She moved over in that eternal primate desire to touch. "I don't want to die in silence."
He tilted his head up to stare into the stygian darkness and braced his head on the back of the pipe. "I guess I've always been alone. Except for once. I had a woman. A slave I freed."
"What happened to her, Tuff?" She snuggled closer, enfolding his arm in hers.
"Stolen away from me along with my son." His voice soured.
"She's Skyla?"
"No. Skyla was my… my friend, but ……
"But what?" At his silence she added, "I think, considering the circumstances, you can tell me. We aren't getting out of this one alive. "
"But I never knew how much I'd come to love her." He started to curse the wistful tone in his voice and stopped. In the name of the Pus Rotted Gods, what difference did it make? "I never told her. Never even allowed myself to… to admit it. Since I've been here, it's all come clear."
"What's she like?" Kaylla shifted, laying her head on his shoulder.
"Tall, her hair is pale blonde." He smiled in the darkness, enjoying a deep-seated warmth. "Her eyes are an incredible blue. She's the most beautiful woman in all Free Space. There's a hard humor in her manner-a cynicism I never understood until recently. She's intelligent, smarter than I am, it seems. And when she jokes, a devilish light fills those magnificent eyes.
He shook his head. "Ah, Kaylla, the things I should have done for her."
He put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close, feeling her body warm and reassuring against his. "Tuff, you saved my life again — or tried to. Why?" "Justice," he whispered, thinking of Koree. "A small slice of ustice — and perhaps retribution. Atonement would be a better world." "Atonement for what?"
"I am not. " He bit off his confession. No, not here. Not in the last hours of life. She deserves a little peace. Instead he said, "During my life as a soldier, I was responsible for some vile things — things I have only barely begun to understand. Atonement is for those who have sinned." He stared emptily into the darkness. "Koree was right. So many have so much to pay for. I more than any other. You wondered about my nightmares? So much blood stains my hands… my conscience, I… I was a living monster, God's tool of injustice." And the Praetor's!
He shut his eyes, images of the past rising from the depths of his mind, people hurting, scared, dying. Their terror seeped in with the blackness. Like them, Staffa saw himself being bonded by the collar and herded into a transport to be sold here or there — never to see a wife or son again. The same pain he now lived.
She shrugged, moving against his shoulder. "No person can take the blame for all the misery and suffering. That's God's realm. Blame it on the times in which we live. Science has extended our lives. Existence is no longer short and sweet. Rulers become bored through time and seek something new — too often they find amusement in terror. My husband and I, we fought that on Maika. We enjoyed a shining brief instant of knowledge and art and freedom before the Star Butcher and the Emperor drowned it in blood."
Staffa squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced, thankful for the cloaking blackness.
"I can die proud at least," she told him. "I never sold myself. When they took me, they did it after beating me senseless. When I could, I fought back and — on the whole—. it was a good fight. I made life a little easier for some, like Peebal. and you."
"Stop it!" Staffa cried, eyes shut tight, guilt and shame spreading through him in a flood he couldn't control. "Keep me out of this." He thrust her away and buried his head in his hands. "Don't shame me anymore, Kaylla!"
Her hand — callused and rough — felt warm on his shoulder. "Shhhh!" she whispered.
He sensed it as she shook her head. "Men. Rotted Gods, what am I saying?
I mean people, all people, condemn themselves for faults when they're about to die." She resettled, crossing her legs, grabbing up his hand. "Remember the Temple sewer? I was dead. A few minutes left before I would have fainted. You pulled that girl's body free and spared me. You have a good side too Tuff. No matter what you've done."
Silence.
"Why did you really kill Brots?"
"Because of what he did to you. Because I would free you from this hell and restore you to power on Maika."
She ran her hand up and down his arm, squeezing in appreciation. "Thank you Tuff. Tell me, does that mean you're in love with me?"
He knitted his ragged emotions together. "Yes, I have come to love you. I would make you happy if I had to come with a fleet and blast this worid apart to do so."
"And your Skyla?"
"My Skyla, I would. make my wife." Why did I never know before? "You, I would make my friend. Ask you to forgive. though it be impossible in the end."
She squeezed his arm again and leaned forward to kiss him lightly on the lips. "Thanks, Tuff. I guess I don't need to point out that your use of subjunctive is hardly necessary. From here, it looks like the end is pretty close, hence there is no impossibility about it. You're my friend forever. Forgive? What for? You've always been a man of honor and courage as long as I've known you."
Honor? Courage? If you only knew.
He couldn't push her away when she leaned against him. Exhausted and numb, he hunched in the dark and stared into infinity.
After several minutes she asked, "What happened that they made you a slave, Tuff?"
"I was robbed on the street and killed two 'citizens' in the process." Was it so long ago?
"You're kidding? Where?"
"Here."
She turned and he could feel her stare in the blackness. "Came to turn the whores in the Temple?"
He remembered the brag he'd made to the holo recorder in his quarters in the far off Itreatic Asteroids. Honesty? He owed her that. It soothed his soul. "I probably would have." An image formed of the pale girl he'd pulled from the sewer. "But mostly, I came to leam, to understand more about life — and to catch a vessel to Rega and then make my way to Targa to look for my son among the Seddi Priests."
"A scholar in search of trust and a son? And you found slavery. Come up with any answers yet, Tuff?"
"Some. Enough to leave me more confused than ever. Every time I think I find a truth, something comes along to turn that foundation to sand. As long as I was arrogant and perfect, I could pick and choose. Now, I can't define right… or justice… or anything." He barked an angry laugh. "And I have less idea of who I am — or what I am — than when I started. At least, back then, I had a myth to cling to, a facade I could accept as being myself."
"And now?"
"I'm a nameless slave — a convicted madman with a collar — dying in a buried pipe in the middle of the Etarian desert."
"Well, you won't die alone."
"No," he grinned aimlessly into the dark. "No, if I've done nothing else, I won't die alone."
They sat silent, lost in their thoughts. Staffa, bone weary, drifted off to sleep and the dream.
They came, easing out of the blackness. Mangled specters, they floated in gruesome death as they twisted in blood-crystallized vapor. Some screamed until their voices matched his memories. Some stood and stared, among them children with fear-glazed eyes. They awaited their deaths at his hands, lips pinched in pale faces. Women cursed him as they died, raped, bleeding, abused. Fists clenched as dam-
nation lanced from their bloody gazes. Through it all, Chrysla watched him
with hollow yellow eyes.
He writhed and started awake to pant in the cool blackness. The air had grown bitter and stale in their cramped pipe tomb.
A slight vibration shivered up through his buttocks and back. He blinked, feeling how much his ribs expanded with each breath. Kaylla's chest moved in long quick breaths next to his. A soft rasping could be felt through the sand.