I spent the week fretting over Celes's visit or trying not to, but when she stepped off the airship all the nervousness vanished and I managed to push Locke out of my mind. We smiled politely and shook hands like civilized people and public figures, and then she broke into a grin, and I halfway squealed, "You look fantastic!" and she said "Me? What about you?" and then I hugged her, which she returned with somewhat more ease than had been usual for her a year ago.
"She does look stunning, doesn't she?" Setzer said. "But then, so do you," he added, and I ran halfway up the ramp to hug him too. "Easy, easy. I can't stay."
"Well, yes, that's why I have to greet you now," I said. "I haven't seen you since the house was done!"
"I have a business empire to rebuild, you know," he said, and we both scolded him about terminology, and he gave a beleaguered sigh and then we stepped out of the way while one of his porters brought out Celes's trunk and a valise.
"Are you staying for a while?" I asked.
"No more than a month," he said. "I can't do without the sight of her face for much longer than that." She rolled her eyes, but she looked a bit pleased, too, I thought.
"You'll do without me as long as you need to," she said, and they kissed each other goodbye on both cheeks. "And you could always spend time here. If Terra doesn't mind."
"We'd be thrilled to have you," I said.
"I really have been busy with business," he said, regretfully. "I'll stay longer when I come to pick her up," he added, and then he kissed me too, the same way. It was a thoroughly Jidooran gesture that seemed to very much impress all the onlookers – I kept hearing about for almost the entirety of her visit, whenever she wasn't around.
"Is he still trying to marry you?" I asked, quietly, once the airship had lifted off and I was done waving goodbye.
"If this were anyone else, I'd know you were teasing," she said. "No, he's not trying to marry me."
"Oh. I just can't believe no one mentioned that to me until then," I said.
"Well, after they woke you they weren't in much mood to tell entertaining stories about me. And then I suppose it just slipped everyone's minds. It wasn't as though he meant it, I don't think."
"Are you sure?" It had always seemed to me that he liked her. He'd talk about her to me, which wasn't something people seemed to do regarding their casual acquaintances and ordinary friends.
"Well, he said so. I thought I'd take his word on it." She stretched. "I understand you'd want to give me the grand tour of your house, which looks lovely by the way, but can I change into something less official first?" She was wearing Figaro dress whites, and she'd picked up a bit of tan, something I still didn't seem capable of no matter how much time I spent in the sun. She really did look wonderful.
This visit was meant to be halfway official – she was planning to run for the governorship of Narshe when the elections were held in the fall – but it was officially personal, as she put it when we were sharing cups of tea at the kitchen table after the tour. "I'm trying to emphasize that I... well, that I have friends in high places."
"Some high places. We don't have more than a couple thousand people here, I don't think," I said. I'd been trying to estimate from the homestead claims, until the census-takers came back.
"Yes, but this is a country, you know. And you're developing quite a little city here." We had more shops than I'd bothered to mention in letters – a watchmaker's, a bakery, a butcher's shop and a smithy. And further south a few enterprising souls had started factories, textile mills, and the like. Calling Mobliz a city was being charitable, though. "I'd like to set up some sort of favorable trade agreement with you, once I get the chance – spare you the Nikeah tariffs. But I guess you don't really get to vote for me, so I shouldn't get into the campaign talk with you."
"I doubt they'd let me even if I lived there. They don't like me much in Narshe."
She shook her head. "None of that really matters anymore. There were landslides... many of the people who used to live in Narshe are gone now, either because they were killed or because they left. Most of the survivors are the ones who fled when the continent went up. It was absolute panic, from what I hear. If I'd been in charge I'd have tried to discourage it, but it saved their lives. Well, some of them. Others ran right into— well, never mind. "
"Oh..." I said. I hadn't realized people had done that in the first place. But then, I'd tended to stay on the ship, or at least out of towns. I'd become more self-conscious after the fall, had begun to see hostility in the stares. Maybe it had all been in my head, after all, since the people of Mobliz had been so ready to accept me.
"There are a few left from old Narshe, of course, some of them never left their houses at all, but a lot of the settlers are refugees from somewhere else. I swear, most of the big cities are just swapping, we have more Kohlingans... And people from the area flocking to the big city, too, of course. There were so many little towns back in the mountains and on the plains that just couldn't keep going – they made all their money supplying Narshe, and when it was decimated, obviously they couldn't. Farming's gone downhill around there too, climate changes."
"I guess now they get to be miners," I said.
"Well, there are worse lives," she said. "I suppose. I'm already working out labor laws, so it won't be as bad as it could be. And I hope to encourage other types of industry, I... I sound like a politician."
"Well, that's what you are, isn't it? Or what you're going to be?"
"Well, in a way, but I'd rather be a public servant. Like you."
"I'm just someone who happened to start doing paperwork," I corrected her. "I'm not really anything."
She waved that off with her teacup. "You're a leader, Terra, but if you insist. But a politician is like Cabbarus, do you remember him?"
