A Kiss for the Enemy's Shadow

How it begins

Tarin Dorr's shadow arrived before he did.

It slipped beneath the clinic door, crossed the clean floor and stopped beside Renna's operating chair.

Three voices said her name.

She put down the needle.

When the commander entered, his left hand was wrapped in cloth and his face had the gray stillness of a man who had walked too far because stopping would require asking for help.

Renna knew him from the war.

He knew she knew.

“I need it removed.”

The shadow moved behind her chair.

“No,” one of the voices said.

Another began crying.

Renna opened the shutters. Morning light crossed the room, but the shadow did not retreat toward its owner.

“Who are they?”

Tarin leaned against the wall.

“People my country expelled.”

“From where?”

He looked down.

“From their bodies.”

Outside, the clinic's ordinary queue continued forming. A farmer with a torn shade. A woman whose reflection had stopped following her home. People who expected Renna to repair the private damage of a public world.

She had agreed to do that work. She had not agreed never to ask what caused it.

Tarin loosened the cloth around his hand.

Beneath the skin, darkness moved like water crowded with small lights.

“If you separate us,” he said, “they may survive.”

“And you?”

“Perhaps.”

Renna disliked perhaps offered in a man's heroic voice. It often meant somebody else would be left to manage the consequences.

She placed a second chair beside the first.

“Sit.”

He obeyed, slowly.

The shadow gathered beneath both chairs.

Renna looked at the space between them.

“Before anyone decides who is sacrificing what, everyone here gets to explain what they want.”

Tarin looked up.

For the first time, she could see something besides endurance in his face.

The shadow became quiet.

Then one small voice asked whether the window could stay open.

Renna left it exactly where it was.