Shadow of the Swan (Book Two of the Phoenix Legacy) (18 page)

He took her hand in his, remembering all the subtle, delicate nuances of it: ivory and velvet. And remembering the night he’d put this ring on her other hand. Then he pushed her silk black hair away from her face, watching her eyes close, the dark lashes drawing shadows across her cheeks. There would be no secrets between them. Her faith deserved enlightenment.

The second parting would come soon enough.

He saw the silver glint of tears on her cheeks and heard the soft intake of breath as their lips touched, and he wondered how he could forget the fragile texture of her mouth, why it came as a surprise that so much could be said without words.

Alexand moved with even strokes through the water, pausing to catch his breath when he reached the rim of the circular pool, looking up through the sheen of the atmobubble to the blue-black sky. The air was tropically warm; this ’bubble let more ultraviolet through than the one over the main part of the retreat. Even the plants here were tropical; Terran, most of them, but a few were Polluxian.

He took a deep breath; there was only a hint of an ache. Then he pushed away from the side of the pool, keeping the rhythm of his strokes slow, enjoying the physical freedom as he never had before the Cliff, luxuriating in the flow of warm currents against his skin. When he reached the other side, he turned and crossed back to his starting point.

Adrien was waiting for him there.

He didn’t see her until he started to launch himself across the pool again. He came to an abrupt halt and reached for the rim, hearing her laughter as the splashing died. She knelt by the pool, smiling down at him, her hair caught in a narrow chaplet, falling free over her shoulders. The rose hue of her gown cast warm lights on her face.

“I didn’t expect to see
you
up so early,” she said. “Dr. Lile won’t be happy to find you gamboling in the pool when you should be in bed.”

Alexand laughed, resting his folded arms on the rim of the pool.

“Has he complained?”

“He isn’t awake yet.”

“Then we’ll worry about that later.” He pulled himself up into a sitting position on the rim. “There’s a towel on the table over there . . .”

She went to the table and tossed the towel to him as she returned. He dried his face, then came to his feet. Her hand was ready when he swayed with the too-sudden movement. He laughed as he tied the towel around his waist.

“I guess I’m not used to the gravity level yet.”

One eyebrow came up. “Or maybe you shouldn’t be out of bed yet.”

He paused, feeling already a bittersweet regret that wasn’t yet mordant because for the moment she was still here. He leaned down to kiss her, his eyes closing. When he drew away from her, he studied her a moment, then smiled.

“I’ve gotten you all wet.”

“I’ll dry under this ’bubble in a short time.” She sighed, touching the bandages on his wrists. “Alex, how are you feeling? Really?”

He kissed her lightly to distract her from the bandages.

“I took a reading with Dr. Perralt’s biomonitor, and all systems are functioning properly.”

“Still, you should be resting.”

“Adrien, in three days I’ll be on my own again. I won’t regain my strength lying in bed.”

“No. I suppose not.” Her eyes were briefly downcast, then she looked up with a quick smile. “Get yourself dry and covered before you get a chill, and I’ll have Mariet bring some breakfast.”

Adrien took out her pocketcom and spoke into it while he gave himself a cursory drying, then pulled on a robe, and sank into one of the lounge chairs, reveling in the warmth on his sun-starved skin.

“I hope you slept again last night, Alex. I should feel guilty for keeping Dr. Lile’s patient awake so long.” She sat down on the lounge beside him, laughing softly. “But I don’t.”

“It was I who kept us both awake. I slept again; very well, in fact. Did you?”

“Not really. I couldn’t make my eyes stay closed. Haven’t you ever had a dream so lovely you didn’t want to wake up and find it gone? That’s what last night was like, except in reverse.”

He felt his smile slip away. It would all be gone soon. That awareness stood like a shadow behind their every word.

“Alexand . . .” Her fingers were light against his lips. “You’re thinking future tense. I can feel it.”

“I can’t ignore the future.”

“Neither can you do anything about it at the moment. Joy in the present tense, love. Remember? Three days. That’s a miracle.”

He smiled at her, watching the sun-glints in her hair.

“More than a miracle.”

