"The good thing would have been to go unhugged in the first place."
He tilted his head back to look at her. He wasn't going to smile, but he nodded. "That would have been the good thing."
They sat a while silent. How much time, she wondered, would have to pass before she didn't feel every muscle and bone’s grief? She looked around at sleepers and the thin sunlight coming in the window. It lay, a golden shaft across the floor, picking out a bright pattern in the mosaic where footprints had disturbed the dust of ages. She followed the path of the light, the brightest thing in the room. It stopped an arm's length from the corner where Char sat.
"Brand," she said, the words coming before she could stop them. "Why is it Char grieves?"
Brand settled his shoulders more comfortably against the wall. He didn't touch her with purpose. He never did but when the sleeping furs wrapped them. Still, his arm was close to hers, the warmth of him familiar. The phoenix flew round his finger and round again, the light glancing from it in beams like blue needles.
"What makes you think he grieves?"
"I hear him dream. He told me once that Ley still grieves the death of his…" What to say, wife or woman or lover?
"Alissa was her name," Brand said, watching the phoenix fly. "Yes, he still grieves her. Char-I don't know that he grieves, but maybe. Everyone's lost something, eh? You don't keep much from the cradle to the grave, do you? Char, he did a killing that got him kicked out of Thorbardin."
"And he regrets it?"
"He does."
She thought about that for a while, and she thought about a thing she'd noticed in the days after Brand had given her the choice of him or the rest. Char had changed toward her. He'd grown cold and had hardly spoken to her since. She didn't imagine he'd cared about her or whether Brand took her to his hard bed or didn't. She thought, though, that it had reminded him of something.
Elansa put her head against the wall and turned her cheek a little to feel the gathering warmth of the late sun. "It had to do with a woman."
The phoenix flew, blue and shining, Brand seemed to be able to keep it whirling with little effort and no attention. "It did, but it wasn't a woman he killed. Ask me, he should have, but he didn't. He killed his brother. Loved him right well, or so I gather; two brothers were never fonder. Didn't love him enough to share his wife with him though. Should have killed the woman. Might be he'd sleep better if he had." He snorted, still flying the phoenix. "Might be there’d be a barrel or two more of dwarf spirits in the world, too, if he had."
He looked away from Char.
"Ah, girl, you think that's a hard story? You think so? We ain't your pretty courtiers here, little princess. We ain't no merry band gone to be robbers and highwaymen for the fun. Half of us don't like the rest, and for a while we manage because it's a hard old world. Char, I guess he knows that just like the rest of us. He'll come around, later before sooner without the drink. But he'll come back. He usually does when I need him to."
"And you?"
"Me? Ah, me, I'm just like the rest. Got lost things and I try not to get lost with 'em."
Something about his expression moved her. The stirring felt like pain, she had allowed no such feeling in all the months since she'd been his prisoner. And yet here, now, with the late light on his craggy face, his eyes a little narrowed as though he were looking into some far distance, she wanted to ask him what it was he had lost. She wanted to know whether he'd lost kin or friend, a home… How had he become lost?
Brand's mood shifted suddenly. He snatched the whirling sapphire in mid-round and held it tight in his fist. "What is it, girl? What is this pretty bird of yours?"
As his mood shifted, so did hers. She wanted to say, It is a godstone. It is magic. It is more powerful than you can imagine! But she said none of those things. She doubted he could imagine the power contained in the stone, the power a god granted, her beloved Blue Phoenix. She didn't want him to know; she didn't want him to understand. This was hers, though it lay in his hard grasp. This phoenix, the sapphire found whole in the very bones of the world, unshaped by an artist’s hand, made by magic, this was hers.
She said, "It is my inheritance."
He laughed then, a hard bark. "Only this?" He tossed the stone high and caught it. "Just this little thing? Did your kin spend all their riches on the dowry, girl? Left you only this?"
"It was enough when I needed it."
Again, he tilted back his head, looking at her. "I suppose it was. But what do you mean, inheritance? A gift from your father?"
Elansa put out her hand.
"Ah, no you don't. You don't get it back that easily." Brand tossed the stone and caught it again, closing his fingers around it. "Might be you don't get it back at all. I don't know about magic, or not much, but I do know it doesn't take a mage to make a thing like this work. Tell me, how did you do it?"
Elansa closed her eyes, unwilling to watch him play with the power he didn't understand. "I pray. When I take it out to heal, I pray. When I broke the stone, I prayed."
He didn't believe her. His eyes went cold and hard. "Power like that can't be had for a prayer, and I'll tell you this, girclass="underline" You better start thinking of telling me how you used it or-"
"Or what?" she said, her eyes still closed. "You won't let me eat? You won't let me drink? You won't let me have a night's peace?" She opened her eyes and met his without flinching. "I eat at your pleasure as it is. I drink when you tell me to. If you want me, I have no choice. You can kill me whenever you like, and I don't think you have any plan to take me home to Qualinesti. So… what? What will you do to me if I don't tell you?"
He rose, stood tall above her, and she thought he would strike her. She didn't brace, didn't flinch, for she couldn't imagine a blow would hurt her worse than she hurt now. He opened his fist, a little. The silver links slid from his fingers, and the phoenix dropped the length of the chain.
"It’s a prayer," she said. "It’s a prayer to a god, and I'll tell you this: You don't know what you have to pay for that prayer, Brand. You don't know what it feels like to speak to the elements as though they were kin, to feel what they feel, to feel what it is you do when they lend you their strength." She shuddered. "I don't use that power without paying a price."
Brand touched her then, a swift light brush of his fingers against her cheek, and said, "I know the fee, girl. I saw you pay it." He put the talisman back into his pouch. "Go to sleep," he said. "I'll let you have some peace."
Chapter 15
In the camp of the elves little fires gleamed. Smoke like gray ghosts drifted low. The warriors had no tents. They carried no such luxury as that, not even the prince. They slept rough on hard stone, they ate what they could catch or hunt, and they drank water that tasted of stone and dirt. The horses, picketed this night near a small stony pool bubbling up from the ground, stamped and snorted, nickering in the night. Bits slipped from their mouths, ringing only a little as they stirred or dipped their heads to drink.
Generous as this spring was, none such had the army seen for several nights before, and it was the water the warriors thought about most. They didn't wish for joints of stag or fine fat grouse. They didn’t much miss the sweet canopy beginning to go faintly green. They missed the running brooks and the flashing streams. For its lack they despised the stonelands most, and when Kethrenan heard his warriors talk among themselves he heard them talk about water.
Not tonight, though. Tonight was a grace, and he wished his cousin would accept it in stillness. She did not. Lindenlea paced the ten feet before her prince's campfire as though it were a matter of life and death to measure the space precisely and often. She paced head down, chin on chest, her hands clasped tightly behind her back. Kethrenan knew that she was not happy. Cousins, they had known each other for a very long time. They were battle-friends, warriors who had often stood back to back, so close that not even the narrowest blade could pass between. He knew her, and though others might imagine Lindenlea was angry with the enemy, with goblins who had rampaged through the stonelands and had sent the pride of Qualinesti soldiery scattering in panic before fire-wights, striding flames with eyes like blackest coals and jaws that slavered acid, Kethrenan knew better. He knew his cousin, his trusted second, was angry with him.