SeekingJovannaTheEndOfTheMatterRain beat on the windows of Giulian's sitting room as he waited for the others to arrive. He wanted to be able to take notes of this evening's meeting, so he'd deserted his favorite caneback rocker in favor of an armchair that could support a portable writing table. While he waited, he went over the notes he'd made in the Uni library this afternoon. He didn't have much yet, partly because he wasn't sure what he was looking for. He only hoped he'd know it when he saw it -- and he hoped even more fervently that the others had been more successful in their pursuit of information than he had. They should start arriving soon... Devon's hair hung dark around his face, swinging forward and free as he seemed to duck behind it more than usual. He was dressed carefully -- a shirt of better quality, slacks, his boots still as scuffed as ever, and the ever-present beaten leather bag over one shoulder, strap across his body, the bag against one hip. The vest was a touch of vanity -- the one Jovanna had gifted him with. He lifted one hand to knock sharply, three times, then shoved both hands in his pockets and stood there, a sullen darkness upon the doorstep as he waited. The door was answered by Peterson, who recognized Devon from previous visits and said, "Good evening, Mr. Byeroth. Please come in." A footstep sounded behind him and Sasha appeared, a parcel of books under her arm and wrapped in a warm cloak against the evening mists. "Hello, Dev," she said. "Good evening, Peterson. May I leave my books here? I've come straight from a Sociology lecture..." Devon nodded to Sasha. "Certainly, Miss Matisse," answered Peterson, indicating a hall table that already held a vase of flowers, a pair of driving gloves and a stray pencil. "May I take your cloak also?" "Thank you," said Sasha, setting the books down and surrendering her cloak. "Is anyone else here yet, Peterson, or are we the first?" "You and Mr. Byeroth are the first arrivals," Peterson confirmed as he hung her cloak on one of the pegs in the hall. He then went to the sitting-room door and opened it. "Miss Matisse and Mr. Byeroth, my lord." Devon nodded to Giulian as they entered. He found a place to stand, remaining with pockets in hands, slightly hunched. Giulian looked up from his notes. "Evening, Dev ... Miss Matisse. Grab yourselves a drink, if you'd like." He nodded toward the sideboard, which held the usual array of decanters and the coffee service, plus a tray of sandwiches. He looked from one to the other of them, his eyes questioning. Then his mouth tightened, as if closing itself on any questions until everyone was there to hear the answers. Just as Peterson opened the sitting room door and introduced Sasha and Devon to Giulian's lair, another knock on the door played a staccato beat that nearly mixed with the sound of the rain outside. When Peterson went back to the front door, Harold Decuma Maun stood on the doorstep. "Hello Peterson." Harold began, wiping a little bit of wet hair from his eyes. "I'm sorry if I am late." He lowered his voice conspiratorally. "I'm not the last one to arrive, am I?" "I hardly think so, my lord. Mr. Byeroth and Miss Matisse are the only arrivals so far," Peterson informed him. At the mention of Miss Matisse's name, Harold's eyes brightened considerably, enough for Peterson to notice. "Excellent," Harold said with a sigh of relief, and waited for Peterson to allow him into the Anderon House. Peterson stepped back, opening the door wider to allow Harry in, and went to the sitting room door to announce him. Devon glanced up and nodded to Harry as he came in. "Evening, Harry," Giulian greeted his friend. After what happened at the last meeting, Elissa stood still as she stared at the door to Giulian's home. The rain dropped on her, soaking her cloak and whatever skin and hair was exposed. Sighing, she stepped forward and knocked a few times to announce her arrival. She told herself she would leave if the others did not wish her presence. Peterson answered the door promptly, and seemed to recognize her with no trouble, for he said, "Good evening, Miss Chatham. Please come in. May I take your cloak?" Elissa could see one cloak already hanging on the row of pegs in the hall. "Evening, Peterson," Elissa said, walking into the foyer. She nodded and slipped off the long cloak. She ran a hand through damp hair and grimaced at the long damp braid and curls that framed her face. She shook out her skirt and readjusted her shoulder bag that hung down her side, protected under the cloak. "Apparently I'm not the first one or hopefully, the last to arrive." "Neither, so far as I can tell, Miss Chatham," responded Peterson, taking her cloak and hanging it next to Sasha's. He then moved to the sitting room door to announce her. "Miss Chatham is here, my lord." "Thank you, Peterson," Elissa said with a smile to the older gentleman. Letting the long thick braid fall down her back, Elissa slowly entered the room and waited to see the reaction before deciding to flee back into the rain. She looked around and saw Giulian in his chair and smiled warmly at him. Giulian returned her smile, the tension in his face and shoulders relaxing momentarily as he did so. "Hullo, Elissa." "Evening, Giulian," Elissa said walking towards him. She reached her hand in her bag and pulled out a leather covered notebook. She held it to him. "Apparently, members of my family were interested in the same story as you were at the library. I copied notes from their diaries for you. I think most of it's the same, but..." She