The Consort, Chapter 19
Thursday
Cain wondered if Mynus was having a good laugh at his expense.
Sure, set me on a road and wish me luck. Of course, as you say, I’m resourceful enough to scare up better transportation. I’ll soon find a phone or a viewscreen so I can call the palace and tell them not to write my obituary quite yet. I’ll beg, borrow or steal a horse or a car or a bicycle.
If only there were any towns, people or houses to enable me to do these things.
Within an hour of his journey, Cain had started to get suspicious. The road was two-lane, paved, but…there was just nothing. Finally, he came to a crossroads with a signpost, and that confirmed his suspicion.
Mynus had left him on the Robber’s Highway.
So named for its long-ago infestation of highway robbers, the RH was notoriously remote. For so long no one had wanted to set up homes or towns here because of the crime that even after highway robbers had gone the way of the Deadly Deserts, the area remained a no-man’s-land of desolate stretches of road with little to no civilization along the way.
The RH would take him from the Flornish border northeast around the ruins of Azkadellia’s old tower and towards the City, but he wouldn’t hit any settlements of significance until he passed the tower. If he were still on foot, that would take several days. Even if he were able to get his hands on a horse or a car, he'd be pushing it to get back to Central City by Saturday.
Happily, luck was with him, and modern-day Ozians were braver. As the sun set and Cain was starting to worry about shelter for the night, a farmhouse with a barn loomed out of the deepening twilight. “Thank the great and terrible,” he muttered, picking up his pace. His feet were killing him and all he could think about was getting to a phone and calling home.
And what will you say to her? “Hi honey, I’m not dead! Isn’t that great?”
I’ll think of something. It won’t matter what I say. Except for these three particular words I absolutely have to get in just in case an asteroid falls on me and kills me for real and I’ll have missed my chance again.
The nearer he got to the farmhouse, the less enthusiastic he became. The place looked dark and empty. Not deserted, though. The grass was cut and there were horses near the barn. He went up the stairs to the porch, not holding out much hope.
He knocked and waited. He walked around the house looking for signs of life and found none, returning to the front porch. There were flower bushes on either side of the steps that ought to have been blooming, but were bare. He bent closer and saw that all the blooms had been cut off with shears.
That’s weird.
He stood there in front of the door for some time, battling his conscience.
I really need a place to sleep. And I really, really need a phone.
They’ll understand.
He broke one pane in the door with a rock and let himself in. It was a tidy home, but lived-in. He saw that the house had gas lamps, which made his heart sink. Gas lamps meant no electricity, which probably meant no phone.
He lit a lamp and looked around. On the butcher-block kitchen table was a map of the OZ with a route to Central City marked in a red pen, and some notes about routes and a few places and names. He looked up, thinking of the flowerless bushes outside.
Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. They’ve gone to Central City. For my memorial.
If they were that enamored of me they’ll kick themselves when they realize if they’d stayed home they could have had the not-dead me over for dinner.
His fears had been justified, though. No phone. Cursing his luck, Cain considered abandoning this house and continuing on up the road, but soon put the idea aside. His recent proximity to death made him a little more protective of his life than he’d traditionally been, and while his desire to get back to DG made him want to hurry, it also made him want to be cautious and not take any unnecessary risks. The robbers might have gone from this highway but he could still be in danger on the road at night, not to mention cold and tired. He might come across another house soon, but that was far from certain.
Get a good night’s sleep and leave in the morning.
He looked through the rest of the house. Master bedroom, one room that looked like a teenaged boy slept there, and one that was dusty and unused. Guest room. He put down his bag and went back downstairs.
Another struggle of conscience ensued. Do I eat their food? Mynus gave me food. But I might need that more on the road. But it’s stealing.
Practicality won out. I’ll leave them some money. He helped himself to some chicken from their icebox and made a sandwich. It was homemade bread and tasted like heaven.
He went into the living room. No viewscreen. There was, however, a stack of newspapers, both reputable and of the birdcage-liner persuasion. He put his sandwich aside and hauled the papers onto his lap, restlessly paging through them.
It was a macabre, vaguely obscene experience to be reading accounts of his own death, and descriptions of the kingdom-wide mourning. Mynus hadn’t been exaggerating. Cain stared, his mouth hanging open, at a wide-angle shot of the impromptu memorial that had sprung up around the Spire. Flowers and gifts stacked knee-high up against the courtyard fence, people behind barricades just standing and looking, watching, talking.
He went to the next paper, the Twin Sun, a reputable publication. He held it up, his chest tightening. A very large picture of DG from her national address stared back at him. Her head was turned away, two fingers to her mouth. “A Queen’s Grief,” the fifty-point headline said. There was another photo, smaller, of DG out in Gale Square with the gathered mourners. She was crouching near the pile of flowers and notes, looking down at the leavings, her face sad.
“The Queen resumed official business today,” the article read, “meeting with key members of her senior staff, including the Home and Foreign Secretaries as well as General Showalter. Rumors continue to circulate that General Cain’s body is missing. An army patrol sent south earlier this week returned Tuesday morning with a survivor, Captain Danny Armagnac, and the bodies of the other fallen, but palace sources tell us that Her Majesty received news upon their return which upset her. No confirmation on these rumors from the Palace, but action against the aggressors is expected to be announced soon.
