He knew he was being a fool, and he tried to force thoughts of Lici and the daybook out of his mind. He needed to sleep. In the morning he'd speak with Pyav and together the elders would decide what to do.
After lying still for what seemed the better part of an hour, he gave up on trying to sleep. Now that he had started to imagine what might be in the book, he couldn't stop. He rose, dressed, and took his pipe, smoking weed, and flint out into the chill air. The last of the rain clouds had moved off, leaving a clear sky. It was past midnight, but this late in the waning the moons were just rising, glowing brightly enough to cast pale shadows across Elica's yard and the lane beyond it.
He filled the pipe bowl, but then laid it on Sirj's stump. Taking a deep breath, he gazed up at white Panya, who shone through the trees, gleaming like fresh snow.
"Gods forgive me," he said. And he began to walk south, toward the old woman's hut.
There would be a guard there-hadn't Besh himself recommended to the eldest that they continue to keep watch on Lici's home?-but Besh was an elder. The guard might think it odd that he would come to the house at such a late hour, but he wouldn't hesitate to let Besh enter.
"I have no right to do this," he told himself, remembering how self- righteous he had sounded denouncing those who wanted to divide up her gold. "I'm no better than they are." Still, he kept walking.
Ojan, the village miller, lay on the steps leading up to Lici's door, snoring softly. He was a big man, heavy as well as tall, with a round, fleshy face and jutting brow. Certainly he looked the part of a night watchman. When standing, he cut an imposing figure; anyone from outside the village who came to steal from the old woman's house would have fled at the mere sight of him. Those who lived here, however, knew him to be a gentle man who was no more dangerous awake than he was asleep. He'd been asked to guard the house by Korr, his father, who was also a member of the Council of Elders. Despite the thoughts churning in Besh's mind, the old man smiled to see Ojan sleeping so soundly on his guard duty. Not wishing to startle him, Besh cleared his throat and stepped farther into the circle of light from a torch burning at the top of the stairs.
The miller opened one eye, then sat up and scratched the side of his face. "That you, Besh?"
"Yes, Ojan. Sorry to disturb you."
"Not at all." He frowned. "What's the hour?"
"I don't know. It's late."
"Is something wrong?"
"No," Besh said. He started to say more, then stopped himself. Now that he was here at Lici's house, he wasn't certain how to proceed. He decided, though, that he wouldn't compound his sins by lying about why he had come. "There's nothing wrong. I saw something today when Pyav and I were searching through Lici's things. A daybook. I wanted to take another look at it."
The miller's frown deepened, making him look fierce in the dim light of the moons. "Now?"
"I know it seems strange. But I wasn't able to sleep, so I thought…" He trailed off with a small shrug.
Ojan answered with a shrug of his own. "All right." He stood and took the torch out of the makeshift sconce that had been fashioned on one of the beams of Old Lici's porch. "You'll need this," the miller said.
"Won't you?"
Ojan glanced up at the moons. "I daresay there's enough light without it." He shrugged again. "No one ever comes anyway. You're the first in all my nights here."
Besh smiled. "All right then. My thanks."
He took the torch and climbed the stairs to the house. He almost raised his hand to knock, just out of habit. Instead, laughing at himself, but also wiping a sweaty palm on the leg of his trousers, he pushed the door open.
The inside of the house looked just as it had earlier that day. Of course. But somehow the darkened corners and the shifting yellow glow of the torch made the mess Lici had left seem even more menacing than it had in the light of morning. Shadows lurked along the walls. Light reflected oddly off windows and kitchen pans. He almost backed out of the house-better to leave this until morning.
But again the daybook called to him. He made a point of leaving the door ajar and started toward the back room. Before he was halfway across the house, a small gust of wind made the door slam. Abruptly his heart was racing, like a horse that bolts at a sudden flash of lightning.
"Damn," he muttered, taking a breath.
He continued to the back room and quickly found the journal in that same crate below Lici's sack of coins. He lifted it out and carried it back into the main room. After setting the torch in a pot, he brushed bark cuttings off a chair, sat down, and began to leaf through the volume.
There was much he wanted to look for in the book-information about his parents, about a flood he remembered from his childhood, about the deliberations of the Council of Elders during Sylpa's tenure as eldest. But he remained uncomfortable with what he was doing, and so resolved to look only for information about Lici.
He thumbed through to the middle of the book, and began to scan the pages for any mention of the orphaned girl who came to Kirayde so unexpectedly. Besh knew his letters well enough, but he was not nearly as learned as some, and at first he had some difficulty reading Sylpa's hand. But after some time, he found what he sought.
".. She can barely speak of the tragedy," Sylpa wrote. "Nor does she cry anymore. She merely stares silently, her expression utterly blank, only the twisting of her pale hands revealing something of the workings of her mind."
Besh turned back a page, and then another, searching for the date of the first entry that mentioned Lici. When he found it, the hairs on his neck and arms stood on end. "Thunder Moon, twelfth day of the waxing, 1147."
It wasn't just that Sylpa had written this sixty-four years ago. That he had expected. But the day: the twelfth of the Thunder Moon's waxing. That day in this year had to have been around the time Lici disappeared from the village. He'd seen her earlier in that turn, but he couldn't remember seeing her since the full of both moons. Was it possible that she vanished sixty-four years to the day after arriving in Kirayde? If so, was it mere coincidence? Looking around the house, seeing the filth she had left behind, he found it hard to imagine that Lici could track the days so closely.
And yet somehow he knew that she had. For all her odd behavior, which bordered even on madness, Lici was not one to let an anniversary of such significance go unnoticed. If she left Kirayde on the same day she arrived here, she did so with purpose. But what purpose? What might this mean?
He heard a noise outside, like the scuffing of a shoe on wood, and for just an instant he wondered if Lici had returned. But after staring at the door for several moments, waiting for it to open, his expression, no doubt, like that of a child caught stealing a sweet before mealtime, he realized that it was just Ojan shifting his position on the stairs. Turning his attention back to the book, Besh began to read again, starting this time from the beginning of the entry.
Thunder Moon, twelfth day of the waxing, 1147.
It seems the last of the storms has passed. We've had no rain now for three days, and the wash begins to recede from the top of its banks. The flooding was worst at the north end of the village, but even there the damage is only slight. We've been fortunate.
But already, the gods have found a new way to test us. Near midday, a girl wandered into our village from the south. She looks to be eight or nine years old, perhaps ten. She has long limbs and is tall for a girl of that age, but her face still has the delicacy of a young child. In truth, though, it hard to set her age with any certainty, for she looks a mess and has yet to speak a word to anyone.