Corngold, looking not the least abashed, trotted out again, exchanged looks with Ash, and went off after the others.
Ossin paused and opened the top of one of the half-doors. Lissar stepped forward and looked over the bottom half. There was a small, pathetically small, rounded, lumpy pile in one corner of the small room, which was ankle-deep in straw.
A small window-this room was on the low side of the hall, and the door ran up to the ceiling-let sunlight in, a long yellow wedge falling across the floor and brightening the white-and-brindle rumps of a couple of the tiny puppies in the pile. Lissar could see blanket-ends protruding from under tiny heads and feet.
"There they are," said the prince sadly. "I thought of putting a bitch in with them, but my two most reliable mothers have litters of their own. By the time I found out if one of the others would accept them and start producing milk, if the answer was no, it would probably be too late to try again."
Lissar softly pulled the bolt on the lower half-door and stepped inside. She knelt down beside them and touched a small back, ran a finger down the fragile spine. The puppy made a faint noise, half murmur, half squeak, a minuscule wriggle, and subsided. She looked around. Ash was standing in the doorway with a look of what Lissar guessed to be consternation on her face; Nob and Tolly were nowhere to be seen. There was a water dish with a piece of straw floating in it, near the puppy-heap. The little run was very clean.
"That water dish is doing a lot of good," said the prince irritably. "Jobe-has anyone tried to feed Ilgi's litter?"
Lissar heard footsteps stop. "Hela tried, but I don't think she got too far." The voice was that of the messenger who is not completely sure that his message won't get him killed.
"Oh, get out of here, I'm not asking you to be wet-nurse," said the prince in the same tone. The footsteps began again, quicker this time, and then a pause, and a voice, as if thrown back over a shoulder, "There's six left."
"There were nine born, live and perfect," said Ossin, and there was both anger and grief in his voice. "While they're asleep, I'll show you where your room is-after I ask Berry what's available. Cory's old room, I expect."
Lissar shook her head. "I'll sleep here, if you don't mind, and I have no possessions to keep. Ash will stay with me." She looked up, sitting on her folded legs; the prince was looking at her with an expression she could not read. It might have been surprise, or relief. It was not wistfulness or longing; it might have been hope. "They will have to be fed every couple of hours anyway," she said. "And kept warm."
The prince shook himself, rather like a dog. "As you wish. Washrooms and baths are that way"-he raised an arm, the hand invisible behind the frame of the door.
"Jobe and Hela and Berry can get you anything you need-milk, meal, rags and so on-you and the dogs get the same stew, most of the time, but my dogs eat very well, so it's not a hardship, and the baker is the same one providing bread for my father's table." The prince's smile reappeared, and fell away again immediately. "I have to go attend some devils-take-it banquet tonight, and I will probably be trapped till late. I'll come by when I can, to see how you are doing."
Lissar was aware that his anxiety was for the puppies, not for her, but she said sincerely, "I thank you."
He took a deep breath, and as he turned and the sunlight fell fully on his face, she saw how tired he was, remembering that he had said that he had been up all the night before with the bitch he could not save. "I hope I don't fall asleep in the middle of it," he added. "The count is the world's worst bore, and he always wants to tell me his hunting stories. I've heard most of them a dozen times."
After he left, she went out to find someone who would provide her with the requisites for her attempt at puppy care. Jobe was watching for her, and led her through the open archway that Corngold had been earlier turned away from, where he introduced her to Hela and to Berry, who left at once, several dogs in his wake.
Jobe was lugubrious and Hela brisk, but they treated her as if she knew what she was doing, which she both appreciated and simultaneously rather wished they would condescend to her instead, if the condescension would provide her with any useful advice.
The puppies were beginning to stir and make small cheeping noises, bumbling blindly through the straw, when she returned, looking for someone who was not there. Twilight was falling; as she sat down cross-legged on the floor with her bowl of warm milk and rags, Jobe appeared with a lantern, which he hung on a hook in the wall inside the door to the puppies' stall. "There's an old fire-pot somewhere," he said. "Hela's gone to look. It would be easier if you could heat your milk here, during the nights, when our fire is banked." "Our" fire burnt in the common-room, where the staff-and most of the dogs, come evening-collected, and there was a pot of stew, firmly lidded in case of inquisitive dogs, simmering there now. "And it would give you a little extra warmth, too, as long as . . ."
"As long as I can prevent the puppies from frying themselves," Lissar answered, and saw the faint look of approval cross his long face as he nodded. "Thank you,"
said Lissar. "It would be helpful."
Jobe seemed inclined to linger, but hesitated over what he wished to say. "You'll do your best and all that, of course, my lady, but the prince isn't an unfair man. He knows as well as I do you've a hopeless task, and he won't fault you for it. None of us would take it, you know."
Lissar looked up at him, thinking of her bare feet and long plait of hair. "Why do you call me 'my lady'?"
Jobe's expression was of patience with someone who was asking a very old and silly riddle that everyone knows the answer to. "Well, you are one, ain't you? No more than yon bitch is a street cur. They don't generally let people bring livestock to the receiving-hall, you know." He smiled a little at his own joke, and left her.
TWENTY-ONE
SILENCE FELL AFTER HE LEFT; SHE HEARD THE OCCASIONAL
YIP-these dogs all seemed to bark as little as Ash did-and the occasional crisp word from a human voice. My lady, she thought. I was only the apprentice to an herbalist.
Perhaps this is why the title makes me uncomfortable; I am pretending to be what I am not. But am I not pretending worse than that, in being here at all?
She picked up the nearest puppy, who had blundered up against her foot and was nosing it hopefully. The sounds the puppies made were no louder than rustled straw.
She dipped a rag in the milk, and offered it to the puppy, who ignored it, now exploring her lingers. Its squeaks began to sound more anxious and unhappy, and she noticed that the little belly was concave, and the tiny ribcage through the thin hair felt as delicate and unprotected as eggshell. She squeezed the tiny raw mouth open, and dropped the milky rag inside, but the puppy spat it out again immediately, in its uncoordinated, groping way, and would not suck.
She paused, cradling the pup in one hand. I cannot fail so immediately and absolutely, she thought. If the puppy will not suck, I must pour it down his throat somehow. I wonder what Jobe meant when he said Hela hadn't "gotten too far"?