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ACT ONE
I, I A street in KeyParis
Zoe Washburne didn’t particularly feel like a drink (and didn’t care for resin in her wine, tasted like paint thinner). But wars—even other peoples’ wars—always made her hungry. In her war, there were plenty of times when she wasn’t afraid of being killed. Sometimes she was uplifted by the zeal of the righteous cause, or burning in her blood to avenge, or just kill some motherfuckers when it’d been a while, or just wanted them to kill her if they were going to, and avoid the Christmas rush. Sometimes there was a lull, and nobody was actually trying to kill her (for the moment, anyhow). But once you got an even keel between terror and bloodlust, and even if you managed to halfway fill your belly, you’d be hungry again soon enough.
They went to KeyParis because Mal had bought up a cargo of antibiotics that turned out to be kinda-sorta out of date (by a Parliamentary election or two), and Mal figured that what with a war going on, hospitals and the army might figure they were better than nothing. But by the time they got there, the enemy had bugged out and there wasn’t any war and they were back to figuring out what to do next. Or Mal was working on his next hare-brained scheme.
KeyParis was a two- or even three-horse town, so Zoe figured if she walked down the biggest of the streets she could see at a glance, she could find a taverna. No chance of hoo-hah elegant cuisine, but that was all right: she had about enough plat in her pocket for a plate of flatbreads and olives and maybe some of that salty, sheepy cheese.
She was surprised to see Serenity’s mule parked on the street, and even more surprised to see (through a streaky window that probably used to have more glass) that Shepherd Book was inside, seated at a table. The mirror in the backbar was cracked enough to look marbleized, but the naked lady had been miraculously spared. Several tiny white cups, streaked with coffee grounds, accompanied the shepherd’s breviary and the Racing Form. Zoe was amused to see that, despite there having damn nearly been a war, the racetrack was still open. \
Book looked up from circling his selections in red grease pencil. “Purely for the improvement of the breed, you understand.”
Zoe nodded. “It’s science.”
The Shepherd showed Zoe how to get at the kernel of the dish of roasted melon seeds, then her flatbread and cheese arrived.
A short, blocky woman, her best feature a complexly braided wreath of red-gold hair, flinched as the last drops of arrack in the bottle dripped into the eye assessing his contents. “Another!” she shouted. The barkeep stayed in place behind the bar, then dipped down for the length of lead pipe he kept around in case of trouble. Fat lot of good it did last night.
Book went to the cash register to settle his and Zoe’s tab. He lowered his voice. “Looks like you don’t need any more trouble.”
“Christ, no, that was a hum-dinger last night.” Book saw Zoe’s look of reminiscence and regret: it had been a long time since U-Day, and it would have gone down fair fine, cracking a barstool upside some huin-dan’s head.
The barman gestured with his chin. “That’s Emilia. She’s the Ancient’s wife.”
Book’s eyebrows shot up, picturing some mythic or even supernatural being, but Zoe whispered, “Nah—probably just means a top-kick.”
She turned to the barman. “Think it’s time you cut her off. I don’t think this is a safe place for a drunked-up woman to be by herself,” Zoe said. “We’ve got a mule. If we take her home, she won’t start any trouble in here and nobody’ll start any trouble in here over her.” Zoe figured since it was a mule, Emilia could puke out the side if she had to.
Book shrugged. “Devil you know, and so forth. But I’m a Shepherd, and Mrs. Washburne here’s a respectable married woman. If Emilia wants to leave with us, I think it’ll be best all around.” He could almost hear Zoe thinking “Maybe not best for us, but screw it, we’ve got nothing else to do.” The Shepherd sometimes thought that a lot of River’s fantods were just old-fashioned carny mind-reading, observations and deductions from familiarity and assessment of body language.
“Want a lift home?” Zoe asked. Emilia’s brows contracted to a thundercloud, but then she loosened them and shrugged. Zoe took the wheel, and Book sat in the back next to Emilia and conveyed directions to the married quarters at the fort.
Obviously, when they arrived, Emilia was in no hurry to go in. She twisted the wedding ring around her big-knuckled red hand. It left a green ring on her skin. “Did he tell you I had to pay for it?” she said. “Oh. I guess you don’t know him. My husband. I thought I might have been knocked up. Turned out I wasn’t, though, but my folks could hear me thinking it. They would have thrown me out on the street if I didn’t get married. I gave him the money for the ring, he swore it was pure gold. Took all the money I had saved up, for the ring and the marriage license.” She looked down at the stain again. “Dick,” she said. Zoe wasn’t sure if that was an adjective or a proper noun.
