Captain Cosette (3 page)

The tavern owner put his hand on Rasora’s shoulder. 
“He’s gone.  I’m sorry.”

“
No!”  Rasora shook his brother again.  “He’s just… he can’t….”

Cosette
pressed her fist against her mouth.  She had never seen a person die before, not even when the sickness took her parents.  She had also never seen someone watch his own brother die.  She forgot about her own burned wrist, her own numb hand, and ached inside for what she saw on Rasora’s face.

“
Imsamiiiii!”  Rasora clutched his own hair.  “Ahhh, gods, no!  No!”  He jumped to his feet and pulled his knife, looking for an adversary, looking for someone to fight, as though he could fend off death and bring back his brother, but there was no one else in the tavern except the man with the bad teeth and a distraught looking barmaid.

He fell back to his knees and wept, wept in the clumsy fashion of a man that had forgotten how to weep, not knowing how to deal with his tears, with his running nose, with his inability to speak.

“Look,” he whispered, when his sobs subsided.  “Look how they slashed his ears to take his gold.  And they took his bracelets….”  He pressed a useless bandage against his dead brother’s ears.   

“
Did they also take….?”  He ripped open Imsami’s shirt, and a thin medallion lay there on the hair of Imsami’s chest, a small symbol on a silver chain.  “No.  He still has this.”  He gripped the symbol in his fist, and with a sudden jerk removed it.  His eyes fell on Cosette and he shook the medallion at her.  “They can’t have this.  Our mother gave us these.”

In the distance a siren blared. 
“Officers are coming,” said the tavern owner.  “These days, with all the fighting, they’ll arrest everybody.”

Rasora stood. 
“I can’t leave him.”  He blew his nose on his sleeve.  “I don’t care what happens.”

The tavern owner put his hairy hand on Rasora’s shoulder. 
“I’ll take care of him.  I’ll see he’s decently cremated.  Go, or you’ll be in prison or worse.  There are no trials anymore.  Take that girl with you; you don’t want her to wind up in jail.”

Cosette
stepped back.  The city was in chaos.  What the tavern owner had said frightened her. 

I
should
run
back
up
the
hill
. 
But
Rasora
still
has
the
key
!

Rasora dug into his pocket and passed a coin to the tavern owner without looking at it. 
“Here, but maybe he’s not dead.  Maybe he’s just…”

The tavern owner shook his head. 
“He’s dead, sir.  He’s not even bleeding any more.  I’ll take care of him.  Leave now; I’ll hide his body.  Trust me, if he comes back to life, we’ll see to him.”

“
No,” said Rasora in a hoarse whisper.  His hand moved vaguely through the air, as though grasping at phantoms.  He shook his head.  “He won’t come back.  If he were here, I could feel him.  That’s…that’s not him anymore.”

He stood, rocking on his feet, unable to make a decision until
Cosette tugged at his sleeve.  “Let’s go.”

He turned and followed her out the door, stumbling against the frame.

A van with strobe lights pulled up to the front of the Lucky Lady as they climbed the slope behind.  Cosette guided Rasora, who seemed blind.  They eventually made it back to the fire, where Rasora sat on the ground.  He held out the medallion to Cosette.  “Please, will you put this on me?”

She took the medallion and examined the thin chain by the firelight. 
“The clasp is broken.”

“
Oh.”  He rose, took it from her, and laid it in a box in the van.  He dragged out a worn blanket, wrapped it around himself, and collapsed on the ground between the fire and the van.  He sobbed intermittently, rose to drink from a canteen and lay back down again, and sobbed some more.  She thought he had fallen asleep, and she curled into a blanket and tried to doze herself, only to be awaked by the anguished cry, “Imsamiiii!”

She could not go back home, even if her bracelet was removed.  She was sure now that
if she did return, her stepfather Auguste would find some other way to eliminate her.  Besides, by morning one of her brothers would move into her room.

She couldn’t run away until she was delivered to the Union; they were the only ones that could remove the bracelet.  She rubbed her wrist, pushing feeling back into her hand.

I
want
to
go
back
to
my
room.  I want to sleep
in
my
own
bed
. 

She would even be willing to put up with the constant annoyance of her stepbrothers.  Homesickness hit her, accentuated by the misery of Rasora.

Somewhere, down in the town of Toulouse, in the midst of the unrest and the fires and the shots and the explosions, was the military post where she would be delivered.  What would happen then?  She could not guess.

But her imagination was free to concoct one horrible fate after another, and she ran through them all as the night wore endlessly on.

She was wrong every time.

Chapter Three

Dawn came, slowly and reluctantly.  The rising sun fell on them before it reached the town of Toulouse, drying the dew and warming the air.  A brightly feathered
rakina
landed on a nearby branch and yodeled shrilly until Cosette tossed a stick at it.  It sputtered and buzzed down the slope.

