A Dictionary of Fools (The HouseOf Light And Shadow Book 2) Read online

  To his left, sitting alone on top of the bureau, was a blue velvet box. Inside it was a ring. The Emperor’s Cross, the highest military decoration in the empire. Awarded for “valor in the face of the enemy,” it was usually presented to the recipient—or his next of kin, as it was often awarded posthumously—by the Emperor himself. Kisten had skipped the formal investiture on the pretext of being too ill, and everyone had gone along with the polite fiction that he was merely “waiting until he felt stronger” to attend the Emperor in person. In the meantime, the ring had been delivered, without fanfare, by a special messenger.

  The same honor had been awarded to Jivaj. It was just as well that Kisten refused to leave his house; he had no wish to face his friend’s family. Or the woman that his friend had loved. His only regret, he’d told Kisten, as they prepared to meet their death in the pass, was that he’d never see her again. Selfishly, he’d hated even the thought of her being with another man, but he loved her too much not to want her to be happy. He hoped that, eventually, she’d find someone else.

  Eventually, he’d stressed, grinning at Kisten. Very eventually. I want her to miss me a little.

  Opening the box, Kisten studied the ring for a long time before taking it out and slipping it onto his finger. It was the same ring that, almost three years later, he’d give to the first and only woman he’d ever love. She’d never know, because he’d never tell her, how much it meant to him or what it represented—or that giving it to her was one of the few truly intimate gestures he’d ever make.

  He shut the box and, replacing it on the bureau, turned and prepared to face the outside world.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Kisten glanced over at Renta; she was smiling. The sun was out, and the weather was beginning to turn warm. They were walking through the deer park, which was wonderful outside of hunting season. A preternatural calm pervaded the sun-dappled glade, broken only by the occasional rustle of some small creature in the underbrush. The deer moved silently, stopping to stare at the intruders before bounding off.

  They’d taken to walking this path every afternoon. At first, Kisten’s departures from the house had been hesitant. Renta, gamely, had let herself be drenched while they took advantage of the monsoon. But as the rains receded and humidity gave way to the crisper and less humid air of fall, Kisten began to anticipate their walks with something like contentment. He liked being outside, and he liked being outside with Renta.

  He’d turned twenty-nine during his captivity, and thirty during his recovery. War was brewing on Goliath V—nothing like what had happened on Charon II, Goliath V was a minor mining outpost and the troubles there purely local—and the week before he’d put in his papers.

  Charon II had ended with a treaty and city planners, structural engineers and aid organizations from all over the empire were flocking in to assess the damage and rebuild. Life marched on; Kisten was ready to resume his own life, as best he could. He’d done a lot of thinking over the past few months, and knew now that he was ready to do his duty as both commander and prince. Was looking forward to it, actually; someone had to end Karan’s reign of terror, as it was coming to be known. He’d hidden himself away for far too long, and at some point fear had transformed into driving impatience.

  His one regret was that he’d be leaving Renta. He’d come to, if not love her, then care for her—after his own fashion. As a friend. He owed her more than could ever be repaid.

  The air was crisp, and redolent of green. Fall in Chau Cera was nothing like fall at Palawan. Chau Cera was chilly sometimes, and volcanically hot sometimes, but it was always green. He loved it. He loved his estate, in the north. He loved Brontes, and he was glad to be home.

  “My leave is up in three months,” he told her.

  “You put in your papers, then?”

  He nodded. “I’ll use the time to keep training, and getting back my strength—I need it. The season is starting soon,” he continued, referring to polo, “and I’d like to play a match or two before I go.” He smiled crookedly. “Provided I can do so without falling off my horse during the first chukker or utterly ruining my handicap. You could come, if you like; I wouldn’t mind someone cheering me on from the sidelines.”

  “Perhaps I don’t wish to be on the sidelines,” she said with some asperity.

  “I like nice, complying women,” he reminded her.

