“Dead,” I said, trying to show him with my hands. “Both of them dead long ago. They were old and they died.” I stood by the door and pointed outside, meeting his hard gaze so he could not mistake my meaning. “How dare you touch their things… my things? Get out.”
He surveyed the mess he’d made, then tossed the cap on the floor and walked out. I sagged against the cottage wall. Stupid to bring him here. No matter who was chasing him, no matter how much hate was in me, bringing him to the cottage was stupid.
I had just closed the chest again with everything refolded, when a shadow darkened the still open doorway. My guest stood just outside looking resentful, but draped in a halfway respectable tunic, his long legs sticking out from underneath the sheet’s frayed hem. I stepped to the door and looked him up and down. In truth, the garment looked ridiculous, but it would do as long as the wind was not too high.
“It’s a good thing it’s summer,” I said. He cocked his head and frowned. I fanned myself, pointed to my own light clothing and his skimpy outfit, and raised my eyebrows. That he understood, and just for a moment there blossomed on his face a smile of such unrestrained good humor and unexpected sweetness that it almost took my breath. Earth and sky… he could charm a penny from a beggar with such a smile.
Unfortunately his fair humor disappeared as quickly as it had come. He scowled and rubbed his belly with unmistakable meaning.
From a basket hanging in the corner I extricated a hunk of dry bread, the last of a loaf I’d bought from the village baker. Pulling off the cloth wrapping, I stuffed the bread in the man’s hand and waved toward the meadow. “All right. You won’t starve. Now go.”
He glared at me sourly from the doorway as I set out a leek and a turnip—the rest of my food ration for the day— and filled a pot from my water jug. Before I could hang the pot over the fire, he had thrown the hunk of bread on the floor and was striding across the meadow.
For one moment I leaned heavily on my table, vowing never again to yield to rebellious impulse. When I began peeling the fibrous outer leaves from the leek, my hands were trembling.
But my hopes that my brutish visitor had decided to seek food and fortune elsewhere were quashed when, after crouching at the edge of the trees for something near half an hour, he headed back toward the house. He walked through my door as if it were his own. Onto the table in front of me he threw a rabbit, neck broken, already gutted and skinned, evidently by the bloody shard of rock in his hand.
Though sorely disappointed at his return, I acknowledged the offering with a nod. I threw another leek and another turnip into the pot, along with the rabbit. I was not averse to fresh meat.
While the savory steam rose from the pot, he stood at the doorway watching everything I did. Retrieving a bone needle and a sad-looking length of cotton from a rolled canvas packet, I set about repairing the rip in my skirt, an immensely practical garment that Anne had helped me make years before—fashioned like a lady’s riding togs with the modest, unremarkable appearance of an ordinary skirt, but split discreetly down the middle like wide-legged trousers. After a while he retreated a few steps, sitting cross-legged on the trampled grass where he could still see inside my door. I resisted the temptation to close the door, remembering the force he’d used earlier to kick it open.
His incessant stare, my sore fingers, and the crude stitches down the side of my one decent garment did nothing for my temper. When the meat had cooked long enough, I shoved a filled bowl into his hand and indicated he should remain outside to eat. His disdain did not extend to my ever-mediocre cooking. His bowl was empty in moments, and he gestured for more. I set the pot outside the door and went back to my own dinner. Before I could finish my first serving, soaking up the broth with the bread he had discarded, my visitor had emptied the pot.
He lay back on his elbows, watching as I cleaned up the mess, carried in wood to refill the woodbox, and mixed dough to make hearthbread for the next day. As the evening cooled he wrapped his arms tightly about his bare legs, and whenever his eyelids drooped, he would jerk his head upright.
When my work was finished, I washed my face and hands in the last of the hot water. Then, as was my habit, I wrapped a blanket about my shoulders and sat on the bench outside my door to watch the day come to its end. Pious Leirans believed that twilight was a sacred time, when Annadis the Swordsman, the god of fire and earth and sunlight, handed off his watch to his twin brother Jerrat the Navigator, the god of sea and storm, moon and stars. Many years had passed since I had had any use for pious Leirans or their warrior gods, yet I still observed the ritual, using the time to keep the days from blurring one into the other. On this evening a good-sized oak limb lay on the bench beside me.
When my visitor unfolded his long legs and looked about as if to decide what to do with himself, I waved him away from the cottage. “Don’t think you’re going to sleep anywhere close.”
He eyed my blanket, my crude cudgel, and the cottage door, which I had deliberately shut when I came out. But I didn’t flinch. As he stood up and walked slowly toward the alder copse, I muttered a good riddance. After a few steps, though, he turned and gave me a half-bow, little more than a nod of the head, but graceful and well meant… and immensely revealing. The man was no peasant poacher. No poverty-dulled laborer. No thieving servant.
As he turned his back again, I called after him. “Your name. I need to have something to call you.” I pointed to myself and said, “Sen.” Then I pointed to him and shook my head in question.
He nodded seriously and worried at it for a few moments. Then he faced away from the cottage into the lingering dusk, pointing into the deep blue sky above the ridge. Slowly he waved his finger back and forth as if searching for something, until the quiet evening was pierced by the harsh cry of an aeren—a gray falcon. The young man gestured and nodded so there was no mistake.
“Aeren?” I said. He didn’t agree or disagree, but only shrugged his shoulders tiredly and trudged across the grass to the copse. He lay down on the thick turf under the alders and was still.
A breeze rustled the dry grass. The plaintive whistle of a meadowlark echoed off the ridge. The stream burbled softly. But as the light faded across the meadow, my gaze moved from the unmoving form under the alders to the hoofprints left by Darzid’s men, and my blood stayed cold. Karon had believed that enough beauty gathered in the soul might bury the knowledge of the evils of the world. I had never accepted his premise. Evil was too strong, too pervasive, too seductive.
Why had I asked the stranger’s name? I didn’t want to know anything about him. And when the longest day of the year was done, I went inside to bed, thinking that if there was any luck to be had, I would wake in the morning to find him gone.
CHAPTER 3
I dreamed of the fire again that night. After ten years, one would think such pain might fade into the dismal landscape of my life. Yet once more I saw Evard’s banners whipped by the cold wind, bright red against the steel-blue sky. I heard again the jeering of the wild-eyed crowds that surged against the line of guards surrounding the pyre, and the stake, and the one bound there, maintaining as he could the last shreds of dignity and reason.
Where was justice? Time blurs so much of worth, so much of learning unused, so many of the daily pleasures that shape a life, too small to make grand memories. Why would it not erase the image of Karon’s mutilated face: the ragged sockets where they had burned out his eyes, the battered mouth where they had cut out the tongue that had whispered words of love and healing? Should not mercy dim his last avowal of joy and life, given just before he withdrew from what relief and comfort I could give him? After ten years I should not hear, again and again, his agonized cry as the flames consumed his sweet body. Dead was dead.