Preface

Concordia hurried across the deserted courtyard and headed towards the massive Keep that dominated King Alfred’s fortified city of Winchester. She kept within the shadows and was grateful for the cloud cover while running past the soldiers patrolling the wall-walk and avoiding the ever-present sentries that walked the familiar streets. She pulled her hood tighter around her face when a sudden gust of wind scattered the willowy clouds and moonbeams illuminated the darkened night. She looked atop the tower and quickened her pace when she noticed a solitary figure glancing in her direction.

Concordia waved excitedly as she approached the stairwell and was out of breath by the time she reached the top. Her eyes sparkled and her face was flushed as she removed her hood, her loose tresses caressing her face when touched by the whispering wind, her simple dress accentuating her curvaceous body while her cloak fluttered about her.

Thayer bowed ceremoniously, grasped her hand and kissed the tip of her fingers. He laughed inwardly since he was amused by her reticence as she quickly withdrew her hand, yet he looked questionably into her glowing eyes while brushing aside unruly strands of hair that billowed effortlessly in the wind.

Concordia glanced upon the exotic Moor whom she admired from the moment he had arrived at the court school. She had kept her distance because she feared the awakening emotions that consumed her thoughts whenever she came upon him, whether in the classroom or at the king’s table. She remembered her embarrassment each time he caught her staring at him during one of Brother Frederic’s lengthy discussions, yet she was pleased when he winked in acknowledgement, and how could she forget the sparkle in his eyes? His dark features added to his mystique, which fueled the budding fire within her soul. Concordia sensed his excitement when their hands touched briefly each time he handed her a book or helped her rise from a chair. She preferred sharing the evening meal at the king’s table where Thayer would be found sitting next to the queen, and she still had the flower petals he had given her when they first met. She tried to suppress her feelings, knowing her father would never permit such a match, even though Concordia and Thayer shared a passion for knowledge in a world shrouded in warfare.

“You are trembling,” Thayer whispered as he pulled her closer and held her tightly in a loving embrace.

Concordia did not shy away from his touch, but welcomed his protective arms as she tried to control her rising emotions while fearing the truth of his words. Her watery eyes glistened in the moonlight as she buried her head in his chest, taking deep breaths as her mind made sense of her chaotic thoughts while finding the courage to speak the words hidden within her heart.

“Do not be distressed,” Thayer said softly as he kissed the top of her head. “Our friendship is unrivaled and I shall cherish the memories.”

Concordia freed herself from his embrace and walked towards the wall while admonishing herself for her foolishness. He had spoken the truth, they were just friends, but because she was smitten, she believed he returned her love. She would have been humiliated by her confession and silently thanked the Lord that she had held her tongue.

“I beg forgiveness,” Concordia said as she glanced upon the darkened landscape. “I had grown accustomed to your presence in the classroom and will miss our debates. I meant no offense.”

“Ah, Concordia, never apologize for speaking your thoughts…that is why I find you so refreshing…I have enjoyed our differing opinions…you will be sorely missed.”

Concordia wrapped her cloak tightly around her as wind gusts chilled the night air. She smiled slightly when Thayer placed a velvet pouch in her hand, yet she was hesitant to accept the gift.

“Open it,” Thayer whispered in her ear.

Concordia gasped when she saw the gold bead necklace, but she could not curtain her excitement when she held the striking jewels against her chest. The gold beads were interspersed with turquoise and blue glass of various designs, and each bead was elegantly embellished by exquisitely engraved decorations.

“I have never seen such intricate work,” Concordia said excitedly as Thayer clasped the necklace around her neck. “There are no words…but I cannot accept such a costly gift.”

“You must lest you offend my mother.”

“I do not understand…how am I known?”

“I had written my mother of our friendship…she sent this token so you may always remember the bond we share…it belonged to her mother…she insisted.”

“Tell her I am most pleased,” Concordia murmured as she held the beads gently between her fingers while averting his gaze. “Tell her I shall never forget her kindness.”

“Come, the hour grows late…you must be in your chambers before you are missed.”

Concordia followed Thayer down the stairs as the clouds once again covered the full moon. She walked silently beside the man who had captured her heart, etching his features into memory, to remember in the days ahead, when she grieved for a love that might have been.

Thayer stopped abruptly when they reached the king’s private quarters, grasped Concordia by the shoulders and kissed her gently upon her lips.

“Forgive my impertinence,” Thayer said softly. “I cannot leave without telling you…if only…you must go before words are spoken that cannot be taken back…go!”

“I do not understand,” Concordia tearfully replied. “Can you not see…”

“Hush,” Thayer interrupted as he placed his finger over her lips. “I know.”

“Will I ever see you again?” Concordia asked, her voice choked with emotion.

“If Allah wills it,” Thayer replied kindly before he disappeared into the night.

Saturday, May 7

“How did I get mixed up with such a loser, Anna?” Lia’s question somehow managed to be simultaneously earnest and rhetorical. The lithe, thirty-ish artist posed this question as she and her friend perched on top of a picnic table at the Mount Airy Dog Park, watching their furry children at play.

