"There is a tale here."
"A complicated tale. On the grace of my mother and the honor of my father, I swear to you that we work for the safety of Gondai."
The old man bobbed his head in return, then turned his back to me. "Release him, daughter. Whatever harvest he must reap for what he has been and done, it is far beyond you and me."
With an explosion of disgust, the girl sliced through the ropes, nearly taking a few of my fingers with them. She whispered in my ear with a spit of hatred. "I won't forget. Justice will be done." Or perhaps it was only in my head that I heard it. Then she untethered her horses, and took her father's arm, and with no more word, they headed off toward the hospice lights and soon vanished into the night.
As for me, I huddled alone in the shelter of the tree through a very dark midnight, waiting for my vision to dear and the blood to return to my arms and legs. The cold rain fell for hours.
Chapter 8
"You were fortunate to be given a chance to speak," said my father when I explained my shopworn appearance on the next morning. "Seeing that bruise makes my own head hurt."
"If the choice had been left to the woman, the earth would have split in half before I'd have said anything," I said.
I'd only told him an abbreviated version of the night's encounter: how I'd been recognized and assaulted by a woman who had been captive in Zhev'Na, that I'd managed to convince her father to withhold judgment and keep our secret, at least for now. My father would guess there was more, but it wasn't his way to push. I just couldn't bring myself to talk about it.
"I'll watch my back a little closer from now on," I said.
We strolled along a tree-shaded lane that led from the main house to a fenced paddock where the Lady D'Sanya's horses grazed. Though the hour was still early, the sun had already sapped the previous day's moisture and glittered hot through the leaves. When we came to the edge of the shade, our steps slowed.
A horse cantered through the paddock gate on its far side. No mistaking the well-formed gray or the rider's cloud of pale hair.
"I'm not very good at this investigating business," I said, pausing to watch her. "I want to march up and ask her straight off what she's up to."
"You don't think it remotely possible the Lady could be as she claims?"
"She lived in Zhev'Na for more than three years before she was enchanted to sleep. No, I don't believe she could be untouched by it. She was amazed that I'd told you what I'd experienced, and she seems to assume that . . . forgiveness … is necessary for anyone who was there. She was not a slave. So what did she do that needs forgiving? That's the key."
As I resumed walking down the path that led past the paddock, my father didn't move from his position in the shade. "I think I'll go back," he called after me. "I want to finish a letter to your mother, and I think the Lady might be inclined to be more sociable without me."
I waved, walked on to the paddock, and soon found myself hanging over the white painted fence, admiring the way D'Sanya slipped from her mount so gracefully and catching her unguarded expression when she turned and saw me. Her face took on a certain brightness, an indescribable clarity. How could such a look, not even a smile, please me so well?
Think, fool. She is of Zhev'Na. It is impossible . . . impossible . . . that she is what she seems.
"Master Gerick! How is it I find you here alone? Is your father well?"
"He claims he's getting lazy and hasn't finished a letter he wants me to take to a friend, so he's sent me off on my own."
Her horse snuffled and crunched an apple she pulled from her pocket. After patting his nose and stroking his neck, she turned him over to a groom who had hurried out from the stables. Then she walked over to the fence. She wore a tan riding skirt, tan boots, and a filmy, wide-sleeved shirt that was either blue or green, depending on the angle of the light. When she stretched out her arm in my direction, I believed she'd read my thoughts and was allowing me to see more of the long pale limb the slightest breeze left bare, but eventually her arched eyebrow and her boot on the fence rail penetrated my thick head.
She laughed as I gave her a hand to climb over. But when she stood before me in the lane, a quick sobriety clouded her face in the way thin sheets of vapor mute the sun. Her fingers twined in a knot at her breast, as if she couldn't quite decide what to say next and didn't like her choices. "I must apologize for my rudeness the other evening," she said at last. "I hope your father was not offended."
"Not in the least. Just a bit—"
"Curious, I suppose."
"I won't deny it. You didn't know he'd been a slave. But you hadn't asked; we assumed there were others here." I clasped my gloved hands behind my back.
"Of course there are. Several others."
She started walking down the road toward the trees, her arms folded tightly now. I walked beside her, not offering my arm. She was no wilting flower, and I needed to keep my wits about me.
"Their slave-taking was so despicable, so wretched." Her head and shoulders moved tautly with each word. "Amidst all their cruelties, it was so absolutely evil. When I see the scars, it makes me feel— I don't know how to describe it."
"Guilty? For having escaped it?"
She glanced up at me sharply, her eyes almost on a level with mine. "Of course. That's it. Yes. I should have known I didn't have to explain it to you."
"My father was in such pain before he came here that he couldn't move, couldn't think, could scarcely speak. You've helped him a great deal."
"And I'm glad of it. But I wish so very much . . ."
". . . that you could go back and change what happened in Zhev'Na. Because those horrors make illness such as his so unfair after what he's suffered already."
"Exactly." Her steps paused, and she crinkled her nose at me. "Do you read thoughts?"
"As little as possible."
"Then it must be that you have the same ones as I."
"I wouldn't wish them on you," I said, resuming our stroll into the trees. "Or anyone." This was not easy banter between us. Not with the ache in my head and shoulders to remind me, and the depths of sadness in her words. Talking seemed easier when we kept moving.
Unfolding her arms, she clasped her hands behind her as if to mimic me. "There's much to be said for sharing these experiences as we do. We can move on to other topics without having to dredge them up and explain."
"What other topics?" Perhaps I was at last going to hear what I needed to hear.
The dappled sunlight teased at her face and shifted the color of her silken shirt to deep purple and blue. Suddenly she stopped walking again and tugged at my arm, forcing me around to face her. "Remembering how to enjoy ourselves," she said. "I think that would be a marvelous beginning. I would state unhesitatingly that you've near forgotten it."
Without meaning to do it, I burst out laughing at such foolish words so seriously spoken. She was so unexpected. "Conceded," I said.
She threw up her hands, more animated by the moment. "I've been so involved in explaining myself, being tested, dragging Archivists about to dig up ruins of my lifetime, and trying to do some good with the gifts holy Vasrin has shaped in me, that I've not had time to remember what I was doing when I was fourteen . . . before the world changed. I know that life was wonderful, and I enjoyed it immensely. But I seem to have lost the skill. So I need to relearn it, and you must relearn it along with me."
"I don't think I ever knew how. I was only ten. . . ." And had lived in terror since I was five years old, when my nurse discovered that I was a sorcerer in a world where sorcerers were burned alive, even if they were five.
"Exactly so! The Preceptors and a hundred town guilds clamor that I must assume my father's throne right away, that it is my duty, my 'heritage,' even though the good Prince Ven'Dar is much loved and admired. But I've put them off. I've told them that I need to learn of the world as it is now and to grow accustomed to being free again. I intend to permit no distraction, not even the throne of Avonar, until I've recaptured the pleasures of being fourteen and grown up to my duties." As if to prove her point, she climbed up on a stone half-pillar, one of a pair like those that marked the roadside all up and down the lane between the paddock and the gardens.