"Oh, uch. Yes." A blandly handsome, oily courtier we'd both met when he toured the academy. I remembered asking him a specific question, though I couldn't remember the subject now, and listening to him talk in circles and generalities around it. Once he'd moved on to the next I'd hissed 'he never answered!' at Celes. I'd been incensed. "I remember him. But they called him a public servant, too." I took a sip of my tea. "It's just a semantic distinction anyway."
"The difference between a treasure hunter and a thief," she said, and we both laughed, though mine was a little more uncomfortable. I stood to rinse my teacup. Celes was still working on hers; she liked her tea a bit cooler. "How's he doing, anyway?" she asked.
The cup slipped out of my wet fingers, clattered against the china pot I'd left in the sink. I picked it up, checked for chips. "He's fine. His dig's going well, I think. In those mountains south of Nikeah."
"That's what I'd heard. I thought he might have written a bit more in detail to you."
"Why do you think that?"
"Well, you two were close, weren't you? He came up for that visit earlier this year." I couldn't remember if I'd mentioned it to her or if someone else had. I didn't know if she knew how long it had been. She couldn't possibly know how it had ended. "And besides, he's close enough geographically that he can send you a longer letter and expect the bird to reach you."
He'd written me long letters all through the previous year with no thought to postage. Since he'd left this time, they'd seldom completely filled a page. I wasn't going to say that. "Not lately. I think he's probably pretty busy." I finally turned to face her. There's only so long you can scrub a teapot. "He'll probably come up to see you, I've mentioned you were coming."
"Oh, you didn't have to do that!"
"Don't you want to see him?"
"Well, it's not that I don't want to see him, but he doesn't have to go out of his way."
"Oh," I said, mystified. "But you went out of your way to see me."
"Yes, well..." She shrugged. "Never mind me, Terra. Travel can be tiring, especially when you're up on deck."
"All right," I said, doubtfully.
"It's just that he and I weren't really close friends, I don't think. Not like Sabin and Cyan and Gau were, or Edgar and Locke. Maybe you and Locke – I don't know, was it just me? It seemed like he got all distant, after—"
I shook my head. "Not just you," I said. "I spent a lot of time with him, but then, I'd missed him, I was probably sort of following him around." No, no, bad answer, I thought. "I thought he spent a lot of time with you, too, and Edgar," I added.
"Maybe so. We'd work together, but we never seemed to get anything said." She drank the rest of her tea, slurped the last.
"Manners, young lady," I said, trying to tease, get back to where we'd been before, just friends, not talking about him. She made a face at me, then turned serious again.
"I don't want him to feel obligated to come up to see me, that's all."
"He still thinks of you as a friend though," I protested, flustered. "He'd want to see you."
"Well, I know, and I think of him the same way, but..."
I didn't really follow, and was about to say so when I realized she wasn't going to finish that sentence. But we were interrupted by Rosie, post-bath, running stark naked and giggling into the room, and she was pursued by a drenched and rather crabby Katarin, so we were off the hook.
The next day brought further complications. Martin Collier knocked at the front door of the house not long after I'd closed up the shop, handed me a bouquet of daisies, and went into the parlor to sit on a settee. Puzzled, I joined him, and we talked about flowers, weather, and plays for fifteen minutes until he rose rather stiffly and made his way out. I relayed the baffling incident to Kat and Celes, who both grinned and shared glances. Finally, Kat, giggling, told me, "You have a gentleman caller."
"I what?"
"He's courting you," Celes explained.
"Oh. My. Gods," I said, sitting down with a thump in a kitchen chair, and I continued to whimper inarticulate protest as they teased me. Most of the teasing was from Katarin, at least until Celes began reciting advice from some etiquette book she'd found gods-knew-where, about proper topics of conversation for young ladies. She couldn't possibly have imagined it would be helpful, so that must have been teasing, too. Eventually, I fled to the store to compile the latest few messages from the census-takers. Celes could help Kat with dinner, guest or not, and it'd serve her right.
There was more of the post to sort already, a handful of pigeons on the roost outside, and two more birds winged in just before dark. I retrieved the messages they carried. The first was from Locke, and it simply read Dear Terra, ignore my previous. Will be there in two week's time, have discovered I can do that. No need to reply, setting out soon. Love, Locke, which was a bit of a new development, and one that sped my heartrate considerably.
I buried my head in my arms on the counter, thinking, Kat's right, there's no point to avoiding it or trying to keep it a secret, and maybe Celes won't mind, when I thought, all at once and almost simultaneously, of his reference to the "previous," and of the fact that he'd be here, soon, and then I could see if she was indifferent to him or not. I hastily unrolled the other letter, and found that it was a halfway recognizable, if extremely messy, variant of Locke's hand.
Dear Terra,
I don't see why we can't act normal with each other. Maybe I can, but you are acting so strange it's hard to be myself either. But this time I am going to say what I want and not care if you don't like it though I hope you do.
After that beginning it went on like other letters he'd written me before, with stories of rampaging delta bugs and Osborne Hamley's epic absent-mindedness, and almost as an afterthought he mentioned that he'd made a discovery himself of a tablet that might be the key to a lost language. It looks promising which is why I am drunk right now to celebrate. So I'm just going to tell you how I feel even if you don't want to hear it and won't tell me why. I don't see how you can pretend nothing happened, because I can't. If you don't like it just say so and don't leave me wondering. The signature was dark and smudged, and he'd written, in a scrawled postscript, I'm sorry.
