She took off her uniform, then her underclothes, and looked at herself in the mirror. She’d grown up among Sisters where youth seemed almost eternal. But among them, on the onset of decline, a Sister was removed from the community, sent to spend her remaining five to ten years at a retreat “in the south,” where no one visited. A practice that grew out of Sarkia’s unwillingness to confront the loss of vigor and life, Varia thought wryly. At least the ylver honored their elderly.
As for herself—her critical eyes could find no fault with what she saw. Mother of forty-three, wife of two, and abused repeatedly by a squad of Tigers for how many months. The correct ylvin genes, unhindered by counter-beliefs, healed most wounds short of mutilation or death. You still look twenty, she told herself. Except for the eyes and aura, I suppose, and most don’t confront the one or see the other. So here you are, coveted as a brood mare by an ylvin high noble.
She dressed and looked again. It wasn’t a formal gown, but a dinner frock. Still, she’d never had so nice a dress in her life before, not even for her first wedding. She didn’t pirouette in it though, just looked. God, she thought, I’m beautiful after all. Truly beautiful, except for that wretched short hair. Curtis, oh Curtis, I wish you could see me in this.
She felt the damned tears begin to well, and would have changed back into her uniform, except for the knock at her door.
“Come,” she said. Mariil’s nurse opened it, and Varia left with her, to the east wing and Lady Cyncaidh’s suite. Mariil looked up when they entered, and her expression softened visibly when she saw Varia in the frock. She didn’t stand, but motioned Varia to a chair in front of hers. “You are truly beautiful,” she said softly. “More beautiful than I realized.”
“You wanted to talk to me.”
Mariil nodded. “To you, with you, about you. I’ve read the transcript of your interrogation, and there was much personal history in it. You are—even more remarkable than I’d appreciated. Even stronger. Raien had already told me what he knew of you—how he found you after your flight through the wilderness; of your assault on him when he wouldn’t free you to find your Curtis; and of your swim. I was impressed. But the things we learned through A’duaill . . .”
“I trust there was more to it than my life history.”
“Much more. Much of use to Raien in planning.”
“Planning?”
Mariil shook her head. “We could talk about that for days. And will, I hope. Just now I want to talk about you and Raien.”
“Your husband.”
“My husband. The man I’ve loved since I first saw him when he was what he looks now to be: a youth in his early twenties.” She smiled at Varia then. “I was seventy-two, and quite lovely. At least I thought so, and I’d been hearing it all my life. My first husband was a pleasant and thoughtful man, if a bit careless with the maids, but Raien— And Erig was in decline.
“Raien, it seemed, was as smitten with me as I with him. I was much older, of course, and we knew that barring violence or accident, the time would come . . .” She gestured to herself. “The time would come that has.”
Varia kept aloof, as best she could. “And you’ve produced no heir in those thirty or so years.”
“Twenty-nine years last equinox.”
“You’ve had the man you love for twenty-nine years. I had mine for a few weeks.”
The reply seemed to shrink Mariil, and for a long moment she didn’t answer, then nodded. “But it wouldn’t work,” she said, “even if you could reach him. Your Dynast knows only that you fled. And where to? To Curtis Macurdy or your death.” Again Mariil paused. “Your Dynast is ancient and unrelenting. She doesn’t easily give up what she thinks of as hers. She’d send someone after you. Idri perhaps.”
The thought jarred Varia. She’d recognized the possibility once, then pushed it away out of sight. Oregon. Suppose they went to Oregon. Could Idri sniff her out so far? Could a tracker?