The Baron had Tiana briefly on Earth, hadn’t he?
The thought came almost immediately, and he could not get it out of his head. What if this girl really wasn’t Tiana at all?
For Mia, riding behind him on her horse while keeping the packhorse in the rear in line, the same logic and questions had gnawed even further at her. More bothersome than the skills she did have were the memories she did not. Tiana had gone to school on Earth, in Switzerland, one of the countries there, but she had no memory of the schooling, or the country, or even where it might be. She didn’t even remember being a mermaid, as they’d reminisced, or anything between the palace life and the night they defeated the Baron. Even the palace memories were odd, as if she were someone else, watching Tiana rather than being her.
Memories long suppressed, strange memories but familiar ones, now came to the fore. Of all those kids jammed in a one-room hovel, of playing naked with other dirty kids in a town square, of running away at age eleven when her mother died in childbirth, determined that it would not happen to her. Of reaching a big city and being befriended by a man who was at the start very nice, but who later taught her to dance with the other girls for crowds of leering men, renting out her young body to some of them, and, finally, being arrested, where a kindly woman Procurator listened sympathetically to her life story and sentenced her to be a slave, ward of the state, and trained as a maid… Of being in the palace after Joe and Tiana left, of men in black who’d seized her, to awaken in a strange place on a strange world… Of seeing her Highness helpless, in some room…
It hit her all at once with a force that almost knocked her off the horse. By the gods! I have been mad! I am not Tiana! I am the slave Mia!
After the initial shock wore off, though, the realization brought not horror and regret but a sense of peace in her mind. She was not forced into slavery, she was simply now returned to her proper role and self! It was all right, then! No more inner struggles, no more anguish. Instead, she felt great pride in herself, that she, a mere ignorant whore turned slave, had managed to fool even Joe into thinking she was of the blood royal. And, for those few months, she’d had him, essentially as an equal, something beyond even the most impossible, wild dreams of one such as her. It was over now, she knew, but if she died tomorrow, it still would be enough.
The trouble was, how to tell him! She decided that she could not; it would embarrass him. But, if he suspected at some time, if he asked, then she would admit the truth.
It took ten hours to reach Machang, a pretty big city by Husaquahrian standards, teeming with life and busy people, its huge bridge at the northern end dominating the skyline and marking the end of navigation on the Rossignol.
They selected a low-rent hostelry near the riverfront for their night’s lodging, first going into a back alley and awakening a still slightly groggy Marge, telling her where they’d be, and letting her manage to fly up to the rooftops to finish her slumbers.
Mia helped unload, then unpacked, got the room ready as much as she could, then went back down to arrange to stable the horses. She felt buoyant, giddy, almost supercharged, like a whole new person, free to act and think like a teenager again.
Joe plopped down on the bed, feeling tireder than he knew he should, simply because of the monotony of the ride. And there were weeks and weeks of this to come, with the climate, both real and political, turning worse as they went.
Marge tapped outside his third-story window and he got up and raised it fully to let her in. He was glad to see her. “Any trouble finding me?”
“Naw. Really freaked out a couple folks who saw me peekin’ in, but most of ’em were doin’ anything but lookin’ out the window.” She grinned evilly. “You may be the only person in this joint who’s here to sleep.”
“I think I’d be a little too conspicuous staying in one of the fancy places. Besides, I couldn’t even dress for dinner.”
“Mia’s not back yet?”
“No, she just left to stable the horses a few minutes ago.”
“You’re down in the dumps about something, I can tell. Just what’s ahead?”
“Well, that, but not really. I just never really been this alone on a long trip since I drove a truck, and then I had a CB and the stereo.”
“What you’re really saying is that you can’t relate to Mia as you could to Ti and you can’t just take Mia as Mia.”
He nodded. “That’s part of it.”
“Joe, I think maybe I oughta tell you something. I checked it out last night after Ruddygore told me and it holds up, but it’s a big shock. I wasn’t supposed to tell, but I’m exercising that judgment the old boy thinks I have.”
“I’m listening.”
She told him the whole thing, beginning to end, including how she’d run into this lonely half-baked magician in Terdiera who’d looked up the literacy thing in the Rules for her and confirmed it. Joe listened with so little expression, saying nothing even after she’d finished, that she had to prompt him. “Well?”
“I—I was beginning to suspect as much, but it’s still a shock to find out the woman you thought was your wife is some sixteen-year-old slave girl I don’t even remember. It also means I’ve been had and living a lie for many months, and, most of all, it means Ti’s really gone.”
She hadn’t thought of that last one. “Oh, Joe. I’m so sorry! Damn me!”
“No, no. You were right to tell me. It’s better to know. The question is, does she know?”
“I think so, now. Fairy intuition, maybe. This was supposed to take a week to kick in, but I can’t stand it. Ask her when she gets back. Ask her if she knows the truth about herself.”
“And if she does and admits it? What then?”
“Then I’d tell her it’s okay, that it’s good to know, and that it’s closed. And then I’d blow out the light and make love to her. Not as Joe and Ti, but as Joe and slave girl.”
“Huh?”
“Trust me. Do that and all the ice will melt. After that, you can relate to her and she to you as people in their relative positions. The feminine fairy nose knows. How would you guys ever survive if you didn’t have women to tell you what to do?”
And, it turned out, she was exactly right.
The next day dawned as clear and warm as the one before; good traveling weather. Mia was like a different person—which, in a way, she was—up and about before dawn, getting things packed and ready before he awoke and without awakening him, somehow even finding hot water for the basin and giving him a morning wash. To himself, guiltily, he had to admit grudgingly that he liked such treatment and could easily grow used to it. She refused breakfast, saying she’d eat something later, and, while he ate at a dingy riverfront cafe, she went and settled the livery bill, got the horses and packed things away, then brought it all to him.
“That’s a hell of a girl you got there, Mister,” the grizzled proprietor of the cafe noted as she arrived. “You want to sell her?”
“Never,” he responded. “She’s absolutely essential to me.”
They picked up Marge in the alley, and she crawled in her “hidey hole” as she called it and was soon off to dreamland, but feeling a little smug. She still didn’t care for this slave girl bit; it went against her grain. But if she had to see it, then it was a lot easier to accept a little slave girl raised to this level, at least, rather than a Tiana sunk to it. After all, Tiana hadn’t given a thought to slaves waiting on her hand and foot, both male and female, as being anything other than her due. That didn’t make it right, but Marge had been around long enough to lose, if not her ideals, at least her hopes that one could cure the evils of the world without also inventing totally new ones.