‘Not hungry,’ she mumbled.
‘Have to be,’ he told her. ‘Both of us have to be. For strength. Strength to be dead, Gretl. Strength to get us out of here.’
‘All right,’ she said, reaching through the thick wall to take the wrapped package. Then she placed the plank over the hole and moved the bare cot to cover it. When the doctor had come to ‘do away with her,’ he had wedged the latch on her door so it wouldn’t close. Later, while she was below in the shaft they had been digging for months, he had given the guards her ‘body.’ The guards weren’t watchful, and they certainly weren’t intelligent.
She slipped to the far end of the corridor and into an empty room, carefully wedging the latch, saliva filling her mouth at the smell of the package in her hands. She would have a bath. And a meal. And then sleep. And then it would be night, and she would start digging again.
Thalia Ferrence sat in her chair by the wall, dreaming of a grandchild. The Grand Master had called to tell her that he had learned about the woman, that she and the child were on their way to her. The child and Lim’s wife, Vivian. Thalia hadn’t told Betuny yet. Betuny would be upset, afraid that Thalia wouldn’t need her anymore. Perhaps Thalia wouldn’t really need Betuny anymore, but she’d deal with that later. Just now, it was too pleasant to anticipate, to dream, to imagine all the wonderful things implied in a daughter coming, and a baby. And to think about old times, too. She had done that a lot lately.
She had allowed herself a celebratory glass of broundy, something she seldom did, and now sat in her chair at the end of the garden, her arms folded on the low wall, the setting sun shining full on her face so that she felt the soft warmth of it as she half dreamed about old times long past, wishing she could see the brou fields and the towering Presences once more. She could see them in a sense, but they loomed so large in her remembered vision that she wondered if she had not created them. She wanted to check reality against her memory and had spent a long hour floating dreamily over this, as though the truth were something she needed to arrive at – a key to some future imagining that could not be achieved otherwise. She could no longer be sure what was true, what had actually happened. What had been the truth about Lim, about Miles? Was Tasmin actually what she thought he was? Had Celcy been? Was this woman who was coming going to be a part of her life? Was this world the world she remembered, or was it only a dream she had invented? How would she know?
The voice, when it came, though it asked a similar question, was not like that other voice that had accosted her. This voice was so soft and insinuating it could have been part of her brooding dream.
‘Are you the mother of Lim Ferrence?’
The broundy was flowing in her veins. ‘Lim Terree he called himself,’ she said, almost chanting and with a half smile curving her lips. ‘But I was his mother, yes.’ The voice that had spoken to her was a strange voice, almost like a child’s voice, but with an odd accent. It could be a dream voice. Certainly it did not seem to be a real one.
There was a moment’s silence, as though she had said something confusing.
‘Was?’ the voice asked at last. ‘Implies former time? Not now?’
‘He is dead,’ she said. ‘Dead. He died on the Enigma.’
A tiny consternation of sounds. She was reminded of birds talking, that chirrupy, squeaky noise, but in a moment the child’s voice spoke again, almost like singing.
‘What kin did he leave behind?’
‘I thought it was just me, you know. I thought I was his only real kin, the only one who still cared, and remembered, and grieved. Oh, there is Tasmin, of course. His brother, but Tasmin couldn’t be expected to care. Yes, I thought it was only me, but it seems he had a wife, and a child. They’re coming here. Soon. Someone came to inquire about them, and then when I asked the citadel, they found out for me….’ Her dream gave way to a sharp pang of anxiety. ‘I hope nothing’s happened to them.’
Again that dream pause. Something brushed her face, like a feather, something soft, cool, and infinitely gentle. Then the voice. ‘Why should something happen to them?’
‘I don’t know. It’s that man who came. His voice. He didn’t tell me his name. He said it was lucky I was blind. He wanted to know where Lim’s wife was, and his baby. I told him I didn’t know Lim had a wife and a baby. The man wasn’t polite. He didn’t even say goodbye.’
That small consternation of sound once more. ‘Did you think it was a threat to your son’s wife?’
‘It seemed odd they would want to know where she was. It seemed odd anyone would want to know. What is she to anyone? The Master General said she was only a woman, no position, no family. Working in the fish market, he said. And the baby, only a baby.’ Thalia brooded over the wonder of a woman and a baby who were only that. Not Tripsingers. Not people with busy-ness or resentments to take them away, but only people. A woman. A child.
Then the voice once more, soft as gauze, so soft she could scarcely tell from what direction it came, unaware it came from
