By Anne Fraser and Barbara Zuchegna
With assistance from Sharon Pickrel and Jean Lamb
Copyright 1999

Chapter Thirty-Eight

"Why didn't someone say something?" Lily wailed, shoving Richard's arms away.

They were back in their bedroom in Ardeshir's house. Richard, who was slowly becoming more accustomed to this unorthodox means of getting from one place to another, was unfazed. "It seemed more efficient to do something, than to say something," he said, but there was a certain stiffness in his voice.

"I look like a drowned rat!" Water was dripping from her hair to the floor. "It's so damned unfair. Why don't men ever look bedraggled when they're wet? You just look ... wet. I look like the cat didn't even bother to drag me in."

"I think," he said, in that same rigid voice, "you had better tell me what you said to Adrian."

Lily stopped trying to wring out her hair and looked up at him, ready to give battle. "I said that friendship was more important than pride."

He sighed, lightly. "My love, you will have to allow me to decide what my pride is worth ... and when. And you should have allowed Adrian that same choice."

He was irritated, but not greatly so. His eyes were not on her defiant face, but moving over her still clearly revealed body. She would always, she knew, have the power to do this to him. What he was feeling, the almost overwhelming memories of her very wet body on other occasions, was flooding her mind as it bloomed in his. And it would be easy to encourage it, to give in to what it was arousing in her, too.

Instead, with a sudden thought, she dressed herself in the closest thing she could manage to a child's blanket sleeper ... fuzzy, footed, shapeless, totally concealing, and the most sexless costume she could think of. To cap it, she made it in an almost nauseating shade of chartreuse.

To say that Richard's emotions quieted would be a monumental understatement. Frowning, not entirely certain this wasn't her idea of high fashion, he said, "What is that?"

"That, my love," she said, "is my little way of saying, 'Look at my eyes when you talk to me.' You told me you didn't want to use sex to avoid thinking. I don't want to use it to avoid arguing. If we're gonna fight, let's fight."

He seemed honestly perplexed. "I have no wish to fight with you, Liliana."

"No, I know you don't. You want to tell me what I am and what I am not allowed to do, and you fully expect that just telling me makes it a done deal. It doesn't, Richard."

His eyebrows had begun to lower again. "I have no wish, either, to control you," he said, with maddeningly patient reasonableness. "I asked only that you respect my wishes in future in those matters on which it is more my province to decide than yours."

Exasperated, she said, "Richard, you are the most important thing in my world."

"As you are, in mine."

"Then you have to understand that I will never be able to stand by and watch you make decisions that hurt you, purely out of pride. Your friendship with Adrian is important; it would hurt you to lose it. I couldn't let either of you throw it away because you were too stiff-necked to apologize to each other."

"It was not..."

He stopped, swallowing what he'd almost said, but Lily knew exactly where he was going with it, and she finished it for him. "Not my place?" she said furiously.

"I didn't say that."

"You were going to. If you weren't still thinking of shutting me the hell up so we could see who could get to the bed first, you damned well would have! Richard, stop looking at me like that! This is important!"

His mouth was twitching, damn him. He was trying very hard not to smile. Idiotically, Lily realized, she was the one who was getting madder by the minute. Richard, his mind and all his emotions totally open to her, was projecting nothing but his love and his desire and ... something totally different, a sudden, sweet, amused affection that was driving her up the wall.

"I can't look at you any other way," he said, and his voice had done that magical thing, that warm-soft-silken thing. "Get rid of the ... costume, Liliana."

"I'll be damned if I will! We are not..."

She could have zapped herself away when he moved ... and never thought of it. He caught her arm and swung her in against him, and brought his mouth down on hers with a reckless passion he had not shown to her since those first days in Maine. Dizzy with it, lost in it, she hardly felt it when he lifted her and almost flung her onto the bed. His body came down hard on hers and when her eyes came open, his dagger was inches from her neck. "Get rid of it," his voice, suddenly hard, said, "or I will cut it from you."

She could have sent his dagger into limbo. Instead, she sent her idiotic clothing ... and his. She would have zapped away an entire planet if it had been between his flesh and hers. "Don't you dare," she whispered fiercely in his ear, "waste time with foreplay!"

