21. A Vow to Oneself
After she had declared her intention to trust in him, they had continued to sit in that garden and talk for hours. She had wanted to know whatever she could of him that he was willing to tell her. That had meant including stories from his childhood, even embarrassing ones, such as the time when he was fourteen and had been showing Killu how to open the Gates of Verification just after a frost, and had slipped on the icy forecourt, and wound up flat on his face, sending the toddler into a giggling fit. Or what happened the first time his mother had asked him to give Mike a bath. Lucia had laughed and so had he. And more seriously, he had told her about his interest in the nervous system and what happened when different pathways were interrupted. How he hoped for his experiments in this to be his addition to his family's store of knowledge. She had seemed genuinely interested.
And she had told him about herself, her love-hate relationship with Padokian politics, her desire to move out from under the large shadow cast by her father. She shared stories from her past too, like the time she had used the pretty paper of a non-aggression treaty with the Republic of East Goruto to make paper dolls (Kalluto would like that one). Or how she used to pick from ladies that she knew and try to imagine what it would be like if they had been her mother. Then she'd asked,
"Why didn't you ever come to see me? I couldn't go back to your home, but you knew where I was all this time."
He had already asked himself that question. Firstly, Illumi had never gone anywhere in his life without a specific assigned purpose, and secondly, his presence usually made people uneasy, even if (or perhaps especially when) they had sought him out to avail themselves of his services. It was so completely alien to his experience…someone wanting to just see him. After all, to his knowledge, it had never happened before. "I didn't know you wanted to see me."
Lucia had looked stricken at that, fixing him with her pellucid eyes, "Oh Illumi! I missed you so much!" Then she looked down at her lap, as if embarrassed by her outburst, and continued, "And it wasn't just you I missed. Your mother was one of the few people I remember from my childhood who seemed to care about me." Then, more dejected, "Though maybe I was mistaken about that. Maybe she didn't like me at all."
"She liked you. When your father came back without you, she asked after you. And she told my father afterward that she was disappointed not to see you."
"Really?" she brightened, "sometimes it's hard for me to tell. People in politics are very good at faking that kind of thing, and I've been surrounded by those people my whole life. I'm glad to know I didn't remember it wrong." There was a sudden hopeful earnestness in her voice, "When all this is over, can I go back again to Kukuru Mountain?"
He answered without hesitation, "Yes."
By then it was very late, and even in the confines of his arms she was getting cold. So he carried her back to her house, dropping her off a little way from the gatehouse as she had requested, so she could explain to the guards on duty why they had heard her scream and then not been able to find her. Something about old school friends and a prank to cheer her up, it sounded ridiculous but she'd seemed fairly sure she could sell it to them. After looking down at her shoeless feet, she had laughed and said, "Well I can tell whom I've been out with!" Then she kissed him goodnight and was gone.
And as Illumi watched her run away from him toward her home, he made a vow to himself that she wasn't going to die. Whatever it took, so long as he lived, he would protect her.
Then he returned to the safe house. It was dangerous to leave Lucia now, but he had to risk it to contact the person inside. He'd been intending to meet up there, after seeing that job in the Schedule. Typically this assassin would go to that house after an in-town job, and when he'd arrived with Lucia he knew he'd been right. And it wasn't too long to wait for his return after he dropped her off back home. He had formulated a workable plan.
Illumi could work alone, but he really preferred to work jobs as leader of a team. It meant more chances to cover every angle if the targets or opponents were numerous, or if they were particularly clever or skilled, and that's just what he was planning to do now. Because it was looking like he was going to need all the help he could get, if he was going to go up against whom he thought he would have to, to save her life.
He was almost certain now he knew who was behind this. And it meant her life was in terrible danger.