shrugged one slender shoulder. Giulian's eyes lit as he took the notebook from her hand. "Thank you, Elissa!" He grinned. "There's nothing a scholar loves more than a primary source. Even if there is nothing new here, it's corroboration and a different perspective on events -- both valuable." Elissa grinned back. "You're more than welcome. I had to do a few...umm...edits to protect my family, but the full gist of their entries are all still there. I'll look through them again to see if I missed anything." She then settled down in a chair near him if he wanted an explanation or anything. Devon glanced over at Elissa's arrival and gave her the same curt nod he had given the others. His scowl neither deepened nor relaxed, his hunched posture giving the assumption that he had been standing the same way for several minutes already. Elissa glanced back at Devon and nodded back to him. Giulian looked around at the rest of them. "Who else can we expect?" he asked. "Romeo? Renata? I sent a note to Talaren but I don't know if he can make it or not." "I don't know," said Sasha. "I haven't seen either of them since we got back from the spaceport." She looked a little enquiringly at Dev. "I think Acciaio'll be here," Devon shrugged. "Unless something got him distracted." "Or someone," Harold, who long since had greeted the quartet in the room, said with a grin. "Romeo and I can be stunningly similar that way." Harold made a conscious effort not to look at Sasha. "On the other hand, he's unlikely to blow off a promise," Harold added. "While we're waiting, why don't you sit down, Dev," Giulian suggested gently, "and have a drink." Elissa rose and walked over to the bar to peruse the drinks and snacks. "What can I set up for you, Devon?" she asked, reaching out for her own drink. "Something that would get me drunk," Devon muttered under his breath. He shrugged in response, and spoke to be heard. "Whatever's available. And thanks, but I'd rather stand," he said to Giulian. His arms were crossed across his chest, his body stiff, but he kept moving, subtly, as if he couldn't quite manage to stand still. "As you wish," Giulian acquiesced, a troubled expression shadowing his eyes. Just as Harry's ebullience hinted that he'd discovered something, Dev's attitude suggested knowledge of a more painful sort. Elissa glanced over at Giulian, seeing the shadow in his eyes, and poured Devon a drink that was a little stiffer than her own. She walked over to him and gently pushed the drink in his hand. "Here... Take a big sip. Made it a little strong. If needs be, stay here and sleep it off," she said in a low tone and rested her hand lightly on his forearm as she transferred the glass. Harry gave a sympathetic nod to Devon as Elissa handed the stricken young man the glass. Devon took the glass, stiffening slightly as Elissa's hand fell upon his arm. He took a deep breath, then pulled away with a caution that made it obvious that he wasn't jerking himself away. "I won't need to stay. I've made it home drunk often enough." He still stood, the drink held carefully in one hand, and had yet to actually drink from the glass. Elissa shrugged as she dropped her hand. "You never know how you will be, nor should you be alone. There are worse things out there nowadays." She shifted on her feet, picked up her drink, and walked back to her seat and settled down again. "You're welcome to stay over if you need to, Dev," said Giulian. Sasha sat quietly to one side, her face calm, but pensive -- as it had been ever since Harry had so lightly compared himself to Romeo. She seemed absorbed in her own thoughts... "Thinking about what we learned at the spaceport?" Harold walked over amicably to Sasha. "Or something else." He then silently mouthed the word "sorry" to her. Romeo shrugged off the rain; his black hat seemed twice its weight when he handed it to Peterson. He trudged into the room, a spare glance for Devon before working out a slim smile for the others assembled. "Evening, Acciaio," Giulian greeted him from an armchair. Devon nodded to Romeo, then took a long drink from his glass. A glance at Giulian. "The offer's appreciated, but no," he answered the question from earlier. His voice was more curt than he intended, and he looked down at the glass immediately, then took another heavy gulp. Renata arrived almost immediately after her cousin, her mood only slightly less grey and damp than the weather. After handing her hooded cloak to Peterson -- and remembering to smile her thanks at the servant -- she smoothed her hair with her hands (it had a tendency to frizz in the rain) and went in to join the others. "There you are, Renata," Giulian greeted her with a look of subdued relief. "Any word?" she asked, trying to sound cheerful, even casual. "Anything at all?" Still looking at the glass, Devon said quietly, "Yes." Giulian's gaze immediately went to Devon. "What did you find out?" he asked, no longer able to hold back now that all the experimenters were here. "Renata and Elissa and I didn't turn up much of anything." Devon drained his glass, then set it aside on a nearby table. "Simply put, she's left. She's probably fine, and if she's not, then it's her decision. She wasn't kidnapped, and she definitely doesn't want us to interfere." He stared at a point across the room, not looking at anyone as he spoke. "She left a letter to say she was going. And now she's just gone." "Gone?" Giulian echoed, stunned. "Gone where?" "Interesting way of just disappearing," Elissa muttered under her breath. Sasha glanced at Harry and then said