11. Sanctuary/3.

Seldom do people tell the truth in a pressing situation that doesn't favor them. Find their truth in the irrelevant, and far more useful than a full story that isn't theirs, a piece of the jigsaw puzzle from their life always shows more than it lets on. 

"Used to?" Warshon cocked a brow, narrowing his eyes that bored into hers. "What did you write?"

"Stupid stories."

"What are they about?"

"You won't be interested."

"Try me."

She made a moue of protest and puffed out her cheeks. "What's the point? I don't write anymore."

"Why? Aren't you a bit too young to retire?"

"Too young, exactly," she snorted, her voice dripping in sarcasm. "Why should anyone publish or read the work by a young man without the credential or the experience if it weren't for the people tooting his horns? I used to write because I had the people who were my privilege. Now, I've lost them." 

The words she spoke of, the precocious wisdom, if not cynicism, with which she saw the world, and the valor displayed in the face of plight, all contrasted with the face that looked no older than a fifteen-year-old. "Sorry to hear," he said at length. 

"It's alright," She shrugged. "People come and go. We share a ride with many who don't share our destinations, and that's just life."

"You must have been a great writer," he observed, meaning every word. "With or without the ones tooting your horns." 

A visible shudder coursed through her. She darted a glance in his direction. Their eyes met for a second before she looked away, her arms clasping her knees. "Great or not, it's all up to others, isn't it?" A tentative smile rippled across her plump little face. "Is communication really plausible between people who disagree? Do we agree with one another because of what we say, or what we have experienced and understand? When our experiences lead us to a different conclusion, can words make a difference or prove otherwise?"

He sat up, imbibing every bit of her presence. 

"Stories are supposed to make us uncomfortable and challenge our moral standing. Not anymore if you want to have a market, if you want publishers to wager their bet on you when you don't have the connections already. But –" An aching smile broke off her speech. "What's the point if stories can't be the lies that tell truths?"

Savoring her words, Warshon pursed his lips. "You're quite an old soul, aren't you?" 

"I got that a lot." She shrugged. "Anyway, I was rambling."

No, he thought, remembering his own mother. A Tamen immigrant from the Third World North, she married Arslan Qusbecq for her legal status to stay in the Republic, while Qusbecq needed a public statement to run for the mayor of Enkera that he wasn't a racist. A quid quo pro which had worked well until he found a better deal with House Effendi. All the time she had stayed in the Republic, she wrote stories bashing the Tamens, their people, their culture, their regime, and it was a hit. The Republicans loved a renegade. They loved her for the comparison she made between the Commonwealth Utopianists and the Tamen tyrants until she felt too comfortable with her position. Until she forgot that they had doted on her not because she was telling the truth but for having confirmed their lies, that to them, she would always be the other. She impugned the Republic for the North Bay War, a conflict over the trade routes twenty years ago that killed over ten thousand Tamens, and they spat her out, burning her in effigy. Lord Qusbecq then took Warshon from her. For the first time after their divorce, he spoke out, calling her a gold-digger and a cheater. He didn't blink an eye spewing vicious lies about the woman who helped build his career and gave him a son. He spewed such lies to ensure the Conservative Caucus won the majority over the Globalists by a landslide. Since then, Warshon had never seen her again. Few had. She couldn't go back to Tamen anymore after everything she had said and written to earn her a place in the new world; nor could she stay in the new world where she thought to have earned a place. Words on the street, she died of cancer three years later. And that was the price to pay for being a traitor, they said. 

Warshon brooded at the girl quailing on the floor. Evan Ginsberg. His hands clenched, lips parting. What kind of ordeal must you have been dealt to bring you such painful insight? In a huff of a sigh, he saw indeed the truth in her lies, glittering like unearthed gold. 

The landline beeped. 

"Can you check the message for me?" he asked under his breath, smiling when she ventured to meet his eyes again. 

She nodded. Getting to her feet, she seemed dizzy and braced a forearm on the wall, her breath rapid. 

Something isn't right.

He watched her shuffle to the other side and take the receiver off the cradle in the wall. On the screen flashed a series of numbers that furrowed her brow. "I don't know what it means," she confessed, her breath wheezing. Detaching the screen from the receiver, she brought it over to him. 

As their hands touched, he gripped her wrist. 

"What's wrong?" She panicked, trying to pull away. 

Without taking his eyes off her, he fastened his grip, his brow furrowing at her temperature. "You tell me." 

"Nothing." She blinked, her lips a stubborn pout. As she tried to wrench free from his clench, she tugged the collar of her shirt a little off her shoulder, revealing again the red swellings on the lower back of her neck. 

"Have you been to the Dominican Peninsula of late?" He let go of her. Evan Ginsberg, the only crew member who didn't get the jab for malaria, and the cargo ship she happened to be on laid over at the Penisula where cases of malaria had been reported. 

She halted, glancing at him over her shoulder. 

A half smile pursed his lips. He plucked out the cannula and pushed himself off the reclining chair. "Loaded question," he added. "But I trust that you're clever enough to ask a doctor for help while feeling under the weather." 

"Since when do gangsters start calling themselves doctors?" she clapped back, rubbing her arms as she huddled into herself in a corner. "Did you just turn down the temperature to make me cold?"

"Stubborn as a bull." He heaved a sigh, his head shaking. With a glimpse at his watch, he clipped the screen back in the receiver and opened a small closet inside the wall. Taking a new trench coat off the hanger, he put it on her. "Hang on," he said, turning back to the closet. "We'll be leaving soon." 

The black shirt billowed as he put an arm through the sleeve.