“Go now, for I feel I am slipping into the dreamworld, and I am ashamed to let any except my healer or my daughter see me when I am like such.”
“I understand. Until the morrow or day after,” Mildred said gently, taking leave of the ailing baron. Looking back as she made her way to the door, she saw his eyes glaze over, becoming unseeing as he entered the world that was his gateway to the beyond.
She had no time to dwell on this, however, as more earthly matters took the imperative. As she neared the door, she could hear voices on the other side. They were whispering, but the door wasn’t of a thick wood and she could hear them clearly. One was Markos, and the other—similar in timbre, but slightly higher in tone, she couldn’t place.
“Things are as they are and that cannot be changed,” Markos was saying.
“But you are changed, and the changes are like those of the snake that sheds skin as it grows fatter.”
“You dare to say such things to me, with their implications?”
“I do, and gladly. You know that her influence will pollute the purity of the idea and moral that I have—”
“You dare to speak of purity?”
There was a silence. Then the speaker broke the silence with a low hiss pregnant with suppressed menace. “That is the matter of which we never speak. Indeed you are lower than the snake to bring that into the argument. I cannot reason with you when you are in this temper and I feel so disturbed. We will continue this later.”
Mildred heard the speaker move away, his footsteps fast and heavy, obviously agitated. She had paused by the door, uncertain as to whether she had been heard, but unwilling to walk into the middle of the argument. Now she judged that it was safe to open the door and exit.
As the light flooded in, she squinted at its sudden violence. The heat of the words she had heard from behind the door, mirrored in the thickness of the atmosphere.
Markos turned to her, the anger of the argument still written on his face. But he softened his tone with a visible effort. “Mildred—all went well with the baron?”
“Uh, yeah,” she replied with caution.
“You do not wish me to pry?” he questioned. His tone was sharper than his expression implied, which she put down to the discussion he had just concluded, the argument that gave her a feasible excuse to change the subject.
“No, it’s not that… It’s just that I couldn’t help hearing as I came to the door…” She shrugged, not knowing what to say.
Markos allowed a wry, sad smile to flit across his face. “My brother. He grows more and more agitated at the notion of moving away from the island, and he wants merely to pick at his agitation like the wounded animal picks at its sores. I do not even know what he was doing here, apart from trying to pick yet another argument with me.”
Mildred furrowed her brow. “How the hell did he know you’d be here? You aren’t supposed to be.”
Markos shrugged. “It couldn’t have been difficult. He had merely to go to where I should have been and ask questions.”
“I guess so. Do you want me to go find you a relief for this post, so you can continue?” It was not merely from the goodness of her heart that Mildred wanted to do this. It would also enable her to escape before the sec boss reverted to a line of questioning about her meeting with the baron.
“I would appreciate that,” he returned, adding as she turned to go, “But tell me just one thing. Why do you wish to meet with J.B. tonight?”
Mildred stopped. She turned to him, deciding to hide her newly discovered reason behind a curtain of the personal, hoping it would dissuade him from prying further. “Because not everything is always cut and dried. Matters overlap, and there are loose ends to be tied. And that’s all I want to say on the matter. Is that permissible?”
Markos thought for a moment, chastened. Finally he said just one word. “Yes.”