Vignette: Answers
Gans stared through the darkness at the place where the ceiling would be, and imagined stars.
He couldn't sleep. He was tired; that, at least, was an uncommon relief. But sleep was something he didn't really desire. The endless stretch of unconsciousness, the dull beat of absence - these things he had given up in their last form when Hirth died.
But he had never slept well, or long. As a young man he whiled away the nights in conversation with Hirth or sketching out plans in his mind. His aging body could no longer tolerate the unrestful stillness, however, and Gans crept quiet out of bed.
He smiled crookedly in the darkness, finding with blind hands his sweater and slacks. In silence he scolded himself: Why so careful to be quiet? There was no woman in his bed to take care to leave sleeping.
Some time later he was seated in the much brighter darkness of the open night. Dragon or no, turns of experience had taught him how to know when the guest weyrs were free. On some of those nights he used one of their ledges, sitting atop the highest stair with his back to the draped entrance, and watched the stars.
He knew he shouldn't do it. He had his safe routes, his safe places. Places with people and the eyes of the Weyr all around. Places Miniyal approved of, and several (due to their popularity with other people) she might not, but all safe places.
Miniyal. Gans' mouth quirked. How he craved to while these useless nights away in her company. How ironic, that he should have at last his perfect companion, and that she should be confirmed with Peloth, and that Hirth should be now gone -
Gans imagined speaking to Peloth, to Miniyal through her, and laughed softly. Hirth, cool and distant. Hirth, who had taught him how to be dignified. Why had he never managed to teach Hirth a sense of humor? Of humility? Of imperfection? It would have been ridiculous, the three of them conversing across the width of the bowl with Hirth their awkward fourth companion. Awkward without ever knowing it, in his charmless nobility.
He closed his eyes for a moment and imagined Peloth, but imagination was all he could muster. No matter. He knew his lover was, and likely her mind's other soul was also, awake across the bowl's empty distance, waiting for dawn and duties to come. Like him, waiting.
Waiting.
Gans thought of a sad, tall bluerider, and of his life's ideals summarized in a document whose tone Hirth would have approved of. Waiting, like he was, for the world to shift. How many minds were required? How many acts?
Now, more than ever, he should be staying in those safe places. He knew E'sere was no more than a few heartbeats away. He knew that girl, the one who'd been there when his room was wrecked, was probably there with him. His servant. His hand.
Gans found himself wondering how Eseren - little driven, noble Eseren - had come to such means. His way had been written for him in the stars, in his name; why had he strayed from that obvious, easy path?
He looked up at those stars and wondered, too, what it had been the girl, or her accomplices, or whomever, had poisoned him with. Fellis? It would be easy. But he made his own tea, and he'd have known (he thought) the taste of fellis against the sweet, spicy cake he'd had that morning.
He knew that method was proven.
It required a little force to turn his mind away from that matter. He had to make an about-face and travel back the path that had taken him there from safer studies. Along the way he remembered, as he always did, flashes of that night in his ruined room, imagining his skin crawling with microscopic, buggy feet. This he shoved aside quickly; to dwell upon it made the sensation return. He ran his hands over his arms, then refolded them over his knees and focused on the next thing: Aivey. He recalled telling the weyrwoman - the weyrwoman, now - what he remembered of the evening she'd given him. He recalled hearing Aivey was to be staked out.
And he recalled thinking, How strange, that High Reaches Weyr should choose to put a dangerous woman to death, and I not part of that body which proposed the solution.
There, that angle was easier. It brought him to the same junction but with the momentum of bitterness to carry him through without stopping.
Yevide.
Gans looked into the sky for a long time in silence, his mind sufficiently empty that he needed no words to clarify his thoughts. The idea of her was enough to consume him until his eyes lost focus and the stars began to blur together in a wet wash like their reflections in the waves of the ocean.
Why, he thought, sending the question out into the night.
He knew she would have never been able to answer him.