“So you’re Wendingers? Here at the fort?” Book asked. Emilia nodded. “Well, mostly. Cassio, the pretty-boy, he’s the Looey, he’s from Flowers. And the General, well, he’s from where the Moorfolks come from.”
She didn’t seem curious about where Book and Zoe came from, but just to discourage inquisitiveness, “General Othello, yeah?” Zoe asked. “I saw him on the cover of Ebony.” Five pounds of fruit salad, she thought. The white gloves and the white hat set off his complexion nicely.
“My husband’s got his knife out for Othello,” Emilia said. “Walks around muttering that he thinks Othello screwed me. As if I’d go with a black fella—oh, sorry, no offense—and anyway if my husband really thought that, he’d a killed me already. And I’d a let him.”
“It’s been real entertaining,” Zoe said, reflecting that no good deed goes unpunished. “Looks like we got you safe home, so goodnight. Take care of yourself.”
This time, Book drove the mule back to Serenity. “Surprised the Wendingers put Othello in charge of the wing-ding,” Zoe said. “Not so much because he’s Black, but because he’s an incomer. Our leaders were our own folks. ‘Course, maybe if it was just a simulation and we could do it again, we’d try something different, maybe not get our asses kicked so bad.”
ACT TWO
II, I A Low Tavern
The next morning, still without much else to do, Zoe and Book wandered around the camp listening and asking a few questions. They met up at the other taverna, just to give them the turn.
“Kinda sucks,” Zoe said. “I mean, those Wendingers offering up Desdemona to Othello as a little Christmas bonus, keep him hard at work. ‘Here, take this pretty little white girl.’ Makes a change, selling white folks to Black folks, but still sucks. I almost couldn’t blame her for looking for another bathmat to park her slippers on.”
“Ah, but I don’t think that’s how it went,” Book said. He had secured a quantity of intel through his inquiries, as well as some creative racial invective. “Apparently, while Othello and Desdemona met at her father’s house—her father Brabantio was a great friend of his—their marriage was far from popular with the Powers That Be. In fact, they eloped, just before the war started—or was supposed to start, anyway. Brabantio even demanded a Senate hearing about it. After a touching speech by Desdemona about her love for Othello, the Senate not only dropped the case, but let Desdemona come out her to be with Othello.”
Zoe adeptly spat a melon seed shell onto a small white china plate. “They’ve been married how long?”
“About a week,” Book said. “Maybe less.”
“And she married him even though she didn’t got to, and he thinks she’s cheating already?”
“He is some years older than she is, and part of the male climacteric is questioning one’s choices, as well as…abilities.”
“You think he’s gonna harm her?”
Book shrugged. “Look at Emilia. Domestic violence in the military…is a problem. Or rather, if you instruct a man that violence is a solution, then he may go about looking for problems to fit it to.”
Zoe used a fingernail to scratch the last bit of shell from between her teeth. “We can’t let him act the fool. It’d look bad for all the brother and sisters in the Service. That Cassio, he gets trashed—and what kind of officer can’t hold his liquor?—and busts up a bar, that’s on him. General Othello, now, he creates a scandal or worse, and before you know it all the say-so is ‘super-subtle Wendinger’ and ‘erring barbarian.’”
Book nodded. “Do you think I should go talk to him? It’d come better from me, and a Shepherd—all his interviews are very specific about his Christian piety—than from you.”
Zoe shook her head. “I know his type. Wouldn’t listen to anybody, or anyways anybody wasn’t telling him what he wanted to hear. No, we’ll have to pull on the other end of the string.”
ACT THREE
III, I The Fort
The domestic arrangements at the fort suited Iago very well. It was nowhere near the worst billet he had ever had. He slept each night in a comfortless but genuine bed, not rolled in blankets on duckboards in a dugout’s mud or in a tent in the desert. He had been assigned a tiny stone-walled room in the Married Quarters (Non-Commissioned). Cassio’s cubicle in the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters was no larger and hardly more luxurious. KeyParis’ generally smiling climate, and the cheerless rooms, meant that much of the life of the army camp was lived in the fort’s central courtyard, near the fountain with its discount Baroque sculptures.
Othello sat on a folding canvas chair, at a skimpy table dragged outside, reading a pile of sitreps. An adjutant stood at attention next to the desk. Desdemona sat on a low stool, sewing campaign ribbons on Othello’s new Class A tunic. Othello groaned loudly, and jacknifed over, beads of sweat popping out of his forehead. Brabantio, too, had suffered from migraines, so Desdemona gently patted his forehead with a white silk handkerchief embroidered with strawberries. She raced back inside the building to get him some water and headache pills, not noticing that she dropped the handkerchief.
