City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [68]
‘I taught you all I could. You no longer required my services – not in the end.’ Then, ‘So, this Rika lady,’ Munio continued, his tone spuriously optimistic. ‘Is she wedded? Some strapping lad waiting for her? You think a gentleman of my age stands any chance with such a refined individual?’
‘No, it’s not that,’ Randur sighed. ‘She’s not really, uh, in the market for that kind of thing.’ Being here in the manse, Randur felt he could trust the old man a little more. So he decided to reveal a little about who the girls really were.
Munio merely gaped at him for a long moment. ‘Empress?’
‘Well, not any more. But shush now.’ Randur glanced around sheepishly. He whispered a few more of the basic details. ‘So that is why you can’t hope to get together with someone like her.’
‘Destined to be alone. Oh, my life is such a mess . . .’
‘Why not talk more about it?’ Randur offered.
‘Talk! You can tell that a woman raised you. Talk, indeed, as if talk could make me better. Whatever happened to just shutting up and getting on with life? You want to talk, let me tell you this: I once was something, Kapp. And moments of my life are now only memories – if even that. I’m nothing. You will be one day, a nothing just like me. You’re filled with the hopeless optimism that blesses youth, but which then taunts middle age. We will all of us fade, like this world of ours will. Cultures come and go, and nothing remains of them. So what else is there to do but drink?’
‘Don’t be so bloody miserable,’ Randur snapped at him. ‘People are dying in this world for less that you have – I’ve seen them pleading outside the gates of Villjamur, no food or opportunities. Refugees crammed up against the wall, pressing into it almost, fading in the ice. And here you are, wasting your life and money and talent because you’re running away from the real world. By the look of it, you’ve been running away from it ever since you could afford to pay for this drinking habit of yours.’ Randur stood up. ‘I’m going back to bed. Company’s better up there.’
SEVENTEEN
‘It’s as if you’re composed from a different fabric than before. I don’t know what to make of your mannerisms any more, your tentative gestures and insecurities. Could you even be the same person as you were some years ago?’
How could she answer that?
Physically things were good, they always had been. Opening up was something she would never consider with Malum, and slowly, slowly she was beginning to remember. To learn again.
‘Where’s your confidence gone? Where’re your nuances for mocking me, like I loved so long ago?’
He mellows me . . . ‘I need time. Sometimes I feel stressed thinking about such things.’
Again they came to that world with no name. Earlier in the day, they had discovered a beach, and in his eagerness he declared it for himself.
‘Lupus Beach is a suitable name for a beautiful place,’ he laughed, then changed the subject, as if aware of her sudden unease.
There came an urge, later, to map this place, this other realm, and maybe it was his soldier’s mind demanding to analyse everything, to apply a systematic logic to her world. She discouraged him at first, explaining that the place seemed to change slightly with time. No matter how much of this world she saw, each new visit would bring variants – different species of trees, or water carving fractionally different paths for the rivers.
‘You just can’t apply logic,’ she insisted, watching him frown, ‘to a place that doesn’t obey any logic.’
His explorations didn’t stop there: he moved onwards to the curves and blemishes of her body, tasting her skin, which perspired in this heat. The tide came in to drench their half-discarded clothing, her dark hair was left wet, and sand clung to their damp and sweaty bodies.
*
A stove-hot meadow now, the two of them lying in the grass, bright orchids, a flock of some bird species she had never seen before cutting through the sky in a V-formation, their calls utterly alien. Something