“A Rightness. That’s what Malaki would call it.” She took a deep breath, her eyes veiled with remembrance. “He told me about the Brother. And about Saint Richard the Lamb. The Bonds showed great perception in making Rich a saint. I haven’t talked to Malaki for some time; I must go see him when I get back to—” She stopped, and it was more than the awareness of their impending separation.

The marriage. The Selasid marriage. She hadn’t once mentioned it, and it was more a shadow than the separation.

“Adrien . . .”

Her hand tightened on his and she smiled. “What a luxury to have hours and days when I never imagined having even minutes.”

The subject of the marriage was closed for now. He nodded and pulled her into his arms.

“A luxury, indeed.”

She settled comfortably into his embrace, her head on his shoulder.

“But, Alex, I won’t indulge myself to the point of depriving you of rest.” She frowned briefly, then, “Thank the God for Dr. Lile. I suppose I shouldn’t have brought him here, but you were so ill.”

“Don’t worry about that.” He felt a little uneasy. Perralt’s double identity was one thing he’d withheld from her, but only because he wanted to talk to Perralt and Ben first. He intended to tell her; he would need a line of communication with her in the future.

And there was something he intended to discuss with Erica. Why had his conditioning failed in so many areas with Adrien? They were general and nonspecific areas, to be sure, but he had been surprised at how much he could tell her before the conditioned restraints went into effect. Perhaps it was because in his mind she was so much a part of him, of his life and hopes, she was in a sense a part of the Phoenix. Rich, he knew, would have understood.

Adrien was still frowning; she seemed distracted.

“Dr. Lile would never betray you, Alex. You needn’t be concerned about that. Still, I wouldn’t have involved him if I hadn’t been so worried about you. I’m sorry I had to . . . burden him with it.”

Alexand’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“I’m afraid he’s ill. His heart, I think, but he won’t talk about it, especially now that he knows about—” She stopped. The marriage again.

“I’m sorry if he
is
ill.” And he was wondering if Ben knew about it. Probably not.”

She called up a smile. “Well, Dr. Lile is an excellent physician; he’ll take good care of himself. Perhaps you’d like to go up to the roof and see my view.”

He didn’t comment on the change of subject. “Adrien, I’d like to do whatever you’d like, and it doesn’t really matter what it is.”

She laughed, then looked toward the retreat. “Whatever we do, I’m going to see that you get some breakfast first. Here comes Mariet.”

“It isn’t as elegant as your viewpoint pavilion in Concordia,” Adrien said as they stepped out of the lift.

Your
viewpoint pavilion. It seemed so alien, both the memory and the possessive pronoun. He walked with her across the roof, absorbing the sunlight as he did her presence. When she reached the bench against the railing, she rested one knee on it, looking eastward, a smile curving her lips.

“I suppose you have to be born to views like this to love them.”

Alexand looked out over the stark vista, senses straining with the equivocal readings of distance, the clarity of the atmosphere. the strong contrasts between light and shadow, the nearness of the horizon.

It was a landscape divided. To the right, a desert whose glaring ochres were softened with a haze of green-tinged gray—the pygmy forests, also called the Marching Forests because they migrated constantly with the melting and freezing of the icecap, dependent on its precious moisture. None of the plants were more than a meter in height, many nearly microscopic. The dry gray-green faded toward the south, the yellow ground rolling toward the horizon and a range of naked hills whose origin in the upthrust of a fault block was clearly evident in this land where erosion was limited to the workings of wind and the slow grinding of extreme temperatures.

The Barrens. This was the temperate zone of Castor. Girdling the equator was the real desert, the Midhar, where no form of life survived. The furious winds were all that moved there, and the sands driven by them. Alexand knew of the Midhar only vicariously, and it was enough to adjust his senses to the Barrens now. And the icecap.

The left half of this view was a startling contrast to the right: an expanse of white vanishing over the close horizon, reflecting the sunlight in a brutal glare. Between the icecap and the Barrens was a pied joining, fingers of ice laced with patches of ochre and olive gray.

This land offered no green welcome to human beings as Pollux did. Castor was one vast, indifferent wilderness that suffered a man to survive unprotected on its surface for a matter of minutes in its temperate zones, or seconds in its polar and equatorial zones.

Yet there was beauty here. Perhaps it was because he was seeing it with Adrien. She respected this dry-hued land, and didn’t despise it because it didn’t welcome her.

