Halfway through the morning, Tamaro came down the path toward her.
“I’m still here,” she said. “Just the one of me.”
“I brought you some loaves.”
“Why? Do you think you can stupefy me with wormbane, and then do what you like?”
Tamaro looked every bit as hurt by this suggestion as if it had come out of nowhere, a gratuitous slur against an innocent man. He said, “If I really were the kind of monster who’d treat you that way, don’t you think it would have happened without warning, a long time ago?”
“You were probably just worried that it might affect the children, but now you’re willing to take that risk.”
He stopped a few strides from Tamara and tossed the loaves on the ground in front of her. “And you’re willing to risk them being fatherless?”
“That makes no difference to me,” Tamara replied coolly. “I won’t be here to deal with it. And why should it bother me if my children despise you? I doubt you’d go so far as to kill them out of spite—you’d be much too afraid of Erminio to do that. You’ll just get out of the way and let him raise his grandchildren.”
“You should hear yourself,” Tamaro said sadly. It was surreal just how sincerely he clung to his right to express disappointment in her.
“It was his plan though, wasn’t it?” Tamara needled him. “You just spluttered with helpless indignation, day after day, but he was the one who goaded you into this heroic rescue of the family’s legacy.”
“Neither of us wanted to do this,” Tamaro said. “It’s no one else’s fault that you wouldn’t listen to reason.”
“So that’s what this is about? Reason?”
“You could have found an old man to take your place,” Tamaro insisted. “Can you name one benefit that the Gnat would not have been able to bring us, if you’d done that?”
“Who is this mysterious ‘us’?” Tamara wondered. “I hear the word a lot from you, but whatever the usual rules of grammar might imply I never actually seem to be a part of it.”
“If that’s true, it’s because you cut yourself out.”
“Ah, my fault again.”
Tamaro tipped his head in agreement, not so much oblivious to her sarcasm as indifferent.
“Am I even a person to you any more?” she asked.
“I’ve never stopped loving you for one moment,” he replied.
“Really? Me, or the children?”
Tamaro scowled. “You want me to choose?”
“No. I just want you to separate the two.”
“Why?”
“Because if you can’t,” she said, “we might as well be animals. Just bundles of reproductive instincts.”
Tamaro contemplated this claim. “And if I were just a friend, a neighbor, what would you feel for me? If I weren’t destined to raise your children, would you ever have cared if I lived or died?”
“Prior to this obnoxious stunt,” she said, “I’m sure I wouldn’t have tried to turn you into worm feed just because that’s nature’s plan for you in the long run.”
“So if I try to stop you risking your life, you equate that with murder?”
“Not at all,” Tamara said. “I don’t blame you for wanting to dissuade me from flying on the Gnat. If our places had been swapped, I probably would have argued just as hard for you to stay. It’s only what you’re doing now that amounts to murder.”
Tamaro was silent for a lapse. Then he said, “How many years do you think you would have waited? If not for the scythe in our bed, are you telling me you were never as likely to have woken me in the night as I was you?”
“I don’t know,” Tamara replied truthfully. “But once I found the Object, I would never have let you take the scythe away until I’d made that trip.”
He spread his arms. “So what now?”
“Let me leave.”
“I don’t have the key,” Tamaro declared. “I couldn’t open the door if I wanted to.”
“I don’t believe that. Either you have a key, or you have some way to summon Erminio.”
“Believe what you like.”
Tamara said, “If there’s no trust left between us, we should just part. If you want me to tell all your friends that I’m to blame for the separation, I’ll do that.”
Tamaro was offended. “You think I’m clinging to you out of pride? Or worse than that: I’m just fretting about what people will say?”
“No,” she conceded. “I think you’re worried about feeding your children. Which is why I’m willing to sign over the entitlement to you.”
Tamaro stared at her. It was the first time she’d seen him truly shocked since the whole thing had begun.
“Why would I believe that?” he said. “Why would you honor an agreement like that?”
“Signed and witnessed, what choice would I have? Fetch as many of our neighbors as you like and I’ll sign the transfer in front of them.”
“But then what would you do for your own children?”
Tamara said, “I’d find a widower with an entitlement of his own. But I know, there’s no guarantee of that. So I’d have to be ready to go the way of men.”
She could see him thinking it over. That in itself gave her hope: if he’d had no way to release her, what point would there have been in weighing up the pros and cons?
“You know I’m prepared to risk death,” she said. “If you didn’t believe that, we would never have ended up in this standoff.”
Her words seemed to push him toward a decision, but not in the direction she’d been hoping. “Why should I take the entitlement away from my own family?” Tamaro demanded angrily. “Even if you deny me the chance to be the father of your children, they’ll still be my own mother’s flesh.”
Oh, the mother thing again. If only Erminia had had the foresight to leave a few written instructions for her mama-smitten son.
Tamara was tired. She bent down and picked up one of the loaves. “All right, then. I’ll give you an easier decision. It’s better that I stay hungry, but I can only hold out if we finish this now.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m sick of fighting you,” she said wearily. “This isn’t what I wanted, but I have no other choice left.”
Tamaro stood motionless, confused. “You’re serious? You’re ready right now?”
“My body’s been ready for days,” she declared. “I keep waking in the night, thinking you’re beside me.” She gazed at him imploringly. “Can’t we make peace, for this? Can’t you show some mercy and let me feel loved at the end?”
Tamaro lowered his gaze, ashamed. “I’m sorry I’ve been so hard on you,” he said. “I never wanted it to be like that.”
When he looked up again Tamara buzzed happily. She threw the loaf away and gestured to him to approach.
She forced herself to wait until he was a little closer than arm’s reach, lest he slip away and lead her on a chase she might be too famished to win. But before he could embrace her, she grabbed him by the neck and forced his body around. Then she kicked his legs from under him, and knelt forward, pinning him face-down on the ground.
His rear eyes stared up at her angrily. She put a hand over them and sprouted two more arms; he’d already extruded an extra pair himself in the hope of struggling free, but they were short and feeble, of little more than nuisance value.
“Where’s the key?” she asked him softly. Tamaro didn’t answer. “Wherever it is, I’m going to find it.” She ran her new hands over his body, starting just below his tympanum, keeping her fingertips sharp and sensitive as she searched for the tell-tale crease of a pocket.
Touching his skin made the scent of his body stronger than she’d known it for years, forcing her back to memories of the two of them wrestling as children. She’d never hesitated to take advantage of her size to overpower him then, though when she’d done it in anger and hurt him it had always left her ashamed. But she couldn’t afford to be sentimental now. He wasn’t her co any more, he was just her jailer, with a secret she needed if she wanted to live.