"Why should we tell you?" Quiss said.
"Why not?" the red crow said indignantly.
"Well..." Quiss said, thinking,'... because we don't like you."
"Good grief, I'm only doing my job," the red crow said, sounding genuinely hurt. Ajayi coughed on a laugh.
"Oh, tell it," she said, waving one hand dismissively.
Quiss gave another sour look, first at her, then the bird, cleared his throat and said, "Our answer is 'You can't...' no, I mean 'There is no such thing as either.' "
"Oh," the red crow said, still hovering, unimpressed, "wow."
"Well, have you got any better answers?" Quiss said aggressively.
"Plenty, but I'm not telling you bastards."
"Well," Ajayi said, standing up stiffly and dusting the powdery white snow from her furs, "I think we should get inside and find an attendant."
"Don't bother," the red crow said. "Allow me; it'll be a pleasure." It cackled with laughter and flew off." 'No such thing as either'; ha ha ha..." its voice trailed back to them as it flew away.
Ajayi picked the small table and the board up slowly and together she and Quiss made their way through the tumbled masonry of the roof towards the intact floors, some way off. Quiss watched the red crow flap slowly through the snow-filled air until he lost sight of it.
"Do you think it's gone off to tell somebody?"
"Maybe," Ajayi said, holding the small table carefully and watching where she put her feet.
"Think we can trust it?" Quiss said.
"Probably not."
"Hmm," Quiss said, stroking his smooth chin.
"Don't worry," Ajayi said, stepping over some cracked slate blocks as they made their way towards the shelter of a broken arcade, "we can always tell somebody ourselves."
"Hmm, I suppose so," Quiss said as they entered the arcade, stepping over some of its fallen columns and the remains of part of the roof. They came under the shelter of the roof where it was still good, and as they did so Quiss slipped on a patch of ice, crying out as he slid, putting out both hands, trying to steady himself on a column on one side and Ajayi on the other. He knocked the board.
Tiles scattered. Quiss fell heavily to the ground.
"Oh, Quiss!" Ajayi said. She put the board down quickly to one side. She went to the old man, lying on the ground, spreadeagled over the ice he had slipped on, eyes fixed on the vaulted roof of the arcade. "Quiss!" Ajayi said, kneeling down painfully by the man's side. "Quiss!"
Quiss made a strangled, choking noise; his chest moved up and down quickly. His face was grey. Ajayi put her hands to the sides of her head for a second, shaking her head, tears coming to her eyes.
Quiss gurgled, his eyes popping. She took his hand in hers, held it with both her hands as she leant over him. "Oh Quiss..."
The man sucked a huge, laboured gust of cold air into his lungs, his arms came up and he thumped his chest, then he tried to roll over on one side. When she saw what he was trying to do Ajayi helped him. He propped himself up on one elbow, then, with Ajayi's help, sat up. He banged his back with his clenched fist, weakly. Ajayi did it for him, harder. He nodded, his breath coming more regularly now.
"Just...winded..." he said, shaking his head. He wiped his eyes. "Okay..." he sucked in more air. He looked over at the board; the pattern on it broken and spilled. "Oh, shit," he said, and put his head in his hands.
Ajayi kneaded his broad back through the heavy robes and said, "Never mind about that, Quiss. As long as you're all right."
"But the... board, it's all... messed up..." Quiss gasped.
"I can remember how it looked, Quiss," Ajayi said, leaning close behind him and talking into his ear, trying to sound confident and encouraging. "I studied it for long enough, goodness knows. It's engraved on my memory! Don't worry about it. Are you all right? Are you sure?"
"I'm all right; stop...fussing!" Quiss said irately, trying to shove Ajayi away with one hand. She knelt back from him, her hands falling to her lap, eyes lowered.
"I'm sorry," she said, getting up slowly from her knees. "I didn't mean to fuss." She bent, sitting on her haunches, grunting with the effort, and started to pick the fallen Scrabble tiles out of the snow to one side, drifting in under the roof of the arcade, and off the ice-crusted surface of the slate slabs.
"Fucking ice," Quiss said hoarsely. He coughed, rubbed his nose. He looked round at the woman, carefully picking the pieces up from the ground and putting them on the board again. "Have you got a nose-rag?" he said.
"What? Yes." Ajayi said, reaching into her furs and bringing out a small handkerchief. She handed it to Quiss, who blew his nose loudly and handed the kerchief back. She folded it and put it away. Ajayi sighed. She wanted to tell him to get up; he'd catch cold sitting on the freezing slabs like that. But she didn't want to fuss.
Quiss got up with some difficulty, grunting and cursing. She watched him out of the corner of her eye as she picked up the scattered pieces, ready to help if he asked, or reach out quickly if he started to fall back again. Quiss stood, rubbing his buttocks and back, leaning against a column.
They could so easily die, she reminded herself. They might be fixed in one age, but it was an old and fragile one, a weak and accident-prone age. So far they had not fallen really badly, or broken any bones, but if they did injure themselves they would take a long time to get better. She had asked the seneschal about that, long ago. His advice had been: "Don't fall'.
She thought she had all the tiles. She counted them, all the ones on the board, and found there was still one missing. She got up, still stiffly, arching her pained back and looking round in the snow and on the slate flagstones.
"Got them all?" Quiss said. His face was still pale, but not as grey as it had been. Ajayi shook her head, still looking round about her.
"No. One missing." Quiss looked quickly over the slates.
"I might have known it. They won't let us answer the riddle now. I bet we'll have to start all over again. I bet it. That's what'll happen. This is just typical." He turned quickly away and slammed an open palm into one of the columns, staying facing away from her, breathing deeply, head hung down between his shoulders.
Ajayi looked at him, then lifted up the small table, to see if she had placed it on top of the missing tile when she put it down to help Quiss. But the tile wasn't there. "We'll find it," she said, gazing into the drifted snow. She didn't feel as sure of it as she hoped she sounded. She couldn't understand it; the tile couldn't have bounced so far, could it? She counted the tiles on the board again, then once more.
She began to get angry; at Quiss for falling in the first place and then for trying to shove her away; at the missing tile; at the castle itself, the red crow, the seneschal, the attendants; all of them. Where could the stupid thing be?
"Are you sure you've counted them properly?" Quiss said in a tired voice, still holding on to the column.
"Of course I have, several times; there's one missing," Ajayi snapped, her voice clipped. "Now stop asking stupid questions."
"No need to bite my tongue off," Quiss said huffily. "I was only trying to help."
"Well, look for the tile," Ajayi said. She could hear herself, and she hated herself for it. She shouldn't lose control like this, she oughtn't to snap at Quiss; it did no good. They ought to be sticking together through all this, not quarrelling like schoolkids or growing-apart couples. But she couldn't help it.