  “Your loss,” she retorted.

  They walked along in silence, comfortable together.

  Their connection was strong, but also one-note. Like any two souls who’d shared a traumatic experience, they shared a bond that no one else would ever understand—but as deep as that bond was, it reached no farther than the bounds of what formed it. He’d heard of the same phenomenon occurring in rehab and mused that the struggle to overcome any demon must be the same. But as close as they felt now, he knew on a purely intellectual level that he and Renta had nothing else in common. Sharing one thing, even something so monumental, just didn’t translate to compatibility.

  Fortunately, they both knew this.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  “It depends,” she replied. “I’d like to travel, be on my own. At least for awhile. And I’d like to see the colonies. I’m not meant for life on Brontes; I’ve spent so long not fitting in that I’ve lost my taste for it. Even if some uncritical lordling asked for my hand tomorrow, I couldn’t accept. I don’t belong here, if I ever did. I need to live somewhere where I can be me.”

  He almost asked, what about a prince, but he knew that he didn’t love her and never would. She deserved better, and so did he. Instead he asked, “do you still want to get married—some day?”

  “Yes. And….” She made a dismissive gesture.

  “You could adopt,” he pointed out.

  “I could,” she agreed. “What about you? What do you want—really?”

  “I don’t know,” he said honestly. He wanted a career in the navy but—apart from that?

  “You should get married,” she told him. “Find someone who loves you, and who will be devoted to you. Someone you can depend on.” She laughed. “And control.” She wasn’t being malicious; she knew him for what he was, and accepted him. He took her hand and placed it in the crook of his arm. The gesture, although new, was both casual and familiar.

  They hadn’t discussed money, and wouldn’t, but he’d already decided to confer a sizeable bequest: a trust, the income of which would be sufficient to support almost any reasonable venture. She could do whatever she wanted, within reason, for the rest of her natural life. It was all he had to give her, but it was what she wanted: freedom. He hoped it made her happy.

  “I wouldn’t make a good husband,” he said.

  “You could, if you wanted to.”

  “I’d be going through the motions.”

  “So?” She shook her head. “I’ve suffered at the hands of enough men, including my father, who claimed to love me to know that love—or what most people seem to call love—isn’t all the poets claim.”

  She turned, startled by some sound, and Kisten studied her. As he often did when she wasn’t looking. Her skin was clear, and soft, and he wanted to touch it. She wasn’t what he wanted and he wasn’t what she wanted. He wanted someone sweet and young and vulnerable, someone who needed him and who he could take care of—as, in another life, he’d take care of Aria. Renta was kind, but fundamentally flawed in the same way that Kisten was. She was unstable, and she had a cruel streak. She was too much like him.

  Renta, in turn, wanted someone who’d be her support; who’d be strong for her as, later, Aria would be strong for Kisten. Although he wouldn’t meet her for another two years, he knew on some level that there was a piece missing—from himself and from his life. When he met the right woman he’d know, instinctively, because she’d complete him.

  He’d better hope that she could at least tolerate him in return, he thought dryly, otherwise their arrangement might prove difficult.

  But
there was no point in worrying about that, now. He was arm in arm with one of the most beautiful women in the capital and while he’d never feel the same closeness with her that he did with his brother, and she’d never bring out the side of him that—one day—Aria would, he acknowledged that Renta would be a part of his life forever and was pleased.

  THIRTY-NINE

  “Stay.” It was part question, part plea, part command.

  He and Renta were standing in his bedroom, in a patch of warm light that spilled in through the window. Behind him was the bed where he’d spent so long convalescing, and that at times he thought he’d never leave. They’d come in from their walk, still arm in arm, and minutes later found themselves like this: facing each other, finally, as a man and a woman.

  She nodded.

