Chapter 16
SEREYA
Sereya had been smiling at a sleeve.
An empty sleeve, since Dhomhes had left her at the doors several minutes ago. She could still feel the soft fold of his cuff between her fingers, and the ridiculous pleasure of straightening something that hadn't needed straightening.
She shut her room door and leaned against it.
He had held her hand after breakfast with people walking past who could have looked and seen. And when she'd asked what he wanted, he'd answered her.
The room seemed less borrowed this morning. Her dress hung in the small wardrobe. The cup beside the bed was hers until someone came to wash it. She had left the shutters partly open because she could, and a band of warm light lay across the coverlet.
She walked through it, touching nothing, enjoying the absurd fact that there was nobody to ask why.
Her comm sounded.
For a moment she thought it might be him. She reached for it too quickly, and hated Roemary a little more for making her regret the hope.
Your things have been mixed with mine. Come to the common gallery and sort them. I cannot be expected to know what you want to keep.
Sereya looked at the wardrobe.
Everything she owned on this planet was already here.
The residence staff could bring anything belonging to me.
Then she put the comm down and waited for the familiar second message.
Roemary's next message arrived before she reached the window. Sereya left it unanswered.
The common gallery was on the way to the residence office. Sereya had agreed to meet a staff member there to confirm the last of her room paperwork. She had a guard walking with her and a perfectly ordinary reason to leave her room.
She repeated both facts to herself when she saw Roemary near the windows.
Two other volunteers were sitting with her. One held a length of blue fabric against her arm while Roemary considered it with the grave attention she gave matters that would never hurt her.
“There you are.” Her smile widened. “We were just talking about you.”
Of course they were.
“The color is lovely,” Sereya told the woman holding the fabric.
The woman looked faintly surprised. Then she smiled.
“Isn't it?” Roemary said. “I've been trying to persuade Sereya to wear something cheerful. But she gets these notions. Once she's decided to be miserable, there's no moving her.”
There was a small, uncertain laugh from the other chair.
Sereya could have sat down. She could have made the accustomed joke about her own lack of imagination, and the uncertainty would have gone out of the room. Everyone would have known what part to play.
“I've been quite comfortable,” she said.
Roemary's eyes met hers.
The guard remained near the gallery entrance. Close enough to reach her. Too far away to rescue her from a conversation that sounded pleasant.
“Good. Then perhaps you can spare a moment for someone other than your new friends.” Roemary rose and picked up a folded cloth from the table. “This was left in our rooms.”
She held it out.
A plain hand towel. Sereya had seen dozens like it on the staff carts.
“That belongs to the residence.”
“Does it? How silly of me.” Roemary handed it to her anyway. “You always kept track of those things.”
Sereya set it on the table.
“They still have people who do.”
The woman with the blue fabric lowered it into her lap.
Roemary laughed. The sound was so warm that Sereya almost flinched.
“Listen to her. A little attention and she forgets me entirely.”
She stepped closer, reaching to smooth Sereya's collar. Sereya caught the impulse to stand still a fraction too late; the fingers were already there, turning the edge of the fabric down.
“You've been very busy,” Roemary murmured. “Rooms. Breakfasts. That charming boy in the garden.”
Sereya moved back.
Roemary let her hand fall. To anyone watching, she had finished helping.
“I have an appointment.”
“So did Vessik.”
The name struck harder than the touch.
Roemary saw it. She tilted her head, pleased to have found something that still worked.
“People notice when you disappoint them, darling. Even here.”
“I never agreed to take him anything.”
“Is that what we're saying?”
Sereya's tongue felt thick. The gallery was bright, the doors open. She could see the guard's reddish face beyond Roemary's shoulder, the curve of a horn against pale stone.
She could go to him.
“It's what happened.”
Roemary glanced toward the windows as though something outside had caught her attention.
“Naliese.”
Sereya stopped breathing.
It was barely a sound. A name said with the casual softness of someone remembering a favorite restaurant.
For one sick instant she expected someone to turn. To recognize it. To look from the name to her face and put back everything that had been taken apart to keep her alive.
No one moved.
The woman in the chair was folding her blue fabric.
“Such a pretty name,” Roemary said. “I hate to think of beautiful things being forgotten.”
Sereya fixed her eyes on the tiny fastening at Roemary's throat. If she looked at her face, she might do something she couldn't undo.
Her mother had called that name up the stairs once, impatient because the meal was getting cold. Sereya remembered refusing to come down until someone came to admire what she had drawn.
She couldn't remember what the drawing had been.
She remembered the voice.
“Look at me,” Roemary said softly.
Sereya did.
“I would hate for your handsome friend to be disappointed too.”
There it was. Not a promise to tell him. Not quite a promise to tell someone worse. Roemary left the choices open and let Sereya supply the faces.
She had become very good at that.
Sereya drew enough air to speak.
“I'm going to my appointment.”
For a moment Roemary's smile held without changing. Then she stepped aside.
“Of course. Don't let me keep you.”
The first step was the hardest. After that, Sereya made herself keep the same pace all the way to the entrance.
