Then one day Sten broached the matter himself. They were eating dinner—in total silence. Sten had lately formed the habit of staring straight into his dish while he ate. Never speaking, never looking to one side or another. And certainly never raising his eyes as he shoveled in food—more as if it were fuel than anything potentially flavorful. Kilgour watched him out of the corner of his eye.
Sten popped in a hunk of something. Chewed. Swallowed. Another hunk. Another mechanical repetition. Suddenly he stopped midchew. His face grew dark with inner fury. Then he spat the food out as if it were poison, slammed to his feet, and slammed just as loudly out. That time, Alex decided not to ignore the incident. He waited a few moments and then went to Sten's quarters. The door was open, and Sten was pacing back and forth, working off the angry energy. Alex waited at the door until he was noticed. Sten saw him, stopped, then shook his head.
"I'm sorry, Alex," he said. Kilgour determined to bite the bullet and shake Sten up if he could.
"Y' aught't'be," he said, forcing irritation in his tone. "Y' clottin' aught't'be."
He went on, reaming Sten's butt. Sten was told that once again, he had spoiled Alex's dinner. And he was such terrible company that he had driven Kilgour to thoughts of murder, or suicide. He had been behaving like an adolescent, Alex said, and it was time he grabbed himself by whatever pride he had left and started thinking about how he was affecting others, such as his longest and dearest friend, one Alex Kilgour.
Alex felt like drakh when he started—hitting the lad while he was down. But as he went on he warmed to the task. Sten had been getting to him, dammit! And he needed to be told. Then he saw that Sten was not listening—or was only partly listening. His head was down and his fists were clenched until the knuckles were white.
"I blew it!" Sten hissed. "I clottin' blew it!"
"Aye," Alex said. "We did thae, lad. I' spades. But y'ken, 'tis nae th' first time. Nae wil't be th' last."
He had known all along what was haunting Sten. And with the opening he had just achieved, he tried to put it in perspective. He talked about all the other missions that had gone awry, the heaps of corpses left behind. They had suffered far worse things in the past, had witnessed and been partly responsible for far more dead. Alex knew he was pissing in the wind. But he had to try, just the same.
This was not just a sudden case of the guilts. It went back to Sten's reasons for abandoning his career more than six years before. The Tahn conflict certainly had been the costliest in terms of lives, as well as credits, of any war ever. Even on their own infinitely unimportant level, Sten and Alex had been forced to sacrifice so many lives that the foul taste of blood could never be washed out.
Sten had grown sick of playing butcher-which was why he had not only resigned but had turned his back on the only family he knew. Living family, at least.
Some of that also had to do with Kilgour's own decision to quit. But he had Edinburgh, with family and ancestral friends.
This time, what made it harder for Sten to pay the butcher's price was his long self-imposed exile. There was no way, no matter how hard he had continued to train, that he would not blame the blowup of the mission on his own rusty skills. Morally, if he felt that way, he should have turned down Mahoney's urging to lead the mission and helped Ian find someone else-someone fresher, someone not so tired and bitter.
Alex laid all of this out for Sten. He cajoled him. He cursed him. But nothing did any good. How could it? In the same position, Alex knew he would probably feel the same way.
The silence resumed. It lasted the remainder of the trip. And beyond.
Cind faithfully attended every one of the numerous feasts the Bohr had laid on to honor the returning heroes of the Jann war. She couldn't know that one of the key reasons for the banquets was Otho's clumsy attempts to break Sten out of his gloom and self-blame. But she couldn't help but notice how drawn Sten seemed, how oblivious he appeared to his surroundings, as if he were lost in some torment that no normal being could imagine. It seemed terribly tragic to her-and romantic.
She had finally gotten up the nerve to enter Sten's exalted presence. After considering how best to present herself, she had bought a costume so daring that she blushed even to think of it dangling in her locker. When she put it on and looked herself over in the mirror, she had almost pulled a sheet in front of herself so she would not have to look. Cind smoothed her already blemishless features with the most expensive and exotic makeup she could find, then dotted herself with a perfume guaranteed by the salesbeing to make strong human males fall at the feet of the woman wise enough to seek out this particular musk.
Cind dared the mirror again. She thought she looked like a clotting joygirl. If this is what men wanted, they could... she couldn't think of what they ought to do, but she was sure that with thought she would come up with something suitably nasty. That even included Sten. Clot it! He would have to take her as she was.
She showered and scrubbed off all the offending stuff, then threw away the bitty thing that had disgraced her closet. Instead she chose one of her best uniforms. It was made of a fine leatherlike cloth and fit as if the beast who had borne the skin had been genetically bred just for Cind's fine young body. Her face was fresh and glowing from the scouring, her cheeks rosy from the bold thoughts she entertained.
Cind looked herself over in the mirror again. Oh, well. It would have to do.
She could not have picked more wisely. Sten had once had a lover from this part of the Empire. Her name was Sofia. Lady Sofia was a woman who entertained ambitions for the Imperial Court. Sten had helped her achieve them. A long time passed until he and Sofia had met again. It was at a Function, thrown by those greatest of all Imperial hosts, Marr and Senn.
The makeup and perfume Sofia had worn were not much different than Cind's—although vastly more expensive. And as for her dress—Sofia had worn nothing at all except some scattered glitter dust.
Faced with all that pulchritude, Sten had done what Sofia had least expected. He had run like the wind—into the arms of a homicide lieutenant, one Lisa Haines, a woman who was much more Sten's style.
Cind knew that this particular feast was going to be semiformal—for the Bhor, at least. Preceding the usual gluttony, there would be a receiving line to greet the honored guests. She called in a heavy favor with a Bhor friend and found a place at the end of the line.
Otho paraded Kilgour and Sten into the hall and past the line. After his stint as chief of the Emperor's palace guard, there was little Sten did not know about such polite entries. He shook the hand of each being, looked them in the eye, and smiled. It was not a great smile, but it would have to do. Then he passed on to the next. Still, by the time he reached Cind he was anxious to hie himself to the safety of his table. He gave her a perfunctory handclasp, smiled, and started to move on.
Cind held the hand tight. It was just for a moment, but it was enough to make Sten hesitate, so as not to be rude. Then he found himself looking at an absolutely lovely young woman with a stunning uniformed figure, face as fresh as nature itself, eyes clear and innocent, and the sober serious look that only the young could adopt and still be charming.
Cind spoke in a rush, to get it all out before Sten moved on. "Admiral Sten, I want you to know this is the greatest honor in my life. I've studied all the details of your actions during the Jann conflict, and I'd like you to know just how much of an inspiration you've been to me."
Sten couldn't help himself. He had to laugh. But it was not the kind of laughter anyone—especially Cind—would take offense to, or think she was the object of.