Once I had dragged and wrestled him onto the bed, I pulled aside the makeshift tunic. The mark on his shoulder that I remembered as a mere scratch was now swollen purple, hot, hard, and seeping a foul-smelling black fluid. I’d never seen anything like it. Dredging up what I knew of such matters, I scalded my knife and lanced the wound, trying to get as much of the vile fluid out of it as I could. Aeren almost bit through his lip as I worked. “I’ve got to do this,” I said, grabbing a dry cloth to blot his brow. “You’ve gotten something nasty in it.”
As I applied a stone-root poultice to Aeren’s shoulder, he drifted off to sleep, leaving me awash in memory. How not? I even found myself whispering, J’den encour. The words meant heal swiftly in the language of the J’Ettanne. Unfortunately, the words had no efficacy coming from me.
Have you learned nothing, stupid woman? I threw down my towels and left the man to his fevered moaning, busying myself by splitting and stacking wood, filling the woodbox, hauling in extra water, pouring water on the garden, anything to stop thinking. Flour and water, salt and millet went into a bowl for more hearthbread. I threw the rabbit bones and two shriveled carrots in a pot of water on the hearth to make broth. Starving the bastard would not get him out of my bed. I needed him away from the valley. What if Darzid decided to make another sweep?
Aeren awoke near sunset, somewhat surprised to find himself in my bed and mostly undressed again. He watched silently as I made willowbark tea, mixing it with yarrow and a spoonful of wine to ease his pain and fever.
“Don’t get any ideas,” I said, deliberately and obviously holding the steaming cup above his bare torso and discreetly covered nether parts before putting it to his lips. He made no move to take the cup as he drank. “You’ve done yourself no service, running through the underbrush as you did.” Setting the cup aside, I changed the dressing on his shoulder. Not long after I finished, his fever shot skyward again, and he slipped back into restless sleep. I sat up with him most of that night, applying cold cloths to his face and body, dribbling willowbark tea down his throat, and cursing myself for a fool.
The next morning, when I woke from an uncomfortable few hours on the floor, Aeren was sitting up, his eyes fixed so intently on my face that I could almost feel their heat on my skin. Sitting on the side of the bed, I removed the bandages and was astonished to see the horrid wound well on its way to healing, only a bit red and slightly tender. Youth has distinct advantages when it comes to recuperation. “So, you’re better this morning,” I said. Fires of Annadis, why did he stare so?
Once I had renewed the dressing and tied up the bandage again, I busied myself about the cottage, trying to break the lock of his gaze while tidying up the remnants of my herbs and pots.
After a wobbly visit outdoors—I did not even consider following him out—he seated himself at the table. With one hand he gestured at his stomach and his mouth, while with the other he pointed accusingly at the idle pots beside the hearth. Though sorely tempted to grant such rudeness the empty reward it deserved, I threw onions, cheese, and my last five eggs into a skillet on the fire. He’d been none too well fed when I’d found him; after his fever, he must be weak as an infant, and I wanted him to put leagues between us today. “Sorry, I’m not adept at bludgeoning rabbits. You’ll have to do with what I’ve got.”
I was convinced of his recuperative powers when I saw what he ate that morning: an entire round of hearthbread and every bite of my eggs. No encouragement to moderation had any effect on him, and when he emptied his bowl, he banged it down on the table in front of me, pointing a reproachful finger at its desolation. When I refused to cook anything more, he ate all the wild plums from the basket on the table and used his spoon to break off great slabs of cheese. Before I could get it wrapped up and stowed back in the stone-lined hole in the bank behind the cottage, he had eaten a quarter of the pale yellow wheel that I had planned to last until autumn.
Astonishingly, Aeren was pacing the floor by midday, restless with inactivity, not fever. I shoved a pail into his hand. “Fetch some water and I’ll heat it, so you can wash before you go.” But either he didn’t understand my gestures or didn’t want to understand. He dropped the pail at my feet, retrieved the dwindling cheese yet again from my crude larder, and sprawled on the woven rug beside the hearth to eat more of it. Grinding my teeth, I fetched water from the stream for my own washing, seriously considering whether it was enough to drown the brute. When I returned to the house, he was rummaging through my things again, just as he had on the first day.
“Get out of there,” I said, slamming the lid of the clothes chest. Only quick reflexes saved his fingers from being crushed. “What are you looking for?”
With precise and insistent gestures, he demanded a sword.
When I made it clear I had nothing of the sort, he stomped away angrily and sat sulking by the pail of water, dabbling his hand in it and watching the dirt swirl around his hand as he rubbed two dirty fingers together. “That’s mine,” I said, moving the pail away from him and setting another log on the fire. “I’m no serving maid or bath-girl. You’re quite well enough to take care of yourself, and you smell like a stable.” I held my nose to illustrate my point.
He looked me in the eye and kicked over the pail, spilling the water all over my floor.
“As you wish. I’ve no time for spoiled children.”
I began to sort the burdock, scabwort, sparrow-tongue, and bristling spur nettle that I would trade for eggs and butter in the village, purposely ignoring Aeren and the mess he had made; I would not give him the satisfaction of watching me clean it up. A childish response to match his childish behavior. But the hostility in his gaze told me that his anger was anything but childish. The swelling in my throat was only now subsiding, and the slightest touch reminded me of the bruises that remained. Whyever had I brought him here? Never again. Never.
When the plants were clean and bundled, I snatched up my sewing things and a shift that needed mending and moved out to the bench outside the door. The sun beat softly on my face, and the rasp of bees in the clover was the only disturbance on the hot, still morning. Aeren followed me out, slouching in the shadow of the doorway for a while. Then, abruptly, he strode to the center of the meadow and began to wave his hands about in jerking motions, like a scarecrow come to life. Soon he was whirling and thrusting, bending and kicking, rolling onto the ground, and then picking himself up again.
Dropping my work in my lap, I watched in fascination, certain he’d gone mad.
But gradually his movements lost their insistent frenzy and became more fluid, and I at last recognized their patterns: lunge, spin, slash, parry… Swordplay: graceful, powerful, masterful. Whoever was chasing him had better make sure the man never got his hands on a sword. I glanced uneasily about the boundaries of the meadow. Who was he? Why was Darzid after him?
The display ended abruptly when Aeren stumbled over a rock and fell to the grass. Bent over his knees, chest heaving, he slammed his fist to the earth, then dragged himself to his feet, trudged back up the path, and flopped wearily to the ground in front of the cottage. Without favoring me with so much as a glance, he began tracing his finger in the dirt, drawing a rough geometric pattern of lines, curves, and arrows or cross-marks with a crude beast to each side.
I twisted my head to see from the proper angle. Something about the arrangement of it whispered at me of familiarity. “What is it?” I said, tipping my head at the drawing.
He ignored me.
But the exercise gave me a thought. I sat down beside Aeren and began drawing in the dirt myself. “This is the house.” I pointed to my picture and to the real one. He nodded, frowning. “This is the ridge.” I marked on my map the place where I’d found him, the trail to the village, the river, the bridge, and the road. He waited for more. “Isn’t any of this familiar? Where do you come from?” I added more features. “Montevial is to the north,” I said. “King Evard’s royal city.”