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when it came to his granddaughter... even as he lectured Dorr about 'godless
outsiders' I think he was secretly pleased she wasn't as lonely and isolated
as her mother. Close to Commitment Day, he even suggested he might allow a
marriage..."
"Oh gods!" I groaned, "how brainless could he get?" I wanted to bury my face
in my hands. "Accepting Dorr's relationship with you? Suggesting you get
married..."
"What's wrong with that?" Zephram protested.
"Dorr didn't want to get married!" I snapped at him. "She wanted to get out!
Out of the cove, away from Hakoore. Marrying you would just be another tie to
keep her here. It was a threat, not a concession. Hakoore practically held a
knife to her throat andforced her to raise the stakes. To Commit Neut."
"No," Zephram murmured. "Dorr did that to please me."
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"To pleaseyou?" I repeated. "Don't tell me you gave Dorr the happy story
about your Neut friend down south! You couldn't be that stupid... not after
the trouble with Steck."
"I never talked to Dorr about Neuts," Zephram replied. "Not before she
Committed. But Dorr was five when Steck... made her choice. Dorr was old
enough to remember some of what happened, and young enough to have it all
confused. She got the idea..."
He waved his hand as if groping for the right words.
"That you had been Steck's lover after she turned Neut?" I suggested. "That
you liked Neuts?"
Zephram ran his fingers through his hair; the hair was damp, soaked with
sweat. He said, "Maybe Ishould have talked to her about Neuts before she
Committed. But I wanted to stay clear of the topic to avoid influencing Dorr
like I influenced Steck. Once or twice, Dorr even brought the subject up...
and I avoided it. It seemed like the right thing."
Sometimes there is no right thing,I thought to myself. Aloud, I said, "And
when she Committed Neut?"
"I stayed with her," my father replied. "Of course I did. She was the same
person. And I wasn't about to abandon her when she... for my sake..."
"Okay, sure." I didn't want to hurt him by pursuing my thoughts aloud, but I
wondered about Dorr. Had she really thought Zephram would prefer her as Neut?
Or had she Committed Neut to horrify her grandfather, then invented a second
story to tell Zephram? Maybe she was afraid Zephram would turn her away unless
he thought it was his own fault.
No way to know. Dorr was dead. Poor cryptic Dorr, who spent twenty-five years
trying to do something crazy enough to break herself free of her grandfather.
I suppose it wasn't coincidence she had fallen in love with a man the same
age as Hakoore.
"So about Dorr and Bonnakkut," I said. "Did she really kill him?"
Zephram nodded.
"Do you know that for sure?" I asked. "Rashid thinks her confession doesn't
make sense."
"He's right; her confession was a lie. But she did kill him. I was there."
"What happened?"
He told me the story with his eyes closed, as if he was seeing it all in his
mind... or perhaps because he didn't want to look at me or the rest of the
world for a while.
Everything had started, of course, at the gathering where Tober Cove welcomed
Rashid. Zephram had sat on the grass with Waggett in his lap, both of them
calm and content in the early morning sunshine. The day ahead would be so
pleasant sending me off with Mistress Gull at noon, then feasting cheerfully
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with the adults of the village until the children returned at nightfall.
Zephram could meet a Spark Lord, spend time with Dorr...
Then Rashid's Bozzle appeared on the Council Hall steps.
The long-lost Steck had returned.
As soon as the gathering broke up, Zephram headed for his house running away,
really, though Steck would know where to find him. Since he was carrying
Waggett, and since he was over sixty, Zephram only got partway home before
Steck caught up with him... on that path through the woods where everything
happened.
They talked. Awkwardly. About each other. About me.
Then Bonnakkut arrived, gun in hand. He had kept an eye on Steck, thinking
the time might come when she strayed from the protection of Rashid's "force
field." Our First Warrior hadn't seen Steck sneak out the side of the Council
Hall, but he guessed where she would go: to find her old lover. (Bonnakkut was
five when Steck was banished; like Dorr, he remembered. I suppose the day of
Steck's exile was the high point in Bonnakkut's life: a Neut in the village
and a chance to throw stones.)
If Bonnakkut had pulled the trigger as soon as he arrived, Steck would have
died. Our proud First Warrior would have dragged her corpse back by the hair
and proclaimed his triumph from the Council Hall steps. But fortunately for my
mother, Bonnakkut couldn't resist the chance to gloat while holding Steck and
Zephram at gunpoint.
Enter Dorr.
How did Dorr feel, now that Zephram's old lover had returned? Zephram
couldn't tell me. "She didn't seem upset," he said. "It was almost as if she
wasliberated. As if she could pass me to Steck and start her own life."
I thought about Dorr as I had seen her when I went to fetch Hakoore for last
rites. Dorr trying to restyle her hair. Kissing me twice out of sheer
mischief. If she believed she was free of Zephram, her last tie to Tober Cove
finally cut... but maybe it was just giddiness after the murder and before the
suicide she was already contemplating.
But that came later in the morning. Before the murder, Dorr was simply
walking through the woods because she wanted to visit Zephram presumably to
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