quietly, "She's gone offworld, hasn't she, Dev?" Harold scratched his chin, glanced at Sasha, nodded and then looked to Devon for his response. Devon nodded curtly. Picking up his glass, he went to the bar and busied himself with refilling it, and taking a long drink, all with his back to his gathered friends. By the time he turned around again, his face was set in a habitual scowl, although somewhat tighter around the eyes and mouth than usual. "But why?" Giulian asked softly, looking first at Devon, and then at Sasha and Harry, who seemed to know something about it too. "We don't have the why, but we have the how of it," Harry responded. "It's Devon who has the why, it seems." "I don't understand," Renata said, biting her lip. "I was so sure it wasn't... that she wouldn't do that. Not in the middle of everything, not without telling us..." She looked at Devon. "She left you a note. She told you. Because you're her friend. A real friend. She must have felt... that we were using her. Playing with her. She couldn't trust us. But she trusts you. She has reason to..." Her emotions were all scrambled, more than ever before. She wasn't sure she'd ever quite be the same again. Which was how she'd felt ever since Jo had drawn her into her world, only now the 'never the same' feeling was different, too. "Renata," Giulian said gently, "we don't know that. We don't know any of that until we know why she left in the first place." Elissa reached out and gently took hold of Renata's hand, soothing the girl. She didn't know Jo as well as the others, but could feel the pain they felt of a friend leaving suddenly. Devon turned when Renata spoke, looked directly at her. "I love Jo. And she loves me." His voice was flat. "She didn't want me to follow her, so she decided to protect me," the slight drawling of the word showed his feelings on that idea, "by making sure I got left behind. I don't think she'll be back any time soon." "Protect you from what?" asked Giulian. Devon offered a tight smile that did little to chase the shadows from his eyes. "Her secrets." Romeo's eyes showed dark circles from lack of sleep. Other than a few nodded greetings to several of the assembled friends he had been silent since he arrived. "Or maybe she was kidnapped and the people that took her were smart enough to expect her lo...you... to come looking for her and provided the note as a means of dissuading investigation." Devon flushed faintly as Romeo changed words mid-sentence. Harold shook his head. "If she did go offworld, from what Sasha and I discovered about a mystery person sneaking off Aquila, it was a voluntary, secretive attempt to go offworld. It wasn't someone being kidnapped." "The letter was definitely from her, and she wouldn't have included something I'd know was her if she was being forced. She'd have just written it and known I wouldn't believe it if it didn't have the code," Devon said. "I... I didn't bring the letter with me. It's personal." He turned his attention to Harold. "What did you discover?" Devon punctuated the question with a large gulp of drink from his second overfull glass of alcohol. "We're still in the dark as to her reasons. Was she coerced, threatened, paid, or was it just a whim?" Romeo spouted rhetorically. "Bottom line is that she's gone and unless we're chasing her off-planet, which most of us don't have resources to do, we're done with it." He shrugged non-committally. "We'll have to find our own rabble to rouse from here on out." "We still want to know what you found out, Harry," said Giulian. "It was a team effort. I couldn't have done it without Sasha's help." He gestured to the young cit and smiled, before looking back at the room at large. Sasha returned his smile. "We did some poking around the spaceport, and well, discovered that a mysterious person secretly booked passage on an outboard ship. They took care to try and make it difficult to trace their departure, but not so much as that Sasha and I weren't able to find out." Harold took out a handkerchief and carefully unfolded it and held it up for all to see. "It's a cleaning chit," said Sasha. "Or rather, a request for a cleaner. This one was filled out -- but not by the owner of the ship. It was a private craft, belonging to someone who works for the Ky Lasse Organisation -- the KLO." Instinctively she used the spacers' term rather than the Aquilan one of 'the Lasses'. "The people we spoke to believed the craft belonged to Piotr Petravich," she continued. "We took ... or rather Harry took a scan of the cleaning request. The head of the team believed it didn't come from any of her people. We thought ... one of you might recognise the writing. "It looks as though someone forged a request in order to get themselves onto the ship. "Is it Jo's writing? If it is, I don't understand why Jo would have taken the risk of stealing away on a ship like that ... there are safer ways of getting off-world!" "Do you remember what we found in her room? And what I said?" Devon asked quietly. "The picture, of Petravich. Jo thinks he's her father... but he doesn't know. She wanted to tell him. So I guess that's how she went about it." "She stowed away on his private craft?" Giulian shook his head at the sheer audacity of the act. Then he said, "That might explain the ... suddenness of it all. She may have had only a very narrow window of time in which to do something like that." Renata nodded quietly. In a way, it made her feel better. There was a reason for Jo's sudden disappearance and, all things taken into consideration, her friend was probably