Haarlan and his freightrunner didn?t reach the canal station until after sunset, although the sky was only light purple and not full dark. Before Maertyn stepped out of the cab, he slipped his personal credpass through the vehicle?s portable recorder and added a hundred to the total.
"Sir…you didn?t have to do that," protested Haarlan.
"Your victuals, your company, and your transport are all worth the extra…and I want you to be profitable enough to continue in business."
"Thank you, Lord Maertyn. I do appreciate it."
"As do I." Maertyn smiled. "I?ll open the station door, since I doubt anyone?s expecting me this early."
"I?ll be along with the first cartons in a moment, sir."
"Don?t hurry."
Maertyn stepped out onto the damp blue-gray stone of the canal wall, setting his boots carefully. South of the stone, the snow was close to knee-high, signifying more than a few storms over the past few weeks. He glanced to the north, where more dark clouds were massing. Then, he walked to the station and pressed his hand against the stone, waiting as the south side door opened.
"Hello there!" he called loudly and cheerfully.
Shaenya appeared immediately. "Lord Maertyn! You?re back. We were wondering when you?d come." She half-turned and called, "Lady! He?s back!"
"So I am, and so is a large load of provisions from Haarlan?s. From the look of the snow and the sky, we?ll be needing them."
"That we will be."
"Is that you, Maertyn?" Maarlyna rushed forward and flung her arms around him. "I?m so glad…I worried…we all worried…"
"I?m here, and I?m hale and healthy, if a little hungry." He kissed her gently on the cheek, then eased away, much as he wanted to wrap his arms around her tightly. "With that storm coming in, we need to let Haarlan unload everything and be on his way." Maertyn set the shoulder bag beside the door and walked back to the freightrunner, where he picked up one of the remaining cartons and carried it inside the station and down to the lower kitchen area.
He made one more trip carrying provisions, as did Haarlan and Svorak, who had hurried over from the square building that housed the power modulation equipment, before all that he had purchased was unloaded. Then he stood in the station doorway to see Haarlan off.
"Thank you again, Haarlan."
"My pleasure, Lord Maertyn." The wiry victualer smiled and nodded. "Good evening."
Once the freightrunner was headed back eastward, Maertyn closed the door and recovered his shoulder bag.
"I?ll have a right regular supper for you in less than an hour, Lord Maertyn," said Shaenya.
"Not just for me, I hope." Maertyn smiled at his wife.
"No, sir. I wouldn?t be forgetting Lady Maarlyna."
"She never does," added Maarlyna. "She?s very good to me."
"You deserve it, dear." Maertyn looked to Shaenya. "And I can?t tell you how much I appreciate it."
Shaenya flushed slightly, then nodded. "Best I be getting on with supper." She scurried down the ramp.
Walking beside Maarlyna, Maertyn carried the shoulder bag up the ramp to their chamber, where he set it beside the armoire. Then he removed both stunners and slipped them into the top drawer of his dresser, a family heirloom that had originally come from Norlaak. Although it had been an expense he had borne personally, he didn?t regret in the slightest the cost of bringing familiar furnishings to the station, or what he knew it would require to return them all once his research term was over.
"How was your trip?" Maarlyna perched on the end of the bed.
"Long…tedious…difficult. The Ministry wants more concrete results from my research, or they?ll allow the Gaerda to test weapons on the station and canal. I had to fill in for Josef while he was visiting universities…and that meant I had to handle the bud get reallocations…"
He went on to give a brief summary of all the "official" events and duties, but he did not mention the incident with the lorry or the events that had led to his taking the "local" tube-train from Caelaarn to Daelmar or anything that had transpired along the way northward. "…and then I stopped at Haarlan?s to order supplies…and I came home."
"You?ve left out more than you?ve told me," said Maarlyna with an amused smile.
"Of course. I?ll fill in the details after dinner."
"You promise?"
"I promise."
"I?ll hold you to it, you know."
"I know."
"Oh…the crate you had shipped arrived last week. I had Svorak put it in the corner of your laboratory. It seemed rather heavy."
"It is. It has a number of items that we may need in the next few months, and I thought it would be easier to have Rhesten ship them while I was in Caelaarn."
"Those will fit in with what you haven?t told me."
"Yes, they will." Maertyn walked over to the bed, eased Maarlyna to her feet, and held her tightly for a long, long time.
Neither said much in the time before Shaenya rang the chimes for dinner.
After dinner, the two of them settled into the section of the upper level that served as their sitting room, each taking a matching but ancient Laarnian Modern chair of the pair that flanked a low ebony oblong table.
"Matters were very bad in Caelaarn, weren?t they?" offered Maarlyna.
"Why do you say that?" Maertyn replied, keeping an amused tone in his voice.
"Because you were so cheerful when you arrived here. You?re still doing it."
"That?s because I?m glad to see you."
"Maertyn…I know that, but I can tell the difference."
He dropped the smile. "They weren?t so bad as they could have been, but they weren?t good. Ashauer met me at the tube-train station and warned me to be careful. He?s never done that. Tauzn…the Minister of Protective Services-"
"I know who he is."
"He wants to succeed D?Onfrio as EA, and I?m guessing that he wants to make a political issue out of my research."
"He can?t do that very effectively, can he? Your project is very low-budget. There must be hundreds larger and more wasteful. Besides, you?re good at defending…" Her words dropped off.
For a moment, there was silence.
Finally, Maarlyna asked, "You couldn?t defend matters…or me…could you, if you were dead? How many…?"
"Three…four times…" he admitted.
"That many? How did you…did you kill anyone?"
