“Oh, yes,” Miles breathed, and the kiss was even longer this time.
When Miles lifted his head, though, concern shadowed his face. “I didn’t tell Dirk and Gar that I’m not the only person who knows who all the rebels are, and where. I’m very frightened for you, my love.”
“Well, then.” Ciletha wrapped her arms around him and pressed her head into his shoulder. “You’ll just have to take very good care of me, won’t you?”
“Why, yes, I will,” he said, his smile returning, and pressed a finger under her chin to lift her head. “I won’t let you out of my sight, my love.”
“Well,” she said, “at least not at night,” and kissed him again.
So it was that Ciletha stood beside Miles on top of a hill in the very first predawn light a week later, wondering what Dirk and Gar were waiting for, but too polite to ask.
“How do you write out your records?” Gar asked one more time.
“In ink that runs if it gets wet,” Ciletha said patiently, “and we keep a tank of water nearby, to dump in the records if our sentries tell us soldiers are coming.”
“Infiltrate the secret police if you can,” Dirk reminded them for the tenth time.
“We will if we can find them,” Miles told them patiently. “You don’t know how sorry I am to see you go, and how glad I’ll be to see you come back!”
“Thank you.” Gar smiled warmly. “But you don’t really need us any more. This revolution will run itself now—it’s like a boulder that’s been pushed off the top of a hill. If nobody stops it, it’ll knock down the castle at the bottom.”
“It would take a very great deal to stop a boulder going that fast,” Dirk seconded, “especially since this boulder gets bigger as it rolls.”
“Good-bye.” Gar reached down to embrace Miles, then Ciletha, and came up with that fleeting trace of longing flickering over his face.
“Farewell indeed!” she told him. “Until you come back to us!”
“We will if we live,” Dirk promised, “and we intend to. Go now, you two. Leave us to our transportation.”
“Go on,” Gar said, still smiling.
Miles took Ciletha’s arm in his. Together they turned and started down the hill. They heard nothing, saw nothing, but as they reached the bottom, something made them turn and look up.
They saw the huge golden disk hovering over the hilltop, and Dirk and Gar climbing up the ramp it had lowered to them. They disappeared inside; the ramp lifted, and the disk rose.
Miles and Ciletha stood staring at it until it was long out of sight.
“Now I believe our ancestors came from another star,” Miles whispered.
Ciletha shook herself and turned away. “Come, beloved. We have a Protector to overthrow.”
CHAPTER 17
She remembered being the Lady Rijora, and in her dreams, she still was—but in the light of day, she knew herself once again as just plain Bess.
Plain indeed! Where Lady Rijora’s mirror had shown her a finely chiseled face with large blue long-lashed eyes, fair complexion, and a veritable mane of golden curls, Bess saw a moon-round face with close-set brown eyes, skin scarred by pimples, and framed by straight lank brown hair. The layers of fat had faded with Dirk’s combat drills and the Guardian’s diet, though, and she bore herself with grace, back straight and step light. Her tongue kept the lady’s accent as well as her hands remembered the gestures of refined conversation, and the ways of using the tableware for an elaborate formal dinner. Even more, she remembered the tricks of wide-eyed flirtation, of sidelong glances and the tilt of a head and the bat of eyelashes so well that she didn’t even need to think of them.
Less obvious, and much to be hidden, was the knowledge of literature that their deluded court had learned from the Guardian, and the seriousness of the lessons Gar and Dirk had taught—of history, of law, of the workings of society and government, and of the human mind. It was knowledge to be hidden, yes, but also to be used for asking the occasional question that stimulated conversation, and made it much quicker for her to learn from its interplay.
The townswomen eyed her with suspicion as she walked down the high street with her basket on her arm, and she heard more than one mutter, “Who does she think she is, putting on such airs?”
Without even thinking, the words leaped to her tongue: I am the Lady Rijora, peasant. You forget your place. She bit them back in time, though, only tossing her head in reply—and that little gesture brought angry murmurs from other women all along the way.
At least I’m attracting attention, she thought, but with her heart in her throat. She meant to be noticed, surely enough—but what would happen when she was?
A man in livery, carrying the staff of a watchman, stepped up to her, his face carefully neutral. “Good day, goodwoman.”
“Good day, watchman.” Her heart rose into her throat.
“Let me see your travel permit; please.” The officer held out his hand.
“Of course.” She rummaged in her basket and held out the packet, her heart hammering, no matter how calmly she smiled. This was the first crisis—whether or not her forged papers would pass inspection. The Guardian itself had made them, of course, feeding them out of a slot in the wall, and had reassured her that it had shaped them after real papers that a wanderer had brought only five years earlier—but how much could change in five years? Certainly she had!
The papers, though, had not—or so it seemed. The watchman read them through in a minute, nodding in satisfaction. “So. You are Bess of the village of Milorga, come seeking your third cousins.” He looked up, frowning. “Your magistrate does not say why you seek them. Do you need to live with them?”
Bess noticed the dangerous glint in his eye—the official on the watch for single folk who should be bound into marriage.
That was her intention, but she didn’t have the same partner in mind that he seemed to have. “No, sir—it’s just that my grandmother has only this last month learned that her brother lived long enough to wed, when he was mustered out of the Protector’s service.”
The watchman stiffened; service to a Protector’s guardsman, retired or active, held a high priority.
“Gram is old and frail,” Bess went on, “and wishes to see her niece or nephew, if she has such, and their children, if there are any. Mama must tend the old woman, so I am sent to seek our relatives.”
“A good deed,” the watchman said piously, “but why here in our town of Grister?”
“It’s the last place Grandma knew of my great-uncle being sent,” Bess explained, “and she hopes that his family will be here, of course, but if not, she hopes that someone here might still remember where he went.”
“Sent here.” The watchman thrust out a lip, looking thoughtful. “He was assigned to be a reeve’s guard, then?”
“Yes, sir, but his reeve sent him to organize the Watch for the magistrate of this village.”
“A common thing, when a magistrate is new to his office and has just begun his first assignment,” the watchman said, nodding. “Indeed, the officer who commands us is just such a reeve’s man, for our new magistrate is very young, and newly sent to begin his career.” He couldn’t help a hint of condescension coming into his voice.
Bess couldn’t keep a thrill from her heart. She knew very well that the magistrate here was brand-new, and very young, as such officials went, only in his mid-twenties. In fact, that was why Miles had sent her.