What was I thinking? Mysteries and desperate men were no concern of mine. I had reaped the bitter harvest of my fascination with mystery long ago. And this ruffian had come near strangling me. I should leave him to his own reward.
Yet I had never been accustomed to taking good advice, even my own, and so instead of retracing my path to the valley, I stepped warily across the stream and nudged the body with my boot, rolling him onto his back. His only injuries seemed to be the wicked sunburn, the network of angry scratches, and one slightly deeper gash on his chest. He was dirty. Fair-haired. A strong face, the square jaw unshaven, rather than bearded. He could be little more than twenty, and his big frame was well proportioned— exceptionally well—with nothing to be ashamed of if he ran about unclothed very often. How had he come to be in such a state? Nothing simple, I guessed. Nothing safe. Darzid was hunting him.
I scooped a handful of water from the stream and dribbled it on his cracked lips. They moved ever so slightly. “Thirsty, are you?” I gave him a little more, then pulled the red shawl from my shoulders and covered him. Some country-bred men thought you had to marry them if you saw them naked—another of the uncountable stupidities abroad in the world. I stepped out of arm’s reach, watching. Waiting. Maybe he would sit up, say “Sorry, damnable mistake,” and run away.
Every passing moment set my teeth more on edge. Pursuers who chased a man out of his clothes were unlikely to leave off. Two times I started down the path. Two times I came back, railing at myself for stupidity. Shadows stretched well across the glade. I detected no untoward sound or movement, but felt a creeping sensation up my back. The air smelled of something that was not hot pine needles or dry forest earth, something as out of place in this woodland as perfume, but far less pleasant: the odor of hot wind across old stone, bearing the unhearable residue of screams and the tainted smokes of unholy fires…
I shook off my foolish imaginings. Though tall for a woman and stronger than I’d ever been in my five and thirty years, I was not strong enough to carry a well-grown man down to the cottage. I crouched over him, and this time, instead of dribbling the chilly water on his lips, I threw it in his face. Gasping and spluttering, he opened his startling eyes—the deep, clear hue of midsummer evening.
“Who are you?” I said.
He squinted and blinked his sun-scalded eyes, fixing them on my face as he had earlier.
“What does Darzid want with you?”
He edged backward, struggling to sit up without coming any closer. As he moved, he seemed to notice his condition of undress and the now-ineffective red shawl. Though he quickly yanked the shawl onto his lap, he did not seem embarrassed. Nor even as he shook off his stupor did he offer any apology. Rather he raised his chin and continued to stare. Still without a word.
“I just want to know what’s happened to you,” I said. “I don’t care what you’ve done or what you did to me. I understand that kind of fear.” Fear of the things men do to each other out of greed and ignorance and jealousy. Fear that cripples your life and makes you lash out, not just at strangers, but at those you love. I had once killed a man out of fear.
Keeping the shawl well in place and one eye on me, the young man bent over the stream, cupped his hand, and drank long and deeply. Well, at least he wasn’t an idiot.
When he sat up again, wiping his mouth on his scratched arm, I tried again. “You’re a long way from anywhere. Where did you come from?”
He shook his head slightly, but the cock of his head and the blank look of his eyes told me that it was not a negative answer, but only that he didn’t understand the question.
“Are you not from Leire, then? Valleor, perhaps?” I dredged up what I could of the language of the fair northern race, but either my pronunciation was too rusty or my guess was wrong. “Kerotea?” I had been no expert linguist all those years ago, but not incompetent either. Yet neither my Kerotean nor my smattering of Avatoir, the language of Iskeran, elicited anything but a negative shrug,
“Well, you say something, then. That’s all I remember.” I pointed to my lips and to him, inviting him to put out a bit of effort to join the conversation.
He tried. He closed his eyes, concentrated, and worked his lips. Soon his fists were clenched and his whole body straining, until he clasped his hands to his head as if it might burst with the effort. But he produced only guttural growls and croaks. In the end, roaring and red-faced, he snatched a rock from the stream and hurled it into the trees, then another and another until, flushed and shaking, he sank back onto his heels and wrapped his arms tightly about his head.
I wanted to leave him there. People made their own choices, and in the ordinary event, I would let them reap their own consequences as I had done. But I would abandon no one to the mercy of Evard or Darzid or Tomas, whichever of the bastards wanted him. No one. Ever.
Calling myself an incomparable fool, I invited him to follow me, using gestures to augment my words. “I’ve food in the valley. We’ll find you some clothes, and you can sleep for a while.” His only response was to grope awkwardly for the shawl, trying to hold it about himself, looking furious and utterly humiliated.
“Then you may rot in your own prideful stink.” I didn’t look back after starting down the path, having every confidence that he would follow just because I would so much rather he wouldn’t. He followed.
I didn’t particularly want a stranger inside the cottage, certainly not one who had already left bruises on my skin. So I was well content when the young man sat on the splintered pine bench outside my door, leaned his head against the wall, and closed his eyes as if he had no better destination. I kept my attention on the forest boundary, and my ears open, halfway expecting Darzid and his riders to burst into view at any moment. But no one came, and the young man himself seemed little concerned about whatever had driven him to his sorry state.
I had no man’s clothes that might fit him, but went inside, rummaged through Anne’s trunk, and came up with a sheet, yellowed and many times mended. I cut a hole in the middle and trimmed a piece of hempen rope to the right length, then took it out to him and showed him what I planned. He picked at the sheet for a moment, then threw it on the ground, his lip curled in disgust, as if I’d offered him dung for breakfast.
“I’ve nothing finer, my Lord Particular,” I said. Then I threw the wadded sheet back at him. “But you’ll not ruin Anne’s shawl either. Go naked if you will.” I yanked the red shawl from his lap and went back inside, slamming the door behind me.
Before I could decide what to do next, he kicked the door open and stepped inside. A formidable presence in the single cramped room. He was not wearing the sheet. Shoving the chairs out of his way, he rumpled the blankets on my bed, examined the dishes and stores I kept on the open shelves by the hearth, and picked through the box of spoons on the table, tossing them onto the floor in disgust when he failed to find whatever he was hunting.
He knelt beside the chest I’d pulled out from the wall and rummaged through it, strewing the meager contents on the floor: the blue dress Anne had put on when the old couple took their vegetables to market, my winter cloak, salvaged from a barge wreck on the river, three spare blankets, the finely sewn collars Anne had embroidered in youthful dreams of meeting a gentleman, but had never worn. Instead of a gentleman, she had married a sweet-spoken Vallorean lad stubborn enough to think he could grow his sustenance on this rocky meadow and avoid the humiliation of binding his body, soul, and future to the land of a Leiran noble. As if his suspicions were confirmed, the young man held up Jonah’s slouched wool cap and gestured about the room, clearly asking where was its owner.