Anna, wise in the ways of the heart, kept silent. Like all good cops and therapists, she knew a void invited unburdening. She was a sturdy, middle-aged woman of medium height, with a square face and thin lips. Dark brows hovered over intense eyes of an indeterminate color. Nature had gifted her with hair that went pale gold instead of grey, and it waved softly just above her shoulders. It was her one beauty. Like everything in her life, its display was understated.

Lia sighed and ruffled the ears of Chewy, her silver Miniature Schnauzer. Satisfied, Chewy took off for another tour of the park perimeter. Lia tracked his jaunty trot with fretful green eyes while she gathered her thoughts. “I know better. Mom went through the same damn thing with her second husband. Handsome, talented, and just needed a little help to manifest his brilliant potential. Ha!” She bent her head forward while she gave a pat to a passing lab. Summer-streaked chestnut hair poured over her shoulders, curtaining her expressive eyes. She chewed on her bottom lip and picked at the fringe on her paint-splattered cut-offs.

Anna gently posed her question. “You’ve been seeing him for, what, almost a year now? What’s upsetting you today?”

“Nothing’s upsetting me. That is, nothing’s changed. Nothing’s improved, nothing’s different. He always acts like I’m this big muse, and he says he’s writing like crazy but he’s just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.” She gusted a sigh while rolling her eyes. “I take that back. He’s not rearranging them, he’s tossing them into a big pile and pouring gasoline on them. It’s a funeral pyre on a sinking ship.”

“So what brought this on today?” Anna asked.

“I read his latest revisions yesterday. Thinking about it kept me up most of the night. The manuscript was nearly finished when I met him a year ago. It’s no closer to being finished now than it was then.” Lia paused. “Really, it’s further away. His revisions are chopping it up so it’s disjointed and unpublishable. He says he needs to cut pages, but he’ll need to add another 50 pages to pull together all the new material he’s added. He’s killed the pace and it’s lost its freshness. He’s overworked the good parts until they just lay there, dead and stinking to high heaven.” Lia ended her rant and sat back, arms folded.

“That’s quite an image.”

“Anna, it’s pure road kill. I told him, ‘You can’t sell something if you never finish it. You can’t finish it if you keep adding new elements that mean you have to rewrite the whole damn thing. You’re not curing cancer here, you’re just trying to entertain people.’”

“Good thing he’s a writer, not a painter. He can go back to an earlier version of the manuscript when he comes to his senses.”

“That’s just it,” Lia’s voice took on a disgusted edge. “He’s been overwriting the file all along. I set up his computer and showed him how to save different versions of the book as he made changes, and he blew it off. He said it was too much trouble.”

Anna considered this. “There’s software that can retrieve it, isn’t there?”

“There isn’t if Paul offers to defrag your computer while you’re having beers. It’s gone. For good. Honey! Stop digging! Right! Now!” Lia’s anger made this reprimand sharper than it should have been.

Honey usually deserved her name. Today she was busily enlarging a hole created by an earlier dog park visitor and quickly losing her sweetheart status. Chewy found this very amusing and sniffed the dirt pile, emerging with dirty paws and a clump of sod on his pert nose.

“Honey! I said STOP!” This time the handsome Golden Retriever looked up, her expression sheepish. She returned to Lia in a penitent slouch and placed one dirt caked paw in Lia’s lap in a plea for forgiveness. Lia looked down at the dark smudges on her shorts. “And I thought Goldens were the perfect breed.” She scratched behind Honey’s ears and gave her a kiss on the top of her head.

Anna laughed, a merry tinkling full of good humor and empathy. “At least you have the sense to dress for the park. Not like some I might name.”

Lia noticed the older woman’s eyes flick over to the pair sitting at a picnic table several yards away. Lia knew she wasn’t talking about Jim. Jim’s couture was comfortable, well-used and rumpled, like his face and personality. It was the coifed grand-dame deftly touching his arm that drew this bit of spite from Anna.

“I miss Jim, too. I’m sorry I ever introduced them. Catherine’s had her claws out for him ever since. And she never would have looked at him twice if I hadn’t raved about what a great friend he was. Now every time I’m around him, she does everything she can to distract him from me.”

Catherine Laroux and her twin Pomeranians had appeared three months earlier. Caesar and Cleo (Anna, Bailey and Lia privately called them “Prissy” and “Poopsy”) didn’t need much exercise. Catherine needed escape from her husband, and attention. Lots of attention. Any attention would do, and she got it with flattering focus and playing the damsel in distress. Whether it was people who slighted her, symptoms she couldn’t decipher, or appliances she didn’t understand, Catherine always found a reason to seek help and advice. She had a consummate talent for making her needs more important than anything else that might be happening. The women caught on quickly. The men, typically, when faced with the full brunt of femininity, were clueless.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Lia continued. “How many problems can one person have at 8:00 a.m. in the dog park?”

