Chapter Six
Rain was roaring down all around Allen, pouring on his head and shoulders, soaking him, but he could hardly feel it. The worst pain he could remember was stabbing through his left eye, a silver spear in his brain. He couldn't walk any further; his legs were shaking. He was somewhere in the garden; there was a tree ahead of him, and he sank down at its base, felt muddy grass under his hands and knees, curled into a ball with his arms over his head. The pain was too bad for words or tears; it was worse than being hit on the head, stabbed in the belly, anything. It filled his whole body. A sort of hoarse panting groan was coming steadily from his lips but he was not conscious of making the sound; it was just part of him.
A blow fell on his shoulders, a rough slap. He was rolled over and Serena grabbed him by the lapels, glaring into his face, rain streaming from her hair.
'You can't run away from this!' she yelled. 'You can't leave her there after she told you something like that!'
He couldn't answer yet; the migraine was blinding him and the black misery was binding his throat.
'If you love her, go back and hear her out! She needs you.'
'No-one needs me for anything!'
'Bullshit!'
'They don't! Look at what's happening! I'm redundant as a knight. Cid is ashamed of me. You have your own life, Hitomi chose Van, and Millerna not only married Dryden, she let him - she let him - I can't stand to think about it and I can't stop!' She let go of him and he sank down again, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to block the pain, trying to push the spear out from the inside.
'Bullshit,' Serena said again, more gently. 'She loves you. So do I. I wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for you. Why do you think I wanted to come back? Who else was there for me to come back to? If there wasn't you I would have died as Dilandau and that would have been the end of it. Don't ever think I don't need you.'
'Millerna doesn't,' he said. 'This must be why she's been putting off the wedding she doesn't want to be with me at all, but she doesn't have him to turn to. She'd be happy with him.'
'You're just saying that to make yourself feel worse,' Serena said. 'You know it's not true. Dryden is a nice person but I've seen her with him, and I've seen her with you, and she never looks at him the way she does at you. She's married to you in her heart already. She feels like she's betrayed you.'
'Good,' Allen said bitterly. 'She has.'
'Will you stop!? What do you want to do now?'
'I don't know. Leave. Go back to the swamp and never see her again. Kill myself, perhaps.'
'Suicide is for losers,' Serena said. 'And if you say something like "then it's for me" I'll save you the trouble, all right? You're the only person who can make her happy and she's the only person who can do that for you. Things have gotten messed up so you have to fix them. I want you two to be as happy as me and Gadeth. You're not the loser in this, Allen! You've won her! If she wanted to be Dryden's wife would she ever have let him go away? Would she be sitting back in there crying her heart out because she's made you unhappy? She's crying because she thinks you won't love her after this! You've won, so go back and take care of her and remember how bloody lucky you are!' She glared at him, breathing hard. 'And stop making me stand out in this rain yelling at you or we'll both catch our death of cold and you'll be no good to her at all!'
Allen's face was crumpling; the tears were coming through now. 'He got to make love to her,' he said. 'He's held her and known her in every way and all I can do is make her cry.'
'Idiot,' said Serena, and hugged him fiercely. 'Just go back and tell her you love her. Start from there.'
They returned to the house together. The french doors to the library were still swinging, as Allen had left them when he stormed out, and rain was pattering in and wetting the carpet. Millerna was sitting on the floor weeping bitterly; Gadeth had come in after hearing the yelling and was crouching uncertainly by her, patting her hand and saying 'But what's wrong? Where have they gone?' He looked up as they came in and asked 'What have you been doing to her? She can't even speak.'
Millerna tried to say something which came out as 'heurk.'
'See?' Gadeth backed away as Allen came closer, dropping to his knees in front of Millerna.
'Millerna? Angel, it's me. P-please look at me.' She looked at him through her fingers, her eyes pink and swimming. His head was still pounding, but he managed to smile. Millerna gave another enormous sob and flew at him, locking her arms round him and gasping incoherently; she was simply too worked up to make sense. Allen held her and rocked her gently, tears seeping down his face.
'I really don't understand what's going on,' Gadeth complained.
'Ssh! Let's go.'
'But what's happen'- Serena bustled him out of the room and shut the door, then applied her ear to the keyhole.
'Shove over,' he said. 'If you're going to eavesdrop I am too.' She made room for him and shushed him again.
'Could I just have a quick summary of what they're crying about?' he whispered.
'Millerna's pregnant from when she was married to Dryden and we just told Allen.'
'Shee-yit.' Gadeth's eyes widened.
'That's what I thought. They're not talking yet, are they?'
'I can't hear anything. You're soaking, you know.'
'I'm bloody cold.'
'I can see that.'
'Ssh!' She gave him a poke in the arm. The only audible sound from the library was sniffing, growing quieter as the unhappy lovers calmed down.
'I'm sorry I reacted as I did,' Allen said, almost too quietly to hear. 'It hurt very much to hear it. I'm sorry I called you that name.'
'I'm just so glad you came back,' Millerna said. 'I don't care about the rest of it. What are we going to do?'
