"Donc, nous avons ces quatre voyelles nasales," the professor concluded, "in, un, an, et on. Répétez, s'il vous plaît: in, un . . ."
A sudden ringing sound interrupted this dazzling display of nasal vowels. All eyes in the classroom looked to one of the students, a curly-headed girl in the front row.
"Excusez-moi, Madame. . . ." the student grimaced.
The professor answered with a nod and an understanding smile; the girl grabbed her bag and hurried out into the hall. After making sure she was alone there, she pulled from her bookbag--not a cell phone, but a standard-issue New Republic comlink.
"Allô, c'est Trois à l'appareil . . . oh . . . bother." She sighed into the device. "Um, sorry. Three here. You caught me in the middle of French class and I'm sort of stuck in Francophone mode right now. . . ."
"No problem," answered the voice of Terra Lead. "Actually, don't bother unsticking. Francophone mode will come in handy."
"What?"
"You're going to Paris."
"WHAT?"
~
"Désolée, Madame. . . ." Terra Three offered a quick explanation of a friend in need, more than that she couldn't say, but she really did have to go. The professor, très gentille, kindly gave her leave to go, along with an advisement to finish the rest of the Chapter Six exercises for next time.
She had them finished a half-hour into the shuttle ride to Mendellia--leaving her with plenty of time to wonder what was going on. At first she wondered what the new mission might be--Lead had explained little, as was his wont--but her thoughts, as was their wont, soon tended in another direction. After a while she reached up to her throat and drew out a chain that she wore beneath her shirt there: on this was strung a ring, set with rubies and amethysts in an interlacing double helix pattern. A hesitant smile and an anxious frown alternated on her face while she considered this ring, then she reached for the necklace's latch to open it and slip the ring off its chain; but at that moment a voice drew her out of reverie. Terra Eight, piloting the shuttle Gaia to gather the Terrans to Headquarters, called her name; she slipped the ring back inside her shirt and hurried forward to see what he wanted.
"We're there," he said, and the scene before the shuttle's viewport confirmed his words. There was the familiar round island, Mount Atner's broad slopes and the gleam of the River Atner running south and east of Mendel City. And now the city itself sprang up before them as the shuttle drew nearer. Long before any other detail could be made out in the city, the High Palace filled their view. Becki smiled to see its tall towers and wide walls with their fanciful designs--so eccentrically Baroque, yet in this setting so perfect.
It was impossible to see the Palace and not to think of all that had passed there when first she saw it--over a year ago now. She sank down into the copilot's chair and continued to watch the Palace grow, but her smile would not hold. As Josh guided the Gaia toward the newly-built Palace Hangar, she watched, in doubt and dread and longing--and only the littlest bit of hope.
~
In the Palace the Dictator paced, until even Reth began to feel impatient. "Don't worry, Thayer," he said, "they'll be here anytime now."
Thayer nodded and made no other answer, but after a moment more he abandoned the pacing and sat down behind the desk. Reth decided to consider that an improvement.
"What's the mission, anyway?" Reth asked. "Must be something big--they've been bringing in a lot of their people."
"Sci won't say," Thayer said. "Not before he's briefed them."
"Do we get briefed, too? Is Mendellia with them on this?"
"Mendellia is with them," said the Dictator, almost grinning, his eyes for a moment lighting up so that he looked almost his old self, "in anything they must do. As to whether we are needed in this mission, however--I don't know. Sci has been closer than usual."
"Must be pretty bad, then," Reth concluded happily. "In which case, they're bound to need us. Cheer up, boss."
Thayer was, however, in no mood to take that advice, so he glared a moment at his friend and then looked away, out the window. From here he could see the courtyard where, over a year ago, they'd set up a makeshift landing area for the ships of the New Republic and Terra Group preparing for what was now being called the Battle of Terra. The new Hangar, though, was on the opposite side of the Palace, built into one of the newer wings; he would not be able to see the _Gaia_'s arrival. Nevertheless he watched, in doubt and dread and longing.
"I'll go check," said Reth, "if they've been sighted yet. And Thayer--" he paused in the doorway and fixed his Dictator with a stare and a frown: so rare an expression for Reth, that Thayer blinked in surprise. "There's hope yet. You have to trust her." Then he was gone, leaving Thayer alone with his doubts.