“Sometimes we have auroras,” she said, looking up at the star-dusted morning sky. “Even in the daytime you can see them, but at night they’re beyond description. In the winter I’m entirely surrounded by ice, and the reflections—it’s like being immersed in a sea of color.”

He smiled, enjoying her rapt pleasure as much as the images she called up.

“I’d like to see that. Perhaps one day I will.”

She looked at him soberly. “I hope so. Alex, you look pale. Are you—”

“I’m all right.” He sat down on the bench, turning to face her when she seated herself beside him. He was feeling the draining weariness peculiar to the aftermath of illness, and the lighter gravity level only accentuated it, giving him a disconcerting sensation of lightheadedness. “I’ll rest, Adrien, but allow me a little more time to enjoy the sun before I consign my body to that bed.”

“I get the feeling you don’t like that bed.”

“Oh, it’s beautifully comfortable. Maybe that’s the problem. I’m not used to such comfort.”

“Alex, do you miss the old life?”

He gave her a crooked smile. “You mean the comfortable beds?”

“No, that’s not what I mean.”

He tilted his head back to look up into the dark sky.

“I don’t miss it, and I have no regrets, except for the pain I’ve caused others. I hope I can justify that.”

“You will,” she said flatly. “Do you think you and your father will ever come to terms again?”

He paused, then, “I don’t know. I hope so for many reasons, some of them entirely personal.”

“They say he’s changed a great deal.”

“Yes, he’s changed. I haven’t been out of touch with the old life, Adrien. Our intelligence system is excellent.” He studied the patterns in the mosaic pavement. “Do you know the Lady Olivet?”

“Yes. Only on a social plane, really, although she and your father have both been very kind to me. I met your half sister last year. Alexandra.” Adrien smiled to herself. “She’s a pretty child; she laughs so much.”

“And Justin?”

“I haven’t been to Concordia since Justin came along. Alex, Olivet is a gracious and sensitive young woman. I think she’s made your father very happy.”

He smiled at that assurance that went so directly to the real question behind his oblique inquiries.

“I’m happy for his sake, then.”

“And I’m happy for that.” Then she turned to gaze out over the arid landscape, a tension underlying her composure now. He waited silently, knowing what must come next.

“Alexand, there’s one matter both of us would prefer to ignore, but it must be dealt with.” She paused, her eyes opaque. “The Selasid marriage.”

There was no beauty in the landscape now, only a promise of death. He read contempt in her eyes, knowing it was for Karlis, read resignation, and behind it, dread. It was the dread that made his hand tighten on the railing.

She looked around at him, her hand closing over his. “Alex, don’t blame yourself for this.”

“I can’t ignore the fact that I made it possible.”

“You did what you had to do—as I must. We’re both products of the same school, burdened from infancy with obligations and taught that failure to meet them is tantamount to treason. You found it necessary to turn to a kind of treason, just as Rich did, but still, you’re acting on the imperatives of duty, and so must I. You can’t betray the Phoenix, and I can’t betray my father or the House.”

He wondered how she kept her voice so level, and wondered if he’d ever entirely understand the paradox she was. He turned his hand, enclosing hers in his.

“I know that, Adrien, but the marriage isn’t a fact yet. There’s still time.”

“Yes, and still hope. I assume the Phoenix has tried to stop it.”

“Yes, of course.”

“But with no success, and that’s understandable. Alex, Father’s desperate; Selasis has him backed to the edge. Besides, it’s unlikely I’ll be offered another scion of a Directorate House. I think I’ve succeeded in alienating all the available scions.”

“You had help with some of them.”

Her brows came up. “The Phoenix? Well, that should teach me humility. I thought I’d managed it all on my own.”

He smiled fleetingly. “You didn’t need
much
help.”

She laughed, but it faded as she turned toward the serrated horizon.

“Ironic, isn’t it? You and I are already husband and wife
legally
. The only problem is you’re also legally dead.”

His mouth tightened. “Or legally a traitor.”

She shrugged. “That detail will be taken care of when you’re resurrected, I’m sure, and when you are, the Woolf-Eliseer Contracts of Marriage should take legal precedence over . . . any subsequent contracts. Tell me, when the Phoenix was calculating means of dealing with this marriage, what did they think
I’d
do about it?”