It's Not Me; It's You

Taylor and Laura passed quietly through the stone building, avoiding the intelligence and command areas, into a suite occupied by him and his bulwarks. The central room was large enough for several mats, where Mila, Milo, Inez, and Gonzo rested in near darkness. They passed through in polite silence to the side room Taylor kept for himself, where he could dress or read in private. He lit a spirit lamp from across the room without a sound or gesture. The white stone flared into life behind the thin paper shade, a distant sun's fire diffused into soft white light.

Alice closed the door and guarded it from outside while Otavio prepared to lay down with the others. Laura spied the narrow mat on the ground, giving Taylor a pitying look. "Are you still sleeping alone?"

"Not so much, anymore."

"Help me with my dress." She turned around so he could unbutton her. Underneath the layered blue and white fabric was a span of simple cotton, the same stuff that Nexus bought in bulk before embarking on their exile. A wide band was belted around her waist. At first, he thought it was a girdle or corset.

"And the laces too, please." Taylor pulled the loose ends, making the laces spread and go slack, while the sides of the belt parted. "Thank the heavens!" She breathed. "I'll never eat in one of these things again!"

She shucked off the dress and dropped it to her feet. That was followed by the belt, which hit the floor with a heavy thunk. Now, she was properly dressed in a simple lightweight robe that desert-goers often wore beyond the garden walls, which could be layered with outerwear as the weather required. It was oddly creased from being worn under the dress, but most people wouldn't look twice if they weren't too close. She set aside the dress but kept the heavy money belt and opened it, handing Taylor a letter.

"Make yourself at home," Taylor told her when he surveyed the pages, "this could take a few minutes." Taylor took the cushion nearest the lamp while Laura idled around the room, touching all of his stuff. There were three sets of armor, his guitar and nickleharp, and a pile of maps and books. She avoided the sleeping mat, which Taylor thought was strange. They had slept together before, but maybe she had plans to bed down with her people for the mid-day rest. She might have brought a young man with her on her merchant adventures, but it seemed too soon for her to be involved in any exclusive arrangement.

Taylor pushed Laura out of his mind and focused on the message she had delivered. Eleanor, the manager of Penguin Workshop, had sent the yearly financials and his profits. The woman was a gem, an undervalued talent that Taylor had been lucky to find. Their first workshop, called Pegasus, was destroyed by Lavradian nobles. The business secretly moved to Gallia and started again under the new name of Penguin. Even the product lineup was changed to hide the past connection. Taylor kept Penguin at arm's length to keep them safe: His main involvement was to leave them with useful product ideas and recipes, mainly cosmetics. Now Eleanor wanted to know if they could make the Pegasus soap again and if she could set up a branch store in Sand Castle.

While Taylor was reading, Laura made happy little pyramids of silver bars drawn from the money belt until his profits were all stacked up for easy counting. It was an impressive sum for one little workshop in the far north of Gallia, and it was possible because Eleanor had teamed up with the Sabrosa family for distribution.

"Are you going straight back to Gallia?"

"And then home to Girona. After my three days here, of course. I have boxes full of Penguin products that Dacian traders will bid ridiculous sums for. Do you want me to take a message back to her?"

Taylor wrote a quick note praising Eleanor. He ended with, "I am sending a bit of jewelry through our mutual friend. Please wear it. I will answer your other queries in due time." Taylor pulled a jewelry box from a nearby chest, checked the ear cuff inside, ensured the hidden spirit stone was full, and then put the folded message inside. If Eleanor did as he asked, they could talk directly.

"Why didn't you include me in the gemstone deal? You knew I was interested." Laura took the box from him and dropped it into a bag, then put the folded dress and money belt on top of it. The bag must have been a hidden part of the dress, a clever arrangement. Taylor began to wonder what she'd been up to lately.

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"Because it's going to draw Enclave's attention. When they trace the gems back to you, they might remember the personal connection between us. They'll use you to get to me."

"So? Come with me then! Change your name and hair again. You can protect me, and we'll see the world together."

"I can't leave Nexus. You know I can't."

