Which reminded Pavek of the earth cleric, Oelus, who had called him 'friend' and who was a healer. He'd never known which aspect of earth the cleric venerated, which of the many earth temples in Urik he called his home: a large one where his talents and choices might be overlooked, or a small one where his word was law? Either way, Oelus would be worth the risks associated with finding him-if Akashia still needed a healer.
The harangue was over. Pavek stood up and stretched the night-cramps out of a body that was getting too old for sleeping on the bare ground. His companions were awake and blocking his view of Akashia.
"How is she?" he asked.
"Better," Yohan answered with a disturbing lack of enthusiasm. "How much better?"
"Akashia?'' He held out his hand.
Her gaze followed his fingers. Her hand rose toward his, then fell. And her eyes went flat and unchanging.
"She's coming back," Ruari insisted. "She sees us and hears us; she didn't before. She's coming. It's just a matter of time."
"Do we have the time?" Yohan asked. "I don't think it would be wise to carry her all the way to Modekan, not half-aware, the way she is. It's time or a cart. How safe is this place? Who's in charge? Templars?"
Pavek thought of the no-nonsense baker who'd collected the weekly ten-bit rent while he was here with Zvain. The woman might be willing to let them stay as long as they needed, as long as they paid in metal coins. She hadn't seemed the sentimental sort who'd hold a marketable room empty in the hope that an orphan boy would return to it, and since the room had obviously remained empty since he'd left, they obviously wouldn't have a lot of competition for it. If he could find her... talk to her
Yohan's fist rapped his forearm and gave a gesture toward the door. The latch rose, struck the bolt, and fell. Pavek and Yohan scurried for their weapons; Ruari crouched beside the bed, one arm around Akashia. A hook-shaped device, not unlike Ruari's lockpick, slid through a hole in the door to snag the string, but the knots Pavek had tied after curfew meant that the string couldn't be withdrawn through the hole and that the bolt couldn't be moved from the other side of the door.
Pavek, standing beside the door, mimed sliding the bolt free; Yohan nodded agreement and Pavek pushed it loose and lifted the latch itself, then he retreated hastily as the door began to move. It had happened quickly enough that he hadn't given a thought to who might appear in the doorway and was speechless when it proved to be a hale and healthy Zvain.
"Pavek!" the youngster shouted through a gleeful smile. He spread his arms wide and, ignoring the sword, flung himself across the room. "Pavek!"
Wiry arms locked firmly around Pavek's ribs. Tousled hair and a still-downy cheek pressed against his chest. Stunned and vaguely perplexed by Zvain's affectionate explosions-it was hardly what he'd have expected after leaving the boy behind, hardly the way he would have reacted were their positions reversed-Pavek draped his free arm limply around the boy's shoulders, lowering the sword until it rested against his leg.
"Who's he?" Ruari and Yohan demanded together.
"Zvain. He-" Pavek began, but Zvain was quicker.
"Pavek saved my life after my father killed my mother and Laq killed my father. He stayed with me, right here. He had plans. We were going to put a stop to the poison. Then he disappeared, just vanished one afternoon." Zvain swiveled in Pavek's arms, fixing him with a wide-eyed stare that was far more open and trusting than anything Pavek remembered seeing while they dwelt together in the bolt-hole. "But I knew you'd come back. I knew it! And you have, haven't you? You've found a way to stop Laq, haven't you? And these people are going to help?"
"Zvain, that's not-" The truth, he wanted to say, but Ruari cut him off:
"What is he? Your son? Your son that you left here?"
Trust the half-wit scum-the oh-so-predictable half-wit scum to see everything with his own peculiar prejudice. "Zvain's not my son-"
Zvain cut him off again. "More like a brother. Aren't you?"
Something was wrong, subtly but terribly wrong, though it would be harder to admit that the youngster was telling a pack full of lies than to go along with the glowing portrait he created of their prickly weeks together. He was still seeking the words that would explain the contradictions he felt when Ruari seized his sleeve.
"You left him here. You were looking all around that afternoon. You said it was templars, but it wasn't. You left him here, all alone-"
"Can't blame him for that, Ruari," Yohan interrupted softly but urgently. "We weren't exactly gentle with Pavek here that day. He wanted to keep the boy clear of us. Can't blame him for that, you least of all."
To his credit, Ruari relaxed his hold on Pavek's shirt and stepped back to take Zvain's measure. By temperament, at least, they could have been brothers. Zvain released one half of his grip on Pavek's ribs and took Ruari's hand.
"Are you Pavek's friend now?"
"You should've told us, Pavek," Ruari said through clenched teeth and looking at Pavek, not Zvain. "Once you knew we were safe in-" He blinked and cocked his head; Telhami had worked her mind-bending spellcraft on him, too, leaving that gray hole in his memory where the name of that safety should lie.
"Safe?-Where?" Zvain asked, looking from Ruari to him. "Where've you been. You weren't in Urik. I know. I looked everywhere."
"Once we were safe at home," Ruari finished. The interruption gave Pavek a necessary half-moment to think. "Where have you been?" He looked down into the open, trusting face, which blinked once and returned to the wariness he remembered. "Not here. No one's been in this room since I left. And you've changed, Zvain-"
Ruari seized his shirt again. "Of course the boy's changed! You left him. He couldn't live here, not alone. You should rejoice that he survived and that he doesn't hate you for abandoning him. You should swear that you won't leave him behind ever again. -Ever!"
Pavek supposed Ruari was right, supposed he should swear the very oath Ruari was suggesting. He wanted to. Zvain's face was guileless again, offering him a new beginning, if he'd take it. And he wanted to take it. Wanted to believe the boyish candor.
Akashia. For the first time since Zvain had entered the room, he looked to the far side of the room where he'd last seen Akashia staring blank-eyed and listless.
But no longer.
She was crouched on the bed, flattened against the dirt wall, her mouth working silently, while her hands wrung the linen sheet that trailed down in front of her. Yohan and Ruari leapt past him to her assistance.
"What's wrong with her?" Zvain asked, and pressed tighter still against Pavek, forcing him to stand there, helpless. "Has she been eating Laq?"
It was a possibility Pavek hadn't considered. Escrissar was capable of feeding her poison with the meals that kept her strength up for his interrogations. But Laq was a poison that some people-Zvain's father among them-ate willingly until it killed them. Kashi would starve in the condition she was in, and he could see, as her mouth moved, that her tongue wasn't black.
"No," he answered Zvain distractedly, "but bad things have happened to her-"
"She's not a Laq-seller, is she?" The boy's voice shook ever-so-slightly.
Pavek glanced down into eyes wide with contained fear, and suddenly, his ingratiating affection no longer seemed inexplicable: the boy didn't want to be left behind again. He'd turn himself inside-out to avoid that happening again.
Even the unchanged emptiness of the bolt-hole itself could be explained, along with Zvain's appearance this morning. There were, after all, other families living in the catacombs, families that had known Zvain's family and might have been willing to take him in.