” ‘Lyra, I’ll send them home, if you want, but I think it’s not the hammering that’s wrong. What ails you, ‘Lyra?”
Illyra on her scrying stool had taken command of the room. She would have had to arch her neck to see Dubro’s face, but she had no intention of meeting her husband’s eyes. She spoke to the table instead, in a soft voice that emphasized the smith’s awkwardness. Yet she was no more comfort- able than Dubro; her hands sought the scrying deck and her fingers rimed through the cards.
“Everything and nothing, husband. I do not know what ails me-and I’m almost past caring.” The cards broke free of her nervous fingers to scatter across the green cloth.
Heaving a sigh as he moved, Dubro dropped to one knee; he could look into Illyra’s eyes and force her to look into his. “Read the cards for me, then. Ask them what I must do to make you happy.”
Illyra avoided him, watching the cards as she gathered them into a rough-sided stack. “You know I cannot. I love you. I cannot See what I love.”
She raised her eyes, thinking to shame him but was herself shamed by what she read, without Sight, in his face. He doubted her love and, now that the notion flowed within her thoughts, he had a right to, because she doubted it as well. The worst pain Illyra had ever known shuddered along her spine. The cards spilled onto the table when she hid her face behind her hands. She never imagined Dubro would study and remember each image in the moment before he reached across the table to massage her neck and shoulders.