Excerpt: It's Still Desertion (reprise)

IV. Alone

Harmonia drifted in to Prime a month after midwinter at nightfall, snow swirling around her in the darkness. She handed over her papers to the gate guards, signed for her weapons with numb fingers, stuffed the papers back into her bag haphazardly, headed into the town. Their questions barely penetrated her frozen mind; she answered dully, automatically, left the gate guards to their shelter under the overhang of a roof and stumbled up the hill into town.

Liyet's house was just off the main street, near the council chambers and the orphanage. Light glowed within its windows, behind the lacy curtains that were drawn shut to keep out the storm. Harmonia climbed the narrow steps to the doorway, stood shivering as she knocked with a gloved and frozen fist.

The snow was mounding on her shoulders, piling on her lumpy woolen hat. The door opened in a burst of warmer air, scented of woodsmoke and roses. Snowflakes were sucked inside, melted and vanished before they hit the floor. "Harmonia!" cried Liyet. "My god, you look near frozen! Come in, come in! Where's Emeryis?"

She took a few shuffling steps past the doorway, snow falling off her shoulders, her back, her coat, snow covered bag and gun thudding to the floor, before the question penetrated. "He's dead. I killed him."

"Oh no!" said Liyet. "What did he do to you?" She pushed the door closed behind her friend, busied herself brushing off snow to melt in puddles on the varnished floor.

"Nothing." She blinked snow from her eyelashes, tears stinging her eyes again. "The Eaters had him." She was shivering now, now that the world was warm and soft around her, lit in golden light. She couldn't stop. She was so cold.

"Oh, Harmonia, I'm so sorry," said Liyet. Her hands moved at the fastenings of Harmonia's jacket, delicate on the heavy frozen buttons. Snow flaked off as the fabric folded. "You're so cold. When was this?"

Harmonia shook her head listlessly, melting snow trickling down the untrimmed ends of her hair into her collar, thawing nose stinging. "Back--in Caverton. Autumn." Cool winds blowing, the rustle of brown oak leaves still clinging to their branches. Crows flying in aimless clusters, waiting for something to die.

A branch studded with maple leaves, red like drops of blood.

The jacket fell away and Liyet started unwinding Harmonia's long scarf, flinching a little when her bare hands touched the patches where the wind had driven snow into the stitches and the fabric was cold and wet. "Where have you been since then?" she asked gently, casting back another length of scarf, and then another, until the whole fringed length of it pooled on the jacket on the floor behind Harmonia and was forgotten.

The question didn't register. Harmonia stood there, shivering in the heated hallway, staring blankly at the floor. "Come in, Harmonia," said Liyet, leading her into the parlor, where pink plush chairs in the style of the Homeland clustered plumply around a little hot stove. An oil lamp stood on a table by the wall, shining its golden glow over everything. Liyet pressed her into a chair, knelt in a rustle of skirts and bent over Harmonia's feet, started to pull her boots off.

She was so cold. So frozen, so dirty, a rough clot of humanity dug out of some nightmare of death and doom and placed in this delicate parlor to thaw out and melt. She tucked her arms around her and shivered as though she'd never stop. She felt like she should be steaming as the ice came off of her. Liyet placed her boots aside, stood them by the stove. One of them fell over. And there were warm hands on her face, gently touching her reddened cheeks. "Harmonia? Can I get you anything?"

She was shivering too much to answer, teeth rattling together. No, she thought, I don't deserve it. Send me back to the storm to die and be forgotten. "I'll get you some tea," said Liyet. "Would that help?" She moved over to the little stove, rattled silver and porcelain. Harmonia's eyes drifted shut, though the tears still leaked out of them, and she still shivered in the chair's embrace. It was too much effort to tuck her legs up, too much effort to move the toes that tingled and burned and stung. She was so cold.

Liyet was placing a blanket around her, heavy and woolen and warm. The hot hands touched her again, brushed away the tears. "It's all right, Harmonia. You're home now. You're safe." Her shivers were easing, not so much like a leaf in the wind, clinging to its branch until it is swept away. "He's dead, Liyet. Dead."

"Hush. Don't think about that now." Long fingers combed through her damp hair, pushed the tendrils back behind her ears. "He has returned to the audience that watches the world, borne off the stage to the applause of thousands. He is with his teacher now, reunited. They watch the world together."

The kettle whistled, its cry mixing with the wind that blew outside. Liyet was pressing a cup into her clumsy hands, amber tea swirling in delicate porcelain, leaves dancing in the water, steam rising in a hair thin spiral. Harmonia stared at it stupidly, blinking back the helpless tears.

"Drink your tea, Harmonia," Liyet whispered. Gentle hands came alongside her clumsy frozen ones, lifted the teacup. A tear landed in the teacup, a hot stream across her cheek, a droplet falling forever, the tea fountaining up behind it, the endless ripples. She licked her lips, dry and chapped from the winter, and took a sip.

The cold winds howled through the empty streets, chasing each other through the desolation. She'd left her heart out there in the snow somewhere, in a fountain of blood in an Eater camp, the flight of a bullet that she couldn't look to aim. Her body shook with sobs now, slowly thawing with every stab and prickle of nerves reawakening. The tea rippled in the teacup, splashing over the side.

Then cloth was dabbing at her hands, red and angry and rough with winter, dripping with tea. The teacup had vanished. Liyet murmured words, but they came from a distance, somewhere beyond the storm, out of the darkness. She sat and shivered and wept, and Liyet crouched there and held her and waited for dawn.