"I managed not to kill anyone. One Gaerda operative who tried to force me off the road in an ice storm died when he lost control following me and crashed into an oak tree."
She raised her eyebrows.
"I…drove the runabout through the Laarnian Martyrs? Memorial."
"Oh…Maertyn…" Her voice was soft, yet warm. "Is it because you?re a lord?"
"Because I?m a lord?" He laughed gently.
"Tauzn is courting the rabble. His type always does. If he can prove something involving D?Onfrio?s appointees, especially implicating a lord, then that will strengthen his support, especially among them."
"Yes, lords must be above reproach, yet be able to get away with anything unscathed."
Maertyn regretted the cynicism as soon as he had spoken.
"And their ladies…"
"You are above reproach," he said.
"Many might not think so."
He frowned. "How can you say that?"
"Maertyn…I?d like you to answer a question."
"If I can." He offered a smile, although the seriousness of her tone worried him more than he could have said.
"I?m not me, am I?"
"Of course you?re you. Who else would you be?"
"I?ve never been that precise with words." A sad smile crossed her face. "Of course I am who I am. My name is Maarlyna, but I am not the Maarlyna who once was. I read the journal, the one in script, in your armoire. The writing could easily be mine, but it?s not quite the same, and I remember the events written there, but my memories are as though I?d been told of them, and the way the words fall on the page is not quite the way I would write them."
He laughed softly. "I wouldn?t write what I wrote five years ago in the same way I would now. None of us would. Why would you be any different?"
"Maertyn…" Her deep amber eyes focused on him, warm and intent.
He stood, then moved over to her chair, where he lifted her into an embrace, wrapping his arms around her for a long time. Then he stepped back, still holding her hands. "What is it? What has upset you so much?"
"You?ve had some disturbing things befall you…dangers…" She paused, then continued.
"So have I. It?s different…but I worry. I?ve worried more than I?ve told you."
"I?ve sensed it, but I never wanted to press you."
"I know that, and I appreciate it." After the slightest pause, she went on. "I never said much when you suggested you heard or sensed things about the ice calving or tsunamis striking the canal walls. At first, I just thought I was imagining things, or that it was because of all the medical procedures…but they didn?t fade away. Instead, they got stronger as I did."
"You sensed them as well? I wondered."
"Not exactly. I saw shadowy figures…not shadowy, really, because they were more than shadows. They weren?t at all white and ghost-like…"
"Was one of them a woman in red who was neither young or old?"
Maarlyna?s mouth opened. "You saw her and didn?t say anything?"
"I saw her just a few hours ago…when I got off the tube-train in Daelmar. She warned me about the Gaerda assassin waiting for me. Then she vanished." Maertyn saw no point in mentioning the earlier brief glimpse of the woman in red.
"The assassin…?"
"I stunned him in a way that everyone thought he?d fainted or had a seizure. The Reserve guards found a nerver in his hand. No one said anything, except that they didn?t see any reason to detain me."
"People here respect you…unlike in Caelaarn."
Maertyn didn?t want to explore that. There wasn?t any point in it. "What about the woman in red…or the others?"
"She showed me…how to lock the doors and the windows. Just from the inside. They can?t be locked from outside. I can?t do that, anyway."
"How…?"
"I can?t explain it. I can only do it." She eased her hands out of his and walked to where the window was.
That had to be from memory, thought Maertyn since it was well after dark, and he certainly couldn?t see the window from any light being passed through the stone.
Maarlyna touched the stone and the "window" appeared and opened, with the cold air from the north sweeping into the chamber. After a moment, she touched the stone again, holding her hand there for several moments. "Now…you try to open it."
He stepped forward and stood beside her, reaching out to place his fingers against the stone that was neither hot nor cold to his touch.
Nothing happened. The stone did not change.
"You see." Maarlyna reached out and pressed her hand against the wall, then quickly pulled it away. "Try it now."
Maertyn did. The stone flowed back on itself, and cold air rushed past them strongly enough to disarray Maarlyna?s hair. He touched the wall again, and the window closed.
"Well…if anyone tried to attack us here, you could keep them out."
"That…that was what she said."
"She talked to you. What else did she say?"
"Not really talked…it was more like I heard her words in my head."
Maertyn pursed his lips. Had he just thought he?d heard the woman in red speak to him?
Had her words really been spoken? He?d thought her words so clear for being so soft…was that because he?d heard them in his mind?
"Maertyn?"
"I think I heard her in the same way…I just hadn?t realized it." Should he tell Maarlyna what else the ice-sport or ghost or…whatever she was…had said? "She said that our fates were intertwined." That was close enough without putting pressure on Maarlyna. "Did she say who or what she was?"
Maarlyna frowned, tilted her head to the left, then finally said, "No…not exactly…but I had the feeling that she belongs here."
"Here?"
"To the station…the canal. How else would she have known how to show me the locking and unlocking?"
How indeed? "Can you show me?"
Maarlyna shook her head…sadly, it seemed to Maertyn. "It?s not like that. It?s inside my head, my thoughts. It?s like she put a pattern there. When I think of that pattern and touch the stone, I can lock or unlock the doors and windows."
"Can you do anything else with the pattern?"
"Not that I know of."
Maertyn embraced Maarlyna again, murmuring in her ear, "That?s all right. She must have given you that ability for a reason, and, from what she told me, it?s for both of us. I just wish we knew why."
Maarlyna hugged him back. "I?m so glad you understand."
"How could I not?" He lowered his head and kissed her neck. "How could I not?"
Even so, later in the darkness, as he lay there beside her in the bed that had been his great-grandsire?s, he couldn?t help but wonder and worry.
Why had the silvery woman in red sought out Maarlyna? Why?