'Well,' he said, slowly, 'I think we should marry sooner rather than later. I know you wanted to make an occasion of it for everyone, but it will still be special to us, right?'
'Do you really still want to?'
'Yes, if you do.'
'So much.' They were silent again for a while, just resting, hearing one another breathe.
'I've given myself a headache crying,' Millerna said.
'Snap.'
'My poor brave knight.' She drew back a little and looked into his face, smoothing his wet hair away from his forehead. 'You're always so beautiful. I've never quite been able to believe you're all for me.'
'Please believe it. And believe I love you.'
'I believe you.'
'Damn, he's good,' Gadeth muttered on the other side of the door.
'Ssh,' Serena breathed. There was quiet now; she thought perhaps they were kissing. They were; just softly.
'What about when the baby is born?' Millerna asked. It was one of the hardest questions she had ever asked.
Allen was silent for a moment. He could not hide his sadness, showing in his eyes although he was trying to make his face kind. 'The Duke accepted my child as his own son. I hope I can be enough of a man to do the same. I love you; I want to be a father to your children.'
Serena bit her lip. 'That's so lovely.'
'Do you realise how warped it is to listen to your brother and his fiancée when they think they're alone? We're as bad as the kids under the couch.'
'Oh, shush. You're listening too. They've gone very quiet.'
'I admit I wanted to know what was going on, but there's such a thing as too much information.'
'Will you look through the keyhole or shall I?'
'Go on.'
Serena pushed his head away and put her eye to the keyhole. 'All I can see is the back of his head - hold on, he's moving round - yes, definitely kissing.' She straightened up with a smile on her face. 'Well, my work here is done. I think we can safely leave them.'
'And what if it had gone badly? Would you have stomped in and told them what they were supposed to do?' He was amused by her air of satisfaction.
'I don't know. I didn't have to find out, did I?' She looked down at herself. 'Eugh. I need dry clothes. Hot bath, then dry clothes before I get pneumonia.'
'Of course, he could get pneumonia too.'
'Let Millerna worry about him. He's her problem now.'
'Are you my problem?'
'It depends, do you want a very cold, soggy problem?'
'Oddly, yes. Let me try to warm you up.'
Winter was really digging its claws in. The canals were rimed with ice at the edges; some of the narrower ones were almost frozen over. The general mood in Pallas was subdued, even nervous. Basram was on everyone's minds, not because there had been any aggression or even suspicious activity from that quarter, but for precisely the opposite reason. There was no news of Basram at all; the country had closed its borders and was refusing all communication. Some people said, hopefully, that perhaps they were remorseful, or having internal troubles that would occupy them too much for them to be dangerous. Others said darkly that they must be up to something.
The news from Zaibach was sometimes encouraging, sometimes unnerving. Parties of scientists and political observers with military escorts had been despatched from Asturia, Freid and Fanelia; not that Fanelia exactly had scientists, but they had sent representatives to learn what they could. It seemed that there was a vacuum of government in Zaibach. No-one had taken over leadership; although in some areas, some government organisations, such as the electricity, water and sewerage boards, and about half the police force, were keeping running in a hand-to-mouth co-op fashion, with diminishing resources.
The cities were almost empty, as most people had returned to the rural areas, losing faith in technology as they lost the ability to maintain it. Those who remained in the cities tended to be diehards, heavily indoctrinated under the Dornkirk administration and still trying to make the old dreams come true, or the disaffected and delinquent, squatters taking over buildings and street gangs forming little nations of a few city blocks. The cities, of course, were the centres from which the observers could learn the most, but they were the most inaccessible and dangerous places to enter. Most of the observers were calling for a greater military presence to allow them to do their work, and at home, too, many people were talking about occupation.
'The problem is,' a man was saying in a pub - and which man and which pub were unimportant, because you could hear similar people saying similar things all over - 'we've got weak rulers. This alliance is led by youngsters hardly out of childhood - one of them is a child. They won't take action - wouldn't know how. And while they're growing up, Basram is going to take over and none of us will be able to do a damn' thing to stop it.'
'Well, what could they do?' someone else asked. 'Basram has the ultimate weapon. No-one wants to work where they dropped it. They say there'll be a curse on anyone who goes into that area; it'll make them sick, and their children, and their children's children. They could drop another one of those on us any time they wanted to. We could probably find something to fight them with in Zaibach but they're so slow finding anything out well, no wonder people are scared. I'm scared.'
'A decent royal wedding would've cheered things up, but call that a wedding? I don't. The Queen doesn't know how to do things. Useless. Of course, it wasn't a moment too soon, and if you ask me that's very fishy. Her first husband, my eye. We've all heard the rumours about her new fellow. And there's a woman in the Knights of Heaven now. I don't care what she did, that just isn't right. We never had women knights before, and things were never this bad before. It's wossname, symptomatic.'
