“As you say,” speaking past the tension in his jaw, “nothing came of it.”
“Still,” Abacha said, “it ended happily, yes?” He gave an appreciative smack of his lips. “Lady Terza Chen! How perfect for you! You’re a lucky man, you know it?”
“Yes,” Martinez said. “I’ve been told.” He reached for his drink, and a cool frumenty fire poured down his throat.
Ari Abacha was still in a contemplative mood. “You and Caroline Sula,” he mused. “Who’d have thought that you’d become so famous? You have to wonder how such a thing could happen.”
“War,” Martinez said into his glass. “All it took was war.”
A cold wind was blustering around the High City, carrying with it the smell of rain, so Martinez took a cab from the Commandery to the Shelley Palace, where he would join Roland and Walpurga for dinner. He was spending the day without Terza, who was joining her parents on the ride to the skyhook, and wouldn’t be back till late.
This was the day fixed for the Convocation’s evacuation. Though no announcement had been made and there were no reports in the media, all the High City seemed a part of the secret. The Boulevard of the Praxis was filled with trucks taking household goods into storage, and several of the larger palaces were being shuttered. Another element that made up so much of the capital’s distinctive style was abandoning Zanshaa, and no one knew what would come, with the Naxids, to take its place.
Shutters weren’t going up on the Shelley Palace yet, but it was only a matter of days before they would. Personal possessions were being packed, to be shipped up the skyhook and received aboard theEnsenada, the Martinez family yacht, to be carried to Laredo along with the family. They would leave as soon as Martinez brought his honeymoon to an end by leaving for his appointment with Michi Chen’s squadron. Martinez supposed it was nice of them to wait, but he thought it was asking a lot of Terza to endure three months’ daily exposure to Roland, Walpurga, and PJ.
Daffodilwould be ready in four days, which meant Martinez’s marriage would be seven days old before he and Terza were parted, certainly for many months, possibly a year or more. Conceivably forever, if things went wrong.
The first days of marriage had been tranquiclass="underline" the serenity that seemed to surround Terza had embraced Martinez in its calm, scented arms. He and Terza spent most of their time in the hotel suite, having their meals brought in, and aside from chance encounters on their short walks they saw no one.
They opened their wedding presents. Martinez managed to conceal his shock when the Guraware vases were unwrapped.She hates me, he thought, in sudden desolation.
He sent the vases straight into storage, where he hoped they would remain forever.
They sent thanks to wedding guests. Fresh-cut flowers had been sent to the room every day, and Terza arranged them into gorgeous displays that radiated color and scent in every corner of the apartment. Thankfully she never remembered Sula’s gift, and Martinez never had to look at Terza’s flowers arranged in Sula’s porcelain.
Terza and Martinez discovered a mutual liking for the plays of Koskinen: Terza enjoyed the sophisticated portrayals, and Martinez the cynical epigrams. They called upThe Sweethearts Divided onto the parlor’s video wall and watched it with great pleasure.
Martinez missed the intensity he’d shared with Sula, the way their minds had seemed to leap suddenly into the same channel, the intense, often unspoken mental collaboration they’d shared when they devised the plan for the evacuation, or even—the minds leaping across star systems—when they’d created a new system of tactics.
Terza was all tranquillity and excellence—self-possessed, considerate, alert to his wishes, efficiently arranging their time together. But there was an unearthly quality to this tranquillity, and sometimes Martinez suspected he was watching a performance, a brilliant performance of the highest order, and he wondered what it concealed.
Martinez found something of an answer when he watched Terza play her harp. As her fingers drew music from the strings the habitual calm and serenity were replaced by an intensity that bordered on ferocity—Here is fire.Martinez was intrigued.Here is passion. He saw her breathe with the music; he saw the determined glitter in her eye, the throb of the pulse in her throat. Her engagement with the music was total, and the sight of it a revelation.
Martinez tried to carry the music with them to bed, to kindle the same passion there, in the bower she filled with rainbows of flowers. He flattered himself that he was successful. In the music of limbs and hearts Terza soon found her rhythm. Her trained musician’s fingers, sensitive already to nuance, learned to caress him and draw forth any timbre she desired, piano to fortissimo. She was not shy. In between moments of love there was a sweetness to her that he found touching.
But somehow his time with Terza failed to equal other, recent experience. With Sula the play of love had been more brilliant, more brittle, its peak a moment of realization, a knowledge of self and other and the whole blazing, brilliant universe beyond. In Sula he found the confirmation of his own existence, the answer to every metaphysical quest.
Martinez failed to find this with Terza, and furthermore he knew perfectly well that it wasn’t Terza’s fault. At a loss for any other options, he strove simply to please her, and it pleased her to be pleased.
The problem, Martinez thought as he paid the cab, was that he simply didn’t know on what footing the marriage stood. He couldn’t be certain if it was a business arrangement, a piece of practical politics, a folly, or a farce. He couldn’t tell if he and Terza were a man and woman bought and sold, or simply two inexperienced people trying to make the best of what fate had handed them, aware that at any moment fate could declare the whole arrangement nothing more than a joke.
Martinez opened the door to the Shelley Palace and saw PJ standing irresolute in the hall, and he thought, at least my marriage isn’tthat.
“Oh,” PJ said, his eyes widening. “I was thinking of, um…”
“Taking a walk?” Martinez finished. “You don’t want to. It’ll rain soon.”
“Ah.” PJ’s long face was glum. “I suppose I should have looked.” He returned his walking stick to the rack.
One of the maidservants arrived to take Martinez’s uniform cap. “Shall I tell Lady Walpurga you’ve arrived?” she asked.
“Not just yet,” PJ said, and turned to Martinez. “Let me give you a drink. Take the chill off.”
“Why not?”
Martinez followed PJ into the south parlor, where he saw a glass already set out on a table, the sign that this was not PJ’s first drink of the day.
“Terza’s well, I hope?” PJ asked as he made a swoop for the mig brandy.
“She’s very well, thank you.”
“Would you like some of this,” holding up the brandy, “or…”
“That will be fine, thanks.”
They clinked glasses. Rain began to spatter the broad windows, and outside Martinez saw people leaning into the downpour and sprinting to their destinations.
PJ cleared his throat. “I thought I should let you know,” he said, “that I’ve decided to stay.”
“Stay?” Martinez repeated. “You mean on Zanshaa?”
“Yes. I’ve spoken to Lord Pierre and, ah—well, I’ll be staying here to look after Ngeni interests while everyone’s away.”
Martinez paused with the brandy partway to his lips, then lowered the glass. “Have you thought this out?” he asked.
PJ gazed at Martinez with his sad brown eyes. “Yes, of course. My marriage to Walpurga is…” He shrugged. “Well, it’s an embarrassment, why not admit it? This way Walpurga and I can part and…” Again he shrugged. “And no one can criticize, you see?”