Emilia, as practiced in Dumb Insolence as any dogface, didn’t like stealing the handkerchief, but, slowly and grouchily, carried out the order. When Emilia handed it over to Iago, he gave a disapproving cough, and rushed out of their quarters. Nobody at the fort ever bothered locking the doors. He put the handkerchief on the child-sized desk in Cassio’s cubicle. When he went back a few hours later to “find” it, it had already disappeared.
III, ii Bianca’s Lodgings
The minute his shift ended, Cassio rushed out of the fort, into town, to the boardinghouse where his mistress was staying. Bianca, who had made the trip out to KeyParis with no encouragement whatsoever from Cassio, huffed “You want me to do *embroidery*? Some slut gives you a handkerchief, and that’s not good enough for you? Why do you want two fancy snotrags, anyway? You planning to breed them and sell off the puppies?”
“Nobody likes a smartass, Bianca,” Cassio said, unbuttoning the tight collar of his tunic. “Well, I’m here, we might as well do it.” She hated herself for it, but they did it, and everything except her better judgment enjoyed it. He dozed off briefly, lifting his head to say, “What’s for dinner.” And she hated herself that she had a selection of Cassio’s favorite meals ready to reheat.
ACT FOUR
IV, I Serenity
Desdemona issued an invitation to all the ladies of Serenity, although by common consent it was decided to leave River behind because she wouldn’t be good for their image. Zoe was putting the mule in gear when a pretty, if somewhat frantic-looking, woman approached Inara waving a copy of “Planet and Moon” magazine. “Oh, Madame Serra, may I have an autograph?” the woman said.
Inara motioned to Zoe to go ahead; she would catch up later. “Of course, dear,” Inara said. She signed the page showing her, looking impossibly slender under a gigantic hat with a reproduction of a stuffed peacock on top, at the St. Albans Derby. “I’m Bianca Guglielmi. I heard that an authentic Companion was here, and I couldn’t help myself. I’ve never had a chance to actually see someone so glamorous. So—important.” Since that was more approval and validation than Inara had received from Mal in the course of their entire acquaintanceship, Inara (regretting it even as it happened) lapped it up like a starving kitten with a season pass at a crème fraiche factory. Inara invited Bianca into her shuttle, and brewed a pot of tea (although mint rather than her usual matcha, as a tribute to local mores). Bianca leafed reverently through one of Inara’s scrapbooks.
“Are you a native KeyParisian?” Inara asked politely.
“Oh, no, I’m a Wendinger. I came here with the army—with Mikey, really. And now I wonder why I bothered. But here I am, and I don’t know anybody else. I suppose I could find someone else to take care of me…”
“I’m sorry,” Inara said. “A woman always risks a lot if she is dependent on a man, without the protection of a Guild contract. Or a legal marriage, of course.”
“Well, Desdemona’s married to Othello,” Bianca said. “For all the good it does her. Iago’s going around saying she’s slutting around with Mikey. Which isn’t true because if he was slutting around with her I’d cut his balls off. But Othello’s starting to believe it. I don’t know what’s going through Mikey’s tiny pretty pinhead. See this?” (Bianca waved a white handkerchief, spotted with strawberries.) “He said he found it, and he wanted me to make another one just like it. Found it, my ass. Or his balls. I heard that Desdemona has one like it. Well, I don’t want it, that’s for damn sure.”
“I’ve been invited to take tea with Desdemona,” Inara said. “Why don’t you give it to me? I’ll make sure that she gets it—and keep your name out of it. But, perhaps I’d best be getting to the fort. Is there someone with a taxi service we could call? I’d be glad to drop you off at your lodgings.”
IV, ii Desdemona’s Parlor
Meanwhile, Kaylee blew on the tiny glass of mint tea and tried not to let the blazing-hot metal cage around it cause her to drop it. Zoe took one look at hers and left it on the table.
“So, how’re you liking it here?” Kaylee asked.
“It’s been wonderful!” Desdemona said. “Can you imagine, I’d never even been on a spaceship before. It was so boring, just sitting all day in my father’s house. The most exciting thing all month would be planning the menu for a dozen graybearded Senators. And now here I am, part of a history—I mean, wars are a part of history, aren’t they? And married to the man I love. He’s had a fascinating life, and now I can be a part of it. You wouldn’t believe all the things he’s been through! The worlds he’s seen, and the battles and the highest levels of diplomacy! It was an education, just listening to him.”
“Huh,” Zoe said. “Seems some folks actually appreciate war stories. Even if they don’t have any to swap themselves.” The mint tea was now cool enough not to be an imminent hazard, so she threw it back like a shot of tequila. “Shepherd Book said your folks weren’t too pleased with your marriage. I know how that tune goes. My husband’s white, and my folks didn’t much feature that.”