Much later, while he still lay half on top of her and tried to catch his breath, his face turned into her hair on the pillow, he said, laughing, "We must make it a point to fight more often, my love."

She didn't answer ... couldn't answer. He had been fierce with her. Not totally out of control; he was aware of her smallness and her pregnancy, and he hadn't hurt her. But in that moment, she couldn't have moved if the room had been burning down around them. She turned her face in against his throat. In the rain-damp air, they were both sweating freely, and she breathed in deeply. God, she loved the smell of him ... the taste of him, so different from any man she had ever known. Logically, she knew it was because of the very different, greener, unpolluted world he had come from, because of the simpler food he had eaten throughout his life, the cleaner air he had breathed. But she could only think of it as the smell and taste and texture of the man she loved more with every passing day.

He lifted his head, finally, to look down at her. His smile was all the love that was in him. "Sweetheart, forgive me," he said. "I know it matters..."

She had forgotten until he said it. It didn't seem to matter all that much right now, but he was right. They would not have an easy time setting the limits between them. It was an issue that would come up again ... and she was content to deal with it when it did. She reached up with both hands to cradle his face between them. "Later," she said. "Richard, the stupid words..."

His smile widened, and he kissed her. Lily's eyes drifted closed. She had never felt so cherished. The man would drive her mad ... and make her impossibly happy.

They went back to the party, eventually. Adrian, Jake, and T'beth had disappeared, but the villagers were determined to celebrate, with or without their guests of honor.

The rain had dwindled to a light sprinkle, and the clothes Lily provided for them shed this nicely. They were able to sit at the sodden banquet table with Ardeshir and the elders and enjoy the music and the high-spirited dances the village girls performed for them. It was Shapour who finally brought it to Richard's attention that it was time to go, if they were to be back in Saravan before dawn.

Ardeshir sent some of the younger people to search, and one by one, Jake, Adrian, T'beth, Will, and Ed Perry were rounded up and herded into the waiting vehicles, along with all of Shapour's Exalted Ones. Ardeshir pressed on them the large boxes of fireworks they had been unable to use, in the hopes that they could enjoy them in Saravan. With the entire village turned out, calling their goodbyes in assorted languages, engines fired up and the convoy headed out of the village square. And if there were a few pretty eyes left behind that were damp from something more than the rain, there was no one who commented on it.

They would not see Sa'idi again.

Lily was dismayed, but hardly surprised, that Richard had no intention of going to bed. It was morning when they arrived in Saravan ... and morning was when he went to work.

"You can stay and have breakfast," she said. "I want to talk."

He looked down at her very soberly, and after a moment, nodded his head. Lily knew he enjoyed the way she looked: tousled and languid with weariness. She had insisted on driving back from Saravan, and he hadn't argued, but after the long day and night in Sa'idi, and some extremely vigorous exercise somewhere in there, she was exhausted now ... but determined to keep her promise to Doni.

He ordered breakfast on the phone, and while they waited, swept her up and carried her down the hall to the bath. He didn't try to make love to her; in the luxuriantly warm water of the middle pool, he washed her tenderly, cherishing every inch of her until she felt not only clean but new-made. He would not allow her to use the energy to create clothing; he wrapped himself and her in the huge bath sheets he had ordered stocked in the bath and carried her back to their suite. Breakfast, steaming under silver dome lids, was served by the soft-footed, silent waiters of the reorganized kitchen staff.

He wasn't hungry. He seldom was; she had no idea how he maintained his relentless energy. But she was ravenous and he picked at his food politely to keep her company, and when the dishes were carried away and more coffee poured, he waved the waiters from the room and said, "Now, talk. But quickly. I want to put you to bed."

"Alone?"

"Alone. I am in my self-denial mode this morning. Tonight, I promise you, I will have exhausted that part of my nature."

She smiled over the rim of her coffee cup. He wouldn't need much encouragement to scrap the self-denial right now, and it was tempting to encourage him. She loved making love with him when he was demanding and fierce, but other times came back to her now ... the soft, slow, incredibly tender lovemaking when they were both exhausted beyond thought. But she had made a promise.

"Richard," she said, "these people don't need you anymore ... not every minute of your time."

There was surprise in the dark eyes. He had taken time to dress in his Banana Republic safari gear, and he looked incredibly fresh and vigorous. He said, "That was always the intent, Liliana."