  They had three months, and they both knew it. Three months before he went on to his life and she went on to hers—whatever that life might be. But they knew, too, that three months was enough. Being here, like this, felt right and inevitable. Acknowledging that their affair was temporary did nothing to diminish it in either his eyes or hers. It was something they both needed, if for different reasons. She’d never been with anyone of her own choosing, and he’d never shared anything even approaching real intimacy during the act.

  He wanted her, and he knew that she wanted him. He stroked his fingertips along the curve of her jaw, and, leaning down, kissed her. She resisted at first, out of habit, but slowly yielded under his touch. She was soft, and fragile, and hesitant because this was all new.

  Making love to Renta was, oddly enough, the closest that Kisten had ever come to being with a virgin. And it was making love—for the first time, for him as well as for her. She trembled under his hands as he undressed her and, finding her courage, began to undress him. Her small fingers were nimble with his buttons. She chewed her lip in concentration, and he kissed it. She giggled. He brushed a tendril of hair out of her face, and kissed her again.

  He’d only ever make love to one other woman. Before this moment, and after, he’d use women as objects and discard them. He was always considerate, always kind, because he genuinely did enjoy women as people and not simply for sport, but his conquests were just that and nothing more. The thrill was in the chase, and the capture, and proving to himself that he was desirable—that he existed. To him, sex was mostly like masturbation with a series of interesting toys. He sought to please his partners, not for them but for him.

  He trailed kisses down the side of Renta’s neck, fascinated by everything about her and eager to explore. Her hair and skin were a heady mix of geranium, attar of roses, and cloves. He’d conclude later that it was only under this circumstance, that of being with a woman he genuinely cared for, that he’d have been able to overcome whatever mental block had been plaguing him. Because he was thinking of her, and pleasing her, and not himself—and because she made him feel like a man. She’d cared for him like he was a child, and seen him at his worst, and she still wanted him. She thought him handsome, and charming, but most of all she’d told him—meaning it—that he was a decent human being.

  He swept her off her feet, making her laugh, and laid her down on the bed. Wind blew through the fretwork screens, and the air was dry and pleasantly cool. Honeysuckle rioted over the colonnade outside and its heavy, sweet scent pervaded the room. It was heaven. He kissed her, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, and nothing had ever felt so natural to either of them. He kissed her and explored her for a long time before finally making love to her as slowly and carefully as if she truly had been a porcelain doll.

  “You’re mine,” he told her, his lips against hers. “You’ll always be mine.”

  “I know,” she said.

  And although things would change for both of them, and new people would enter both of their lives, she always was.

  Three months later, when Kisten took command of the Nemesis, their parting was neither regretful nor sad. They each carried a small part of the other one, and they each had things they wanted to do. She was leaving, too, to explore the galaxy and find her own destiny. Kisten was a wealthy man, and it gave him tremendous pleasure to use his resources for good. Renta accepted the gift for what it was, and without protest, to make him happy more than from any sense of her own enrichment.

  When Kisten discovered that Renta was in Haldon, he hadn’t been surprised; she was just the sort of enterprising soul the struggling capital needed, and who’d expanded the frontier since time immemorial. They’d kept in touch, but sporadically, and she’d moved while he’d been embroiled in the disaster with his uncle and fighting off a charge of treason. He’d also been tremendously pleased, and it had never once occurred to him not to renew their acquaintance. He still regarded her, as he regarded Aria—although in an entirely different way—as his. And he liked her, and he missed their long conversations over tea.

  Moreover, now that he was someone’s husband—at her suggestion, no less—he felt that she owed him some advice. He didn’t know the first thing about being in love, and was terrible at it.

  Renta had been only too happy to share her bed with him, and her companionship, whenever he chose to appear. When she’d accepted his proposition to become his formal mistress, she’d done so subject to a certain set of understandings. She wanted a husband, and he had no intention of foiling her efforts in that department. Indeed, he’d long ago decided that if he found someone suitable before she did, he’d introduce them. That she ran a brothel amused him; The Savage Club was really more like a home for stray cats, a haven for women who, like herself, had nowhere else to go. Not all of Renta’s charges worked as courtesans; some tatted lace and some scrubbed floors and some taught the others how to read and write and speak different languages and sound as though they’d had at least some minor brush with formal education. Thus polished, they were fit to entertain lonely officers and, in some cases, marry them. But Renta herself, barring the appearance of said hypothetical future husband, was Kisten’s and Kisten’s alone.

