Miletti shrugged.
“They don’t care about us,” Miletti said.
Then he added as an afterthought, “At least, not yet they don’t.”
* * * *
Nancy’s eyes opened, and she stared upward for a fraction of a second; then she closed them, tight, and flung an arm across them protectively.
“The matrix,” Susan suggested. “She’s never seen it before.”
Pel had forgotten that; he quickly fought down the glow, reduced it to a dim flickering, no brighter than a few candles. He was relieved that he had allowed Susan to stay when he sent all the others away; he had become so accustomed to the matrix, and to his own immunity to its brilliance, that he might not have identified the problem for a minute or two, and he didn’t want to waste even a second.
He remembered how the simulacrum had reacted when she first awoke; if this one did the same thing then he would know he had failed, and it would all be over.
“Nancy?” he said.
The eyes opened again, the arm lifted, and she looked up at his worried face. She looked at the beard, at the unkempt long hair, and then at his eyes.
She blinked, and stared into his eyes for a long moment.
“Pel?” she said at last, and the Brown Magician smiled the most wonderful smile of his life.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It was perfect. It was, Pel thought, really almost perfect. It wasn’t at all like that first night with the simulacrum of Nancy. It wasn’t like any night ever before, not even their honeymoon.
At first Nancy had asked about Rachel-Pel hadn’t told her where Rachel was, or that she was dead; he had merely told her that their daughter was safe, that he would explain everything later.
She had still wondered, in a half-hearted way, but she hadn’t argued too strenuously.
And she had asked where they were, and Pel had told her they were in Faerie, but it was all right, Shadow was dead and they were safe, he would explain it all later.
And she had asked about the glow, the strange colors flickering around him, and he had told her that it was magic, but it was under control, he would explain later.
And she had asked about his beard and hair, and he told her he’d been too busy to shave lately, but he’d clean himself up when he had a moment.
And she had asked how she got there, and he said she had been unconscious for a long time, but she was all right now.
And then she had run out of questions and he had taken her in his arms, and it had been damn near perfect.
At first.
But then he woke up beside her, and looked at her sleeping there, and he thought it over.
She shouldn’t have been aware of any long separation. She had died just a dozen yards away from him, aboard that ship; they had been together until just hours before. Yet she had acted as if they were reunited after months apart.
They were, but how would she know?
Was it just his own altered appearance that had let her know? That shouldn’t have been enough, he thought-it wouldn’t have had the emotional impact she seemed to have felt. Had she been somehow aware while she was dead? Had he snatched her back from Heaven, perhaps?
Pel had never really believed in Heaven, and he still didn’t-but he had never believed in a lot of things he had seen for himself of late.
And she hadn’t argued with him about anything, not really. She hadn’t insisted on knowing where Rachel was, or who was looking after her.
Well, there must have been something of a shock, going from being raped aboard a spaceship to waking up in a magician’s castle.
And she hadn’t mentioned being raped, but all the survivors of Emerald Princess had said she was raped before the pirates killed her.
There hadn’t been any physical evidence that Pel could see, but after all, the body had been in such terrible condition that he wouldn’t have noticed anything whether it had been there or not, and why would the others have lied?
So she had been raped-and how could she go so willingly from that to her husband’s bed? It didn’t seem right, somehow.
That first fetch he had restored had screamed at the memory of what had happened to him; Nancy hadn’t. Why not?
Pel frowned, and told himself that he was worrying about nothing, trying to ruin his own happiness with all these niggling little worries. Maybe years spent as Shadow’s fetch were far more horrible than what Nancy had lived through. Maybe she didn’t remember being raped; he hadn’t asked her about it, so he didn’t really know. Maybe she had blocked out those last few minutes. Or maybe that was why she had been eager enough to not ask more about Rachel, maybe she had wanted something clean and good to wipe away the memory.
This was Nancy. She had known his name when she first woke up. She had asked about Rachel, even if she hadn’t insisted. She had responded just about the way Nancy always had, nothing had been wrong or strange-until now, until he sat here thinking too much.
Had she been a little slow to react to things, a little detached?
Well, she had been dead.
He got up and had the matrix drape a robe about him, leaving Nancy undisturbed.
There wasn’t anything wrong with her.
There wasn’t, he told himself as he walked down the stone corridor, finding his way in his own light, anything wrong with her.
But somewhere in the back of his head he remembered something Shadow had said before she died.
The exact words were hard to recall, given her archaic phrasing, but he thought he had it. “I can instill therein a semblance of life, indistinguishable by any normal means from any mortal born,” she had said, “yet some certain spark is lacking.”
She had been referring to the ability of a resurrected person to use magic, to hold a matrix, Pel reminded himself. Nancy could never be a magician-but who cared?
That was all Shadow had meant, Pel told himself.
It was still Nancy. She was alive again.
And in an hour or so, Rachel would be, too.
* * * *
His Imperial Majesty George VIII drummed his fingers on a six-hundred-year-old table and considered his disgraced General Secretary, delivered directly from the spaceport to the palace and rushed hastily through security.
“Bucky, whatever were you thinking of?” he asked.
“I don’t know what you mean, your Majesty,” Sheffield replied uneasily.
“We mean why did you persist in antagonizing this Brown person? You know better than that.”
“I’m not sure I do, your Majesty,” Sheffield said. “I did what seemed best to me.”
“We’re disappointed, then. Why in the world didn’t you just give him his dead wife back? What possible harm could that have done?”
“I am not quite sure, your Majesty, and I preferred to err on the side of caution. Secretary Markham seemed to believe that the so-called ‘magic’ at Mr. Brown’s disposal might be able to make some use of the woman’s remains.”
“And what possible use could be worse for us than getting Brown furiously angry?” the Emperor asked. “And not only that, Bucky, but you lied to the man-you promised delivery, then balked. He did everything you asked-do you realize he ordered his entire network of spies to swear loyalty to us? To us, personally? That was more than anyone asked, and entirely his own idea, and he didn’t even bother to mention it. The man was being as friendly as he could be, and how did we respond?”
“Um,” Sheffield said. “But your Majesty, he…the Empire cannot afford to appear weak.”
“Oh, nonsense. The Empire isn’t weak, so it doesn’t really matter how we appear. Except that it’s much easier to stab someone from behind, and an enemy will never turn his back, while a friend won’t give it a second thought, so we should have done all we could to appear friendly. We should have turned over the bodies immediately.”