This time Anna responded with a ladylike snort. “Now, now. Let’s collect our furry children and see if they might like to chase some balls.”

Anna’s handsome and mannerly Tibetan Mastiff, CarGo (as in “Car! Go!”), was stately and full of humor. He was black and tan and always well-groomed. Like his mistress, he deplored fussiness and remained aloof from drama. He galloped up – gallop is the only word that would work. At 125 pounds, CarGo could be mistaken for a small horse. His one bad habit was jumping up, and with paws on shoulders, looking humans in the eyes. In moments of whimsey, Anna considered teaching him ballroom dancing.

His canine radar infallible, CarGo was ready as soon as Anna pulled her “flinger” from her bag. Anna expertly launched two balls in the air. CarGo beelined after a line-drive, Chewy yapping at his heels while Honey considered a high lob, bolting when its trajectory became apparent. She leapt up to snag it out of the air before CarGo pounced on his own grounder.

Anna turned to look at Lia. “I love watching them play. I don’t even mind the slobber. So what will you do about him?”

“Luthor?” responded Lia, not thrown by the non-sequitur. “What I always do, I suppose. Withdraw.

“People who accomplish anything are finishers. They don’t whine or make excuses. They might adjust their course a bit, but they don’t suddenly decide to switch destinations. All of a sudden, Luthor doesn’t know what kind of book he’s writing. This is 18 months into the thing, and he hasn’t decided who the killer is, or if he ought to be writing a police procedural instead of a psychological thriller. Drives me crazy. Once I figured he was never going to finish the book, I lost all feeling for him.”

“Over a book?”

“Over his lack of direction and his pretense that he’s actually doing something. I can’t be with someone who hasn’t entered the real world. Sooner or later, they wind up turning on me like it’s my fault they haven’t accomplished anything.”

“Poor girl. I’m so glad he never moved in.”
“That would have been a mistake. I’m dreading this as it is. Oh, Gawd. Here he comes.”

It was the sound of a perforated muffler that drew Lia’s attention to the parking lot. Luthor had named the rattle-trap Corolla “William” because it had “suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” Lia thought “Shakes-Gear” was more to the point.
Luthor Morrisey was a handsome man, blond and tall. His hair was deliberately unkempt, and his clothes, while expensive, were unpressed and tossed on. 19th Century Romanticism overlaid with a patina of 21st Century Artist Grunge. Lia reckoned he’d coasted on his looks and self-serving artistic sensitivity for too long, that and his advance guard, Viola, a lovable but occasionally schitzy Border Collie mix whose silky fur drew admirers. In an act of compassion that Lia suspected slayed the hearts of many women before her, Luthor had spotted the traumatized puppy in a February ice storm and spent over an hour coaxing it to warmth and safety. But animal rescue only gets you so far. She mused, “I’ll miss the dog.”

“Lia!” Luthor yelled, waving a long arm over head.

“As if I didn’t figure out he was here when the car was a mile away,” she muttered.

“Now, Lia, have pity. He doesn’t know what’s coming.”

“No, he doesn’t have a clue. That’s the problem.” Lia mustered a limp half-smile (or was it a grimace?) and went to meet him with dread in her heart.

Anna watched as Lia ignored Luthor’s outstretched arms and perched on a table. Her crossed arms confused Viola, who expected hugs. Lia’s defensive posture must have sunk in, Anna noted, as Luthor’s stance suddenly became aggressive. Anna continued to watch the performance as Luthor’s voice became audible over the distance and elevated in pitch. She could almost, but not quite, understand what he was saying.

“Third time a charm?” a familiar voice asked.

Anna turned to look at Jim. The retired engineer was a short man with kind eyes and a shaggy beard. Anna thought, not for the first time, how much he resembled Treebeard, the ancient ent in Lord of the Rings. “I hope so, the other breakups didn’t stick. I hope this one does. This is wearing her down.”

“Is she going to be okay?”

“Sooner or later. Lia’s resilient. But I’d so hoped he would make her happy.” Anna craned her neck further. “What happened to your girlfriend?”

“Girlfriend? Catherine? She just needed some advice. She’s not my girlfriend. Fleece is the only woman in my life.” Jim referred to his beloved Border Collie, who was currently attempting to herd a pair of Lab pups.

“You’re too kind, Jim.” Or too blind, she privately thought.

A tall redhead with chin-length hair joined them. Bailey had the kind of figure that photographed well because she was always fifteen pounds underweight. In real life, she came off as gawky. She had an open face with mildly popped eyes, and a nose that an unkind person might call ‘beaky.’ She had a hesitant smile, with the left side quirking up while the right remained undecided. “So do you think this will be the end?” Bailey gestured to the discordant pair with a long, graceful hand that should have been pouring tea or playing piano. Ironically, her fingers were always callused and nicked from her job as a self-employed gardener.

“I hope so,” Anna responded, “but I don’t think he’ll let her go easily and she’s already stressing over that garden you two are building for Catherine. I’m so angry at Luthor, he should be supporting her so she can do her work, not expecting her to nursemaid him while he pretends to be a writer.”

