A board creaked. Cil was on the stairs; Jhirun could see her now. Her heart beat painfully; the supper lay like a stone in her belly. They were no match for the warrior-king; they could not be. And Cil, brave Cil, a loyal sister, heavy with child: it was for her sake that Cil ventured downstairs.
Jhirun moved suddenly to her knees, touched the stranger. His eyes opened in panic and he clutched the axe that lay across his lap. Behind her in the room she sensed that things had stopped, her house with its furtive movements frozen where matters stood. “I am sorry,” Jhirun said, holding his eyes with her own. “The wound—will you let me treat it?”
He looked confused for a moment, his eyes ranging beyond her. Perhaps, she thought in terror, he saw what had been proceeding.
Then he bowed his head in consent, and moved his injured leg to straighten it, moved the blanket aside so that she could see how the leather was rent and the flesh deeply cut. He drew the bone-handled dagger from his belt and cut the leather further so that she could reach the wound. The sight of it made her weak at the stomach.
She gathered herself up and crossed the room to the shelves, sought clean linen. Jinel met her there and tried to snatch the cloth from her fingers.
“Let me go,” Jhirun hissed.
“Slut,” Jinel said, her nails deep in her wrist
Jhirun tore free and turned, dipped clean water from the urn in the corner and went back to the stranger. Her hands were shaking and her eyes blurred as she started to work, but they soon steadied. She washed the cut, then forced a large square of cloth through the opening and tied it tightly from the outside, careful not to pain him. She was intensely aware of her grandfather and Cil and Jinel watching her, their eyes on her back—herself touching a strange man.
He laid his hand on hers when she had done; his hands were fine, long-fingered. She had never imagined that a man could have such hands. There were scars on them, a fine tracery of lines. She thought of the sword he carried and reckoned that he had never wielded tools… hands that knew killing, perhaps, but their touch was like a child’s for gentleness; his eyes were likewise. “Thank you,” he said, and showed no inclination to let her go. His head went back against the wall. His eyes began to close, exhaustion claiming him. They opened; he fought against the impulse.
“Your name,” he asked.
One should never give a name; it was power to curse. But she feared not to answer. “Mija Jhirun Ela’s-daughter,” she said; and daring much: “What is yours?”
But he did not answer, and unease crept the more upon her.
“Where were you going?” she asked. “Were you only following me? What were you looking for?”
‘To live,” he said, with such simple desperation it seized at her heart. “To stay alive.” And he almost slipped from his senses, the others waiting for his sleep, the whole house poised and waiting, nearly fifty women and an old man. She edged closer to him, put her shoulder against him, drew his head against her. “The woman,” she heard him murmur, “the woman that follows me—”
He was fevered. She felt of his brow, listened to his raving, that carried the same mad thread throughout. He slipped away, his head against her heart, his eyes closed.
She stared beyond him, meeting Cil’s troubled gaze, none others.
A time to sleep, a little time for him, and then a chance to escape. He had done nothing to them, nothing of real hurt; and to end slaughtered by a house of women and children, with kitchen knives—she did not want that nightmare to haunt Barrows-hold. She could not live her life and sit by the fire and sew, work at the kitchen making bread, see her children playing by such a hearth. She would always see the blood on those stones.
No wraith, the stranger: his warmth burned fever-hot against her; his weight bruised her shoulder. She had lost herself, lost all sense where her mad dreams ended, no longer tried to reason. She saw the others lose their courage, settle, waiting; she also waited, not knowing for what. She remembered Anla’s Crown, and knew that she had passed that edge where human folk ought to stop, had broken ancient warding-spells with as blithe a disdain as the stranger had passed the bits of feather at the door, innocent of fear that would have been wise to feel.