“Would you like to return to your room?” the guard asked quietly.
She almost said yes. To shut the door, pull the shutters, lie down until her heart stopped battering itself against her ribs.
Then Roemary would know exactly where she had sent her.
“The office, please.”
The guard nodded and turned with her.
Sereya kept her hands folded. She had learned young how to hide shaking fingers.
Dhomhes was coming out of the office when she reached it.
He saw her. His mouth began to curve, and she nearly looked away.
There was a whole life in that nearly. Rooms she hadn't entered. Friends she had stopped answering. Making herself less pleasant to people who might have liked her, because Roemary could always find a way to make liking her expensive.
She was tired of paying.
“Dhomhes.”
He stopped immediately.
“Can I speak to you?”
His glance moved to her hands, then back to her face.
“Yes.”
He spoke to the staff member waiting for her and opened a small sitting room beside the office. There was a table, two chairs, a neglected pitcher of water. He let Sereya choose the chair with its back to the wall.
She sat. He poured water without asking a question she would have answered out of habit.
The glass was cool enough to hurt her palm.
“Roemary?” he asked.
She nodded.
He stayed standing until she looked up at him. Then he took the other chair.
“She said a name.”
His expression didn't change, but his attention settled more closely on her.
“One she shouldn't have said?”
“One she knows frightens me.”
“Where?”
“The gallery. Quietly. There were other people there, but I don't think they heard.”
“Was your guard with you?”
“At the door. He couldn't have known.” She gripped the glass. “Please don't blame him. It sounded like nothing.”
“I won't.”
The certainty of that loosened something in her chest.
“She knows Vessik came here.”
“Yes. He contacted her when the packet failed to arrive.”
Sereya looked up.
“She told him I was coming?”
“The acknowledgment came from the address on her request. Before she gave you the packet. He let us preserve the conversation.”
“Did he know what was in it?”
“He expected a relocation form. He says he meant to forward it for approval, which is what his office normally does. He couldn't explain why it needed your personal delivery. The commander is checking what he would actually have sent on.”
“And now he's angry with me.”
“He has been told you made no such arrangement.”
“Did he believe you?”
“He was more interested in knowing why we had the packet.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That I had ordered it held.”
She rubbed her thumb along the glass. “She'll say I've made a fuss about nothing.”
“Then she can explain why she needed information she had no authority to request.”
Sereya studied him. His jacket was open at the throat, one cuff creased where she had fussed with it earlier. The sight nearly undid her.
“She said you would be disappointed.”
He went still.
“In you?”
Sereya couldn't quite make herself nod.
“Look at me a moment.”
The words caught her so sharply that he stopped. His eyes moved over her face.
“You don't have to,” he said.
She raised her head anyway. She wanted to see him choose what came next.
“I am angry with the person who frightened you. I am very glad you came to me. Those are the two things happening at present.”
A laugh escaped her, thin and unsteady.
“Only two?”
“I'm simplifying for the sake of the furniture.”
She glanced at the table. His hands were resting on it, open, but there was a tension through his forearms she hadn't noticed before.
He saw where she was looking and deliberately relaxed his fingers.
“May I?” he asked, turning one hand toward her.
She set down the glass and took it.
His palm was warm. She had expected that, and still her throat closed when his fingers settled around hers.
“I nearly walked past you,” she said. “Because she was angry that we'd had breakfast.”
His fingers closed a little more firmly around hers.
“I'm glad you didn't.”
She looked at their joined hands until she could say what she had come to tell him.
“There were people who wanted me gone,” she said at last. “Before I met her. I thought I'd got far enough away.”
Dhomhes didn't move.
“Does she know how to find them?”
“I don't know.”
He accepted the answer without pretending it was better than it was.
“If she threatens to contact anyone, tell me. Even if she makes it sound like a favor.”
“Everything sounds like a favor.”
“Then tell me those too.”
She nodded. She was frightened by how badly she wanted to keep sitting here. By how much she would miss his hand when she had to let go.
His comm vibrated against the table.
He glanced at the display. Whatever he read wiped the softness from his face.
“I need to take this.”
“Of course.”
He released her slowly and rose, moving a few steps away.
“Tell me.”
Sereya watched the back of his neck. He said very little. Asked who was hurt. Asked whether the medics were there. When he turned, she had already stood.
“Another attack?”
“Janae and Khalzin. In the rooftop garden.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“Alive,” he said before she could ask. “Both of them. They're being checked.”
Sereya gripped the back of her chair. She remembered Janae on the ship, before Kantenan. The hesitant beginnings of a friendship Sereya had let Roemary spoil.
“I have to go,” Dhomhes said.
She nodded, but when he passed her, she caught his sleeve.
He stopped.
“Be careful.”
“I will.”
“I know you're good at this. I still want you to be careful.”
His expression changed. For a moment he looked as though she had given him something he hadn't known to ask for.
He covered her hand with his.
“I heard you.”
Then he was moving, the guard coming forward to take Sereya back to her room, voices rising in the office behind them.
She kept her comm in her hand all the way upstairs.
This time she wanted him to know she would answer.