Rasora sat slumped, staring into the sunrise until
Cosette feared for his vision.  He had the blanket pulled around himself like a shield, although the morning warmed quickly.

She
dug through the van and found a loaf of coarse bread along with bottles of beer, water, and some dark liquid labeled in a foreign language.  She drank some water and ate part of the bread.  She offered the bread to Rasora, but he shrugged it off. 

Toulouse was quiet, although smoke continued to rise on the far side of town.  In the daylight she could see the spaceport on the near side of the river, a tall ship gleaming in the sun like a miniature spear point.

I’m
in
no
hurry
to
get
to
the
training
station
or
whatever
it
is
,
and
Rasora
is
in
no
condition
to
do
anything
. 
I
might
as
well
make
the
most
of
it
. 

She used rope from the van to turn a blanket into a hammock in the shade.  From her bag she pulled out one of her books, and settled down to read.  A breeze picked up, tempering the mid-day sun.  Harvest of the
ambrosia fruit marked the end of summer, but autumn was still gentle, especially close to the ocean. 

The thought of harvest reminded her of the fruit
—
her
fruit — that she had picked off of the vine and slipped into her bag.  She dug it out and asked Rasora if she could borrow his knife.  He grunted and tossed it to the ground in her direction.  The sun was now high in the sky, but he continued to stare over Toulouse towards the horizon.

Maybe
he’s
blind
. 
Maybe
he’s
insane
. 
Maybe
…

She took the knife and carefully sliced the fruit in two. 
“Would you like half?  These are very good.”

He shook his head.

Yep
,
he’s
insane
. 
No
one
would
turn
down
an
ambrosia
fruit
.

She sipped the juice as she read, making it last
as long as possible.  Her book, BLAZING HEARTS ON FIRE by Renée Chevalier, borrowed from the library shelf at the local grocer, was a romance novel set on a jungle planet and was a real tear jerker.  She stopped halfway through and wiped her eyes, looking at Rasora to be sure he wasn’t watching.  He hadn’t moved.  She was glad; she felt like an idiot crying over a novel, but there was something satisfying about the loves and heartbreaks of someone else.

Gregory
isn’t
the
only
faithless
rat
in
the
universe
. 

Not that Gregory had promised her anything, though.  They hadn’t even…

Nope, no reason to be sensible.  Gregory was a faithless rat, and a wretch besides.

She started the fire as the sun began to set.  Rasora finished his water bottle, stepped into the woods for a few minutes, and then returned and sat on the ground near the fire.

“How are you doing?” she asked.

“
I don’t know.  First, there’s, ah, I’m not really, sort of….”  He wiped his face with his hands.  “I’m sorry.  What I meant was, I’m having trouble dealing with the fact that I’m only half here.  It’s like I can’t complete a thought.”

“
I’m sorry.”

He looked at her as though seeing her for the first time. 
“We take you from your home to deliver you to the military, and you’re sorry for me?”

She nodded.

He frowned.  “You’re a better person than I am.  Something’s not right.  I mean, besides Imsami’s being dead.  We were wrong about so many things.”

She offered him the remains of the bread, but he refused it. 
“You should eat, you know,” she said.  “You haven’t eaten all day.”

“
No.  No, I’ve got to figure this out.  We were doing everything we intended to do, but we were wrong somehow.  Imsami’s dead, and he’s dead because of these,” he touched the gold rings in his ears, “but we could have stopped working yesterday, driven to Rabelais village, bought some land and retired.  We could have stopped months ago, years ago.  When were we going to stop?”  He looked at her as though she could answer, but she widened her eyes and half-shrugged.  “That’s just it,” he said.  “We were gathering wealth, and gathering wealth, but it didn’t do any good, it just got Imsami killed.”  His eyes drifted to the fire, and she could see its light reflected in his eyes.  “Poor Imsami, overpowered, fighting for his life, and I wasn’t there.  Nobody got killed but him, and he was a master of the knife.  And they took his gold.  If he hadn’t had gold on him, they might have just thrown him out, or fleeced him at cards, or bought him a beer.”

He picked up the knife
Cosette had used to slice the fruit.  “Would you help me get the gold out of my ears?”

She looked aghast. 
“I’m not cutting your ears!”

“
No, no, you don’t need to do that.  These earrings are soft, almost pure gold; you just put the blade here on the ring and pound the back of the knife with a stone.  In fact, I’ll thank you not to hit my head or cut me.”

He walked to a large boulder and rested his head against it, his earring lying on the top.  She set the knife carefully, and tapped hesitatingly with a small stone, got a larger one, tapped harder, and soon had the earring separated.

She repeated the procedure with his other earring, and now both ears were bare.

