"You are betrayed," the Death said.
He wrapped his arms about him against the chill and stared at her.
"She doesn't love you," said the Death. "Don't you know that?"
"I knew," he said. "But then, no one ever did. They've forgotten how." The Death lifted her hands to the veils and let them fall. She was beautiful, pale of skin, with ebon hair and a blood-red stain of rubies at her brow. She held out hands to him, rising. And when she came to him he did not look away. "Some change their minds," she said. "Even those who come of their own will."
The eyes were strange, constantly shifting in subtle tones. . . the fires, perhaps, or all the souls she had drunk, all the torment. "I bring peace," she said. "If I did not exist, there would be no way out. And they would all go mad. I am their choice. I am possibility. I am change in the cycles." He gazed into the flickerings, the all-too-tenanted eyes. "How is it done?" he asked, fearing to know.
She embraced him, and laid her head at his shoulder. He flinched from a tiny sharp pain at his throat, quickly done. A chill grew in his limbs, a slight giddiness like love.
"Go back," she said releasing him. "Run away until your time." He stumbled back, found the door, realized belatedly her words.
"Go," she said. "I'll come for you. . . in my agreed time. I at least keep my word, Jade Alain." And when he would have gone. . . .
"Jade Alain," she said. "I know you have moved to Onyx. I know most things in the City. Tell your wife. . . I keep my promises."
"She fears you."
"She is nothing," the Death said. "Do you fear me?" He considered. The question found him numb. And for all his numbness he walked back to her, faced the dreadful eyes. He tested his courage by it. He tested it further, took the Death's face between his hands and returned the kiss she had given three years before.
"Ah," she said. "That was kind."
"You are gentle," he said. "I shall not mind."
"Sad Jade prince. Go. Go away just now."
He turned away, walked out the grim doorway into the light, walked up the stairs, a long, long walk, in which there were few passersby, for it was what passed for night in the City now, and of that he was very glad, because of the shame which Onyx had dealt him and the anger he felt. Those who did see him stared, and muttered behind their hands and shrank away. So did those at the doors of Onyx, who blanched and began to bar his way.
But the doors opened, and Ermine's several friends stood with knives.
"Go away," they said.
"That was not the bargain," he replied.
"Your wife is the bargain," the oldest woman said. "Take Ermine back to Jade. Don't involve us."
"No,"Ermine wailed from the hall beyond; but they brought her to him, and he took her by the hand and dragged her along to his own doors. She ceased struggling. They entered within the ornate halls of Jade Palace, and under the fearful eyes of his own kin, he drew her through the maze of corridors to his own apartments, and sealed the door fast behind them. Shewas there. There was no possible means that she could be. . . but there the Death stood, clothed in black, among the green draperies by the bed. Ermine flung about and cried aloud, stopped by his opposing arms.
"Go," the Death said. "I've nothing to do with you yet. Your wife and I have business." He held Ermine still, she shivering and holding to him and burying her face against him. He shook his head. "No," he said, "I can't. I can't give her to you."
"I've been offended," the Death said. "How am I to be paid for such an offense against my dignity?"
He thought a moment. Smoothed Ermine's pale hair. "The year that I have left. What is that to me? Don't take Ermine's lives. She cares so much to save them."
"Does Ermine agree?" the Death asked.
"Yes," Ermine sobbed, refusing to look back. He sighed, hurt at last, shook his head and put Ermine from him. The Death reached out her hand, and he came to her, embraced her, looked back as she put her black-robed arm about him. Ermine cowered in the corner, head upon her knees.
"Cousin," the Death whispered to him, for she was once of Jade. He looked into the shifting eyes, and she touched her finger first to her lips and to his; it bled, and left the blood on his lips. "Mine," she said. "As you are."
He was. He felt cold, and hungry for life, desired it more than ever he had desired in his youth.
"I also," the Death said, "am once-born. . . and never die. Nor shall you. Nor have a name again. Nor care."
"Ermine," he whispered, to have the sight of her face again. She looked. And screamed, and hid her face in her hands.
"When the lives grow too many," the Death said, "and you grow weary, Ermine. . . we will be waiting."
"Whenever you wish," he said to Ermine, and slipped his hand within the Death's warm hand, and went with her, the hidden ways.
Pertito shook his head sadly, poured more wine, stroked the cheek of Legran, who was his lover this cycle, and Claudette's sister. Below their vantage, beyond the balcony, a pale figure wavered on the tenth level stairs, where the Sin began its dizzying fall. "I'll wager she's on the verge again," he said. "Poor Ermine. Thousands of years and no invention left. Never more years than twenty-two. When she reaches that age. . . she's gone."
"Not this time," Legran said.
"Ah. Look. She's on the edge."
Legran stretched her neck to see, remained tranquil. "A wager?"
"Has she whispered things in your brother's ear, perhaps? Lovers' confidences?" Legran sighed, smiled lazily, settling again. She sipped at her cup and her smoky eyes danced above the rim. A crowd was gathering to watch the impending leap.
"Do you know something?" Pertito asked.
"Ah, my tragic brother, to be in love with Ermine. Three lifetimes now he could not hold her. . . Wager on it, my love?"
Pertito hesitated. A hundred lifetimes without variance. It was a small crowd, observing the suicide indifferently, expecting no novelty from Ermine.
"This time," Legran said, eyes dancing more, "there is a rival."
"A second lover?"
The white figure poised delicately on the topmost step of the chute. There were sighs, a polite rippling of applause.
"A very old one," Legran said. "For some months now. Ah. There she goes." There were gasps, a dazed silence from the crowd.
Past the falls, this time, and down and down the stairs, a gleam of white and pearls. 1981
THE HAUNTED TOWER
( London )
There were ghosts in old London, that part of London outside the walls and along the river, or at least the townsfolk outside the walls believed in them: mostly they were attributed to the fringes of the city, and the unbelievers inside the walls insisted they were manifestations of sunstruck brains, of senses deceived by the radiations of the dying star and the fogs which tended to gather near the Thames. Ghosts were certainly unfashionable for a city management which prided itself on technology, which confined most of its bulk to a well-ordered cube (geometrically perfect except for the central arch which let the Thames flow through) in which most of the inhabitants lived precisely ordered lives. London had its own spaceport, maintained offices for important offworld companies, and it thrived on trade. It pointed at other cities in its vicinity as declined and degenerate, but held itself as an excellent and enlightened government: since the Restoration and the New Mayoralty, reason reigned in London, and traditions were cultivated only so far as they added to the comfort of the city and those who ruled it. If the governed of the city believed in ghosts and other intangibles, well enough; reliance on astrology and luck and ectoplasmic utterances made it less likely that the governed would seek to analyze the governors upstairs. There were some individuals who analyzed the nature of things, and reached certain conclusions, and who made then attempts on power.