“Support her?” Bailey looked amused. “He can’t even put gas in his car.”

“Not that. She does okay by herself. I meant cook her dinner, rub her feet instead of expecting her to rub his all the time. He’s not the one standing on a concrete floor all day painting. Why is it men always think their needs are more important, Jim?”

“Anna, you know I’m not going to touch that.” Jim looked at her sideways and put up both palms in a universal request for peace.

The sound of a car door slamming brought them back to the drama at hand. Squealing tires announced Luthor’s departure.

“I don’t think he can afford to lose any rubber,” Jim said dryly. “He could blow out a tire going down Montana Avenue.”

“Don’t say that!” Bailey interjected. “If he dies on that hill, she’ll feel guilty and paint his picture forever. If he lives, she’ll still feel guilty, she’ll be rubbing his feet in the hospital, and she’ll still paint his picture forever. Either way, it’ll destroy her career because who wants to buy a hundred paintings of Luthor? We’ll never finish Catherine’s garden. I won’t get paid and I’ll wind up starving.”

~ ~ ~

Sunday, May 8, 4:00 a.m.

Lia couldn’t say she was up early because she’d never been to bed. Luthor’s recriminations and endless phone calls echoed in her head all night. Weary, she’d unplugged the phone at 1:00 a.m. At 1:30 she’d taken a long, hot soak in Epsom Salts, her favored cure for insomnia. It hadn’t worked.

Luthor probably started leaving nasty messages on her cell phone at exactly 1:05 a.m., but as usual she didn’t know where her cell was. She hated the damn thing and only kept it because there was no phone at the studio. That’s where it probably was.
She hoped her phone wasn’t over by the south wall. She thought of Jason, an illegal loft-liver on the other side of that wall. Better buy him a twelve-pack. Make it imported. I bet the ringing has been driving him crazy. If I’m lucky, the battery’s dead. She pictured Jason, enraged by the noise, punching a hole in the dry wall to retrieve her phone and fling it out a window. She winced. At least then I wouldn’t have to listen to the messages. How many were there? One three hour rant? A hundred one-word nuisance calls? How quickly can you call and leave a message? Two minutes? At two minutes a message and three hours, ninety messages? What are the limits on the in-box? She hoped for Jason’s sake it was one very long message, or that the battery was dead. How long would it take to delete ninety messages?

Tired of her head spinning, Lia pulled on sweats and grabbed her keys. The soft jingle had Chewy and Honey beating her to the door. “You guys don’t miss a trick, do you? Up for some pre-dawn prowling?” She snapped leashes to their collars. “Shall we walk this time? It’s only a mile-and-a-half, what do you think?”

Lia learned to appreciate baker’s hours years ago when an outdoor mural had her working in the pre-dawn dark so she could project her design on the wall. Her friends were horrified, convinced her body would turn up months later in Mill Creek. But Lia loved how quiet the world was at 4:00 a.m. Inside at 4:00 a.m., your brain would be in over-drive. The world outside was silent at 4:00 a.m. You never realized how noisy houses were until you went outside in the dead of night. The quiet calmed her mind. Outside was peace. No pain, no drama, and she could let everything go.

Lia hit her stride. Not a power walk, but quick and steady through the darkness. She watched her shadow change direction and shape as she passed under street lights. The rhythmic motion eased her. Honey and Chewy trotted obediently beside her. Her head started to clear and she began to relax. This is the ticket. One and a half miles to the park, let the dogs run around a bit, back home, fry up some potatoes and eggs. It’s Sunday, no need to plug the phone in. Play some Mozart. Do the crossword. Don’t think. Go back to bed. Yes.

She turned down Westwood Northern Boulevard, jogging down the hill for the last half-mile. Honey and Chewy barked happily. “Shush!” she admonished, laughing as the last of the tension poured out.

She slowed to a walk as she turned into the parking lot. She was looking forward to sitting on a table, looking up at the sky and watching the stars until the rising sun blinked them out. Then she saw the dark hulk at the far end. The familiar silhouette had her grinding her teeth. What was Luthor doing here? He couldn’t have known she was coming this early, could he? Or had he been parked outside her apartment and seen her leave? Was he stalking her?

The Munich all around her was bustling with activity. She could hear it from all directions. Munich was a wonderful city, a fun-loving place, the live and let live ebullience of the city emanating from its every nook and cranny. She had had a lovely stay here. All of it had been so adventurous, so new, so unlike life back home in Arizona. She could vividly recall the first time she had ventured into a Munich beer garden, where the liter mugs had been so huge that she had had to lift hers with both hands, and the giggles, from him, until he too had had to use both hands.

The fumbling noises he had been making came to an abrupt halt. He began stroking her cheek again. Gus looked so happy, so young, so full of life. It was so hard to imagine that he could be so heavily involved in all this horror.

Gus smiled at her once more. His eyes were soft, so gentle, so caring, so loving.