"Then when can we go home?"

He smiled ... what she would always think of as "her" smile. "My love," he said, in that wonderful voice that he had better never use on another woman, "you never cease to astonish me. I have already set plans in motion to return all our friends to their homes."

He had? This was the first she had heard of it. But then, he did a thousand things during every day, and she saw only the results, not the effort that went into them. Then she realized what he'd said. "Our friends?"

"Adrian, Jake and T'beth will want to return to their homes in Toronto. Will, I think, will prefer to be wherever the lady of his heart chooses. And Ed ... Ed is a problem I have not yet resolved."

She knew what he meant by this last. They had always planned ... he and Adrian, to remove Ed Perry's memories of this entire trip before they returned him to wherever they had found him. But Richard had grown fond of Ed, and had learned to trust him, and Ed, clearly, had come to think of himself as one of Richard's lieutenants. He would not want to leave the rest of them. But Lily's mind had fastened on the omission in Richard's planning.

"And what about us?" she said, frowning.

He didn't answer right away. He took another sip of coffee, using it to avoid her eyes for a moment, and then said, "That is what we will have to talk about, Liliana."

She was beginning to get a nasty, sinking sensation somewhere around her heart. "You don't want to go back to the Refuge," she guessed.

She felt his regret; he knew he was disappointing her. "Sweetheart, I cannot go back to existing on the largesse of others. I have to find my own place in this world ... and I know now that I can do it."

"I never doubted that you could," she said, trying very hard to sound perfectly reasonable. "But the best place for you to be is where you're needed most, isn't it?"

He smiled again ... but it was the small, self-mocking smile he gave to others, and not usually to her. "I think there are few places in this world that are not existing adequately without my presence, Liliana. I am 'needed' nowhere. But I have some skill that could be of use in many situations. I will have to seek them out."

"Then you don't mean even to give Stephen a hearing?"

This was a touchy subject. "Stephen has powers and abilities that are far beyond my own ... or those of any man. He doesn't need my help, Liliana. And I will not allow him to make a place of busywork for me so that he can retain your services."

"Busywork! Oh, god..." She stopped. She was damned if she was going to do Stephen's work for him. He should have been honest with Richard from the start. Instead, he'd been trying to manipulate him ... and it wasn't going to work.

She sighed. "We need to go back to the Refuge before we do anything else," she said. "I'll make a deal with you, Richard."

This brought the smile, her smile, back to his somber face. "That isn't necessary. You know I will have to go there, to speak with Nan."

There was no hesitation in raising Anne's name anymore; she and Richard had gone beyond that. But she said, "We go there first, and you hear Stephen out. If you're determined to leave, after, I will go anywhere in the world with you."

She offered her hand across the table, to shake on it, but he took it and carried it to his lips. "Where you are," he said, "there is my world, my love."

He meant it, but she knew it wasn't entirely true. He would never again be able to exist without work that challenged him. It was going to be up to Stephen to convince him that the greatest challenge he could face would be at the Refuge.

"What did you mean about 'setting plans in motion' to go home?" she asked. "Richard, you know I can take everyone here back to the Refuge all at once."

He shook his head firmly. "No. I won't allow you to exert that much energy, Liliana. I brought these people here; I can return them. You are in no condition to do so much."

He could be impossibly exasperating. "I can get Stephen to help me. If you insist, Stephen can do it all. Richard, please. You know it's by far the simplest and best means of getting everyone out of here. From the Refuge, they can go wherever they want. Don't refuse our help just because you're annoyed with Stephen."

His eyebrows drew together sharply. "I didn't say I was annoyed with Stephen."

"What you feel about Stephen comes through loud and clear every time I mention his name." It did. Richard was perfectly aware that Stephen wanted something from him. In the hard schooling of his youth, everyone had wanted something from him. And those who weren't open about it were not to be trusted.

"Sometimes, it is difficult to remember that I cannot conceal my feelings from you," he said ruefully. Then, sighing lightly, "Liliana, I admire and respect Stephen, and I am more grateful to him than I can ever adequately express. Of course, if he insists on my presence at the Refuge, I cannot refuse him, but..."

"But if he only asks, instead of insisting, you'll say no."