“
Ah,” he said, shaking his head experimentally.  “More of me is gone.”  He tugged off his bracelets, and tossed them beside the earrings.  “There’s wisdom in that.  I need to think.  Thank you, by the way, for not cutting my throat when you had the chance.”  He went back to the edge of the clearing overlooking Toulouse and sat.  Below him, lights began to wink on across the city, along with a resurgence of explosions, gun shots, and sirens.

She looked at the stack of precious gold and could not let it lie there.  She scooped up the earrings and bracelets and put them under the foot carpet in the van. 

She adjusted the lazy fire – she had discovered its convenience – and climbed back into her hammock.  The evening was warm, and clouds had come in to hide the stars and trap the warmth.  She would not need a blanket.

She was not free, but she was not terrified at the moment.  She slept fitfully, but she did sleep.

*

Morning came, and she eased out of the hammock.  She had gotten up in the middle of the night and overbalanced, falling on the ground rather than rising gracefully. 

The clouds looked thicker, promising rain, but she was used to cloud banks that broke their promise.  She took a bite of the remains of the coarse bread, took a swallow of water, and choked.

Rasora still sat on the edge of the clearing overlooking Toulouse,
but beside him was a loose stack of clothes.

He was naked.

“Um.  Rasora?  Are you okay?”

Now
I’m
certain
he’s
quite
mad
. 

Fortunately, the key was in his discarded pants pocket, so if he
did begin to gibber and run away, she wouldn’t have to follow.  He began to speak, cleared his throat, and tried again.  “I’m quite fine, thank you.”

“
Can I bring you a blanket?”

He remained sitting, for which she was grateful. 
He replied in a calm, reasonable voice, “No, thank you.  I’m comfortable.”

“
Can I bring you some clothes?”

“
No, I’m good.”

“
Some underclothes?” 

At
least
?

“
No.”

She folded her arms.  He was being pigheaded just like her step-brothers. 
“May I ask why you aren’t wearing your clothes?”

“
I don’t have any clothes.”

“
Then what’s that pile sitting beside you?”

“
Those aren’t my clothes.  I don’t own anything.”

“
What do you mean, those aren’t your clothes?  They most certainly are.”

“
Look.”  He started to turn his head, and she turned her back on him.  “Imsami is dead.  I will miss him forever.  But he’s dead because we thought possessions were everything.  Even bounty hunting, turning in unfortunate souls for the money, we thought that was fine because it made us wealthier.  But all it got us was Imsami dead, and we would have never been wealthy enough to satisfy us.”

She heard his voice diminish, and she assumed he had turned back to looking over the city. 
“The philosopher was right,” he continued.  “To not desire anything is to possess everything.  I have discarded everything I own, and I’m sitting here content.  There is nothing more I need to do.  If only we had known.”

Then
there
would
have
been
two
naked
men
wandering
around
the
countryside
. 

She ventured a glance back at him.  He was indeed looking back over the city. 
“Could you at least put on your underclothes?”

“
I don’t have any underclothes.”

She lost her temper.  This goat-headed off-worlder was deliberately being difficult.  She stomped up to the pile and grabbed the gray underclothes lying on top.  
“Fine!  I claim these as my own, then.” 
Eww
!  “Any problem with that?”

He shrugged. 
“They’re not mine.  Doesn’t matter to me.”

She threw them at him. 
“Then will you please at least put on
my
underclothes?”

He didn’t answer. 

She tapped her foot, determined to outwait him.

Another
rakina
swooped through the clearing, yammering at them.  Down in Toulouse, a shot rang out.  Over the distant ocean, a brief flash of lightning flickered in a cloud bank but no sound reached them.

“
Very well.  If you wish.”  He started to rise, and she turned her back again.

As she heard cloth rustling, she asked,
“What took you so long to decide?”

“
I was just thinking,” he said.  “There are more possessions than just things.  Insisting on my own way, my own will, my own desires, that’s a form of possessiveness.  It’s not enough to give up gold; I have to give up wanting gold.  That was a new thought for me.  Remember, Imsami always complained that I thought too much.  It’s a flaw of mine.  Did you want me to do anything else?”

“
Could you put on the rest of, um, my clothes?  Please?”

“
If you wish.”

With quiet efficiency he finished dressing, snapped his boots – her boots – and reached for the knives.  He stopped in mid-reach.

“Yes,” she said.  “You may carry my knives.”

“
Thank you.”  He picked them up and slipped them into their scabbards on his belt.  Her belt.

“
Are you ready to eat something?” she asked.

He shrugged. 
“I have nothing to…”

“
Here,” she snapped, pushing the last crust of bread at him.  “Eat some of my bread, drink some of my water, and then let’s get into my van and go wherever it was you were taking me.”

He accepted the bread and ate it thoughtfully. 
“You know,” he said between bites, “I don’t want to turn you in any more.  I don’t want the bounty.”

“
Can you remove this bracelet?”  She held out her wrist, displaying the electronic device that had shocked her so painfully two evenings ago.