The voices of his Council of Lords rang in his mind. After a year and more as Dictator, he had won their respect and allegiance; from many of them he had even their admiration and love. Yet still in this one matter he had often to deal with their disapproval. They'd advised him, when he took the throne, to marry quickly. They had cited for him time and again the curious custom of Mendellia, that a Prince ascending unmarried to the throne should be titled Dictator after the initial title of the pirate founder of the country, Reenaccub Atner, while a married Prince ascending the throne should be titled King after the title Reenaccub took upon his marriage to the first Mendellian Queen. Only upon his marriage to a woman confirmed as Queen might a bachelor Dictator take the title of King.
Even that custom might have been only a minor concern to Thayer and his chosen Queen. But the superstitions about bachelor Dictators ran strong in Mendellia, though none of the current councilors were quite so old as to have lived under one's reign--they didn't care to count the late Eugor Atner as a legitimate Dictator, though truth be told, it was precisely the troubles of his Queenless reign that had restored the old superstitions to every Mendellian mind. After the Battle of Terra, with the praises of Terra Group being sung throughout the city, the Council had been content to approve Thayer's choice of a Queen. But they had never been content with her wish to delay the marriage.
And he certainly wasn't inclined to disagree on that point. But he'd had to: it had fallen to him to defend both her and her delay before the lords many a time. They grew impatient. Thayer had never been anything but impatient. Frustrations mounted.
And it had been a whole year since he'd seen her: there had been almost a week at Christmastime, when she was in Mendellia to be Kirret's bridesmaid, but then she'd faded back to her schoolwork and he was alone with the Council again. In the year since then, she'd been in Mendellia once or twice for Terra Group's missions: yet fate had always drawn him away from the Palace on those occasions, on government business in other parts of the island or abroad, so that the wedding was the last time he had seen his fiancee. With every month, every week, it grew harder to keep her image in his mind.
The voices of the Council were a cacophony where he could hardly now remember the melody of his beloved's voice. But even the councilors seemed a sweet harmony compared to the ominous silence of the Queen Mother. Llessur had been every manner of odd since her return to Mendellia, but once she had learned of Thayer's choice of Queen, she had become secret to him, and he could not now read her as he once might have. Only it was clear that she disapproved: yet she seldom said so much aloud. It was all in the disdain with which she masked her face when the Queen-to-be was mentioned, the coldness with which she spoke to her son--even when his fiancee wasn't mentioned. And then there were the ladies-in-waiting. He could guess well enough what Llessur's game was, with those ladies-in-waiting: but what could he do or say? Mothers were made for meddling, he concluded.
Once, just once, she'd spoken plainly to him on the matter, before the coldness set in and she retreated behind her masks. "I cannot approve your choice," said she, "but nor can I say nay, for it was yours to make. Yours was the ring to give. I only wish you had lent more thought to the giving of it. I do not like to think of it on the hand of such a one as this."
"I know no better place for it," he had sighed, frustrated with her. "Mother, won't you trust my judgment?"
"I could, had it not so clearly left you at sight of this girl."
"Whatever you think," he'd said impatiently, "she wears the ring now, and there's an end of it. You know what the ring means, you who have worn it. She is Queen: the approval of the Council, even your approval, are but formalities. Even the wedding is largely a formality now; she wears the ring of the Queen, and there's an end of it."
It was then that Llessur had first begun to go cold. "Does she?" she'd said. "Does she wear it? What's a ring to one such as her?" She whirled and began to stalk off, but then turned back to say: "I had thought I'd raised you better than to call a mother's approval mere formality."
"No!" Thayer cried, "No--Mother! That's not what I meant, and you--"
It was pointless, for the Queen Mother had already gone. And since that day he had had only silence from her: silence, and this game of the ladies-in-waiting.
Perhaps, he reflected, staring mournfully out at the courtyard where no ships now landed, the silence was an improvement.
"Gaia's landed, sir," Reth's voice announced cheerfully. "You'll want to go and meet them?"
"I . . ." Hope kindled for a moment in response to Reth's bright smile--it often did; Thayer was frequently glad for his second-in-command's undying optimism--but the doubt was still strong. He knew, really, where the doubt came from: it was all part of Llessur's game, working on him, with every little word and deed and gesture and even that accursed silence, to plant these doubts of the one on whom he'd staked so much love and hope. Yet knowing the cause of his doubt did little to dispel it. "Yes," he said finally. "Let's go."
