Context (8 page)

But her only answer was a gasp.

‘Ah...’

She shuddered, eyes already
growing opaque.

Thanatotrope.

Suicide implant. Self-immolation
by conscious decision: undercover operatives used them, choosing death over
torture.

‘Elva! No—’

The Seer spun away, silver
highlights sliding across the helm-throne’s polished dome.

I SHOULD NOT HAVE REVEALED SO
MUCH.

Blue lightning coruscated
angrily.

MY SCANFIELDS CAN’T DETECT— BUT
IT’S TOO LATE NOW.

Elva’s body was growing slack and
heavy in Tom’s arm, her eyes half-lidded as though sleep was upon her.

‘
My
love
. . .’
Shaking, she reached out, touched Tom’s mouth with a gentle fingertip. ‘...
always

The most important words he had
ever heard: they changed his life in an instant.

I’M SORRY
...

‘Forever,’ he said, meaning it.

And kissed her soft lips as she
died.

~ * ~

5

NULAPEIRON
AD 3418

Pale,
triangular face. Green eyes, dark with concern.

‘Go away.’ His voice was a
distant grey whisper.

Her soft touch against his cheek.

Elva, dying...

‘I think you should leave’—the
red-haired medic, Xyenquil—‘for now, Mistress Nirilya.’

Vassals stood statue-like against
the plain polished wall, staring straight ahead.

‘He needs me.’

Tom’s face was like stone when he
turned to look at her: ‘Go away. Now.’

A
faux-comic moment: in the med hall’s main corridor, a long bundle slipped from
the lev-pallet as it bucked—‘Watch out!’—but one of the attendants caught the
thing just in time: Elva’s corpse, bound in russet cloth.

‘Where are they taking her?’ Tom
asked.

‘Sir—’

‘I’m her liege Lord.’

Xyenquil sighed. ‘For autopsy. By
our laws, we can— Lord Corcorigan, it would be better if we have your
authorization.’

Tom stared at him for a long
moment.

Then, mechanically: ‘Proceed.’

His thumb ring sparked, recording
the agreement.

Back
in the apartment, he looked inside the chamber which had been readied for his
rehabilitation. The laminar-flow running pad, the adjustable slope of the
carefully designed climbing wall, with its jokey gargoyle-featured
protuberances.

Prepared to Elva’s
specifications. Who else could know him so well?

‘Elva ...I’m sorry.’ Too stunned
to sob, he stood with tears tracking down his face, making no attempt to brush
them away. ‘Nirilya was... a mistake.’

He gasped, and leaned against the
doorway’s arch, feeling his legs about to give way.

Please come back.

But no-one knew better than he
the futility of prayers to Fate.

There
was no sleep that night.

Instead, he sat facing Elva’s
chair—the one she had used most often over the past few days—with glowglimmers
tuned almost to pitch darkness, wrapped in deep shadows, remembering the past,
picking over every mistake he had made.

Too many...

He and Elva had never even
kissed, until the moment of her death. There were so many times he could have
spoken up, could have done things differently. So often, he had seen liege
Lords abuse their privileges ...but he had broken so many other precedents, so
many other rules. Surely he could have managed this properly. And their
backgrounds, his and Elva’s, had been the same.

As far as he knew.

‘It was always Litha who was the
important one.’

It was what she had said, before
death came to shut her down at her own command.

Who is Litha? Or who was she?

Someone that important to Elva,
someone she would mention in her final breath ...And Tom had no idea who Litha
might be.

Elva. There‘s so much I need to
ask you.

But death is the final stripper
of illusions. It cuts away the pleasant images we use to cocoon ourselves
during the everyday, the insulating fluff of social interactions and light-hearted
entertainments, leaving bare the starkest of realities: that every life must
end, and in its wake leave survivors to contemplate their loved one’s passing,
the inevitability of their own extinction.

And worse: that even initial
grief-heat passes, slowly cooling as the survivors’ energies begin to ebb,
leaving stunned acceptance in its wake, and unwiped tears which grow as cold as
death.

There
had been a brother: Odom Strelsthorm, whose wedding Tom had attended, four
Standard Years ago. But Odom and his wife Trilina would be impossible to find—even
by courier—given the conditions in Gelmethri Syektor.

It had taken Tom and Elva four
tendays to reach the Grand’aume; and it had taken all of Elva’s skills to make
the arrangements, to get them here. Yet she had not once complained.

Damn it all to Chaos...

Gritty-eyed, Tom waved open a
series of displays and traced through news-holos, using his noble-house access
rights—valid even here, in this realm which boasted no Lords or Ladies of its
own—to trace the revolution’s path. Wondering if he could search out the family
Strelsthorm; knowing it was impossible.

It was not just an academic
exercise. For most of the four SY since Elva’s brother had married, Tom had
lived in exile, far from the revolution which suddenly seemed as arbitrary and
meaningless as the cruel and overbearing system it was meant to replace.

Tom wiped his face, tried to
focus on the holo reports.

Half-melted corpses;
smoke-blackened tunnels. ‘Sources implicating the White Glowclusters have
disappeared in mysterious
...’