“There is . . . some doubt. . . yes.”
“Then we’ll all leave now.”
“That’s not an option. I stay and you leave. That’s what they’re offering. It’s not up for negotiation.”
“I see.”
“I’ll be all right, Gentle,” Pie said. “Why don’t you go back to the cafe where we had breakfast? Can you find it again?”
“I can,” Huzzah said. She’d spent the time of this exchange with downcast eyes. Now that they were raised, they were full of tears.
“Wait for me there, angel,” Pie said, conferring Gentle’s epithet upon her for the first time. “Both of you angels.”
“If you’re not with us by twilight we’ll come back and find you,” Gentle said. He threw his gaze wide as he said this, a smile on his lips and threat in his eyes.
Pie put out a hand to be shaken. Gentle took it, drawing the mystif closer.
“This is very proper,” he said.
“Any more would be unwise,” Pie replied. “Trust me.”
“I always have. I always will.”
“We’re lucky, Gentle,” Pie said.
“How so?”
“To have had this time together.”
Gentle met the mystifs gaze, as it spoke, and realized there was a deeper farewell beneath this formality, which he didn’t want to hear. For all its bright talk, the mystif was by no means certain they would be meeting again.
“I’m going to see you in a few hours, Pie,” Gentle said. “I’m depending on that. Do you understand? We have vows.”
The mystif nodded and let its hand slip from Gentle’s grasp. Huzzah’s smaller, warmer fingers were there, ready to take its place.
“We’d better go, angel,” he said, and led Huzzah back towards the gate, leaving Pie in the custody of the squad.
She glanced back at the mystif twice as they walked, but Gentle resisted the temptation. It would do Pie no good to be sentimental at this juncture. Better just to proceed on the understanding that they’d be reunited in a matter of hours, drinking coffee in the Oke T’Noon. At the gate, however, he couldn’t keep himself from glancing down the street of blossom-laden trees for one last glimpse of the creature he loved. But the execution squad had already disappeared into the chianculi, taking the prodigal with them.