I sip the tea he offers, and do not say thank you.
He does not drink his at all.
It is possible that he is poisoning me, I realise, but what would be the point?
Poison, stab, strangle, drown. There are not enough ways to dispose of my body in a timely enough manner, in a permanent enough manner, that I will not return. All he’d be doing is making me mad.
The realisation is almost exciting, and I sip a little more, trying out the taste of a thing that should be familiar yet feels so strange after so long from this place.
After a while, he sips his tea too, an acknowledgement perhaps of a test quietly passed, eyes never leaving me, hands pressed around the cup as if his fingers are cold.
“Enhancements getting a little loose round the edges?” I ask at last, tilting my chin towards him in the Mdo way.
“I was always told that ageing, when it happened, would be unpleasant. I just assumed I had more time.”
I clicked my tongue, and then, realising he wouldn’t understand, nodded. “I hear it happens rapidly, once the protocols stop.”
“In its way. Frailty comes quickly. Loss of bone density, muscle mass, telomere shortening and so on. But I have always been diligent in leading a healthy and active life, regardless of the work of my surgeons. I am in excellent physical condition. In other words… I could live many years as an old, crumbling man, waiting to die.”
“You’ve had access to plenty of airlocks. Missed opportunity, if you ask me.”
“I did contemplate it, but how utterly ignoble. It is not the way of the Shine to give up. It is not what our people do.”
I clicked my tongue again, sank a little deeper into my chair, while the night settled outside and the wind rattled the windows.
Theodosius mused, his eyes half turned to some distant place: “My own people sold me out. Very difficult to promote the right sort. You need people who are aggressive enough, fiery enough that they will betray you. It shows they have initiative. But you also need people weak enough, loyal enough that they will follow you to the edge of the world. Off the edge of the world. I have always been very good at choosing the right sort – strong Shine, but not too strong. But war, of course – or rather, I should say,defeat– brings out extreme qualities in even the most dour of natures. The most loyal will die for you even when their death is inane, foolish. The most ambitious will turn like that.” A snap of his fingers, less sharp, less ringing perhaps than he desired; he glanced a moment at his own digits as if betrayed. “I saw both in the last days of the Shine.”
“Clearly you made it work.”
“I think that depends on your metrics. I survived. I escaped and I hid and I survived. That is of course a remarkable achievement – I am a remarkable person, you see. But it is only a thing the historians, my biographers will be amazed at. The reality of living it – of being on the run – is really rather tiring and prosaic.”
“You have not come to a glamorous place.”
“No. But the irony of it – the delicious irony of it. When I realised which system I’d landed in, the last of my resources running dry. Well. I had to really. All that intelligence I’d gathered on you, and you out there hunting me… delicious, I thought. Utterly delectable.”
He said “delicious” almost like an Adjumiri, a thing to be cherished that is so much more than taste.
“So here you are.”
“Here I am.”
“And what now? You are aware that you cannot kill me. Not in any meaningful, lasting way.”
“I know,” he mused. “Though I thought of numerous ways I could try. Keep you alive for days, weeks maybe, bleeding you dry, making my feelings known. But that trick of yours – the way you sometimes cease to be when attention is elsewhere, that fascinating phasing in and phasing out. Not quite here, not quite anywhere. If I had a team of people then I feel very confident we could torture you to death perpetually, but I do not. As you see. I do not. And to be honest, after all this time… I’m not sure I would derive as much satisfaction from it as I might hope.”
I clicked again, didn’t bother to explain, rolled my shoulders back. The cottage smelled of damp and dust – everything would need cleaning, resealing, putting right. Months of work, maybe years, have to choose what to prioritise first, get the place comfortable enough to sleep in, water, power, heat; get the pantry dry and sealed, arrange food from the town, then work outwards perhaps, starting with the vegetable garden and moving towards theorchard one season at a time. Once I had stable power, I could look at signing up to a few courses again, or maybe I could even offer to teach something, not that I felt especially qualified in anything significant, but who knows, after all this time…
Theodosius shifted in his chair, which creaked beneath him.
He was getting used, I felt, to having people ignore him, but it was not yet an experience he was comfortable with.
I tried to think if I had anything I could possibly say to him.
I did not.
Tried to think if there was anything I could ask.
Only one question leaped to mind, and it wasn’t even a question, just a statement of a distant memory I would be mildly satisfied to have confirmed. “A while ago – years ago now, before Cha-mdo – you interfaced with a Tryphon.”