Sources also inform us that the Queen has engaged local artist Thelma Winterset to paint a portrait of General Cain in time for unveiling at Saturday’s public memorial. Her Majesty was seen accepting a gift of a smaller painting done by Mrs. Winterset on Tuesday evening in Gale Square, which she liked enough to engage the artist in a official capacity.
Speculation about the Queen’s mental state continues to run rampant. Our palace sources report that Her Majesty is not keeping to her rooms or separating herself, but is being carefully looked after by Princess Royal Azkadellia and First Minister Ambrose Mariposa.”
Cain shook his head. “Who the hell are these palace sources?” he muttered. He flipped back to the front page and stared at DG’s face for awhile, tracing her jaw with one finger.
Quit wallowing. That isn’t helping anybody.
Neither is sitting here. Get your ass back on the road.
It’s too dangerous and I need to sleep. I’ve had a hard few days.
What are you, some kind of sissy who can’t do shit on less than eight hours? On your feet, soldier.
Hey, in the last few days I’ve been stabbed, drugged, healed, resuscitated, half-starved and imprisoned, plus I think I walked eight clicks since Mynus let me go. And I’m not as young as I used to be, you know.
You’ve got to get back. You’ve got to find a phone. You’ve got to get her a message. Look at her, she’s there in that city grieving you, and every second you waste here is one more second you could be getting closer to her.
I’m going to bed right now. I’ll take one of the horses and ride out first light.
Hmm. All right. If you must.
Cain put the papers aside and went upstairs to do just that.
Once he got there, he was faced with yet another dilemma of etiquette. He stood in the hall between the bathroom and the guest bedroom, debating.
Should I take a bath?
That’s a little gross, to bathe in someone else’s tub who hasn’t given me permission to do so.
But is it grosser than getting into one of their beds all dirty and sweaty?
He must have stood there for a good five minutes before he heard DG’s voice in his head, as clear as if she’d been standing right there.
You are a ridiculous person, Cain. Are you listening to yourself? Take a damn bath, already.
He nodded. I’ll scrub the tub afterwards.
Half an hour later he was lying in the guest bedroom in just his underwear, staring at the ceiling. He was profoundly tired, but his brain wouldn’t stop twirling.
Tomorrow is Friday. Saturday’s the memorial. I can make it to the city by then, especially on a horse. And I’m sure to find a phone between here and there.
He thought of DG and Jeb, and their faces when they saw him alive. He’d already seen that face on each of them, at different times, but now…he was so much closer to both of them than he’d been then. He didn’t care how many people were around or how unmanly he was thought to be, he intended to hug his son until he couldn’t breathe.
As for DG…well, he wasn’t sure if he had the nerve to do what he wanted to do, which was make that kiss on the portico seem like a light peck on the cheek. And would she allow it? Was it Queenly to do more than clasp hands or perhaps embrace her husband, back from the dead?
Perhaps they’d meet again without the eyes of the nation watching. Perhaps once he called home, he’d be fetched to the palace in private. If he knew DG, she might want to come out and meet him on the road.
However it worked out, and his brain insisted on conjuring scenario after scenario, it was nothing to what he intended to do once he got her alone.
Cain had learned to suppress his libido pretty effectively in the last two years. Actually, it hadn’t been that hard. Easy enough that he’d had occasion to wonder if he had any left. He was a little young for total system failure. Anyway, the equipment had been in working order, but the will seemed to have left him.
He’d chalked it up to the loss of his wife, the abrupt change in circumstances, the lack of anyone he responded to physically. He hadn’t expected that his marriage would change any of that.
It hadn’t. At first.
He didn’t know when he’d started to notice her. As a man notices a woman. It had been after they’d started trying for a baby, but it hadn’t been that change to their relationship that had made the difference, which was a little surprising to him. He’d worried that he’d start to look at her differently or feel differently about her once he was actually having sex with her, but the sex they had was so unsexy that it made him feel less drawn to her, not more.
No, it had been something else. Some quality that had grown in her, or possibly in him.
He remembered a state dinner last fall. One of many such interchangeable events. She’d come out of her room in a deep royal blue dress looking so beautiful that it had taken him a moment to recover. He was sure she’d noticed his discomfiture, but wondered if she knew that in those stammering moments, he’d seen it so clearly in his mind. Crossing the room, sweeping her up and bending her backwards to kiss the breath from her body. It was as palpable as if he’d actually done it. He could almost feel her lips on his.
After that night, it was as if someone had turned a soft-focus light on her all the time. He’d pretended not to notice. He’d pretended it wasn’t there. He’d pretended so well that he himself had forgotten for long periods of time…until the next occasion when she’d stretched like a cat in her bedtime t-shirt, pressing her breasts against the fabric, or the next time she’d hugged him and his chin had tucked into the soft cleft of her neck and shoulder.
He had foolishly thought that it didn’t mean anything. She was an attractive woman, young and full of life, and he was a man hard-wired to find such things enticing. It didn’t mean his feelings had changed. Until suddenly, it meant exactly that.
So now, after months and perhaps years of keeping her out of the box where he kept his sexual impulses carefully locked up, he let his mind roam free and imagined being in her room with her after his return. So different from all the times he’d come to her there before. This time, they would undress each other, touch each other, laugh and sigh and whisper and grapple. It might be rough and fast, or slow and languid, or both, but one thing was sure.
This time, it would be real.