“O lord Vanye,” she said at last, her voice almost as hoarse as his. “It is ugly, it is ugly; it is worse than Barrows-hold ever was. The ones that came here would have been better dead.”
The refuge toward which the Hiua had fled… he recalled all her hopes of sanctuary, the bright land in which they would escape the dying of Hiuaj. It was a cruel end for her, no less than for him.
“If you find the chance,” he said, “go, make yourself one of those in the yard outside.” “No,” she said in horror.
“Outside, there is some hope left. Look at the ones that serve here—did you not see? Better the courtyard: listen to me—the gates may be opened during the day; they must open sometime. You came by the road; you can return by it. Go back to Hiuaj, go back to your own folk. You have no place among qujal.”
“Halflings,” she said, and spat dryly. She tossed her tangled hair and set her jaw, that tended to quiver. “They are half-blood or less, and doubtless I can say the same, if the gossip about my grandmother is true. We were the Barrow-kings, and halflings were the beggars then; they were no better than the lowlanders. Now, now we rob our ancestors for gold and sell it to halflings. But I will not crawl in the mud outside. These lords—only the high lords, like Bydarra—they are— they are of the Old Ones, Bydarra and his one son—” She shivered. “They have the blood—like her. But the priest—” The shiver became a sniff, a shrug of disdain. “The priest’s eyes are dark. The hair is bleached. So with many of the others. They are no more than I am. I am not afraid of them. I am not going back.”
All that she said he absorbed in silence, cold to the heart; that even a Myya could prize a claim to qujalin blood—he did not comprehend. He swore suddenly, half a prayer, and leaned against the lintel of the fireplace, forehead against his arm, staring into the fire and tried to think what he could do for himself.
Her hand touched his shoulder, gently, timidly; he turned his head and looked at her, finding only a frightened girl. The heat at his side became painful; he suffered it deliberately, not willing to think clearly in the directions that opened before him.
”I am not going back,” she repeated.
“We shall leave here,” he said, which he knew for a lie, but he thought that she wanted some promise, something on which to build her courage. He said it out of his own fear, knowing how easily she could tell the lords of Ohtij-in all that she knew: with this promise he meant to purchase her silence. “Only continue to say nothing, and we shall find a way to leave this foul place.”
“For Abarais,” she said. Her voice, hoarse as it was, came alive. The light danced in her eyes. “For the Well, for your land, and the mountains.”
He lied this time by keeping silent. They were the greatest lies he had ever told, he who had once been a dai-uyo of Morija, who had fought to possess honor. He felt unclean, remembering her courage in the hall, and swore to himself that she would not come to hurt for it, not that he could prevent. But the true likelihood was that she would come to hurt, and that he could do nothing.
He was ilin, bound to a service; and this one essential truth he did not think she understood, else she would not trust her life to him. This also he did not say, and was ashamed and miserable.
She offered him food, and a second cup of the drink, attacking the food herself with an appetite he lacked. He ate because he knew that he must, that if there was hope in strength, it must be his; he forced each mouthful down, hardly tasting it, and followed it with a heavy draught of the sour drink.
Then he rested his back against the fireplace, his shoulders over-warm and his legs numb from the stones, and began to take account of himself, his water-soaked armor and ruined boots. He began to work at the laces at his throat, having to break some of them, then at the buckles at his side and shoulder, working sodden leather through.