~
In the Great Hall, because it was nearly halfway between his office and the Hangar, the nearest thing that the sprawling Palace had to a central location, they met. It seemed to him that her smile was strained or forced--and he fancied he saw his own doubts mirrored in her eyes. But it had been more than a year, and surely--
He took her hands and bent to kiss her. But then his doubts seemed to take on flesh and leap to life, for her hands were bare, and the Queen's ring was not on them. In his alarm--the voice of his mother laughed at the back of his mind: Why so surprised? What did you expect?--he hurried through the kiss, hurried through greetings and pleasantries, and hurried her away to be escorted by Reth to a room, then he himself hastened through halls and up many stairs until at last he came out atop one of the Palace's towers.
Here he had stood, he remembered, more than a year ago, and here first spoken his love for her. So certain everything had seemed then, so clear. It was midday now, and of all the stars in the heavens only the Sun was visible, yet he could remember just where Orion had shone--the X-wing standing guard over them that night. Now he stared at the clouds where those stars should be and wondered what to do. He tried to tell himself that it was not as he feared, that it was for some good reason that she did not wear the ring, that all was as it should be, as it had been that night under Orion's gaze. But he could not easily shake off the doubts that had been growing for nearly a year--and ever he saw her smile, so strained and unsure, and a look in her eyes he did not know.
~
Reth had given her the same room she'd had on all her previous visits to the Palace, Becki noted; it was becoming nearly as familiar as her old room in her parents' house, or the guest room she always had when she stayed at the Hermitage, though not yet quite so familiar as her dorm room. As such, it was reassuring, in a way, so she thanked him and hugged him as a long-lost friend (trying not to think that there was more warmth in this gesture than there had been in Thayer's greeting kiss) and sent him away, after securing a promise that he'd let Kir know she'd arrived. Alone now, she looked around the room.
Or not quite alone. Her bed had already been claimed, apparently. "Why . . . Roguie!" she exclaimed, recognizing the three-legged shadow curled at the foot of the bed as Josh Cochran's cat, now underfoot in the Palace while her master maintained Terra Group's headquarters in the lower levels. Rogue blinked and yawned, but she purred when Becki greeted her with a scratch behind the ears.
"So did you just pick this room for a nap at random, or were you waiting for me?" she wondered aloud. "Anyway, thank you. All it needed was a feline presence. It seems so empty without Macavity whenever I stay here. . . ." Rogue twitched her whiskers knowingly.
With a sigh, Becki settled onto the bed next to the cat. "I don't know what to make of him, Roguie. I mean--Thayer, not Macavity. I know it's been a year, but . . . it wasn't like him, you know, so . . . cold. You'd think after this long he'd be a bit more glad to see me."
Rogue shifted slightly and directed her attention to a paw that wanted washing. "Well, yes," Becki said quickly, "you would think I'd be more glad to see him, too. I thought I would be. At least--well, I don't know. I wanted to, and yet didn't. It has been so long. And I've hardly heard from him lately--"
The cat's placid gaze inspired confession. "Though I guess he's hardly heard from me, either, has he?" Rogue went back to her washing, apparently satisfied with this admission. "Never get in a long-distance relationship, Rogue; it's just insane. We meant to write every day, but how long did that last? E-mails all the time at first, but after a while . . ." Rogue pricked up her ears expectantly. "Well, I got busy. I student taught last semester, you know: I didn't have time to write anything but lesson plans, nor read anything but students' papers. I even had to take a semester's leave from Terra Group duty--not even to save the world could I have afforded to miss a single day of school. I suppose he got busy too. I suppose rulers of countries do that occasionally."
She remembered the ring and once again drew it out to look at it. "In the halls of the high school I seem to have forgotten who I was here in the Palace's halls. I couldn't wear this then--I couldn't have answered the questions if anyone had seen it. Terra Group is still top secret, you know, and in Indiana no one can know I'm anything except a typical college student. But I'll wear it now." She slipped the ring off its chain and set it in place on her finger, and then for the first time since French class that morning, she smiled fully and felt at ease.
Then her comlink sounded, and she answered it. It was Lead again: "All Terra Group personnel, briefing in the Batcave in fifteen minutes. Lead out."
"Well. So soon? Sci's been around Thayer too long; everyone's so hasty in Mendellia." She laughed and started out the door, but Rogue suddenly meowed, a chirping little call like a question. Becki looked back to the cat and nodded.
"I know; don't give up hope. Maybe he's just out of sorts--maybe it's just the silence there's been between us, and all that, or maybe it goes deeper. But it's not too late, perhaps. I'll--" Rogue tilted her head expectantly at the pause. Becki grinned and shrugged. "Well, I don't know. I'll think of something." And with that, she hurried off to the briefing.