  He’d never considered his arrangement with Renta a threat to his marriage; the two relationships were unrelated, in his mind. Although Aria herself might disbelieve this, no one could ever eclipse her in his heart. He loved her with a single-minded devotion that, at times, he found difficult to live with. Owing to his temperament and natural inclinations, it was in Kisten’s nature to amuse himself with other people—sexually and otherwise. But while he never tired of entertaining himself with new and unusual women, from the moment he first heard her voice until the moment he felt the bullet pass through his body, he never truly stopped thinking of Aria.

  FORTY

  Aria worked mechanically. Anything not to think. She hadn’t slept in over forty-eight hours, a feat she hadn’t thought possible. She watched her hands move, seemingly of their own volition: swabbing wounds, applying bandages, holding the ragged edges of flesh together so they could be stitched. The endless, pounding din outside had abated at some point, but in her exhausted state she’d barely noticed. What did it mean? Nothing. Nothing meant anything.

  Missing, presumed dead.

  She loved her husband—and she’d realized it, too late. Now she’d never have the chance to tell him that she was sorry, that she hadn’t meant the things she said, that she did want to be married to him and that she was grateful to him for giving her a new life. She’d loved him when he’d picked her up and carried her to the shuttle, she’d loved him when she’d come out of the bathroom in her towel and he’d laughed at her, she’d loved him when he’d quoted her poetry and when he’d promised her that he was a good man and when he’d defended himself against Setji and that odious admiral. She’d loved him when she’d married him, and she’d loved him when he’d placed that garland around her neck and kissed her in front of everyone even though he was probably the most private person ever born.

  She’d known it, too; she just hadn’t admitted it to herself, because she was afraid.

  She’d met him because she’d been
running from something and part of her hadn’t known how to stop running. And he’d hardly been what she’d expected. He was a narcissist and a sadist and being married to him was a full-time job—and one requiring a great deal of sacrifice on her part. But he was also the only man she wanted for a life partner and she didn’t know how she was going to live without him. Something had been missing, always, since she was a child. Love, from her family, a stable home environment, both of those things; and something else, something she couldn’t name. She’d thought she’d found it in Aiden, a long time ago now, but she hadn’t.

  She’d found it in the unlikeliest person—and place—imaginable.

  And she’d been the luckiest woman alive, that that person had been her husband.

  She’d been so lucky, and she’d never even realized it.

  The weight of that realization was crushing.

  Pushed to the limits by grief and sleep deprivation, the barriers around her mind simply collapsed and she found herself thinking all kinds of new things. Like that maybe the real reason she’d left Solaris was because, somewhere deep inside, she’d known that something critical was missing from her life. Because she’d been looking for Kisten. For her other half, rather. Who just happened to be Kisten.

  She swayed slightly, and steadied herself against a column until the fog cleared. The stench of death was overpowering. Blood was everywhere, and it was beginning to curdle. The men who were dead stank, and the ones who weren’t smelled of shit and piss and iodine and screamed like banshees. They’d run out of opium—and laudanum, and aspirin, and everything else they could lay their hands on—a long time ago and still the men came in.

  Fewer and fewer were coming in, but Aria hadn’t had time to notice. She’d been too busy helping those they could keep alive to stay that way. Aros, at her insistence, had taken himself off to her bedroom to sleep. He wasn’t seriously wounded, but he was too tired to function. Unlike Aria, he hadn’t simply been fetching and carrying; he’d been in the thick of the battle until, when Kisten disappeared, he and General Bihar had assumed command between them.