No, patience, he thought to himself. His time would come. He could wait and all things would come to him eventually. He wasn't going to fence his treasure. He didn't want money. He didn't want mercenaries or liquor or any of the things the others bought. He wanted treasure. And he would have it all.
He turned, and started as he saw someone in his room. In his room! In his private sanctum! It was the Centauri. The former Lord-General. He was standing next to the girl, touching her cheek and looking into her eyes. He was touching Rem's property! Just like a nobleman. He thought he could take anything he wanted just because he had had a title. Well not here! His title didn't mean anything here! The laws of the order promised him a fair and equal share. Oh, the others had tried to trick him out of that, and they'd pay for it later, but no one was going to take something that was rightfully his from his own sanctum.
And now he was cutting her down! How dare he? How dare he!
"Leave her alone!" he shouted, moving across the room. "She's mine."
Marrago looked at him and he drew back for a moment. It was not fear, no. He was not afraid of the man at all. He was just like any nobleman. Too weak and too reliant on his servants to stand up to a real man. No, Rem was just.... taking his stance, not being too eager and overconfident.
"She belongs to herself," Marrago was saying. "No one else."
"She's mine!"
He finished cutting through her bonds and she fell limply to the floor. He caught her effortlessly and gently lowered her. He then removed his coat and wrapped it around her.
"She's mine!" Rem moved slowly sideways and picked up the kutari beside the wall. One of his little treasures from Gorash. He'd never been allowed one of these before. He remembered touching a nobleman's sword once as a child and being flogged for it, but now he had his own sword. It was his!
Just like the girl was, and this nobleman wasn't going to take either of them from him.
He charged forward, holding up the sword and screaming. He would defend what was his. He was entitled to defend what was his.
The nobleman must have tricked him. Yes, it was a trick. Nothing else could explain how he had moved so fast, knocking the sword out of his hands. It was all a trick. Rem felt the cold touch of Marrago's kutari against his face, and the warmth of his blood trickling down his cheek.
"She's mine," he said.
"I should kill you for what you've done to her, and elsewhere. But this is a different place, and different rules apply.
"But come near her again, and I will kill you, and to hell with the consequences."
It was not fear that made Rem stammer like that. Not fear at all. It was.... a bluff. He was lulling Marrago into a false sense of security. That was it. Let the nobleman think he was helpless, and then....
It was a testament to his acting skills that he was still trembling a long time after Marrago had left with the girl.
Rem Lanas finished his garbled story and Moreil looked at him. "She's mine!" he said again. "You've got to help me get her back."
Moreil had no further time or patience for the fool. "Go," he said.
"But she's mine! You have to get her back for me!"
"I said go! Recover her yourself if you are strong enough, but trouble me no longer."
Moreil did not watch him flee. The lordling was of no concern to him any more, but this Marrago was.
It was past time the two of them had a little talk.
"You aren't dead."
"No. I am not."
"Is the sun coming up, then? I can't see. Everyone I've seen tonight is dead. Everyone. I didn't realise I'd killed so many people, but I suppose I have."
"You don't look like a warrior."
"No. I'm nobody. Not any longer. I used to be a soldier, but.... after a while I just couldn't take any more. All of them.... At first, I thought it was.... justified. It was for defence and protection, but then it became revenge, and then it was a new war and it was for defence again and then.... and then...."
"You just did not know how to stop."
"How do you know that?"
"We were the same. I heard.... pieces from the Grey Council. It started in anger and continued in pride, because we were too stubborn to admit we were wrong."
"It wasn't stubbornness. It was just.... we didn't know anything else. Good God, have all those people died for something so pathetic?"
"No. They died for understanding. We know each other better now. We understand each other."
"Are you sure you aren't dead?"
"I am not dead. It feels as if I am sometimes, but no, I am not dead."
"I came here because.... I'd heard the dead came back, and they would answer questions. I hoped they would tell me some things, tell me what I needed to know, but all they've done is haunt me. All they've done. There are so many of them, and....
"You're the only person who's said anything to me all night. The others just looked."
"That is why you came here. For understanding."
"No. For forgiveness. Why did you come here?"
"There was one whom.... I loved very much. I hoped to see him here, to tell him everything I should have said while he was alive. To share one last night with him."
"Did you?"
"Yes."
"There was one woman I was hoping to see. I think I loved her, but I was never sure. I used to wonder if it wasn't more the idea of love than love itself I had with her. I wanted someone who would want to be with me, someone who could care for me, someone who could provide a focus, an understanding of what I was fighting for. Was that love? Shouldn't love be less.... selfish?"
"Perhaps. I don't know. I know only that I wanted to spend every minute with him, every second of every minute. Was that selfish of me? I do not know."
"Nor do I. I wish I'd seen her here. Or maybe I did and she was just a face in the crowd."
"Where are you going now?"
"I don't know. Somewhere they stop talking to me, I hope. Anywhere they stop talking to me."
"You were a soldier?"
"Yes. I was."
"My.... husband was a warrior. Like you, he had fought too much and seen too much and grown tired of it. He found peace at the end of his life, as a worker. He built and he created and he gave up destruction. If you want to, you can come home with me. There is a lot to be done there. I cannot guarantee you will find peace, but it is a place to look."
"It was me who destroyed your home, did you know that? Me, and people like me."
"I do not believe you, but it does not matter. Whatever guilt you carry, justly or unjustly, you can try to work it away. Do you wish to come with me?"
"Yes, please.
"Yes, I think I would like that. Maybe then they will stop talking to me."
It had taken Dexter Smith several hours to stop shaking. In spite of what he had told Julia and Zack his first port of call was not the Edgars Building, but his apartment. Once there he had vomited everything he had eaten that day, drunk several large glasses of Narn liquor, and then vomited again.