Gil knew that at the time she had known perfectly well what she was doing. She was saving her own life.
Absently she thought, Four for sure and one maybe, if the poor bastard bled to death.
And she began to cry, as she had done when she had lost her virginity. She had crossed a line that could never be recrossed. It was no longer possible for her to be what she had been.
'Hey, Angel Eyes,' Gnift's voice said again, and the sword-calloused hand wiped the tears from her cheek. 'It's all over. Just a little broken collarbone. Nothing to that.' But she could not seem to stop herself and wept, not for the pain, but out of a sense of loss and an understanding of herself.
The world returned slowly to focus. She lay on her own bunk in the barracks, the narrow room jammed with her fellow Guards in the blurred yellow glare of the grease lamps. Her shoulder was strapped and braced, and Gnift was wrapping up his crude surgical equipment on the next bunk, his elf-bright eyes kind. Melantrys was standing next to him, a bloody towel dangling from her hand. Caldern, who had replaced the Icefalcon as captain of the deep-night watch, towered over them both.
Melantrys glanced over at her. 'You did nicely,' she said. 'Clean. I told you she had a strong side-cut, Gnift. Took the foot off through both bones and halfway through the other ankle.' Her cold, careless eyes returned to Gil. 'Was that a one-handed cut?'
Gil drew a shuddering breath and nodded. She wondered if her father had cried the first time he'd killed some Japanese he didn't know. In a voice that sounded hideously matter-of-fact, she said, 'Yeah. What happened to you, Caldern?'
The big captain scratched his head. 'Were had for chump,' he drawled in his north-country accent. 'Chappy come yellin' murder down the way, and 'twere no others to call. I followed, and a pretty chase he led me; and lost of him after a'. Sorry it is I am, lass.'
Gil shook her head, closing her eyes again against the light. 'You couldn't have known.'
'Not something anyone would have guessed,' Janus' voice said, and the Commander loomed suddenly from the darkness. 'We never thought to be posting guards on the gate to keep folk from throwing them open at night.' He elbowed his way through the press to stand behind her, as large and solid as a Mack truck. 'Are you well, Gil-Shalos?'
'Fine,' she said quietly. The one person who could have comforted the pain in her soul was camped somewhere in the middle of the plains; she wanted only to sleep.
She heard Janus say to the others, 'Show's over for the night, children; time to clear out the College of Surgeons. The alarm's out - there's probably not a Dark One in a hundred miles, but it's an all-troops patrol of the Keep, just to be sure.'
There was scuffling, moans, chaff and vivid curses in the pungent tongue of the Wathe. Through her closed eyes Gil heard them leaving, Gnift flirting outrageously with Melantrys, and Janus and Caldern conversing in their unintelligible north-country dialect. The noises faded, amid a jangle of sword belts and mail. Lonely darkness returned. 'Can I get you anything?'
Gil opened her eyes again, surprised. In her thin peasant skirts and black cloak, Minalde sat on the next bunk.
'You can get me some water, if you will.'The girl turned away to dip some out of the communal tank. 'What are you doing here?'
'They told me you'd been hurt,' Aide said simply. 'They woke me to sign the papers to arrest Parscino Pral.' She came back with the dripping cup in her hands. 'Can you sit up to drink?'
'I think so. Who's Parscino Pral?' 'The man whose foot you cut off.' Aide spoke very matter-of-factly as she helped Gil sit up a little further against the collected pillows of the entire barracks. The slightest movement ground the broken ends of the collarbone together in the bruised mess of the torn flesh. 'He was one of the wealthiest merchants in Gae. The man you killed was Yard Webbling, his partner. Pral says the third man was Bendle Stooft.'
'He was.' Gil remembered now, the faces falling into place. Pral had been a member of Alwir's coterie of merchants, the day Janus had been released by the Penambrans. Bendle Stooft had been there, too, dressed in green velvet and ermine. She didn't remember Yard Webbling at all. But already it was only a matter of
academic interest. Aide certainly didn't look upset. But then, Gil thought, Aide has seen far more men die than I could ever imagine. Since the fall of Gae, her life has been nothing but a wilderness of flight and horror. She was certainly less than likely to waste good guilt over a man or two killed and a shut door that condemned three others.
'Could you identify him before a tribunal? Aide asked.
'Sure,' Gil said, 'no problem.'
Aide blew out two of the room's three lamps. 'Would you like me to stay for a while?' she asked.
Her eyes closed again, Gil said quietly, 'No. Thank you, though.' She heard the girl hesitate; then quick, light footfalls pattered through the empty barracks and out into the Aisle beyond.
Bendle Stooft was brought to trial late the following morning, in the big cell Alwir had taken over for his audience hall in the Royal Sector. Gil recognized him immediately. The soft, slack face and receding button chin had swum through the confusion of last night's dreams. He sat now in a carved chair, nervously fiddling with the jewels in his rings, so that his hands glittered with a fireworks display of topaz and green in the warm gold of the candlelight. It was a formal occasion; candles banked the long and strangely carved ebony table at which the tribunal sat, giving them the curious appearance of holy statues enshrined in votive light. The fire of bullion embroidery rippled and flickered over Alwir's breast and sleeves and wound like tattoo-work around the knuckles of his black kid gloves. The flame caught in a hard glint of hot red-purple in the amethyst of Bishop Govannin's episcopal ring and glowed in the crimson of her habit. Between them, Minalde looked very pale and composed.
Gil stood behind the prisoner, flanked by Janus and Caldern. She was exhausted from the walk here, and her head buzzed with fever. The room around her had a two-dimensional quality, unreal to her tired eyes. Colours seemed to drip as vividly as blood against velvet darkness, and sounds changed their quality, either louder than they should be or humming and distant.
Her own voice echoed strangely in her ears as she said, That is the man.'
'Are you sure?' Alwir asked. Beside him, the Bishop unstacked her long, fragile fingers and stacked them together differently, as if observing the patterns made by the shadows of those bony knuckles.
'Yes,' Gil said. 'Of course.'
'You understand the severity of the charge?' Alwir asked in that soft, melodious voice. 'You must be sure there is no mistake.'
Gil frowned. 'He and his friends tried to murder me,' she said. 'It isn't likely I would forget him.'
'And,' Janus said quietly at her side, 'if the charge is severe, the consequences of
leaving the Keep doors open after dark are more so.'
'Even so,' Alwir agreed gravely. 'And indeed, some kind of punishment is certainly in order.'
'Some kind? Govannin purred, her eyes slipping sideways at him, as dark as smoky agate. 'By Keep Law, there is but one punishment.'
Candlelight glittered a thousandfold in the dark-blue eyes. The Chancellor made a deprecating noise of general agreement in his throat, and Stooft turned fish-belly white. 'Nevertheless,' Alwir went on, 'since there was no clear evidence that the Keep was in danger -'
'My lord,' Janus broke in, 'we found the bones of Stooft's three helpers outside the food compounds this morning. It's sure that the Dark were in the Vale last night.'