The Aeolian Harp ~ Chapter 7
Months passed.
Dominique wasn't sure if she was supposed to consider her time in Byzantium substantial or not. There had been a time where she would never stay in one place for long, but that had been back when there was always business in the next town over, or trouble in the current one that she didn't want to face. Compared to Alexandra, compared to the other citizens, she was as fleeting as frost on the dunes in the morning.
She went to the library every day. Sometimes, she was only there for a few hours; sometimes she would fall into the same rhythm as the machine and it would be late, very late, before she made it home that night.
It was a different kind of work than what she was used to. There was no end to it, no point where she could say she had accomplished something. Never anything definite to show at the end of the day. But there was a sense of slow building towards some goal. The way, she thought, an architect might have felt as he watched his monument constructed.
Perhaps it was that very feeling that kept her content. The perpetual reminder of something always on the horizon kept her from growing bored. There was no promise that anything would happen, but no guarantee that nothing would.
One day, she knew, she would grow tired of it. She wasn't sure what she would do then, and she didn't think about it much. That day hadn't come.
She did not think about Legato much. Weeks would go by when he didn't cross her mind at all, but then, all at once, he would. He stomach would knot, and she would feel her legs already tensing as if to run. To leave Byzantium behind, and not stop until she found him again. Then she would remind herself, as long as she was here, he knew where she was if he needed her. That helped a little, but not much. It wasn't a thought she wanted to dwell on. It was better to forget him entirely, to know, once and for all, that she would never see him again.
Still, she couldn't do that. Perhaps if she had wanted to, she could have reasoned it out with herself. She could have made herself understand. But she didn't want to, not yet. She wanted to hold him a little longer, until the pain became too much.
Sometimes she worried that she was working only to dull her senses, to pass a long hour. She almost never took out a copy of a finished manuscript out from the library. Only when Alexandra insisted would she borrow something short, and read it all at once, over the course of a night or two, like she was choking down a mouthful of some bitter medicine.
What she liked more was to read the single pages that poured out of the machine in the back of the library. They permitted her only a glimpse, a taste, upon which she could build a world to her specifications. She caught glimpses of the planet they had left to come here, sometimes only brief ones, like what you saw of a dark room when lightning flashed outside. But everything looked better when she saw it for only a moment.
Autumn didn't exist in the desert. No significant change in temperature or weather marked the new season, but one morning the suns seemed to rise much later, and into a much grayer sky and Dominique knew that two months of unenthusiastic winter had begun.
It was already close to dark when she left the library that evening. Alexandra had stayed to finish binding a newly discovered volume, and she had sent Dominique ahead to start dinner.
She had never known much about cooking before coming to Byzantium, and she'd never had much interest in learning, either. But she was glad Alexandra trusted her enough to ask. It was as if she knew that Dominique would never be able to settle into this life unless she was thrust into it headlong. She would have to take the good with the bad, because she there was still enough of the outlaw in her that she didn't believe in any deal that seemed too good to be true. She still remembered how to get out while the getting was good.
There was a car parked out on the dunes near Alexandra's cottage.
Dominique noticed it from a ways off. It was a smooth black four-door sedan, long as a shadow in the setting sun. She had never seen it around town before, and she kept a cautious eye on it as she knelt in the shelter of the livery, hiked up her black skirt, and drew her pistol from the holster at her thigh.
She had never had any intention of turning the gun in to the sheriff, and Alexandra had always known that. As long as Dominique kept it out of sight, she pretended she didn't notice it in the house.
Dominique held the gun at her hip, cocked but out of sight. The sedan didn't move. The dark windows were nearly opaque in the fading light, but she was certain she could see a silhouette in the driver's seat. She reached up, touching the edge of the silk cloth that covered her right eye, but didn't pull it away.
There was something missing here. She didn't feel nervous, not like she would have in the moments leading up to a battle.