Desdemona blinked, never having considered that angle on the unpopularity of diversity initiatives.
“Everybody here has been so kind to me,” she said. She looked down at the elaborately patterned rug at the feet. “Except that—well, Othello has become cold to me. Almost angry. No, angry, really. I didn’t really believe it when he gave me a special handkerchief when we were courting. He said he got it from his father, or his mother—I don’t remember, just that it was magic. That as long as I had it, he would love me. But if I gave it away, or lost it—well, things don’t work like that, do they?”
“We’ve seen some pretty off-center stuff,” Kaylee said.
“There’s something powerful about it. Romantic. Oh, I love that handkerchief so much! I would kiss it, and talk to it…”
Yehsooah, what a simp, Zoe thought.
“But now I can’t find it, and maybe that’s why he doesn’t love me anymore. And what am I going to do if he asks me where it is?”
“Got a Capture of it?” Kaylee asked.
Desdemona sniffled (wiping her nose with an ordinary tissue), nodded, and took out her Pasukom.
“Shoot, nothin’ to it,” Kaylee said. “Wave me the file. I’ll go back to the ship, have River cadcam you a new one in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.” She left, with Zoe and Desdemona debating whether it is ever legitimate to lie to one’s beloved husband.
IV, iii Serenity
When Kaylee got back to Serenity, River had already anticipated her, and was waving—not a white flag of surrender, but a pair of Inara’s intimates that had much more surface area than the average. Kaylee (who figured that River either prognosticated that Inara wouldn’t mind her lingerie being rifled, or counted on Kaylee to sweet-talk her) nodded her thanks and showed her the Capture. “I can do this. It will survive visual inspection,” River said, “But not forensic examination. I do not have adequate time to synthesize even trace amounts of mummy and virgins’ cardiac blood and then age them up to conform to generations of General Othello’s ancestors.”
“Don’t matter none,” Kaylee said. “By the time they get around to forensicating, if they ever do—this crowd don’t seem too strong on evidence and logical connections--we’ll be long been and gone.” Programming in the pattern took seven minutes, embroidering it took two, and putting a rolled edge on the handkerchief took less than a minute.
Othello had ordered a Readiness drill that involved a great deal of crawling through mud. This, in turn, resulted in a vast amount of filthy laundry for the Quartermaster Corps members assigned to the washhouse. When it was time for chow, they all headed for the mess hall, leaving the huge bunch of keys in the door. Because nobody bothered to lock up.
IV, iv Desdemona’s Parlor
The aged, wheezy taxi dropped off Inara; Emilia showed her the way to Desdemona’s quarters. “Oh, there’s no more tea or pastry,” Desdemona said.
“That doesn’t matter,” Inara said. “I’m delighted to meet you! Here, I believe this belongs to you.” She handed Desdemona a beautifully carved sandalwood box. Desdemona opened it curiously, and then pulled out the handkerchief. She burst into tears, then took off one of her bangle bracelets, wrapped the handkerchief around it, and tied it into place. “Oh, thank you so much. I can’t believe it took only a minute to make. Thank you a thousand times.”
Inara had very little idea what she was on about, but could accept homage gracefully in any circumstances. So she bowed her head and touched two fingers to her shoulder in acknowledgement, grateful that she was not required to provide an origin story for the handkerchief.
IV, v The Courtyard of the Fort
“Let me show you around the fort,” Desdemona said. She looped her arm through Inara’s and, followed by Zoe, led her toward the courtyard. Iago whispered to Othello “There she comes. Probably from the lust-spotted bed she has defiled. Ask her if she has your precious gift, the handkerchief. If she does not, that proves her to be a filthy whore. The unwritten law—no court in the Wendinger Empire would convict you of killing her. I’ll take care of Cassio for you. No charge. My pleasure.”
At the subsequent court martial (in absentia) it was discovered that the brigade’s Alliance Sign Language interpreter could also read lips.
Othello charged toward Desdemona. Iago prudently stepped back, out of the range of the predicted arterial spray.
Kaylee parked the mule and sprinted toward the courtyard. When she saw the scene already in progress, she wondered how to manage the hand-off. But she didn’t have to. Desdemona took off her bracelet, and handed it to her husband. “There it is, dearest. Tied in two places so it wouldn’t fall off.”
Kaylee took the duplicate handkerchief out of the teddy-bear-embellished pocket of her coveralls, and stuffed it into a potted plant while everyone’s attention was directed elsewhere.
