The Lycat, Uptown
Niccolette looked down at the almost-empty glass of whiskey, at the small gold ring next to it on the table. She reached for it, slowly, and set her hand just shy of it; it looked so much larger than her fingers, she thought, drearily. And it was, wasn’t it? It wasn’t only a ring, it was – it was –
Niccolette took a deep, unsteady breath, and rubbed her hand over her face again. “No,” she said, softly. She shook her head. “You are – lovely, and I… I had not expected to feel… and I thought, for just a moment…” The Bastian was quiet, looking back down at her finger and the ring again. She sighed, softly, and picked it back up – slid it back onto her finger and settled her hands in her lap once more.
Niccolette had thrown it at him once, in 2714; she had been furious, so furious that she had wished to do anything at all to hurt him. And she had pulled the ring from her finger, and flung it at Uzoji, and she had fled – she had hardly taken anything – she had gone to Vienda without so much as a word and waited there for him. Oh, she had told herself that it was not so, that she – she had waited for him to come to her, although of course she had not quite thought through how he was meant to find her.
And he had come; he had come, with her ring and his promises, and he had made them and not kept them. Niccolette thought she would give anything to be so furious with him again, to feel that wonderful, straightforward anger, clean-burning in her chest. To wish him to grovel and beg and to know that he might. Because – he could not bring the ring back to her, not anymore, and if she left it behind –
“He is dead,” Niccolette said, quietly. She felt small, suddenly; every bit of her seemed to hurt, even her skin tender to the brush of her dress. It hurt more than she could bear to sit upright, to keep herself together, although she did not slouch. She looked up at Drezda, and tried something like a smile, and wondered how it looked. The word dead seemed to fill her mouth like ash; it was not the right word, it was not what she was meant to say. Returned to the cycle – gone to a new life – gone, even. Gone was one of the words she was meant to use – not dead. Dead was crude.
“Three months, and eight days,” Niccolette knew that she should stop; she knew better than to keep talking. “I do not know the time,” she glanced back over her shoulder at the door, as if seeing the darkness through the windows outside would reveal it to her. “Seventeen hours, perhaps? Eighteen soon, if not yet.” Niccolette was proud that her voice was still steady; she did not have much else to be proud of, but she took what she could. She closed her eyes for a long moment, lashes laying heavy on her cheeks, and then opened them again. She looked down at the whiskey, and picked it up, and finished the last of it with a little shiver.
No, Niccolette thought, tiredly; there was nothing that could keep her from thinking of him. She closed her eyes again, feeling that same familiar heat aching behind them – longing, suddenly, for the quiet privacy of her room in Francoise’s house, that bed where she had spent most of the last week. She opened her eyes again and looked back at the lovely Hoxian who had made her feel so alive for just a few moments, and she was terribly sorry for having said so much; she knew there was nothing that could be said in response.
It would be best, Niccolette thought tiredly, if she went – if she got up, and walked across the bar, back out into the streets – if she found her way back towards Francoise’s house, towards the glittering lights of the Aeterna and then beyond, to her soft bed and enough privacy to cry as much as she wished. Better than so sit here, bleeding slowly out onto the table in front of Drezda, her words cutting into herself slowly, one by one, a mess the other woman had not asked for and did not deserve. She meant to, but her limbs seemed to weigh more than her body itself, and she was not entirely sure she could rise.
Niccolette took a deep breath. It had been nice, all the same, that little space of time. She had enjoyed herself a moment – only a moment – she had forgotten to be the widow. Not alone, and not in the company of those she loved, but somewhere between, somewhere she could lose herself just enough. It had been a good place, and Drezda good company there, while it had lasted.
Niccolette looked at Drezda again, at the sleek darkness of her hair, the graceful lines of her face, the bright red lipstick – the elegant hands, which had clutched so tightly at her glass. She thought of the wild laugh that had burst through her delicate, careful face; she thought of that moment when she had tasted something vicious in her field. She was sorry, then, that this was how they had met; she was sorry for what she had done, although she did not speak it aloud. There seemed, to her, to be very little point.
And Niccolette shrugged, and found what little strength she had left, and lifted her chin again, and looked squarely at the woman across the table, and there was a last little flicker of defiance left in her still. “Now you know.”