“Why should they bother?” Magda asked, frowning. “Surely the tariff you pay will cancel out the tariff you collect!”
“Perhaps, my lady, but the taxes your own merchants generate can be very impressive—especially since the money they will bring in will come from your neighbors. Besides, you’ll benefit from their goods.”
“I have benefited well enough already.” Magda caught Dirk’s good arm, smiling into his eyes. Dirk returned the smile, his face softening amazingly.
Cort watched them with envy, then turned to Gar with sudden hope. “Do you suppose the Fair Folk will stay in this valley a while?”
“They have to make sure none of the bosses tries to come back,” Gar mused. “Yes, I’m sure she’ll stay—or rather, they will, at least for this one night.”
Cort turned to bow to Magda. “By your leave, my lady, may I be excused?”
“I don’t think she heard you,” Gar said with a smile. “Yes, by all means, go.”
CHAPTER 20
That evening, Magda’s people celebrated wildly inside their town. She herself held aloof from the drinking and dancing, though, and assigned half her army to stay sober, some to patrol the walls, some to rebuild the gates. Magda walked the battlements to make it clear she was asking no more of them than she was willing to do herself—and if Dirk limped beside her, why, surely that only set all the better an example for her soldiers.
Outside the walls, Cort walked with Desiree between the castle and the encampment of the Fair Folk, their pavilions lighting the night like glowing jewels, the sounds of their merrymaking faint but entrancing.
“What a foolish custom!” Desiree exclaimed. “Must man and woman stay together even if they tire of one another?”
Cort looked up at her sharply. “Will you tire of me so soon, then?”
Her face softened, and she reached out to caress his cheek. “Not soon, my darling, and perhaps not at all—but my people say that life is long, and love is short.”
“My people dream of love that lasts until death parts the two,” Cort countered, “and perhaps after—but maybe that’s because once man and woman really fall in love, they expect to have children.”
“Ah! Well, if everyone were to have children, that might be different,” Desiree allowed.
“You don’t wish to, then?” Cort braced himself for a life without offspring.
“Oh, in silly, childish dreams,” Desiree confided. “I have always yearned to have a child, perhaps two, one of each kind…”
“Kind?” Cort frowned.
“One boy and one girl. But the grown folk assured me that it was only a childish fantasy, and I would outgrow it.”
Cort felt a flood of relief, and a huge stock of tenderness washed in its wake. He stopped and held her hands, looking into her eyes. “You might not have to outgrow it.”
“Oh, but I would,” Desiree said, “for our hill, and every other, has a computer—think of it as a guardian spirit—that advises us. It speaks to us from a console—a little table with buttons—and among the many things it tells us is how many people can live in the hill without hunger or thirst. Simply put, no one can have a baby—unless someone else dies, and surely it is terribly selfish to have more than one, when so many want them!”
“I could bring in extra food and water,” Cort offered.
Desiree tilted her head, smiling merrily. “The duke might countenance that. He seems seized with a sudden desire to open the hill to contact with you Milesians—thank our lucky stars!”
“Thank them indeed,” Cort breathed, unable to believe how her touch still seemed to make him burn with desire.
“But other women tell me that the little creatures can be quite demanding,” Desiree told him, “indeed; that they can wear a woman out so that she even loses interest in lovemaking! Many who want babies sorely and have them, love them for a few months, then wish just as sorely that they had never seen them!”
Cort stared in horror. “Surely not! Children are the second greatest blessing known to Man!”
“What is the first?” Desiree asked, then saw the answering look in his eyes and blushed. “Well, if Man thinks children are so great a blessing, he can help to rear them, and not only in playing with them, but in walking the floor with them and arguing with other parents whose children they anger, and feeding them when all they can do with food is make messes, and…” She paused for breath, then summarized, “…and all of that!”
“Man can,” Cort said thoughtfully. “Man will, if we’re lucky enough to have them.”
“I’m sure the duke would also say that you must rear them in such a fashion that after they were grown, they would go outside the dome to make their ways in the world, so that they did not burden the resources of the hill—and it is you who would have to do that, for I know nothing of the outside world!”
“Yes, that part would fall to me,” Cort agreed. Desiree frowned. “You are a most strange man, to agree so readily.”
“If I didn’t agree readily, you should be suspicious if I agreed at all,” Cort countered, “for how much is agreement about children worth, if you have to argue a person into it? If they do anything, they must do it wholeheartedly, not grudgingly.”
“I can see some truth in that,” Desiree said slowly.
“The world is changing, my love,” Cort said softly. “It will be a better world, but in many ways, it will be a world we don’t know. We will have to change with it, you and I.”
“Some things are hard to change,” Desiree countered. “Remember that among my people, coupling rarely lasts longer than a few months, though a bonding of three or four years is not unheard of. In rare, very rare, cases, two Fair Folk bond for life—but because of this, we have none of your quaint wedding ceremonies, though parties celebrating the beginning of a pairing are common.”
“Can we plan such a party, then?” Cort asked her.
Desiree gazed at him for a moment, then gave him a sultry smile and said, “A week ago, I taught you how to make love to a fairy. How well do you remember it?”
Cort gave her a sizzling smile of his own and answered, “Try me.”
“Twill,” she said, “and if you prove to have learned your lessons well enough, you may ask me again.”
Three hours later, he did. She gasped, “Yes!”
Atop the castle wall, strolling slowly between sentries, Dirk and Magda looked down on the jewel camp of the Fair Folk and talked.
“When you rode away with your soldiers,” Magda told him, “I felt you had deserted me, that I would never see you again.”
“You don’t know how badly I wanted to stay!”
“I think I might.” Magda smiled into his eyes. “At least, I hope that I do.”
Dirk smiled slowly, caressing her hand. “It wasn’t just duty that took me away. I knew that I was a liability to you—that if I stayed, I’d bring the wrath of the Hawk Company upon you. And I was right, though I didn’t know the real reasons.”
“That duty is satisfied now,” she reminded him, “and the danger past.”
“Yes,” Dirk agreed. “You shouldn’t be in danger from me anymore.”
“I hope that I am,” she murmured.
Dirk smiled slowly. “If I endanger your heart, the more lucky I—but I have to tell you the other reason that I rode away: that I knew I had no chance to court you.”
“Why ever should you think that?” she breathed, leaning closer to him.