Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Kate Orman [26]
‘What is it that you are writing?’ Vivant asked, easing the cork out of the bottle.
‘A history of booze,’ she said. ‘Any booze gets near me, it’s history.’ But she was massaging the felt of the brim with her fingers, frowning.
‘I haven’t seen this before,’ said Vivant, taking the hat from her hands.
Benny snatched it back from him, with more force than she had intended.
‘It belongs – it belonged to an old friend.’
He nodded, seriously, not wanting to intrude on her privacy. ‘It’s the only white Fedora ever made,’ she explained, incomprehensibly. ‘And it’s all I’ve got left of him.’
She closed her eyes. She remembered the violent tugging, the burning lights inside her skull. Losing her grip. Feeling Ace and the Doctor being wrenched away from her. She remembered screaming, her voice swallowed by the hurricane noise of the rift.
‘It’s all I’ve got left,’ she said again,
Vivant passed her a glass of absinth, and she downed the bitter stuff in a single gulp.
∗ ∗ ∗
50
For a while things were a bit fragmented, like jumping channels on the telly.
Grating pain as the physician messed with the wound, Ace trying to slap him away, swearing. Sedjet waiting by the bed, smiling at her as she wandered in and out of consciousness.
When she woke up properly, the room was full of lamps, filling the air with golden light and the smell of cooking fat. Sedjet was snoring in a wooden chair by her bedside, scaring off the evil spirits. Ill again, safe again, tucked into bed and watched over.
The scar was a long one, shallow but ragged. She explored it gingerly with her fingers, wishing she could see it properly. It burned dully when she moved her arm. She’d had far worse, but she was nervous as hell about being treated by people who were twenty centuries away from penicillin.
But if anything nasty got into the wound, the little machines inside her would gobble it up, running around in her blood like teenage gangs, leaving Gallifreyan graffiti on the walls of her arteries: THE DOCTOR WAS HERE.
She watched Lord Sedjet sleep for a while, his arms knotted over his chest.
He had a terrific-looking five o’clock shadow. Normally he had his chin and head shaved every morning. Now there was a tiny blur of black stubble on his scalp. Sweet. He had been worried about her.
Pity he was such a bore.
She had been here six months. Half a year on automatic, doing the things she did in any new environment: getting her bearings, finding ways of surviving. Searching for the Doctor and staying in one piece until he could explain the plan. And going to parties. And wearing pretty clothes. And playing games.
Sedjet’s generosity was too convenient. Not that she didn’t deserve some good luck after all the crap she’d been through. But surely it had been set up, was part of some plot going on just outside the range of her perception?
He wrote her love poems, sometimes, sketching out the hieroglyphs in his own hand – slower than Sesehaten, but with firm, broad strokes. The scribe read them out to her, blushing. ‘Let me see you step into the pool again, your white dress clinging to your body. Bring me a red fish from the pool, or a spotless lily.’ Thank goodness Sedjet’s wife couldn’t read.
He was reasonably wealthy, sympathetic, and he had genuine affection for her. He could keep her alive in this alien world. And, after all, he did have a nice arse.
But she didn’t want any babies, not here, where the women screamed and died in childbirth. There was no contraception. At least, no contraception she was planning on using. There are some places you just don’t put crocodile dung.
She wondered if the little machines in her body would let her get pregnant.
51
Sedjet woke up. ‘Sister,’ he said. ‘I hope you are feeling well.’
‘I’ve been better,’ she said, remembering not to shrug. ‘Looks like you got away without a scratch.’
He smiled. It was the same old bland smile. ‘Sister,’ he said, ‘I’ve been thinking again about the possibility of a marriage contract.’
Ace felt a great weariness descend on her. She shook her head, gently.