Maybe this was some kind of huge mistake. Maybe he wasn’t going to kill her after all. Maybe everything would turn out happily ever after. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

But then suddenly she saw it clearly. It was no fairy tale. There would be no maybe. This was real, as real as the mixture of sadness and fear that now flooded her brain.

And then she died, with her eyes wide open, challenging, piercing his to the end.

That female sixth sense.

It’s that antennae you have.

You know.

That aerial. That radar you have. The sixth sense.

You can spot a nutbag from a thousand paces.

Now you’re not always right, admit it, but you’re always on your guard. Always wary, always looking round for the man in the woods, the strange shadow in the corridor, the Bogeyman in the wardrobe with your aerial of suspicion.

Over the years – and you can watch out for incidences of any of these things throughout the narrative – I’ve been called an Arsehole (goes without saying), an Alcoholic (it’s not enough, sorry), a Psychopath (bollocks), a Schizo (has its merits, theoretically), a Split Personality (no such thing), a Borderline (not many arguments with this one), a Narcissist (how, exactly, can someone who hates himself be a Narcissist?), and a Repressed Homosexual (no comment).

Let’s face it, with the internet, popular psychology sites, popular psychology courses and a society-wide oversupply of psychology graduates looking for something to do other than flip burgers and chase shoppers in the High Street with direct debit forms, everyone can be a diagnostic expert.

What exactly IS the point of a psychiatrist with all the stuff available free on the Internet? There are thousands of tests of your personality on the internet as we speak. Free of charge.

Stop reading this.

Flip on your browser and find a popular search engine of your choice.

Type in something like Borderline Personality Test and you’ll find a free test of your personality.

They take about fifteen minutes and they ask you questions loosely associated with particular personality disorders.

Usually multiple choice. A mouse click.

Well, of course it is in today’s hyperfast society. Who can be bothered to fill in boxes full of actual words?

Now. Have you done that? Good. What does it say? Avoidant? Histrionic? How simple was that huh?

You are now a label. By the way, if you’re an Anti-Social, don’t bother reading on.

I hate you and hope your robot arse rots in hell, the damage you cause. If you’re a borderline, get in touch. We can help each other I’m sure. You understand, don’t you? You can empathise. You know what it’s like to want something so much, so fast, that you can never live up to the intensity of it.

You know that emptiness. That scalded skin. That ever-present sense of nausea. You’ve experienced the cutting.

You would understand that, wouldn’t you?

The point of the sharp against your skin, the soothing sense of it, the understanding that the knife is exactly what you deserve.

The cold sharp blade is your only friend and you understand the peace that can bring, the descending euphoria.

When I was inside, the last time, a doctor from New Orleans, reviewed my case notes and postulated the notion that as well as BPD, I suffered from IED too.

Intermittent Explosive Disorder.

They think of something for everything.

Take this one. You won’t believe it.

Lottery Disappointment Syndrome.

I couldn’t believe it when I heard it but apparently, people become so disappointed at not winning their country’s version of the Lottery that they are referred to a psychiatrist! I said that it seemed a bit silly, another job creation exercise, another opportunity to be published in the journals, but Plunkett said that over seven hundred people a year worldwide are so beset by the injustice and the hopelessness of not winning, and they commit suicide.

Many others self harm. Others turn to drink and drugs.

Anyway, I digress. This doctor from New Orleans called Dupont said that I was probably suffering from BPD with IED too.

Plus an organic neurosis or two (my head really is a shed).

The Unit I had been referred to by my father to keep me out of prison had only twice before treated a sufferer of IED. Naturally, when he heard, he paid to bring in a specialist and of course, I do what I always do, which is have long conversations with the specialist, long, immersive, enjoyable ones, take all the medication they ask me to, talk in the rolling grounds to Abdul, Wrigley and Boyd and Leroy and Felicity (when she’s not on her treatment) and wait for Janine to come to my room whenever she’s on shift.

In other words, I conform to their recovery model and eventually they release me.

IED, according to Dupont, is characterised by instability of mood with unpredictable outbursts of severe anger and violence. Librarians are common sufferers. Nice, quiet people who suddenly, with no warning, and for very little reason, start destroying their work environments like Vikings in a berserker rage. Their family homes. Families look at them in horror.

I can see that. The horror of it.

If you marry a tattooed giant skinhead with a history of pathological violence, you can’t really complain when he starts destroying your country cottage in front of your very eyes because he’s had a bad day. A bespectacled, mousy, quiet, inoffensive librarian, with his satchel and brown raincoat, his tortoiseshell spectacles? Watching him take a sledgehammer to the Plasma and the stereo before turning his slit-eyed gaze to you and the kids – now that’s pretty scary, if you ask me.

No excerpt was provided by the author.

Chapter 11

Late on Sunday morning, Aaron left his store to find that Last Chance was a changed town. People headed for church, but they were quiet as they did so. Their usual cheerful gossip and chatter was missing. In fact, an unnatural hush hung over the entire street, except when small groups stopped outside the bank and talked. Watching them, Aaron saw many of these spit contemptuously on the bodies that still hung. Someone had cleaned the blood from the boardwalk, but a red stain remained, and the heavy smell of released feces was strong enough to ride the breeze to Aaron’s store.