Othello reversed directions, lunging toward Iago’s last location. “You traduced my dearest love!” he bellowed. Iago, however, had gotten when the getting was good. Othello, proactively stopping Desdemona’s mouth with a kiss before she could say something, responded to the shouts of “Get a room!” by scooping up a happy Desdemona in his arms and running off with her toward their quarters. The soldiers, many of whom had been dragooned into watching multiple rom-coms by their significant others, clapped and cheered. Despite the obvious lack of admissible evidence, they tried to start a betting pool on whether the general and his bride were about to consummate their marriage for the first time. They were unable to do so in the absence of Iago, who normally would have held the book.
IV, vi The Washhouse
Zoe took off after Iago, catching up with him near the washhouse, where he was on the ground, dazed, after Zoe had tossed three points of rock into the back of his head. She pulled open the door, dragged Iago inside, and left him on the floor, covered with the contents of several laundry hampers. It seemed like too much work to haul him up inside a hamper and cover him with the sticky, redolent contents. Anyway, there was enough mud on her hands as it was.
Zoe locked the door, took the big bunch of keys, and tossed it into the nearest ditch, which had been stirred up by the Readiness exercise. The Quartermaster Corps guys never did find the keys, when they got back from chow. It took an hour for them to find somebody with another set. (It was the army, everything was issued in duplicate.) By then Iago was dazed but conscious, and madder than a wet, indeed muddy, hen.
IV, vii Mount Lil’Lympus
Iago, his occupation gone, stormed into his quarters shouting “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of them!” His words echoed hollowly. When he realized that Emilia had vanished (with her clothes and the contents of the biscuit tin with the housekeeping money), he hiked up to the summit of the nearest approach KeyParis had to a mountain, and looked down on his persecutors. “I—banish—you!” he shouted.
This time, there was an audience. A palpable thug, set off painfully by a two-thousand-credit bespoke suit that only emphasized his torso’s greater resemblance to a fireplug than to Praxitelean marble, said, “Hello. You are out of a job, yes? A significant major person, Mr. Adelai Niska, is once again executive-recruiting. For persons with your skillset.” (There was no need to discuss the reason for the turnover.)
IV, viii Bachelor Officers’ Quarters
When Book first appeared in Cassio’s room, the lieutenant was disinclined to return home and assist his elderly, decrepit father with the management of the family estate. For one thing, Ser Pierluigi Cassio was a hale and hearty fifty-three, and for another, the family estate had been shrunken below the point at which management was required. Or even possible. Book pointed out that there were opportunities in private security for veterans, and Cassio didn’t have to go back to Flowers, as long as he put in his papers and got the hell out of KeyParis.
ACT FIVE
V, i: Inara’s Shuttle
The Companions’ Guild, relying on Inara’s recommendation, accepted Bianca for Mature Student Paraprofessional Certification Training at the Guild House on Fontainevert. There were enough Rim planets that were getting a little Core-like at the edges. They were too rough for regular Companions to bother with, but the Guild believed that there was money to be made in the emerging markets. Fontainevert was close enough to Serenity’s next stop for Inara to take Bianca there in her shuttle. Emilia came along too; she figured that her skills as seamstress (although not Seamstress), hairdresser, and cosmetologist would allow her to earn a living.
Simon decided to take River’s word for it: the antibiotics, mixed with decoctions of native plants, would probably be reasonably safe as a veterinary ointment. It might even be beneficial to cattle and hogs, although Simon didn’t think they were susceptible to the placebo effect. The crew would still have been in the red for the trip, except that Desdemona felt such horrible guilt about receiving the first check in settlement of her father’s estate that she immediately endorsed it over to Mal. Mal had no scruples about accepting it, and by the time the second check arrived, Desdemona felt better about the whole thing and felt no scruples about cashing it herself and redecorating the KeyParis Governor’s Palace.
V, ii The Governor’s Palace, KeyParis
The Wendinger Senate debated whether to confiscate Brabantio’s estate under the Slayer Statute, and decided that it would be a bad idea to piss off Othello. But they preferred him propitiated and distant. On the principle of “don’t go away mad, just go away,” they made him Governor of KeyParis.
The Governor and his lady retired to bed. Desdemona’s wedding sheets had long been replaced by ones with a much higher thread count.
Othello pulled on the bottoms of his pale-blue pajamas; he never wore the tops. Desdemona used to wear them sometimes, but now the bump strained at the buttons. Othello kissed the top of Desdemona’s head. “I rather will suspect the sun with cold than thee with wantonness,” Othello said.
Desdemona, who had decided to forgive because she was kinder than he was, said, “I am your own forever.”
Othello flinched.