"Is it Mante?" Chei demanded of him, rolling onto his back and lifting his head, straining with the effort.
"No," Vanye said. "It is not." And reckoned that Mante was some enemy, for Chei seemed to take some comfort in that, for all that his jaw was still clamped tight. "Nor anywhere where they treat men as they treated you. I swear you that."
"She—" The man lay back and shifted desperate eyes toward their camp.
"—is not your enemy," Vanye said. "As I am not."
"Are you qhal?"
That question took the warmth from the daylight.
"No," Vanye said. "That I am not." In Andur-Kursh the fairness of his own brown hair was enough to raise questions of halfling blood. But the one who asked was palest blond; and that puzzled him. "Do I look to be?"
"One does not need to look to be."
It was, then, what he had feared. He thought before he spoke. "I have seen the like. My cousin—was such a man."
"How does he fare?"
"Dead," Vanye said. "A long time ago." And frowned to warn the man away from that matter. He looked up at a motion in the edge of his vision and saw Morgaine coming down the hill toward them, carefully—a warlike figure, in her black and silver armor, the sword swinging at her side, either hand holding a cloth-wrapped cup she was trying not to spill.
Chei followed his stare, tilting his head back, watching her as she came, as she reached the place where they sat and offered the steaming cups.
"Thank you," Vanye said, as he took his cup from her hand, and took Chei's as well.
"Against the chill," Morgaine said. She was still frowning, but she did not show it to Chei, who lay beneath his blanket. "Do you need anything?" she asked, deliberately, doggedly gracious. "Hot water?"
"On the inside of him will serve," Vanye said. "For the rest—the sun is warm enough when the wind falls."
She walked off then, in leisurely fashion, up the hill, plucked a twig and stripped it like some village girl walking a country lane,the dragon sword swinging at her side.
She was, he reckoned, on the edge of a black rage.
He gave Chei his cup and sipped his own, wrinkling his nose as he discovered the taste. " 'Tis safe," he said, for Chei hesitated at the smell of his. "Tea and herbs." He tasted his again. "Febrifuge. Against the fever. She gives us both the same, lest you think it poison. A little cordial to sweeten it. The herb is sour and bitter."
"Qhalur witch," the man said, "into the bargain."
"Oh, aye," Vanye said, glancing at him with some mild surprise, for that belief might have come out of Andur-Kursh. He regarded such a human, homelike belief almost with wistfulness, wondering where he had lost it. "Some say. But you will not lose your soul for a cup of tea."
He had, he thought when he had said it, lost his for a similar matter, a bit of venison. But that was long ago, and he was damned most for the bargain, not what sustenance he had taken of a stranger in a winter storm.
Chei managed to lean over on his elbow and drink, between coughing, and spilled a good amount of it in the shaking of his hands. But sip after sip he drank, and Vanye drank his own cup, to prove it harmless.
Meanwhile too, having considered charity, and the costs of it on both sides, he delved one-handed into the saddlebags and set out a horn container, intricately carved.
And perhaps, he thought, a scrupulous Kurshin man would regard the contents of that little container as witchcraft too.
"What is that?" Chei asked warily, as he finished his cup.
"For the sores. It is the best thing I have. It will not let the wounds scab, and it takes the fire out."
Chei took the box and opened it, taking a little on his fingers and smelling of it. He tried it on the sore on the inside of his knee, his lip caught between his teeth in the patient habit of pain; but soon enough he drew several deep breaths and his face relaxed.
"It does not hurt," Vanye said.
Chei daubed away at himself, one wound and the other, the blanket mostly fallen about him, his drying hair uncombed and trailing water from its ends. Vanye took a bit on his own fingers and covered the patches that Chei could in no wise reach, those on his shoulders, then let Chei do the rest.
"Why?" Chei asked finally, in a phlegmy voice, after a cough. "Why did you save me?"
"Charity," Vanye said dourly.
"Am I free? I do not seem to be."
Vanye lifted a shoulder. "No. But what we have we will share with you. We are in a position—" He drew a breath, thinking what he should say, what loyalties he might cross, what ambush he might find, all on a word or two. "—we do not want to make any disturbance hereabouts. But then, perhaps you have no wish to be found hereabouts—"
The man said nothing for a moment. Then he reached inside the blankets to apply more of the salve. "I do not."
"Then we do have something to talk about, do we not?"
A pale blue stare flicked toward him, mad as a hawk's eye. "Have you some feud with Gault?"
"Who is Gault?"
Perhaps it was the right bent to take. Perhaps the man in his turn thought him mad—or a liar. Carefully Chei took a fresh film of salve on his fingers and applied it, and winced, a weary flinching, premature lines of sunburn and pain around the eyes. "Who is Gault?" he echoed flatly. "Who is Gault. Ask, what is Gault?—How should you not know that?"
Vanye gave another shrug. "How should we? I know great lords aplenty. Not that one."
"This is his land."
"Is it? And are you his man?"
"No," Chei said shortly. "Nor would I be." He lowered his voice, spoke with a quickening of breath. "Nor, unlike you, would I serve the qhal."
It was challenge, if subdued and muttered. Vanye let it fly, it being so far off the mark. "She is my liege," he said in all mildness, "and she is halfling, by her own word. And in my own land folk called her a witch, which she is not. I should take offense, but I would have said the same, once."
Chei occupied himself in his injuries.
"It was this Gault left you to die," Vanye said. "You said that much. Why? What had you done to him?"
It was that hawk's stare an instant. There was outrage in it. "To Gault ep Mesyrun? He lives very well in Morund. He drains the country dry. He respects neither God nor devil, and he keeps a large guard of your kind as well as qhal."
"Tell me. Do you think he would thank us for freeing you?"
That told. There was a long silence, a slow and evident consideration of that idea.
"So you may reason we are not his friends," Vanye said, "and my lady has done you a kindness, which has so far gained us nothing but an alarm in the night and myself a few bruises. Had you rather fight us to no gain at all? Or will you ride with us a space—tillwe are off this lord gault's land?"
Chei rested his head in his hands and remained so, sinking lower with his elbow against his knee.
"Or do you mislike that idea?" Vanye asked him.
"He will kill us," Chei said, and lifted his face to look at him sidelong, head still propped against his hand. "How did you find me?"
"By chance. We heard the wolves. We saw the birds."
"And by chance," Chei said harshly, "you were riding Gault's land."
The man wanted a key—best, it seemed, give him a very small one. "Not chance," Vanye said. "The road. And if our way runs through his land, so be it."
There was no answer.
"What did you do," Vanye asked again, "that deserved what this Gault did? Was it murder?"
"The murder was on their side. They murdered—"
"So?" Vanye asked when the man went suddenly silent.
Chei shook his head angrily. Then his look went to one of entreaty, brow furrowed beneath the drying and tangled hair as he looked up. "You have come here from the gate," Chei said, "if that is the way you have come. I am not a fool. Do not tell me that your lady is ignorant what land this is."