Aaron walked carefully because stitches in his back pulled painfully. His eyes burned. He felt wooden, sleep deprived, and conscience driven. People looked at him strangely; only two ventured to say hello. Appearing wary, the rest took one look at his face and hurried by. He crossed the street, feeling like a mechanical puppet pulling on its own strings. Sedate, quiet, Bun peeked out of the kitchen when he opened the inn’s door. She waved at him though her lips held a worried frown. Aaron tried to find the energy, the decency to respond, but he could find nothing inside himself except the need to mechanically follow through on his habitual routine.

Plodding one slow step after another, he passed one table of regular diners and then another table of morning visitors who ceased talking as he passed. He walked until he reached his accustomed table. His chair was gone, but a stool had been set in its place, something Aaron only took note of in a faraway distant sort of way. Perhaps someone trying to be thoughtful of his wounded back? He supposed he should be grateful, but that emotion was far too active for him to draw forth. Quietly, he sat on the stool, careful not to stretch and pull at his stitches. Flo rushed over to him. “How do you feel?”

“Numb,” he answered, looking up at her. “I feel very, very numb. I sat up all night waiting for it to hit me, but there was nothing. I know I’m supposed to cry or throw up again or something, but I can’t do any of it. I’ve no emotions at all, Mistress Halfax. When I saw those two men hanging out there just now I thought, Aaron Turner, one of those men is the one you killed.”

“You did not kill him, Mister Turner. My hand was on the rope that pulled both of them up so I know. They were alive when we started.”

“I killed him,” Aaron insisted, “and maybe the others too. If I hadn’t acted they would have left with Ann, and then Ann would have come back. I don’t even know why I did it. I don’t remember.” He felt haunted.

After quietly pulling out a chair, Flo sat down and held his hand. “We heard you when we were outside. I don’t know what made that loud noise, but we heard you. You screamed, Mister Turner. You yelled something about no child being hurt while you watched. They would have killed Ann, sir. They would have raped her, and then they would have cut her throat, only they didn’t because you were there. Besides, one of those men we killed, he was a murdering savage from over the pass who put on civilized clothes to come spy on us. Them people were more than just bank robbing murderers, Mister Turner. There’s trouble coming soon with the natives. In my opinion, we probably saved a bunch of lives by killing one of their spies.”

Senseless. Her words entered his head, but he could not understand them. They were hollow, empty, meaningless. The only word that made sense was a name.

“How is she? How is Ann?”

“Quiet. She stayed home today,” Flo gently said. “I looked her over, and she wasn’t hurt beyond a few bruises and some scrapes.”

Aaron grunted. A distant part of him was grateful the girl was well. Another part of him saw Ann and Flo and every other person in the entire town as caricatures of real people. They were shadows and ghosts and figments that drifted around him but did not settle into his mind. Characters on a stage, they waited for their director, for General Field to come and tell them how to move. They were victims waiting for Aaron Turner to welcome the devil in to destroy their lives.

Flo tightened her fingers, giving his hand a reassuring squeeze. “I’ve seen it in you, Mister Turner. I’ve seen it, and I love you for it. Children and women, they feel safe near you. You protect them, care for them. Look at how you jumped to Ann’s defense that one day. Like a lion you were, and then when the danger to her was over you backed down because you didn’t care about your own pride. Everyone knows about you. Some of us have tried to look out for you.”

Her words held no meaning. He thanked her when she rose, and he thanked an uncharacteristically somber Missy when she brought his food. Moving mechanically, he built a wall of unassailable silence. After an interminable time he finished eating and sat staring at the wall, lost in thought and memory. A shifting foot rubbed against the wood floor. A voice coughed quietly.

Silent and calm, fifty and graying, Bun stood before him. She held out her hand, and he took it, rising to follow her. He was helpless before her pull, helpless in his will. Her power was a faint luminescent glow around her face and hands. The irresistible strength of that power trapped him, made him prisoner and offered him solace. She led him upstairs to her room, lay him down on her bed and laid herself down beside him. She said nothing. Reaching out, she pulled him to her, placed his head against her ample breasts. His body shivered, then began violently shaking. Throwing his arms around her, he buried his head deep between her breasts, and the dam in his mind answered to her call. Emotion bore its way through the silk thin cracks in his mind, and something inside him broke apart. Cheeks wet, he cried quietly, soaking her blouse beneath his face. His crying gradually increased until sobs and moans racked his body. Murmuring something he could not make out, her hands stroked his head and shoulders.

