"I don't know why you're angry with Nimshi, Lachlan, after all he's done for us…"
"It's not the all, Grace, but the how," was Lachlan's cryptic response. We were having diner and Lachlan was drinking brandy with the meal.
"Whatever do you mean?"
Lachlan gave me a blank stare. "I wish they'd both go!" he blurted out, giving me a look that made me shudder.
"Both? Zulei…" My protest was simultaneous to his denial.
"No, no, I don't really mean that. Grace. I just… don't know… I'm afraid. Grace. I don't understand what's been happening. Or how!"
I hadn't really noticed until then that he had been keeping his stump in his coat pocket. Now he brought it out and laid back the cuff.
I gaped at what I saw - a tiny hand, growing out of the renewed wrist. The regenerated portion of his arm was healthy firm flesh and the little hand complete despite it being miniature.
"It's growing, too. Noticeably," Lachlan said, frowning at the grotesquerie. "I spotted the fingers coming out of the wrist before the 'Chase. I didn't think about it then because I didn't believe my eyes. I… don't know whether I want it or not."
"Not want your hand back? But you could ride and write your name instead of that scribble, and dance," I heard myself say, for I wanted nothing now so much as my favorite brother a whole man.
Lachlan stared at me and made an odd strangled sound. "You amaze me. Grace. You really do," he said, and looked down at his budding hand. Carefully he pulled down the cuff and shoved his arm back into the pocket.
"Does it hurt?"
"No, and it doesn't itch," he replied; then he went on in a different tone, pouring more brandy into his glass. "Tell me what else happened at Majpoor during the way. Grace. Tell me what else Zulei did with her black magic."
I shook my head. "She doesn't use black magic, Lachlan."
"Then what the hell is that?" he demanded roughly, jerking his chin at his pocketed limb.
"I don't know what art she uses but I do know that black magic is evil. Zulei isn't evil. Whatever…" I remembered the word Nimshi had used the day Zulei fooled the Yankees. "… working she does is not evil, for with it she protected me, and Majpoor. Restoring what you lost is not evil either. And she's not a Negro, so it's not conjure or voodoo or obeah that she's using."
"Not a nigra?" That surprised Lachlan so completely that I grinned at the effect.
"She's an emir's daughter and was sold into slavery," I said, willing to startle him into belief of Zulei's goodness. "Nimshi wouldn't explain why."
Lachlan gave a snort of disbelief. "And don't try to tell me Nimshi's not get of old man Bainbridge with that hair and those eyes."
"We're not discussing Nimshi's parentage," I said as primly as I could, recalling that Mama would have been scandalized to hear my brother mention such a topic in my presence, "which shouldn't matter a hill of beans when we owe everything we have at Majpoor to Zulei's help during the war."
"Exactly what form did this help actually take. Grace?"
I'd never heard my brother use quite that sort of tone before and, because I remembered the incident with that Yankee captain and Sultan, I related that and what Nimshi had said - that his mother had made the horses look different. And me.
"When they left, Zulei fainted…" I broke off because at that moment I realized why Zulei was so ill. I stared at Lachlan, at his pocketed arm, and nearly fainted myself. "Oh, no…" The chair toppled, I sprang from it so abruptly. I picked up my skirts and ran up the stairs, Lachlan calling for me to stop, to explain. "She's working herself to death for you!"
I burst into the room, not surprised to find Nimshi there; he often sat with his mother in the evenings. I fell on my knees at her bedside, staring down at her face, all bones and nearly skull-like in a deterioration that was rapidly seeping her life away.
"Oh, Zulei, you must leave off the working… you must! You and Nimshi have done enough!"
A wan smile curved on her lips, and I remembered how lovely she had been in the days before the war, and wept to see her so wasted now, as wasted as the South was. "Nimshi, how could you let your mother…" I cried, turning on him in my anger.
He shook his head and then I felt Zulei's fingers on my arm.
"It is not this working. Miss Grace, but the other which has drained me, as evil will."
"What other? You're not evil."
"The man who sold me into slavery," she said, and her eyes glittered feverishly, "has taken a long time to die. He could never get far enough away to shake the Curse I put on him, though it has taken my lifetime to do it. And my life. Evil takes its toll and the good I have done has not been enough to balance the vengeance exacted, rightful though it is. War is not the only way to waste the breath of life. Major Langhorn." She looked beyond me to Lachlan standing in the doorway. "For the kindness of your father and your mother, I used the Great Arts I was taught to heal the sick and injured, and to veil Majpoor's wealth and goodness from its enemies, hoping that that would expiate the other harm I did. Inshallah! May God now have mercy on me!"
Her breath fluttered and ceased. We were all so stunned by her death that we stared at her, incredulous, for many long moments. Then I closed her eyes and, marveling at the look of peace on her ravaged face, slowly covered it.
We buried Zuleika bint Nasrullah in the family cemetery with her real name on the headstone. You can see it there if your heart is pure enough to find Majpoor, for even now, Lachlan says that some folk still can't find the avenue, though it is plainly marked.
His hand grew, although it was never quite the same size as his left one. But he could now break and train the horses we bred. I was bridesmaid at his wedding to the daughter of a Northern lawyer who'd been sent south to see about claims of misappropriation of funds and carpetbagger chicanery.
Nimshi did go north, but for himself, with a son of Wazir and enough mares to found his own stable. And I, I went north, too. Where I could marry a red-haired emir's grand-son who bred horses that always won their races.
Cinderella Switch
Deagan, Fenn, and Cordane were standing on the top level of the broad terraced steps above the ballroom of Fomalhaut V's Official Residence, commenting on the costumed dancers swirling to the exotic music of the android musicians. Having identified everyone there, they were bored. But their location and mood put them in an excellent position to see the girl sweep in through the open garden doors. Her sparkling mist of a gown scintillated against the darkness behind her.
"Fardles! What a party crasher!" Cordane exclaimed, his eyes widening appreciatively.
"What a costume!" said Deagan, wondering just how that shifting mist of pastel light was generated. The new arrival was covered from neck to ankle, shoulder to wrist, with a haze hiding all but her eyes and her streaming black hair. Furthermore, whatever the mechanism, it was quite sophisticated. As the shades shifted from opacity to transparency in a tantalizing random fashion, even the most casual observer realized she wore absolutely nothing under her hazy attire.
Before the three observers could move toward her, a tall man in the garb of an ancient Terran diplomat - his black-and-white an excellent foil for her pale shimmers - bowed formally and led her to the center of the dance in progress.