“I wanted to check the quarters of everyone on this level,” Michael said. “Interior doors aren’t so tight that you would have asphyxiated; but the breathing could have got a little heavy. Maybe by morning we can locate what’s out of order and fix it. This is part of the problem of the servant staff taking off when the
army did. I’d suggest that I open the door to the balcony for you, sir.”
He was already moving across the room toward the door he had mentioned.
“Thanks,” I said. “What was the situation with the servants? Were they revolutionary sympathizers, too?”
“Not necessarily.” He unlocked the door and propped it open to the night air, which came coolly and sweetly through the aperture. “They just didn’t want their throats cut along with the Conde’s, when the army stormed its way back in here.”
“I see,” I said.
“Yes.” He came back to me in the center of the sitting room.
“What time is it?” I asked. “I’ve been sleeping as if I was under drugs “
“A little before midnight.”
I sat down in one of the chairs of the unlighted lounge. The glow of the soft exterior lights spaced at ten meter intervals along the outer edge of the balcony came through the window wall and dimly illuminated the room.
“Sit for a moment,” I said. “Tell me. How did the meeting with the Conde go this evening?”
He took a chair facing me
“I should be getting back soon,” he said. “I’m the only one we’ve got available for a duty officer at the moment. But—the meeting with the Conde went like a charm. He was so busy being gracious to Amanda he almost forgot to breathe defiance against the army deserters.”
“How did Amanda do with the Governors, do you know?”
I sensed, rather than saw, a shrug of his shoulders in the gloom.
“There was nothing much to be done with them,” he said. “They talked about their concern over the desertion of the regiments and wanted reassurances that Ian and Kensie could handle the situation. Effectively, it was all choreographed.”
“They’ve left, then?”
“That’s right. They asked for guarantees for the safety of the Conde. Both Ian and Kensie told them that there was no such thing as a guarantee; but we’d protect the Conde, of course, with every means at our disposal. Then they left.”
“It sounds,” I said, “as if Amanda could have saved her time and effort.”
“No. She said she wanted to get the feel of them.” He leaned forward. “You know, she’s something to write home about. I think if anyone can find a way out of this, she can. She says herself that there’s no question that there is a way out—it’s just that finding it in the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours is asking a lot.”
“Has she checked with you about these people? You seem to be the only one around who knows them at all well.”
“She talked with me when we flew in—you remember. I told her I’d be available any time she needed me. So far, however, she’s spent most of her time either working by herself, or with Ian or Padma.”
“I see,” I said. “Is there anything I can do? Would you like me to spell you on the duty officer bit?”
“You’re to rest, Ian says. He’ll need you tomorrow. I’m getting along fine with my duties.” He moved toward the front door of the suite. “Good night.”
“Good night,” I said.
He went out, the knife of light from the corridor briefly cutting across the carpeting of my sitting room and vanishing again as the door opened, then latched behind him
I stayed where I was in the sitting room chair, enjoying the gentle night breeze through the propped-open door. I may have dozed. At any rate I came to, suddenly, to the sound of voices from the balcony. Not from my portion of the balcony, but from the portion next to it, beyond my bedroom window to the left.
“. . yes,” a voice was saying. Ian had been in my mind; and for a second I thought I was hearing Ian speak But it was Kensie. The voices were identical; only, there was a difference in attitude that distinguished them.
“I don’t know. . .” it was Amanda’s voice answering, a troubled voice.
“Time goes by quickly,” Kensie said. “Look at us. It was just yesterday we were in school together.”
“I know,” she said, “you’re talking about it being time to settle down But maybe I never will.”
“How sure are you of that?”
“Not sure, of course.” Her voice changed as if she had moved some little distance from him. I had an unexpected mental image of him standing back by the door in a window wall through which they had just come out together; and one of her, having just turned and walked to the balcony railing, where she now stood with her back to him, looking out at the night and the starlit plain.
“Then you could take the idea of settling down under consideration.”
“No,” she said. “I know I don’t want to do that.”
Her voice changed again, as if she had turned and come back to him. “Maybe I’m ghost-ridden, Kensie. Maybe it’s the old spirit of the first Amanda that’s ruling out the ordinary things for me.”
“She married—three times.”
“But her husbands weren’t important to her, that way. Oh, I know she loved them. I’ve read her letters and what her children wrote down about her after they were adults themselves. But she really belonged to everyone, not just to her husbands and children. Don’t you understand? I think that’s the way it’s going to have to be for me, too.”
He said nothing. After a long moment she spoke again, and her voice was lowered, and drastically altered.
“Kensie! Is it that important?”
His voice was lightly humorous, but the words came a fraction more slowly than they had before.
“It seems to be.”
“But it’s something we both just fell into, as children. It was just an assumption on both our parts. Since then, we’ve grown up. You’ve changed. I’ve changed.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t need me. Kensie, you don’t need me—“ her voice was soft. “Everybody loves you.”
“Could I trade?” The humorous tone persisted. “Everybody for you?”
“Kensie, don’t!”
“You ask a lot,” he said; and now the humor was gone, but there was still nothing in the way he spoke that reproached her. “I’d probably find it easier to
stop breathing.”
There was another silence.
“Why can’t you see? I don’t have any other choice,” she said. “I don’t have any more choice than you do. We’re both what we are, and stuck with what we are.”
“Yes,” he said.
The silence this time lasted a long time. But they did not move, either of them. By this time my ear was sensitized to sounds as light as the breathing of a sparrow. They had been standing a little apart, and they stayed standing apart.
“Yes,” he said again, finally—and this time it was a long, slow yes, a tired yes. “Life moves. And all of us move with it, whether we like it or not.”
She moved to him, now. I heard her steps on the concrete floor of the balcony.
“You’re exhausted,” she said. “You and Ian both. Get some rest before tomorrow. Things’ll look different in the daylight.”
“That sometimes happens.” The touch of humor was back, but there was effort behind it. “Not that I believe it for a moment, in this case.”
They went back inside.
I sat where I was, wide awake. There had been no way for me to get up and get away from their conversation without letting them know I was there. Their hearing was at least as good as mine, and like me they had been trained to keep their senses always alert. But knowing all that did not help. I still had the ugly feeling that I had been intruding where I should not have been.
There was no point in moving now. I sat where I was, trying to talk sense to myself and get the ugly
feeling under control. I was so concerned with my own feelings that for once I did not pay close attention to the sounds around me, and the first warning I had was a small noise in my own entrance to the balcony area; and I looked up to see the dark silhouette of a woman in the doorway.
“You heard,” Amanda’s voice said.
There was no point in denying it.
“Yes,” I told her.
She stayed where she was, standing in the doorway.
“I happened to be sitting here when you came out on the balcony,” I said. “There was no chance to shut the door or move away.”
“It’s all right,” she came in. “No, don’t turn on the light.”