Horse hooves sounded to his right and he swung to see Silverfox ride up to halt at his side.
'Better we'd stayed avoiding each other,' Paran said, returning his gaze to the soldiers on the road below.
'I'd not disagree,' she said after a moment. 'But something's happened.'
'I know.'
'No, you don't. What you no doubt refer to is not what I'm talking about, Captain. It's my mother — she's gone missing. Her and those two Daru who were caring for her. Somewhere in the city they turned their wagon, left the line. No-one seems to have seen a thing, though of course I cannot question an entire army-'
'What of your T'lan Imass? Could they not find them easily enough?'
She frowned, said nothing.
Paran glanced at her. 'They're not happy with you, are they?'
'That is not the problem. I have sent them and the T'lan Ay across the river.'
'We've reliable means of reconnoitring already, Silverfox-'
'Enough. I do not need to explain myself.'
'Yet you're asking for my help-'
'No. I am asking if you knew anything about it. Those Daru had to have had assistance.'
'Have you questioned Kruppe?'
'He's as startled and dismayed as I am, and I believe him.'
'Well,' Paran said, 'people have a habit of underestimating Coll. He's quite capable of pulling this off all on his own.'
'You do not seem to realize the severity of what they've done. In kidnapping my mother-'
'Hold on, Silverfox. You left your mother to their care. Left? No, too calm a word. Abandoned her. And I have no doubt at all that Coll and Murillio took the charge seriously, with all the compassion for the Mhybe you do not seem to possess. Consider the situation from their point of view. They're taking care of her, day in and day out, watching her wither. They see the Mhybe's daughter, but only from a distance. Ignoring her own mother. They decide that they have to find someone who is prepared to help the Mhybe. Or at the very least grant her a dignified end. Kidnapping is taking someone away from someone else. The Mhybe has been taken away, but from whom? No-one. No-one at all.'
Silverfox, her face pale, was slow to respond. When she did, it was in a rasp, 'You have no idea what lies between us, Ganoes.'
'And it seems you've no idea of how to forgive — not her, not yourself. Guilt has become a chasm-'
'That is rich indeed, coming from you.'
His smile was tight. 'I've done my climb down, Silverfox, and am now climbing up the other side. Things have changed for both of us.'
'So you have turned your back on your avowed feelings for me.'
'I love you still, but with your death I succumbed to a kind of infatuation. I convinced myself that what you and I had, so very briefly, was of far vaster and deeper import than it truly was. Of all the weapons we turn upon ourselves, guilt is the sharpest, Silverfox. It can carve one's own past into unrecognizable shapes, false memories leading to beliefs that sow all kinds of obsessions.'
'Delighted to have you clear the air so, Ganoes. Has it not occurred to you that clinical examination of oneself is yet another obsession? What you dissect has to be dead first — that's the principle of dissection, after all.'
'So my tutor explained,' Paran replied, 'all those years ago. But you miss a more subtle truth. I can examine myself, my every feeling, until the Abyss swallows the world, yet come no closer to mastery of those emotions within me. For they are not static things; nor are they immune to the outside world — to what others say, or don't say. And so they are in constant flux.'
'Extraordinary,' she murmured. 'Captain Ganoes Paran, the young master of self-control, the tyrant unto himself. You have indeed changed. So much so that I no longer recognize you.'
He studied her face, searching for a hint of the feelings behind those words. But she had closed herself to him. 'Whereas,' he said slowly, 'I find you all too recognizable.'
'Would you call that ironic? You see me as a woman you once loved, while I see you as a man I never knew.'
'Too many tangled threads for irony, Silverfox.'
'Perhaps pathos, then.'
He looked away. 'We've wandered far from the subject. I am afraid I can tell you nothing of your mother's fate. Yet I am confident, none the less, that Coll and Murillio will do all they can for her.'
'Then you're an even bigger fool than they are, Ganoes. By stealing her, they have sealed her doom.'