He frowned only briefly at the interruption. He was learning that Lily felt no hesitation whatever about interrupting, and he was trying his damnedest to become accustomed to it. In the life he had left behind, no one at all had ever dared to speak in his presence until he made it clear that they had his leave to do so except for his mother and his older brothers. He said now, "I would much prefer to find my own path than to follow that laid out for me by someone else."

And he was thoroughly sick of being obligated to everyone around him, Lily knew. Well, it was up to Stephen, then. If he needed Richard badly enough, he could damned well find a way to convince him. Lily found a smile for the love of her life and said, "Fine. Whatever you decide is what we'll do. But let me do this much: let me call Stephen and have him take everyone back to the Refuge. Instead of days of travel and complications of travel documents, we could all be back there tonight."

He hesitated. He wanted to refuse, and there was no logical reason why he should do so. Finally, he lifted her hand again and held it, briefly, against his cheek, his eyes moving slowly over her face, as if reminding himself of how very much he loved her and how necessary it was to bow to her, occasionally, as he would to no other living being. He turned his face into her hand and kissed her palm gently. "Call Stephen," he said. "But later. If you've finished your coffee, let me take you to bed."

She didn't need to be carried, but she would happily have driven a knee into the groin of anyone who might have happened by to point it out. Richard, being tenderly concerned for her well-being, was a pleasure to which she could easily become addicted. When he lifted her, she settled into his arms with a marvelous sense of luxurious pampering, and when he laid her carefully on the great high bed in its sheltering drift of curtains, she nestled happily into the stacked pillows and accepted his gentle kiss with no attempt to stir him to anything else.

Tonight, she thought, with satisfaction, as she watched him leave her, would be a very different story.

"Jake!"

The voice finally registered, after racketing back and forth through Jake Fowler's head for what seemed like half an hour. It was Ed Perry's voice, and the hand that was roughly bouncing him back and forth on the sizable bed Jake had finally managed to snare for himself was undoubtedly Ed Perry's hand.

"Jake! Dammit, Jake, wake up!" The voice had reached the stage of desperation now, and the hand was threatening to rip his arm from its socket.

Jake hazarded one open eye. It was dim in the room, but what little light there was stabbed into his brain like a red-hot spike. He groaned, tore his arm free from Perry's clutching hands and rolled over, trying to burrow deeper into his pillows.

He was just awake enough to remember how much he'd had to drink in Sa'idi ... and why he'd needed so much. Lafeeta's pretty, dark face, her huge liquid brown eyes swam before his tightly closed eyes. A baby. A strong son, she'd said, happily. But she didn't know...

"Jake!" Ed Perry's hands were on his back, bouncing him up and down on the mattress. Ed Perry was risking life and limb. "Goddammit, Jake! Wake the fuck up!"

"Awright! 'M'wake..." He was, at that. He'd walked away and left her there. Left his own kid there. And he had no idea whether or not he'd done the right thing. Lafeeta said he had. But then why did it feel like such a shitty thing to do...? He tried squeezing his eyes tighter. Maybe Ed would go away...

"Jake, I'm gonna get a bucket of ice water. I swear to God." Ed slapped him, hard, across the back of his head. "You gotta wake up."

There was determination, as well as a definite plea, in Ed's voice. Miserably, but resignedly, Jake rolled over and slitted his eyes open. It wasn't quite as bad this time. Spikes ... but not red-hot. "You throw ice water on me and I'll kick your ass so far you'll have to FedEx to pee," he mumbled. His mouth tasted like every donkey in Iran had dropped by to crap in it during the day. He was fifteen years younger than Ed, and outweighed him by a good fifty pounds, but right now he didn't give a shit. He was perfectly willing to be an equal opportunity bully.

"Will you just listen?" Ed said, unimpressed. "Jake, we're leaving."

Leaving? That got his eyes open a little farther. "Where're we going?" he asked.

"Home."

Jake probably set records for getting up and dressed and halfway across the palace. The guards posted outside the Exalteds' area were used to him and didn't try to stop him.

Adrian was alone, which was lucky, since Jake hadn't stopped to think what he might have been walking in on. Adrian was also wide-awake, sensing Jake's agitation long before he burst into the room. He was pushed up on one elbow in the half-acre of bed he'd commandeered, clearly naked beneath the thin silk sheets that were the exact color of his incredible eyes. Big news or not, Jake had to wonder how Adrian had managed the personalized sheets.