When she came to the top of the dune that overlooked Alexandra's cottage, she glanced down towards the house. It wasn't until then that she felt her heart began to beat faster. Now she was afraid, she thought, but it was not something that would settle with the gunsmoke.
She didn't put her gun away as she came down the dune. She tried to make it look like she wasn't hurrying.
Legato did not glance up as she came near. He didn't rise from the porch swing to meet her. His head was bent, blue hair a curtain in front of his face. All his attention focused on Alexandra's little black cat, which had curled up in his lap, purring like a car with a bad muffler.
"What is it now?" Dominique demanded, but she knew she wasn't fooling anyone. There was no real anger in the words, no real fight left in her at all.
Legato looked up. His yellow eyes swam over her ruffled white blouse, snug black pencil skirt, the up-do she had bundled her hair into to keep it out of her face while she worked. The cloth wrapped over her right eye, softer and stranger than the contraption of leather and steel that had once never left the spot.
He'd never seen her like this, she thought, and she felt suddenly awkward. As if he had come upon her in lace lingerie, or handcuffs and leather.
"I just left work," she said. She knew her voice was too loud.
"Does the job suit you?" Legato asked mildly.
Dominique looked fiercely away. "Come on, Gato. I'll feed you."
At the promise of dinner, the cat hopped out of Legato's lap and strutted inside. Dominique followed him, without looking back to see if Legato was behind her. She knew he was, though. No, she couldn't get rid of him that easily. Ignoring him had never worked before.
He stood in the parlor while she set out a bowl of food for the ca; he didn't seem to know how out of place he was. There was only so long that she could clatter the dishes convincingly before she had to face him again.
"I'm afraid I've displeased you," he said as Dominique stepped into the parlor to meet him.
"I just want to know what you want."
"I don't want anything, Dominique."
"Then why are you here?"
Legato's expression soured. It was a faint shift, but she noticed it.
"I don't know," he said.
"How can you not know? Nobody ever does anything without a reason. Especially you. You sent me here because you needed something from me. But I got the last laugh, Legato. Because I'm happy here. And I'm not about to let you take it away from me without a damn good reason."
Legato didn't answer right away. In the silence that followed, the Aeolian harp in the window began to chirp tunelessly.
"I can't stand that thing!" Dominique cried suddenly. She swept past Legato and threw back the curtains. Her hands worked fast, so she wouldn't have to know if they were shaking. He was still watching her; she could feel his presence like a hot wind at her back. She had almost forgotten for a while, how every move blew right through her. The strange music they made.
She jerked the harp out of the gap in the window and slammed the glass down.
When she straightened up again, he was behind her. She could have jumped out of her skin, but before she could even gasp his hands came down on her shoulders.
"I came to see you," he said. "Because I wanted to. I don't suppose that's enough to satisfy you, but it's the only answer I have."
Dominique pressed her eye shut, and let her shoulders sag. "No, that's fine. I mean, I understand."
She turned, slowly so as not to frighten him off, and slung her arms around his neck.
"Legato…" she sighed, not sure of what to say. She couldn't tell him about her work at the library; she knew it would not interest him. But she couldn't ask him about his work, either. She didn't have the stomach for it any more.
"How have you been?" she settled for.
"The same."
He touched a gloved hand to the outside of one of her arms. It wasn't an affectionate gesture, nor one meant to push her away. Sometimes, she knew, he just had to check to see if she was there. If she really was touching him, and he really was letting her get away with it.
"How'd you get here?"
"I acquired a driver," he said.
"Is that who I saw in the sedan out there?"
"Yes."
"You should bring him inside. Give him some water at least. You're going to let him go when you're done with him, right?"
"I hadn't thought that far ahead."
"You should let him go. I'll feel better about the whole thing if you do. If I'm not allowed to get up to any mischief, then you're not allowed to cause any for my sake."
"I'll put him back where I found him when I'm through," Legato said.
Dominique smiled weakly. "Sorry. I don't mean to complain. I'm glad to see you."
"Oh."
"That means you can kiss me now."
"Oh," he said again.
And he did.