatly as the last piece in a jigsaw puzzle.

  Her thin summer dress, a deep emerald green, illuminated by the window behind her, is a verdant cloud in the midst of which floats a sinuous, bifurcated shadow. Her hair shines in a rubicund aureole that surrounds a face that appears to be self-luminous, with eyes the lustrous green of the spectral lines of copper. She does indeed, he suddenly realizes, possess an indefinable something that sets her apart from the women of the Kobolds.

  She takes the few steps that separate them, places her hands on either side of his face, which feels firm and cool to her, and, thinking to herself, what the hell, says for the first time in her life to anyone, “I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Bronwyn,” he replies easily and without hesitation.

  “Are you really ready to go to Londeac with me?”

  “I've followed you this far; I'll follow you anywhere.”

  “I don't want you to follow me anymore, Gyven. I want you to be with me.”

  “Your only worry from now on will be getting rid of me!”

  “I'd never do that!”

  “I'd go see the Weedking with you, Bronwyn.”

  “I'd rather go to one of the moons, if you're going to be melodramatic, Gyven.”

  “Which one?”

  “I've always liked the little one best.”

  “All right. We'll go to the little moon together.”

  “And how are we going to get there? In one of the professor's rockets?”

  They laughed.

  THE END OF BOOK THREE