"You needn't bother to knock, Jacob," Adrian said in his silkiest voice. "You're always welcome." His slender, beautifully-shaped hand patted the bed beside him.

For once, Jake couldn't even bother to get pissed off. "Shut the fuck up, Talbot, and listen. We're going home."

"When?"

It wasn't Adrian's voice. T'beth, prowling soundlessly, had come up behind Jake and damned near gave him a heart attack with her sharp demand.

"Now," Jake said, not quite believing it himself. "Ed says we're leaving right now. Tonight."

All thought of tormenting Jake had left Adrian. He threw the sheets off and got up, ignoring both Jake's eyes and T'beth's, and began to dress in the clean safariwear one of the servants had arranged on the bedside chair during the day. You had to hand it to Richard; the palace was running as smoothly as a well-oiled machine, with service that was both impeccable and utterly invisible.

Home. Well ... Toronto, at least. Adrian wanted very much to leave this place, but he wasn't looking forward to the journey ahead of them. "How long has our fearless leader been planning this?" he asked, already well aware that Jake could have no idea. "And why hasn't he bothered to let us in on it?"

"More to the point," T'beth growled, as she pushed by Jake and into the room, "just exactly how are we gonna be traveling? I don't know about the rest of you, but I haven't had any I.D. since my little stay in Khelat."

"That's what I'm trying to tell you," Jake said. "We're not gonna travel. Ed says Will told him we're gonna be here ... and then we're gonna be there. Like Lily does it."

Adrian, who had experienced this mode of transport once already, but wasn't about to explain the circumstances, only frowned. T'beth looked horrified. "Oh, no, we're not," she said. "Nobody's zapping me halfway around the world like a goddamned telegram."

"Will told Ed you don't feel anything. You're here ... and then you're there, and there's no in-between."

"I don't give a damn. I'll find my own way home."

"It's nothing to be afraid of," Adrian said, buttoning his shirt with an air of calm superiority.

T'beth swung around toward him. "How the fuck would you know? I'll be damned if I'm gonna have Scotty beam me up. Have you ever seen the mess it makes when it doesn't work?"

"That," Adrian said, "was a television show. Richard would not propose using this means of transportation unless it was safe." He couldn't resist a small smirk. "I never thought I'd see you afraid of something a delicate little flower like Lily does all the time."

He regretted it immediately. By the time Jake got there to help him up off the floor, T'beth was stalking away like an enraged tigress, off to find Richard and ... uh, express her concerns. Or, as she so succinctly put it, "to tell your royal pain in the ass where to get the fuck off."

Adrian couldn't straighten up just yet. Her fist had left a deep indentation in his crisp khaki shirt ... and in the body beneath it. He was holding his stomach with both hands, aware that she'd done some real damage this time, and that it was already healing. "Why," he said plaintively, in a rather strangled voice, "is he my pain in the ass whenever anyone gets pissed off at him? I don't think she thought he was mine when she was doing her best to screw him blind."

Jake wasn't sympathetic. "Talbot, did you hear what I said? I said we're going home! Tonight!"

Adrian sighed. Such a nice effect. "Yes, Jacob. I heard." He drew himself up, careful of the quickly healing tissue in his abdomen. Damn T'beth! She had to know she'd really hurt him.

"And that's it?" Jake was saying. "Just 'I heard?' You're not the least bit excited about getting the hell out of here and going back to Toronto?"

Adrian was still holding his stomach with one hand. "Why don't you get on the phone and order us some breakfast," he said reasonably, "and after we eat, we can look for Richard and find out exactly what's going on ... and when. I fail to see any point in getting excited about anything until I know for certain that there is some cause."

Ed Perry, who had been pacing in the corridor outside the Exalteds' quarters, came in with the white-coated servant who delivered breakfast on a small, rolling table. "What the hell's going on?" he asked Jake irritably. "Didn't you tell him?"

Jake stared at him. "Adrian," he said, "is hungry." As if that explained everything.

"Oh." Ed ignored the crystal carafe of blood on the table and began lifting the dome lids off of everything else. "Looks like he's not the only one who's hungry. You mind sharing this?"

