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top floor, and refuge.
    * * *
    Miles knocked on the carved wood door. "Who's there?" Elena's voice floated through faintly. He tried the enamel-patterned knob, found it unlocked, and snaked a hand waving the flowers around the door. Her voice added, "Oh, come in, Miles."
    He bobbed around the door, lean in black, and grinned tentatively. She was sitting in an antique chair by her window. "How did you know it was me?" Miles asked.
    "Well, it was either you or—nobody brings me flowers on their knees." Her eye lingered a moment on the doorknob, unconsciously revealing the height scale used for her deduction.
    Miles promptly dropped to his knees and quick-marched across the rug, to present his offering with a flourish. "Voila!" he cried, surprising a laugh from her. His legs protested this abuse by going into painful cramping spasms. "Ah . . ." He cleared his throat, and added in a much smaller voice, "Do you suppose you could help me up? These damn grav-crutches . . ."
    "Oh, dear." Elena assisted him on to her narrow bed, made him put his legs out straight, and returned to her chair.
    Miles looked around the tiny bedroom. "Is this closet the best we can do for you?"
    "I like it. I like the window on the street," she assured him. "It's bigger than my father's room here." She tested the flowers' scent, a musty green odor. Miles immediately regretted not sorting through to find some of the more perfumy kind. She looked up at him in sudden suspicion. "Miles, where did you get these?"
    He flushed, faintly guilty. "Borrowed 'em from Grandfather. Believe me, they'll never be missed. It's a jungle down there."
    She shook her head helplessly. "You're incorrigible." But she smiled.
    "You don't mind?" he asked anxiously. "I thought you'd get more enjoyment from them than he would, at this point."
    "Just so nobody thinks I filched them myself!"
    "Refer them to me," he offered grandly. He jerked up his chin. She was gazing into the flowers' delicate structure more somberly. "Now what are you thinking? Sad thoughts?"
    "Honestly, my face might as well be a window."
    "Not at all. Your face is more like—like water. All reflections and shifting lights—I never know what's lurking in the depths." He dropped his voice at the end, to indicate the mystery of the depths.
    Elena smiled derisively, then sighed seriously. "I was just thinking—I've never put flowers on my mother's grave."
    He brightened at the prospect of a project. "Do you want to? We could slip out the back—load up a cart or two—nobody'd notice . . ."
    "Certainly not!" she said indignantly. "This is quite bad enough of you." She turned the flowers in the light from the window, silvered from the chill autumn cloudiness. "Anyway, I don't know where it is."
    "Oh? How strange. As fixated as the Sergeant is on your mother, I'd have thought he'd be just the pilgrimage type. Maybe he doesn't like to think about her death, though."
    "You're right about that. I asked him about it once, to go and see where she's buried and so on, and it was like talking to a wall. You know how he can be."
    "Yes, very like a wall. Particularly when it falls on someone." A theorizing gleam lit Miles's eye. "Maybe it's guilt. Maybe she was one of those rare women who die in childbirth—she did die about the time you were born, didn't she?"
    "He said it was a flyer accident."
    "Oh."
    "But another time he said she'd drowned."
    "Hm?" The gleam deepened to a persistent smoulder. "If she'd ditched her flyer in a river or something, they could both be true. Or if he ditched it . . ."
    Elena shivered. Miles caught it, and castigated himself inwardly for being an insensitive clod. "Oh, sorry. Didn't mean to—I'm in a gruesome mood today, I'm afraid," he apologized. "It's all this blasted black." He flapped his elbows in imitation of a carrion bird.
    He lapsed into introspective quiet for a time, meditating on the ceremonies of death. Elena fell in with his silence, gazing wistfully down on the darkly