The Boon of Alon

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I'm technically late to dinner, but everyone's still in the mingling phase, so I haven't really missed anything. Not that there's ever anything to miss besides food. This is my third banquet since I got here, but the first since Suthi came, and I spot her across the room in a knot of recruits, drink in one hand and gesturing with the other, the picture of ease; she cuts a striking figure in some kind of dress uniform, probably from the Knights, with the heraldry removed.

Lemi talked me into getting a dress while we were shopping—kind of a slinky black thing that feels more like a nightgown than proper clothes, but she and the shop girl who hemmed it for me insisted it was stylish and looked good on me. For once, I don't feel underdressed while I creep around the edges of the banquet, but I do feel exposed. The dress leaves my shoulders bare, and quite a bit of chest too, but unlike Suthi, I don't have much cleavage to show off.

Lemi beams at me when I find her in the crowd. "You wore it!" she exclaims, then drags me in front of her by the shoulders to show me off, I guess. "See, Rev, it'd look good on you too."

Rev eyes me. So do the other recruits in the cluster I'm now in the middle of. "I guess so."

"It does look good," another recruit offers, and I mumble a thanks before Lemi lets me go and I can slip out to the edge of the group.

"This means you don't need to borrow my clothes anymore, right?" Rev asks me lowly. "I didn't mind, but..."

"Yes, thank you," I say. I finally own more than one outfit—arguably for the first time since I was a child, since technically everything I used on the circuit belonged to Boss. And I'm pretty sure I mostly wore hand-me-downs on the farm, so... maybe these are the first clothes that have really been mine. If I'd realized that earlier, maybe I would've experimented with my style more, instead of turning down half the clothes Lemi suggested I try. I could reinvent myself from the shoes up. It's not like there's any prophecy telling me what to wear.

I keep following this thought down all its wandering paths as we sit down to eat, and through each course I feel my future opening up, inch by inch. My clothes are up to me; so are my friends. The things I choose to learn—the riders are teaching us what they need us to know, but I've spent enough time in the archive by now to know I could read about almost anything in there. I can go almost anywhere, do almost anything. What parts of my life do the prophecies touch, really? There's one thing I'm supposed to do—not a small thing, granted, but Chama was right. I could get it over with and have the rest of my life to myself. I wonder if this is, a little bit, what Zuri meant when she said I'd learn to find satisfaction within—if everyone has those unavoidable things, prophesized or not, then you have to be happy with the other things. Right?

And the other thing is Suthi. Maybe romance is something I don't get to choose—but what does "true love" actually mean? If I left and she chose not to follow me, would we cross paths anyway, or would that be the end of it? Is it a certainty, or just—by Chama's definition—a potential?

As dinner winds down, a few riders set up with instruments and begin to play. Everyone helps move the tables and chairs to the edges of the room so there's space in the middle to dance, and people do. I sit at the edge of the room in a chair left askew and watch, and wonder.

I don't know shit about Suthi. I was already aware of that, but now it seems more important, because clearly she has her own definition of "true love" and it's driving her now. Her life has careened off track as much as mine has, I assume, but what track was she on to begin with? What did she want to do with her life before she followed me here?

I'm so wrapped up in my thoughts that I actually don't notice she's approached me until she speaks.

"I know you're going to say no," she says, and I look up, startled, "but, do you want to dance?"