Jake didn't. There was more than enough. Adrian, loftily above it all, took his carafe and delicately stemmed goblet and retired to the dressing room. He had long since learned to dislike the look on Ed Perry's face when he nourished himself ... even when he did it second-hand, from a glass.

Later, with the inner men fortified, they set out to find Richard and determine if Ed's story was true. Ed, looking pained, tagged along. But as they descended to the main floor of the palace, Adrian lifted his head and said, "T'beth's not with Richard." He could feel her presence ... and the feeling wasn't coming from the area around Richard's office. "She's out in the garden," he said, turning down the side corridor that led that way. In the mood T'beth was in, letting her wander around alone didn't seem like an especially good idea. Anyone who accidentally got in her way was liable to get out of it in several different directions at the same time.

The gardens, and the park behind the palace, had been restored under Liliana’s direction to a verdant perfection they hadn’t known since before Zanjani’s reign of terror. The swan pools, vigorously mucked out and bedded with clean gravel, were crystal clear again, adorned with floating lilies in soft pastels, and even the swans had been groomed (much against their will) to snowy magnificence. In shaded areas, koi ponds abounded with brilliantly-colored moochers who took their food from Lily’s fingers and generally established that they were the planet’s superior life form. And everywhere, between the ponds, sparkled with mist from the central row of fountains, flowers of every shape and color and fragrance bloomed with an exuberance that was a paean of love to the small, determined woman who had brought them here.

Even the roses, wildly overgrown when Lily arrived, had been pruned back and then encouraged with her special magic into vibrant regrowth, and were now covered with enormous blooms of glorious color and intoxicating perfume. The gardens, Richard had said to Adrian in that perfectly serious voice that could make the most ridiculous things sound perfectly reasonable, coming from him, would be Liliana’s legacy to the people of Saravan, but poor recompense for all they would lose when he took her from them. Impossibly pompous as that sounded, Adrian knew it was true; he had seen the palace staff tagging around the corridors on Lily’s heels, their eyes adoring and their hands twitching to do whatever would win her approval.

At any other time, T'beth would have been aware of the presence of intruders the minute they emerged into the darkened colonnade that surrounded the inner garden. But she was too agitated at the moment, and her concentration was entirely on the small, delicate woman who stood in front of her, her tiny hand extended.

"Just to the other end of the garden," Liliana was saying. "Just that far. I promise."

T'beth didn't move. T'beth wasn't a large woman, but she was bigger than Lily, and in her leather pants and tank top, with her muscled arms gleaming in the moonlight, she looked as sleekly dangerous as a chained cheetah. The look on her face was frighteningly feral.

"Trust me," Lily said. She didn't seem perturbed, which Adrian could understand very well. If T'beth made a move at her, Liliana would simply be ... elsewhere.

Finally, very slowly, T'beth put her hand forward and allowed Lily to take it. And just that quickly, they were gone. Where they had been standing, the moonlight revealed only the empty gravel path between beds of suddenly swaying flowers.

Ed Perry made a strangled noise in his throat. He hadn't seen this happen before, as Jake and Adrian had. Adrian nudged him forcefully, and said, whispering, "Shut up. Look down at the far end."

Lily and T'beth were there, only dimly seen in the distance. T'beth had snatched her hand away as if it had been burned. Only Adrian, whose hearing was so much more acute than Ed's or Jake's, heard Lily saying, "That's all there is to it. Distance doesn't matter. Across the garden or around the world, it's exactly the same."

T'beth's voice was very tight. "You mean you do that ... just that ... and we're back in Toronto?"

Lily sighed. "Not Toronto. It has to be some place I know ... or Stephen does, since he's doing the transfer this time. He'll take us to the Refuge ... that's the place he and I come from, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. From there, we can arrange for you to travel normally to Toronto."

"And it will be just like that?" T'beth was a girl who liked to pin things down ... even when she wasn't going to tear their throats out. "Just here ... and then there? And you don't feel anything at all in between?"

"Just like that," Lily assured her patiently. "I promise. I wouldn't lie to you, T'beth. It really is safe. I could do it myself, take all of us, but Richard's afraid I'm not strong enough. I am, but you know men."

T'beth did, and Adrian thought it was clever of Lily to use T'beth's basic distrust of all men. Adrian was coming to realize that there was a hell of a lot more to Lily than her extraordinary good looks.