Aaron gave his grief to the quiet woman. Slowly, one long eternity at a time, his sobs lessened, his mind began working, and his ears caught the sound of crying that matched the echoes of his own. Opening his eyes, slightly turning his head, he saw that tears ran down Bun’s cheek, streaking away her sparse make-up. Her soft breasts heaved against his face while she sucked his grief from him. He stopped crying and raised his head, but she cried as hard as he ever had so he pulled his face from her breasts and raised himself so he could pull her head to him. Gently burying her face into his shoulder, he cradled her for an hour while she sobbed. Eventually, her tears slowed, stopped. She pulled away, wiped her tear-swollen face, gave him a sad, lying smile, and rose to leave.

Feeling cleansed, Aaron followed her. His guilt was gone. His mind was clear, and his thoughts sharp, but he wished to God she had not come to him. Because of her he no longer doubted tales of Talent and Talent Masters. With her strength, her Talent, Bun had cleaned him with the strength of her unaided Talent, but that cleaning had cost her dear. It had cost her very dear. He was not worth the price.

* * *

Later, Sarah and Cathy came to the store. Sarah held out his gun. “It’s used up, or I don’t know how to work it. What is this thing, Aaron?”

“They call it a gun, a pistol, or a revolver.” Opening it with a practiced move, he ejected a cartridge and stared at the empty shell. The bullet the cartridge had held, fired by his hand, was now buried in human flesh.

He shook his head to break the image. “This holds a powder that explodes. The explosion pushes a chunk of lead out the barrel.”

“Are you okay now?” Cathy asked with care.

“Yeah.” Aaron rubbed a hand through his hair. It felt gritty and greasy. Unwashed. Unclean. It needed cutting. He vaguely recalled promising Mister Golard he would be in to get it cut. “Bun helped. I don’t know how she did it, but she helped. I didn’t have any choice when she came to me. I couldn’t do anything but what she wanted.”

“Bun has a very strong Talent,” Cathy told him. “It’s strong and singular so she can use it a little even without a Talent Stone.”

“Yeah—well.”

“You don’t understand about Talent, do you?” Sarah asked.

Aaron shook his head no. “I really don’t understand it at all.”

“Of course not. You don’t understand about a lot of things. I used to wonder about that, but I suppose it’s only natural since you don’t come from around here.” Her voice was flat.

Aaron gave up. He did not care anymore. He was tired of living a lie, tired of deception and unsure why he continued to betray people who cared for him. Lies were against his nature, against the precepts instilled in him when he was a child, before the militia, before he became a spy.

He would tell them the truth and to hell with the consequences. They would think him insane, or they would hate him, but he would be clean. With a few simple words he would be clean, and these two would become distant memories of women who might have become something more than idle friends if only he had been honest from the beginning.

Drawing a reluctant breath, Aaron began speaking. Once started, he found that he could not stop.

“So,” Sarah said after a long moment of silence when he finally finished telling his story. “You come from another realm. Truth is, I’ve suspected something of the sort for a little while now. Some of your goods just don’t exist here. This steel? There is no such metal in our earth that I’ve been able to discover, at least not in any real quantity. In fact, I sent some of it back east to N’Ark University about six months ago. Entire departments have been studying it—with Talent Stones. From what I’ve been told, the closest thing we have to it is something called iron, and that is a very rare metal, so rare that I never heard of it before.”

Aaron was shocked. “You believe me!”

“I have no choice but to believe you. You have one strong Talent and one minor one. The major one is so strong it almost radiates off you. Those of us who have the training can feel it. We just never knew what your Talent was.”

“How can I have Talent? I wasn’t born here.”

“You weren’t,” Sarah agreed, “but one of your parents was born here, or maybe one of their parents. Your Talent is rare but it’s not unheard of. About the time I sent the steel to the university, I also sent a letter to a woman who said she read a book that claimed there are other realms. The author died a couple hundred years ago, but she claimed she could travel to three different realms. If she could do it, I see no reason to doubt some other rare Talents can do the same thing. Tell me, is it easier for you to transport over to here than it is for you to go back?”

Aaron felt as if a light had suddenly snapped on. Questions he had not been able to answer suddenly had answers that were clear. “Yes it is,” he said wonderingly. “At least after the first time, when I traveled blind with no idea where I would find myself. That was hard and scary because the chances were very good that I’d arrive in the middle of a rock or a tree, but now that I have locations memorized it’s easy to travel here, only sometimes I’m not sure if I can return there at all.”

She nodded understanding. “That makes sense. Over here Talent is common and natural but the means to use it is rare. Over there, I think the opposite holds true. I think Talent is rare but the means to use it is plentiful.”

“Aaron,” Cathy said, “I’ve suspected there was something different about you for months, and then when I was in the lower cellar while you were sick—”

Resigned, Aaron sighed. “So what are you going to do with me? What do you do with traitors?”

Sarah shook her head slowly. “You are no traitor. You were a boy pulled into something without your say. Aaron, those people are not your family. They cared for you only so they could use you. You owe them nothing, and if what you have told me is true, you have actually given them nothing.”

