'Do I know you?' he began.
Pamir was wearing the same face he had worn for the last thirty-two years. A trace of a smile was showing, except around the dark eyes. Quietly, fiercely, he said, 'I found my wife, and thanks for the help.'
Leon'rd stared at Sorrel, his face working its way through a tangle of wild emotions. 'Your wife?' he sputtered.
Then he tipped his head, saying, 'No, she is not.'
'You know that?' Pamir asked.
The J'Jal didn't respond.
'What do you know, Leon'rd?'
For an instant, Leon'rd glanced back across a shoulder-not at the library door but at the nearby apartments. The man was at his limits. He seemed frail and tentative, hands pressing at the front of his robe while the long toes curled under his bare feet. Everything was apparent. Transparent. Obvious. And into this near-panic, Pamir said, 'I know what you did.'
'No,' the J'Jal replied, without confidence.
'You learned something,' Pamir continued. 'You are a determined scholar and a talented student of other species, and some years ago, by design or by dumb luck, you unraveled something. Something that was supposed to be a deep, impenetrable secret.'
'No.'
'A secret about my wife,' he said.
Sorrel blinked, asking, 'What is it?'
Pamir laughed harshly. 'Tell her,' he advised.
The blood had drained out of Leon'rd's face.
'No, I agree,' Pamir continued. 'Let's keep this between you and me, shall we? Because she doesn't have any idea, either-'
'About what?' the woman cried out.
'She is not your wife,' the librarian snapped.
'The hell she isn't.' He laughed. 'Check the public records. Two hours ago, in a civil ceremony overseen by two Hyree monks, we were made woman and male-implement in a legally binding manner-'
'What do you know about me?' Sorrel pressed.
Pamir ignored her. Staring at the J'Jal, he said, 'But somebody else knows what we do. Doesn't he? Because you told him. In passing, you said a few words. Perhaps. Unless of course you were the one who devised this simple, brutal plan, and he is simply your accomplice.'
'No!' Leon'rd screamed. 'I did not dream anything.'
'I might believe you.' Pamir glanced at Sorrel, showing a tiny wink. 'When I showed him an image of one of your dead husbands, his reaction wasn't quite right. I saw surprise, but the J'Jal eyes betrayed a little bit of pleasure, too. Or relief, was it? Leon'rd? Were you genuinely thrilled to believe that Sele'ium was dead and out of your proverbial hair?'
The librarian looked pale and cold, arms clasped tight against his shivering body. Again, he glanced at the nearby apartments. His mouth opened and then pulled itself closed, and then Pamir said, 'Death.'
'What did you say?' Leon'rd asked.
'There are countless wonderful and inventive ways to fake your own death,' Pamir allowed. 'But one of my favorites is to clone your body and cook an empty, soulless brain, and then stuff that brain inside that living body, mimicking a very specific kind of demise.'
'Sele'ium?' said Sorrel.
'What I think.' Pamir was guessing, but none of the leaps were long or unlikely. 'I think your previous husband was a shrewd young man. He grew up in a family that had lived among the harum-scarums. That's where his lineage came from,' wasn't it, Leon'rd? So it was perfectly natural, even inevitable, that he could entertain thoughts about killing the competition, including his own identity…'
'Tell me what you know,' Sorrel begged.
'Almost nothing,' Pamir assured. 'Leon'rd is the one who is carrying all the dark secrets on his back. Ask him.'
The J'Jal covered his face with his hands. 'Go away,' he whimpered.
'Was Sele'ium a good friend of yours and you were trying to help? Or did he bribe you for this useful information?' Pamir nodded, adding, 'Whatever happened, you pointed him toward Sorrel, and you must have explained, 'She is perhaps the most desirable mate on the Great Ship -
A sizzling blue bolt of plasma struck his face, melting it and obliterating everything beyond.
The headless body wobbled for a moment and then slumped and dropped slowly, settling against the black wall, and Leon'rd leaped backwards, while Sorrel stood over the remains of her newest husband, her expression tight but calm -like the face of a sailor who has already ridden through countless storms.
Sele'ium looked like a pedestrian wandering past, his gaze distracted and his manner a little nervous. He seemed embarrassed by the drama that he had happened upon. He looked human. The cold blond hair and purplish-black skin were common on high-UV worlds, while the brown eyes were as ordinary as could be. He wore sandals and trousers and a loose-fitting shirt, and he stared at the destroyed body, seeing precisely what he expected to see. Then he glanced at Sorrel, and with a mixture of warmth and pure menace, he said, 'You do not know… you cannot… how much I love you…'
She recoiled in horror.
He started to speak again, to explain himself.
'Get away!' she snapped. 'Leave me alone!'
His reaction was to shake his head with his mouth open-a J'Jal refusal -and then he calmly informed her, 'I am an exceptionally patient individual.'
Which wrung a laugh out of her, bitter and thin.
'Not today, no,' he conceded. 'And not for a thousand years, perhaps. But I will approach you with a new face and name -every so often, I will come to you -and there will be an hour and a certain heartbeat when you come to understand that we belong to one another-'
The corpse kicked at the empty air.
Sele'ium glanced at what he had done, mildly perturbed by the distraction. Then slowly, he realized that the corpse was shrinking, as if it were a balloon slowly losing its breath. How odd. He stared at the mysterious phenomenon, not quite able to piece together what should have been obvious. The headless ruin twitched hard and then harder, one shrinking leg flinging high. And then from blackened wound rose a puff of blue smoke, and with it, the stink of burnt rubber and cooked hydraulics.
With his left hand, Sele'ium yanked the plasma gun from inside his shirt-a commercial model meant to be used as a tool, but with its safeties cut away-and he turned in a quick circle, searching for a valid target.
'What is it?' Leon'rd called out.
'Do you see him -?'
'Who?'
The young J'Jal was more puzzled than worried. He refused to let himself panic, his mind quickly ticking off the possible answers, settling on what would be easiest and best.
In the open air, of course.
'Just leave us,' Leon'rd begged. 'I will not stand by any longer!'
Sele'ium threw five little bolts into the basalt wall, punching out holes and making a rain of white-hot magma.
Somewhere below, a voice howled.
Sorrel ran to the wall and looked down, and Sele'ium crept beside her, the gun in both hands, its reactor pumping energies into a tiny chamber, readying a blast that would obliterate everything in its path.
He started to peer over, and then thought better of it.
One hand released the weapon and the arm wrapped around Sorrel's waist, and when she flung her elbow into
