Keats cranes his neck against the shuttle's g-forces to stare out of the window. Suryada drops away. They punch through cloud, then out into blue sky. A layer of wispier clouds passes, the shuttle creaking as its seals expand. Keats sets his head back on the headrest, remembering Arcadia, the look on her face when he had denied her. She'll never look at Keats the same way. He couldn't just go back to her. Time to move on. He should've left a note. No - he had to leave there and then. He'd felt it, a longing inside to flee into the black. Keep moving, like he always used to. The blue of the sky deepens, darkens. The shuttle isn't accelerating so hard now. Stars appear, and the blue fades to black.
On the station's central concourse, Keats feels the reassuring push of artificial gravity. Nobles' delegations pass in bright livery, full of purpose. Loaders and stevedores shift cargo. Alone, with an oversize pack, Keats looks every bit the space vagrant. He scans notice-boards for bills announcing ships docking and due to dock. Still in Ravenna's gravity-well. Still close to where he lost Tigerlilly, and maybe Arcadia is lost too, or maybe she was lost years ago. Everything gone from that time of carefree childhood. What's left?
The Gratuitous Velocity.
That ship name is familiar. A few enquiries, and Keats discovers that Cortez, low Lieutenant Cortez, travels in it, bringing a cargo of exotic goods. Word has gone out to buyers: Cortex holds court in one of the station's coffee-shops in a few days' time. Keats barely hears the rest. Cortez is coming! Keats actually grins.
In his room aboard the station, Keats drifts off to sleep. Maybe Hemlock was just a dream, best abandoned. Far below, Ravenna turns.
The Gratuitous Velocity is small enough to dock with the station directly. The umbilical locked, Cortez strides aboard with his coterie. He's darkly handsome, with jet coiled hair and a narrow, precise moustache. His coat flares as he walks, cut close at the waist, with rows of gold buttons down the chest and on the cuffs. In the dark of a side-passage, Keats hides, and watches him pass.
“Pancreator's beard!” In his booth at the coffee-house, Cortez leaps to his feet, “No, Slylvia, let him pass. He's a friend!”
“He's armed,” an imposing woman calls back.
“Of course he is. It's Keats!”
The guard looks at Keats as if she'd heard his name before. The stern look vanishes, and she steps aside. At the table, Keats and Cortez embrace, with much manly back-slapping.
“Join me! Sit!” Cortez grins, taking his place, “Coffee?”
“Thank-you,” Keats tentatively sits opposite. The table is strewn with papers.
Cortez pours coffee from a sliver pot, “I thought I might find you. 'Ravenna!' I said to Sandra, the captain, 'That's where Keats went, back to see his family.'”
“'Sandra'?” Keats glances over at the guard, too, who is distinctly handsome, “You seem to have surrounded yourself with a lot of women.”
“Bees to honey! What can I say? I am irresistible! But I thought I would find you in your estates! Where is 'Sir Hemlock'?”
Keats looks into his coffee, “It's complicated.”
“Wait!” Cortez grins, “Was there a woman?”
“Sort of.”
“What do you mean 'sort of'? Tell me!”
Quietly, “I was engaged to be married.”
Cortez leans back in his seat and laughs, “And it did not go so well, and you need a fast ship before her father catches you?”
Keats looks up from his coffee. Cortez's laughter is infectious, and Keats twitches a smile, but it's soon gone, “A fast ship would be nice.”
“I am sorry,” Cortez reaches across the table and claps Keats on the shoulder, “I should not make light of matters of the heart. I'm just happy to see that you have finally discovered the fairer sex. I did wonder, you know.”
“Wonder what?” Keats blurts.
“Never mind. You ol' heart breaker!” Cortez grins.
“It looks that way,” Keats sighs, then, “When you ship out, have you room for one more?”
“Of course! It'll be like old times.”
“I've been away a while.”
“You stuck with me when things got bad. When a deal went sour, you had my back. Keats, you've always been a loyal friend.”
Those words weigh on Keats for the rest of the day, as he arranges to join Cortez's entourage. He returns to the billboards, but there's no news of Arcadia or any of the others. In the evening, Cortez's suite hosts his coterie, now including Keats, for dinner. Captain Sandra joins them.
Keats had been silent the whole meal, letting the conversation wash over him, gazing into the mid-distance, blinking a lot. Half-way through dessert, he sets down his spoon and looks up.
“I'm sorry,” Keats cuts into the conversation, voice catching, “I can't go with you. I would love to. I really would.”
Cortez shrugs and smiles, “The woman?”
“She's in trouble. I can't just leave her. I can't!”
“The galaxy is wide, but the ships I travel in are very fast. We will meet again. Count on it. At least enjoy the meal with us.”
Keats nods, smiling, relieved, sad. He doesn't say anything for awhile.
Cortez adds, “Is there anything we can do?”
“I couldn't -” Keats stops, and looks around at all the faces staring at him, “Do you leave soon?”
Captain Sandra answers, “Yes.”
“Then could I borrow a little of your time for some misdirection?”
On the station, there is a tavern favoured by the noble entourages, many in Hawkwood colours. Today, Captain Sandra sits at a table eating lunch with some of her officers. Sir Hemlock enters the tavern, no cloak hiding his fine studded armour, his sword at his belt with its decorated hilt. He doesn't have the long hair any more, but his short hair has been cleaned and tidied into a pixie-like cut. A cloaked woman walks with him, face shadowed, but clearly powerfully built.
Sir Hemlock sits at the captain's table, and they discuss swift outward passage for himself and 'the lady'. Then he stands, glances around the room, and strides out with his cloaked companion.
The stars disappear as the sky grows blue. Out of the porthole, Ravenna's cloudscape spreads out below. Keats sets his head back against the headrest. Cortez had promised to see him again. Keats couldn't honestly reciprocate. He may die soon, fallen at the hands of Arcadia's enemies. He said goodbye to Cortez, knowing that it could be for the last time.
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