Adrian turned away and pushed Ed and Jake ahead of him. T'beth hadn't noticed them yet, and he didn't want her to now. He got them back into the palace and headed for Richard's office.

Richard wasn't alone. The tall, dark-haired man who was with him rose to his feet as Adrian and the others entered, his bright blue eyes filled with curiosity. Richard, with his exquisite courtesy, made the introductions. "Adrian, allow me to present Stephen, who will be providing our transportation when we leave. Stephen, you've met Ed, I think. This is Adrian Talbot … and Jake Fowler, my friends."

Adrian was aware of a sudden sharpening of the man Stephen's interest when Richard said the word "friends." Hands were shaken all around, and then Adrian said to Richard, "Then it's true, what Ed's been telling us? You're planning on leaving here tonight?"

Richard cast a slightly annoyed glance at Ed, who found something fascinating to look at down around his feet. "I was planning," Richard said, "on discussing the matter with you, as soon as you arose. I am prepared to leave tonight, but I did not know that you were. We will stay, of course, until you are fully prepared to leave."

Adrian looked at Jake. Jake thought of Lafeeta ... and said nothing. Adrian looked back at Richard. "I can't think of any reason we should stay longer, Richard. I don't know what more we can do here." He didn't bother to mention that what he'd come here to do had been done long ago.

"Nor do I," Richard said agreeably. "Stephen is leaving with Shapour a device through which he will be able to contact me if he should feel the need to do so, and another with the mayor, Vaje Nasreddin. I have agreed to serve in future in an advisory capacity only."

"Then we'll be leaving right away?"

"Shortly." Richard smiled. "Vaje Nasreddin has arranged to give a show of the fireworks that could not be used last night, in Sa'idi. As he is doing so in our honor, I did not think it courteous to refuse to attend. I would appreciate it if, before then, you gathered together anything that you wish to take with you."

Half an hour later, Adrian, Jake and T'beth stood on the landing above the front steps of the palace with Shapour and the Sa'idi Exalted. Richard was standing a little way apart, with the mayor, Vaje Nasreddin, a thin, scholarly man even Shapour had learned to respect, discussing some sort of last-minute thing. Will Scrope, nearby, towered over Ed, Lily, and the newcomer, Stephen. T'beth was eyeing Stephen very nervously.

"Will you relax?" Adrian hissed. "It's no big deal."

She glared at him, but said nothing. Jake, feeling a bit better now, looked positively eager to try instantaneous travel. But then, Jake had been fascinated with everything he'd been able to find out about the Awakened, Lily's people. To be going to this place they called the Refuge, where he would be surrounded by them, was just as exciting as all hell. Whatever else he might be, at heart, Jake was still an anthropologist, faced with a secret culture no one else in the world knew anything about at all. He saw it, Adrian knew, as the chance of a lifetime.

The fireworks started soon after. The square was full of people, all come to view the show in honor of their rescuers, and with the first, huge, blooming display of brilliance in the night sky, their oohs and ahs were loud and excited. Applause followed each subsequent explosion, along with cheers for the largest and brightest.

Richard seemed fascinated, which Adrian could understand. He was standing now with Lily, and he kept looking down at her, smiling in a way Adrian had never seen, with a softness in his eyes Adrian had not imagined was in him. Richard was obviously, and very deeply, in love, and the way Lily looked back up at him could move even a vampire's heart ... and make this particular vampire feel even more sorry for himself.

After a time, Richard and his small group came over to stand closer to the Toronto contingent. "We'll go now," Richard said softly, "if everyone is ready?" He looked around at their faces ... Adrian's pale and stiff as he tried to conceal what he was feeling, Jake's eager, T'beth's apprehensive. Lily went to T'beth and slipped her hand into the other woman's, but she didn't say anything. The man Stephen made a point of positioning himself in the center of the group.

The fireworks continued, one after the other lighting up the sky over Saravan, bathing the upturned faces below with shades of red and green and blue, to continual cheering and applause. For a finale, half a dozen rockets were set off at once, exploding high above almost at the same moment, in an incredibly brilliant display of red and white. Shapour, delighted, turned to say something to the mayor and paused, astounded.

He, the mayor, and the Sa'idi Exalted were alone on the landing.