She sighed, impatient and worried. "What are you doing here, Taylor? This isn't you!" Laura motioned at his clothes. "You never cared about all this. You hate power games. You go haring off into the wild and stop writing all your friends for months, and now you're a cult leader? You're preaching against Enclave, and challenging them? What's happened to you?"

"I was exiled, remember? I had to leave. I don't know who you've been listening to, but they're giving you a pretty twisted idea of what's going on. We're only fighting Enclave because Enclave is trying to kill us. We were perfectly willing to be part of the church until they started raining fire on us."

"It sounds to me like you do plenty of killing of your own. What's this I hear about you exterminating a garden? That girl told the story like she was proud of it." Taylor could only assume 'that girl' was Dahabia.

"The Satomen were a menace to all the other gardens. They stole girls like you and beat them until they agreed to marry a total stranger. I killed some to free the women. Most of the other Satomen died because they did something stupid I warned them not to do, and the rest died because they tried to kill me in retribution." Laura's expression wasn't concern for his safety, like he expected, but revulsion. "It's not like I go around killing people for no reason. What do you want from me here?"

"I want my Taylor back!" Her arms were crossed, and her eyes swelled with tears. Even her ears wilted forward in distress. "I want the boy who was kind to people, who just wanted to make soap and improve the city. I want the smiling healer, not this cold, vicious nobleman!"

Taylor thought it would be nice to go back and try something different. Maybe there was another way, and he just failed to find it. But time travel was impossible and speculations like that were less than useless.

He reached out with a handkerchief and dabbed the corners of her eyes. She let him do it, arms crossed, still angry. "That boy had to fight so he could live. This is what's left of him."

"I'll carry your goods," she said quietly, pushing away the handkerchief, "and we can trade, but I can't run around with you. I won't have that kind of violence in my life."

"Laura … "

"You decided to be at arm's length," she flung her bag over her shoulder and stood, "so arm's length is as close as you get."

She exited the room before he could answer, and had Alice show her the back way out. Laura was gone just as suddenly as she had arrived, leaving Taylor to mull over their conversation and figure out how it had gone so wrong. When they first met, her interest in him had been just as instantaneous as her new disinterest. She hijacked a little piece of his life back then, and now she dropped it on the road.

Taylor brooded while he packed away the silver bars into one of his hobby boxes. One bar was the same weight as eight silver boraz coins, 100,000 Ł per bar. A skilled laborer, such as a mason, could support his family for several months on just one bar. Taylor had fifteen of them and all of it was personal money. He would tithe a fraction to Nexus but keep the rest. He had spent all his coin to prepare Nexus for exile, down to his last brass bit. It was a relief to have reserves again.

"Are you okay?" Alice entered without asking and closed the door behind her. She was a tall gray-skinned woman, and every bit as beautiful as her husband was craggy. "Did you two fight?"

"I'm not sure you could call it a fight. Things just … went wrong all of a sudden. She says she doesn't want to be close anymore because I'm a violent person. Which I guess is true." He fumbled with the cloth wrappings as he failed to find where Milo hid the end of it.

"That's a two-person job. Let me help." Alice untucked something, loosened something else, and the cloth started to unwind. She gathered and folded it patiently, as if she had all day to do this one little chore. Alice and Otavio loved nothing more than the chance to parent him and, at times, it annoyed Taylor. He never hated the attention or them for giving it, but it was awkward. His adoptive parents in Emristar had never been so demonstrative.

"She doesn't approve of my life choices," Taylor said while she worked. "She doesn't like what I am now."

Alice put the folded cloth aside and placed the turban on top of it, leaving Taylor in the red under-wrap armor. "Come lay down with your people," she said, and pulled him along by the hand to the other room, "no complaining."

People shifted, half asleep, to give him room between Otavio and little Gonzo. Alice took up her guard position in silence, leaving Taylor in the mass of warm, breathing bodies. Alice was right: these were his people. The Sabrosas were nice, but they weren't Nexus or Calique. Laura didn't understand the precarity of humanity's future, and she would never know the desert except as something to be passed through.

Taylor slept, surrounded by his people.