Emotion welled up in him. His stomach clenched, and his head was about to shatter. “But I betrayed you,” he whispered. “I betrayed you and I betrayed them and I betrayed myself. I told them of you, plotted against you, except in lying that I could have brought people over to harm you. I didn’t let them know I could do that, and so I betrayed the people who gave me back use of my body. After I almost died they spent a fortune putting me back together and now I can’t do anything to repay them.” He slammed his fist down. “GODS DAMN IT! I can’t do anything. All I can do is wait and look and hate myself for not acting.”

Exuding sympathy, Cathy put her hands on his shoulders. “You told them we existed? They knew that from the other man. You plotted against us? How? By caring for us? By helping our poor, carrying their debt when you knew they could not pay? Yes, you could have brought people over and caused us harm, but did you? No. You lied to them about our government. To us you did not lie. To us you said nothing. You did not know us. Now you do. You had no home. Now you do.” Reaching up, she grasped his face between her hands, and she kissed him lightly on the lips. “I claim you as ours.” She released him and stepped back. Sarah moved in.

“Aaron, you were a child when they took you in. Children owe nothing for the care they receive. We owe nothing to the people who raise us, but we do owe a debt when we become adults. We owe a debt to society. We owe the next generation of children. We do not owe people who take us in only because they see a later use for us. Those people are the users, Aaron. They have used you to do something against your nature, and that using is tearing you apart.”

She grasped his face between her hands. “A little while ago Cathy claimed you as one of ours. She did not need to do that because you made yourself one of us a long time ago. You decided what was right, and you acted on that decision even if your acting was to do nothing more than sit still. In this case, doing nothing was the right thing. Aaron, I don’t claim you for us. However, I do claim you for yourself. I also give you the right, again, to use my given name at any time.” Lowering her head, she placed her lips against his for a short kiss.

“As do I,” Cathy added. “We both give you public use of our names without reservation, and Aaron, we ask the same boon of you.”

Aaron nodded numbly. “Of course you can use my given name. You have always had that right. This formality of names doesn’t exist where I come from, so I’m not as touchy about the matter as most of the people are over here.”

Sarah nodded her understanding. “Now I have to ask you a question, Aaron. Were there many women at this place where you were raised?”

“No,” Aaron said. “Not really. No permanent ones anyway. Sometimes a few of the militia members snuck women onto the base, but I seldom saw them. Usually, I only heard the rumors. The only contact I ever had with women or children happened either before I turned eleven, in a hospital, or after I came here.”

Cathy looked knowingly at Sarah. “I told you.”

“You did,” Sarah admitted. “Aaron, another question. Do you know what it means when a man and a woman, or two women, grant one another the full use of their names in public?”

“Friendship and trust?”

“It does. It can also mean a vow of caring one for another. Among women it can state an appreciation for each other, a willingness to share and mutual affection. Between a man and a woman it is often a declaration of affection, a statement of a mutual courtship with marriage as a possible result.”

“It does!” Aaron gulped and felt his face grow hot as the implications sank in.

“Yes. With that understanding Cathy and I still give you public use of our names.” Sarah seemed unnaturally tense. Cathy gripped her arm.

“I—I—I never th—thought a woman could care for me in that way,” Aaron stammered. “I thought you were teasing me.”

“I was.” Sarah smiled slightly. “I was also being honest with my intentions.”

Aaron looked at them, one older by half a decade, the other young enough to be illegal back home even if she was a year past marriageable age here. Sarah, tall, independent, stronger than he in all the ways that mattered and Cathy, brown haired, brown eyed, a waif, but a waif who had held her family together for two years, fighting starvation and cold and winning her battle by the rules she imposed upon herself.

Belatedly, he realized that it did not matter what he wanted or said. Individually, the two of them could out-stubborn him hands down. Together, they were a force to surrender to.

“Yes,” he finally said. “You can use my name. I already care for you both. I trust you both. Might even love you. Only I don’t know for sure because I’ve never loved anyone before, but I think I do. Love you. Gods, this is all new to me.”

“And to us,” Sarah said. “The thing is, Aaron, I always knew I’d share a man if I ever wed, but I never thought I’d share my courtship too. Cathy and I, we have to work a few things out, but that is for later. Right now, I want a gift from you.” She gestured at the revolver with her free hand. “I want you to gift me with this and some lessons in its use.”

“Of course,” Aaron said. “Anything you want.”

“Good. One more thing. During this rather one sided courtship I have kissed you several times. You have never kissed me back, not even once. Cathy?”

“He never kissed me either.” Cathy looked affronted. “And after all the hints I gave him too. He didn’t follow up on any of them.”

“I don’t know how,” Aaron confessed, doubting his face could feel any hotter. “I never had anyone to kiss before.”

“Me neither,” Cathy said. “No men anyway. Why don’t we all learn together?”

The subsequent lesson took over an hour. Aaron practiced enthusiastically, and so did Cathy, but Sarah insisted they were only beginning to get the hang of it by the time the hour was over. Obviously, much more practice was needed. Sighing resignation, Aaron admitted that she was correct. He agreed to regular practice sessions and complained about the horrible things the two of them forced him to do.

They both hit him.