'Actually, there have been women knights before, some of them at times of great security and prosperity for Asturia,' someone pointed out. Everyone else looked at him irritably. They felt this sort of thing was uncalled for. 'And doesn't the Queen have a right to marry as she chooses? All right, it was a quiet wedding, and some people might have doubts about the groom, but no-one was killed. If you ask me that counts as a success.'
'Who paid you to come here and say that?' the first man muttered.
'No-one. I thought of it all by myself. But the level of debate here has gotten too intellectual for me, so I'll be saying goodnight.' The opinionated man got to his feet, paid his bill and left. Someone made a rude noise as the door closed behind him, and there was general laughter.
Outside in the street, the man tucked his hands into the sleeves of his coat and looked around him, his breath hanging in clouds in the air. He seemed to be waiting for someone. It was beginning to snow again, and flakes settled on his dark-brown hair. After about ten minutes, another figure appeared around the corner of the street, a short, broad, bulky man. They both carried heavy packs on their backs; in the dim evening light they looked like hunchbacks. They nodded to each other and began to walk together, in the direction the short one was already going. It was the road out of town.
'Took you long enough,' the taller man said peevishly. 'It's brass monkeys out here.'
'Why didn't you wait inside? You said you were going to wait inside.'
'The locals got too annoying.'
'Criticising your favourite person?'
'Valid criticism I wouldn't mind, but all they want to do is say she's too young and should have worn a fairy-princess wedding dress.'
'How is she now?' the squat man asked. 'Taking care of herself?' He blew on his hands; he was wearing fingerless gloves, which was, on the face of it, not the best choice for this weather.
'She says so. I write as much as I can but you know how touchy Allen is. If I show a natural interest in the wellbeing of the mother of my child, he gets his back up and tells me not to keep sniffing around her.'
'Well, of course he feels threatened. You got his wife pregnant. It's enough to make anyone territorial. I wouldn't like you if you got my wife pregnant.'
'There's a Mrs Mole?'
'Alas, I have never been blessed in that respect. I was speaking conjecturally.'
'Perhaps you're using the wrong mouthwash.'
They walked on for a while in silence, the snow crunching and squeaking under their feet. The evening was deepening into night, and the snowfall, which had only been a sprinkling anyway, was tapering off. The sky was about half clouded, but the stars that showed were unusually bright and clear. The two moons looked strangely close.
'You know,' Dryden said, 'if it were ever night-time here and there at the same time, we might be able to see the lights of their cities. It's impossible, of course, but it's something I'd quite like to see. Actually, I wonder if you could see them during an eclipse?'
'I can take it or leave it,' Mr Mole said cheerfully. 'There's enough on this world to keep me interested.'
'What were you doing all this week, anyway?'
'Just stuff.'
'One day I'm going to solve the enigma that is the Mole Man, you know.'
'Good luck trying. I'm not an enigma, I'm just a weird old fart who doesn't feel like explaining everything he does.'
There was another silence.
'Did I tell you that she's gotten more beautiful?'
'Repeatedly. But go on.'
'She has. She puts her hair up in these soft loops that sort of cuddle the back of her neck. I wanted to touch her hair the whole time I was talking to her. I'm glad I went to see her, even though Allen was growling at me the entire time. When I got her letter, all I could think was that some good came out of her and me together, anyway. Something was created, something that will go on living and changing the world after I'm gone, and hopefully won't think too badly of its old dad, despite the circumstances.'
'Are you hoping for a boy or a girl?'
'Either is good. It'll have to be a wonderful child with a mother like that.'
'But it's got your blood to screw it up as well. They might cancel each other out and it'll just end up normal.'
'A normal child? What a horror. We'd have to smother it and bury it at a crossroads. No child of mine is going to be normal if I can help it.'
'Where did you park, anyway? My feet are freezing.'
'It's just a little further on. You'll like it. It's Energist-powered, although there's a backup coal-fired steam engine for if there are any problems with that, and it's remarkable how it sort of puts its own road down in front of it. Revolving tracks. If we can get them into production locally we can make a fortune.'
'It's heartwarming how you're profiting from the collapse of Zaibach's miltary infrastructure.'
'It's getting the damn things into the country that's so difficult. I had to smuggle this over in parts and get it put together from blueprints by an unscrupulous blacksmith. And there it is.' He pointed to a dark shape off to one side of the road. 'Officially it's called a Hoplite but I'm trying to think of something that sounds better. Less hoppy.'
'Looks like a tin water tank,' Mole grumbled. 'With a plough on the front. What's that in aid of?'
'That clears our path.'
'It's too agricultural. I don't like agriculture. Leads to doings with sheep.'
'Well, if we see a sheep, you just warn me and I'll avert my eyes and think unsexy thoughts.' Dryden had to wrap his coat-sleeve around his hand to take hold of the metal door-handle in this weather; it was that or lose a layer of skin. He hauled the door open and climbed up. It was always freezing inside at first, but it would warm up once he got the little stove lit. He was making it homelike already, with a hammock slung from the ceiling and boxes of books and goods everywhere.
'It's a step down from your fleet,' Mr Mole opined, 'but it's not bad for a fresh start.'
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