He smiled down at her, and Halina looked up at him. She returned his smile, but it was half-hearted at best. Brushing the dirt from her gown, she stood and faced him.
“I don’t know what a good life is,” she said.
“No?”
She shook her head and told him, “Maybe it’s a life spent crying less than I do. I would like that life, good or evil.”
“Indeed,” Marek said with a sneer. “Crying, Halina, is not a legitimate form of expression. It’s a sign of weaknessof a loss of control. You know I forbid it in my house. Are you telling me you’ve cried under my roof?”
She couldn’t look at him anymore, but to her credit at least she didn’t back away.
“Every day,” she whispered.
“You’re forgiven,” he said, speaking quickly so as to keep her off balance.
“No,” she said. “No, I’m not. I’m sorry.”
“Do you think I’ve led a good life?” he asked.
He waited for longer than he should have for her to answer and was about to go on when she said, “No.”
“Really?” he replied, glancing at her only briefly before returning his attention to the plant.
“I don’t know. I don’t know if you’ve led a good life, or even if I’ve led a good life. I just know I want to lead a good life.”
“That Cormyrean did things to you, didn’t he?”
He could feel her vibrate from a distance, she squirmed so terribly. Marek resisted the urge to laugh, and instead made himself wait for her answer.
“He did nothing I didn’t want him to do,” she whispered. “Don’t make me talk about that.”
“He seemed happier after he’d been with you,” Marek said. And he wasn’t simply torturing herthough he was doing that, tooit was something he’d actually noticed. Willem Korvan was in love with her.
“Did he?” she asked. “I could never tell.”
“Did he throw you out?” he asked. “Is that why you came here to dig in the dirt?”
“No,” she replied, “he didn’t throw me out.”
“But he didn’t marry you.”
She sighed and shook her head.
“What are you doing here, really?” he asked, and looked her in the eye.
She met his gaze for only a heartbeat before turning away and saying, “I’m helping people.”
“How?”
“The Sisterhood of Pastorals teaches people how to tend to the soil and harvest the bounty of the Great Mother. We teach people how to feed themselves, and if we can’t do that, we feed them. We help people to live.”
“Do ‘we’?” he asked. She seemed quick to include herself among Chauntea’s Pastorals. “You’ve only been here a few days, Halina. How many people have you helped?”
“No one, yet, I suppose,” she replied. “But if I stay, if I work hard, I could help hundreds, maybe thousands.” He laughed, but just a little.
“You shouldn’t laugh at that,” she said. “That’s not funny here.”
“The idea that by planting flowers in pots you’re going to help thousands of people is funny anywhere, Halina,” he said, risking Chauntea’s wrath. “But leaving that aside, are you telling me that altruism alone guides your actions now? If you can’t satisfy one eager young Cormyrean, why not feed the masses?”
“That’s cruel to say it like that.”
“Is it cruel to say it, or cruel to do it?”
“I don’t understand,” she admitted.
“No,” he teased. “No, I guess you wouldn’t.”
“It’s not altruism that brought me. here,” Halina admitted. “And no, I don’t think that I’m going to single-handedly feed thousands of starving people.”
“Then what do you want, girl?” he pushed. “Say it.”
“Happiness.”
“And what makes you think you deserve that which has eluded so many?”
“I said I want it; I don’t think I deserve it,” she whispered. “And that’s why I’m here.”
“You don’t know why you’re here.”
“I’m here because he wouldn’t marry me,” she said.
“And that’s what you wanted?” he asked. “That’s what would give you this elusive ‘happiness’?”
She nodded and sighed again. She sounded as tired as she lookedas beaten.
“I’ve told you before, Halina, that your happiness, your needs, are of no consequence,” the Red Wizard said. “You are not some goddess, or some lone creature inhabiting a plane of her own. You are a young woman who is a part of two societies. You are a part of the community of the city-state of Innarlith, and you are a citizen of Thay. Those communities require your service, not your happiness. They require your obedience, not your opinion. They require that you do as you’re told. At times, I’m afraid, they require that you don’t run off to some convent to wallow in self-pity, digging in the dirt while you cry over a lost love.”
A tear rolled down her cheek, and he grimaced at the sight of it.
“Halina,” he said, “I want you to listen to me very carefully while I tell you precisely how you will live every day of your miserable existence from this day forward. When I am finished, you will have the choice of doing what is required of you or”
“Pardon me,” Willem Korvan said.
Marek almost gasped.
“Master Rymiit,” Willem said, “please excuse me, but may I ask that you step out for a moment and allow your niece and I a moment to speak with each other?”
Rymiit was less surprised to see Willem Korvan standing there than he was by the young man’s appearance. If the homespun clothing and dirty hands aged Halina, Willem appeared even older, and his clothing was as fresh and clean as his hands. The Cormyrean’s eyes had sunk deep into his face, rimmed underneath with dark bags that made him look as though he’d been punched in both eyes.
“Senator Korvan,” Marek said with an over-wrought bow.
He glanced at Halina, who didn’t notice him. She stared at Willem with her mouth hanging open and tears in her eyes. The young senator stared back, and appeared as surprised by her appearance as she was by his.
Marek walked out of the greenhouse, past Willem. When he was out of earshot he muttered a quick incantation that would allow him to listen in on them. He walked at a brisk pace, under the watchful eye of more than one priestess, but was not prevented from sitting on a low stone bench under a strange sort of tree he’d never seen before, which grew in the central rotunda of the sisterhood’s glass house.
“… awful, Willem,” Halina said. Her voice was clear to Marek, though he knew no one else around him could hear her. “You’ve been drinking. Have you been drinking?”
“Yes,” Willem replied.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“Why am I here?” Willem replied. “Why are you here? You disappeared. I couldn’t find you. I had to call in favors before I was told where you were.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d”
“Halina” Willem grunted.
Marek sighed. It was going to be a long conversation if they both insisted on stopping midsentence, and his spell wouldn’t last forever.
“I came here when I finally realized I had nowhere else to go,” Halina said.
Her voice sounded different to Marek, and it wasn’t just the spell’s occasional distortion. She spoke differently with Willem than she did with Marek. She was more relaxed.
“You’re looking at me,” she went on, “as though you don’t understand what I mean.”
“I don’t,” Willem admitted. “I didn’t drive you away, did I?”
“No, you didn’t,” she agreed. “But you didn’t take me in, — either.”
“Loved me?” she finished for him.
“Yes,” he said with much eagerness.
Marek heard footsteps, a sound of some small disturbance, and Halina said, “No, please don’t.”
More shuffling feet then Willem replied, “You won’t let me touch you? Have you taken some vow of chastity here?”
“Don’t be vulgar,” she scolded, and Marek lifted an eyebrow at her tone. “I am not a priestess here. I’ve come to help, and to think, and the sisters ask nothing more of me.”