safe. That was what was important, wasn't it? So why did she still feel so scrambled and unsettled inside? "Well, I hope she... finds what she's looking for. She deserves to.... And you're right, there's nothing more we can do for her." She looked up at Devon. "I'm sorry, Devon. I wish..." Her voice drifted off. Devon shrugged. "I'll be fine." He gulped down what was left of the drink in his hand and turned back to the table to pour another one, taking more than a moment too long to pour a drink of a more reasonable size this time around. When he turned back, his expression was composed. Flat, almost. "Thank you, all of you, for trying to help me find her. I guess I should've just gone down to Lady Church's first thing since it turned out to have the answer." He sipped at his drink, focussing on the glass and not anyone around. "So now it's time to go on, anyway. I don't know how we'd continue with the experiment -- Jo had all the contacts, and I'm not sure who they are. So maybe it's best if we say lesson learned, and get out of the way, since things are getting dangerous anyway." Giulian nodded. "Probably so." He glanced over at Harry, and with an attempt at lightness said, "I doubt old Snodgkins would let us back in the door anyway, by this time. We've been absent for what, four days now?" "We've lost our positions there," Harry agreed with a somber nod. "And so the Experiment comes to a premature conclusion." "Well, that's that then," Romeo said, rising barely looking at Devon. "You all will excuse me. I had little enough sleep last night." His tone was even, absent of the laughing edge that would make lewd suggestion of why his sleep had suffered. "Not at all, good friend," Harold said, rising from his seated position. "Although I do hasten to remind you that when you do recover from sleeplessness, we have business to discuss and transact." Harry smiled. He looked around at Devon, Sasha, Elissa and the others, and gave a respectful nod and addressed the room. "It is still, I say, better for us to have met her, though she has removed herself from us, than never to have met her at all. And I to have met those of you that, without Jovanna's experiment, I would know less well, or perhaps not at all." Giulian nodded in agreement before focusing on Devon. "Dev, don't be a stranger," he said. "I'd like to continue my lessons, if you have time. If you don't want to use the Bahlmis salle anymore, there's one here." Devon nodded. "Let me know when you're free and I can come by. I've got to talk to Talaren -- I'm hoping I can use the Bahlmis salle for a while yet. I can do chores in the clubs on campus, but I don't get to fence there often, unless one of the members challenges me." A brief glance at Romeo, then back to Giulian. "It's been good getting to keep myself in shape again." He shrugged. "Just let me know when it's a good time for you." Elissa quietly nodded back to all of them. "It was a pleasure to meet all of you as well. I agree that it is safer to stay away from the lower city. Perhaps another time may be best..." She glanced at Giulian a little longer than the others as she rose to her feet. "You'll be staying around, too, won't you, Elissa?" said Giulian. "You were telling Renata and me that you planned to enroll at the Women's College." "Oh... Yes, I'll be...staying around. I have no plans to leave.." Elissa glanced at Sasha. "Other than finding some other place to live. Seeing how the lower city isn't all too...friendly or welcoming. I would much rather stay closer to the college." She looked back at Giulian. "I'll see you on...campus." "I'll probably continue my researches in the library," Giulian agreed. "I see no reason to abandon that yet." "No... There is still one mystery to be solved," Elissa said. "Hopefully the notes I gave you will help." Giulian nodded. "Even if it has nothing to do with Jo's disappearance -- and I'm thankful for that! -- it's worth pursuing on other grounds." Devon toyed with the glass in his hand. "I think I'm going to head out. Giulian, let me know when you want to work next. Renata... I don't think you should give up your lessons either. We can arrange for something so you'll be properly chaperoned, if you like. But for now... I think I'll head out." "I'll probably drop a note in your pigeonhole later in the week," Giulian told him. "Take care, Dev." Harold waited for any response from Giulian and Renata before giving a nod. "Good evening, Devon. Take care of yourself." With a final nod to everyone, Devon left. Sasha rose, careful to avoid looking at Harry. "I should be going too," she said. "I have an early class tomorrow. Elissa, will you come with me?" Elissa nodded as she walked over to Sasha. "Thank you, Sasha, I would like that. I do need to start looking for a new home. Not even I trust the lower city to live in." "G'day all," Romeo offered as he exited. Renata had been sitting very quietly for some time. She had smiled at Elissa when the girl had touched her, and nodded in response to Romeo as her cousin left. Finally, she stood up and said quietly, "I suppose I should get back, then." She looked at her brother. "If you want to stay, I really don't need an escort home. In fact, I'd rather just walk for a bit." Catching a note of worry in Harry's glance she smiled again and said, "I won't wander off. Just the straight, crow's-flight path to the Nest..." Another smile for their host. "Thank you, Jules... for letting us meet here... for everything. All of you... I hope Jo knew how much she was valued, how much she meant to us, before she left." |