It had been threatening rain all day, but when I looked up I realized it was dark, heard the drumming of hard rain on the roof. The flash of light and the clap of thunder that soon followed let me know it was a storm, and close. I put a bucket in the corner where it always leaked, just in case, folded the letters and put them in my pocket, and swept up, calmly, normally, as if everything were perfectly usual. I felt like I was floating, even with the undercurrent of anger in his letter – I couldn't blame him for it, certainly – and even with the word that I should ignore it. I wished I could write to him, but he'd reach me before it could ever have reached him.
I took the letters out and read them again, put them carefully back in the pocket, and ran through the rain from the store's back door to my front porch with a shawl over my head. I brushed water off my skirt and beamed at everyone as I came back in, and endured more teasing – including from Isabella, which seemed very unfair – about Martin, without complaint.
The storm continued as we cleaned and listened to recitations of lessons and put the kids to bed, the rain a steady tattoo against the walls, thunder and lightning just dramatic and beautiful. I made up a guest room for Celes. It was actually Isabella's room, but she was so taken with Celes that she'd actually volunteered, and would sleep in the nursery sitting room. I'd offered to double up with her, but she'd turned that down. I was too buoyant to argue with her about it or caution her about backaches the next day. I chattered at Celes and Isabella, and later at Duane and Katarin, about every trivial thing that crossed my mind, and sat up a bit late, just staring out the window at the storm and hoping Locke didn't have to sleep in it.
That night I dreamt that all the kids were sick and dying, and that somehow I'd allowed Kefka to poison them all. I was hunting through my house, which was labyrinthine and made of stone, almost a castle but somehow still my house, to find him and kill him. But when I did kill him – a single blow and he deflated, withered to dust – I lost my magic and realized I wouldn't be able to heal them. That was when I woke. The thunderstorm was over, and in the eerie quiet I could almost feel the dream had been true.
I stood, pulling on a robe, and padded down the hall to check on them. It had been standard nightmare-stuff, not unlike others I'd had, but unusually vivid, and even though I knew they'd be fine I wanted to confirm it. Everyone was fine in the nursery; Cassie hadn't wet the bed in several months, and tonight was no exception. Isabella was peacefully asleep in a large armchair – I'd made up a pallet for her, but she seemed to like curling up – and in their bedroom, Byram and Theo were normal as well, Theo sprawled on his back and Byram stretched almost crosswise with his covers tangled at his ankles. They were all breathing.
I'd found Kefka in the parlor, so I went downstairs, shielding my candle against drafts, to check that too. I hoped no one woke and asked why I was doing this, because I knew I'd feel foolish. But I couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong, something outside of, and unconnected to, the tangle of things I wasn't saying to Locke or Celes.
No Kefka in the parlor, either. After another nightmare, I'd written to confirm with Celes that both the Figaros were still alive. I'd dreamed that one had died, but I hadn't known which, the part which had troubled me most when I woke. This dream was perfectly normal, easy to interpret. But something still felt wrong.
I rubbed at a spot of wax on an end table, and thought of Kefka's face from my dream. It had been different. He hadn't been wearing the clown makeup, though his face was still pale and his lips scarlet. His eyes had been darkly lined with kohl. Yet somehow I was positive it was him. Really him, not just a dream-figure, not just the way that you can be yourself and also be the queen who was turned to stone, in your dreams, or someone can be both your oldest sons at once and look like Gau.
I'd seen him looking like that before, remembered him experimenting with other looks, sitting at the vanity in my room and painting himself. A memory. I remembered his face painted as it was in my dream, but something was wrong with the angle, and I stared at space, trying to let the memory come. Behind him I could see the ceiling, from my chambers when I was in royal custody. He was above me. On top of me. That was what was wrong with the angle.
My hand was shaking, hard. I'd spilled hot wax on myself, and I set the candle down carefully on the end table, pushed my trembling fist against my lips. "Oh, gods," I breathed, a sob catching in my throat.
I hadn't even realized, until I remembered this, that I had ever been in royal custody, but now I knew that I'd gone to the Magitek lab, that something had happened. I wanted to remember that. I didn't want to remember what Kefka had done to me. I didn't want to see his smirk, didn't want to hear his voice saying "You know I'll have you either way," didn't want the exposed shame that was making me clench in on myself as though I'd been stabbed, as though I were favoring a wound.
I thought I heard a child calling, and I was up and on the stairs before I'd even thought. Annie had had a nightmare, too, but rather than wake the others she'd gone to my room to look for me. I brought her back to the nursery, found the matches on a high shelf and lit the lamp to make her feel better. "It was only a dream," I said, to soothe her, and I hugged her until she stopped crying and tucked her back in, stayed for a little while in the circle of lamplight watching her face and telling myself this was reality now.
After I was sure she was asleep, I blew out the lamp and went back downstairs, feeling my way in the dark, to retrieve my candle. I sat in the parlor all night thinking.