(eng) Patricia A. McKillip - SSC by Harrowing The Dragon

Author:Harrowing The Dragon [Dragon, Harrowing The]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Thief

Briony watched Gerda walk blindly through the falling snow. It caught on her lashes, melted in the hot, wet tears on her cheeks. Her long coat swung carelessly open to the bitter cold, revealing pearls, gold, a hidden pocket in the lining in which Briony envisioned cash, cards, earrings taken off and forgotten. She gave little thought to Gerda’s tears: some party, some man, it was a familiar tale.

She shadowed Gerda, walking silently on the fresh-crushed snow of her footprints, which was futile, she realized, since they were nothing more than a wedge of toe and a rapier stab of stiletto heel. Still, in her tumultuous state of mind, the woman probably would not have noticed a traveling circus behind her.

She slid, shadow-like, to Gerda’s side.

“Spare change?”

Gerda glanced at her; her eyes flooded again; she shook her head helplessly. “I have nothing. ”

Briony’s knife snicked open, flashing silver in a rectangle of window light. “You have a triple strand of pearls, a sapphire dinner ring, a gold wedding ring, a pair of earrings either diamond or cubic zirconium, on, I would guess, fourteen-karat posts.”

“I never got my ears pierced,” Gerda said wearily. Briony missed a step, caught up with her.

“Everyone has pierced ears!”

“Diamond, and twenty-two-karat gold.” She pulled at them, and at her rings. “They were all gifts from Kay. You might as well have them. Take my coat, too.” She shrugged it off, let it fall. “That was also a gift.” She tugged the pearls at her throat; they scattered like luminous, tiny moons around her in the snow. “Oh, sorry.”

“What are you doing?” Briony breathed. The woman, wearing nothing more than a short and rather silly dress, turned to the icy darkness beyond the window light. She had actually taken a step into it when Briony caught her arm. “Stop!” Briony hauled her coat out of the snow. “Put this back on. You’ll freeze!”

“I don’t care. Why should you?”

“Nobody is worth freezing for.”

“Kay is.”

“Is he? ” She flung the coat over Gerda’s shoulders, pulled it closed. “God, woman, what Neanderthal age are you from?”

“I love him.”

“So?”

“He doesn’t love me.”

“So?”

“If he doesn’t love me, I don’t want to live.”

Briony stared at her, speechless, having learned from various friends in extremis that there was no arguing with such crazed and muddled thinking. Look, she might have said, whirling the woman around to shock her. See that snowdrift beside the wall? Earlier tonight that was an old woman who could have used your coat. Or: Men have notoriously bad taste, why should you let one decide whether you live or die? Or: Love is an obsolete emotion, ranking in usefulness somewhere between earwigs and toe mold.

She lied instead. She said, “I felt like that once.”

She caught a flicker of life in the still, remote eyes. “Did you? Did you want to die?”

“Why don’t we go for hot chocolate and I’ll tell you about it?”

They sat at the counter of an all-night diner, sipping hot chocolate liberally laced with brandy from Briony’s flask.

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