States of Grace by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Emerenzio—you know him—will tend to your expenses, just as he would do if I were here.” He drew her close, making no effort to cajole her from her weeping. “Pier-Ariana, I will miss you every day I am gone.”
    “But it will not be enough to bring you back in less than a year,” she lamented.
    “I will return as soon as I may,” he said, his voice dropping to a deep, mellifluous note.
    “So you say now. But men are faithless creatures.” She shoved herself away from him, pinching the bridge of her nose to stop the flow of her tears.
    “But, as you know, I am not like other men,” he said.
    “You, more than most, will not remain faithful; it isn’t in your nature,” she accused. “I know you, and what you need. You will have other women. You must.”
    “But I will not compromise you,” he said. Five hundred years ago he might have tried to approach her, to reassure her, but after Huegenet and Demetrice, he knew better than to attempt to persuade Pier-Ariana to change her mind; he decided to offer her the only truthful pledge he could. “My feeling for you will not lessen because I have feelings for another: believe this.”
    “So you tell me,” she exclaimed. “Gran’ Dio, I hate this! I might as well be a hapless trull, serving men’s pleasure for a chance to eat.” She sat down on an upholstered stool. “It isn’t really like that. You’re not using me unkindly; I know that. Most women would thank the Saints and Angels day and night for such a protector as you are, as I do, when I see what happens to others. And it isn’t as if you’ve promised me anything beyond—”
    “—beyond what we have now,” he said calmly. “Nor did you ask it.”
    “And I wouldn’t want it, for it would take away from my music,” she said, sounding defeated. “But this is different, isn’t it?”
    “It is something you have not had to endure with me. I have been in Venezia for all our association.” He took a step nearer to her.
    “Antwerp and Bruges, and Amsterdam are all far away,” she said, and sighed. “Even an urgent message, carried by private couriers, would take at least ten days to reach Venezia from there.”
    “There are farther places,” said di Santo-Germano, thinking back to China, to Russia, to the destruction of Delhi. “I have returned from them all.”
    She made a mess of trying to laugh. “I should be grateful, then, that you go only as far as the Low Countries?” The shine of perspiration on her upper lip glistened in the lamp-light. “Or that you have left me so well-provided for? You say you do not want my gratitude, but you do all in your power to deserve it, in spite of your going away. You will not change your mind, will you?”
    “No, but you can take some comfort that I am not cut off from you by oceans or deserts or mountains.” He held out his hands to her as he had done earlier. “I will not put you at a disadvantage, carina, whether here or far away.”
    “But you will not put others at a disadvantage, either, will you?” Her chin came up and she glared at him through the shine in her eyes.
    Di Santo-Germano took a long breath. “What sort of man would I be if I abjured my covenant with others?”
    “You tell me you are not a man at all, not a living one, anyway,” she said in sudden world-weariness.
    He regarded her steadily. “All the more reason for me to uphold—”
    “What does it matter?” She dropped her head. “You will do what you will do.”
    He stood still, her pain as palpable to him as a blow would be. “They are in danger on my account. I cannot abandon them; as I would not abandon you.” He spoke gently, his enigmatic gaze fixed on her.
    “So you will go north,” she said.
    “At the end of summer. That still gives us seven weeks in which to arrange all that you require during my absence.”
    “Seven weeks,” she said as if the words could conjure power for her. “Seven weeks.”
    “Yes.” He dropped down on one knee beside