“Keep it,” she said when he offered to return it.
“Where are we going?”
“Back,” she said, “to Ohtij-in.”
“No,” he objected, the reflex of fear; it leapt out in his voice, and made her look at him strangely for a moment, in shame he jerked the gelding’s head about toward Ohtij-in, started him moving, Siptah falling in beside at a gentle walk. He said nothing, wished not even to look at her, but pressed his hand to his bruised ribs beneath the cloak and tried to ignore the panic that lay like ice in his belly—Roh safely sped toward Abarais, and themselves, themselves returning into the grasp of Ohtij-in, within the reach of treachery.
And then, a second impulse of shame for himself, he remembered the Hiua girl whom he had abandoned there without a thought toward her. It was his oath, and that was as it must be, but he was ashamed not even to have thought of her.
“Jhirun,” he said, “was with me, a prisoner too.”
“Forget her. What passed with Roh?”
The question stung; guilt commingled with dread in him. He looked ahead, between the gelding’s ears. “Lord Hetharu of Ohtij-in,” he said, “went with Roh northward, to reach Abarais before the weather turned. I walked into this place, thinking to claim shelter. It is not Andur-Kursh. I have not managed well, liyo. I am sorry.”
“Which first—Roh’s leaving or your coming?”
He had deliberately obscured that in his telling; her harsh question cut to the center of the matter. “My coming,” he said. “Liyo—”
“He let you live.”
He did look at her, tried to compose his face, though all his blood seemed gathered in his belly. “Did I seem to be comfortable there? What do you think that I could have done? I had no chance at him.” The words came, and immediately he wished he had said nothing, for there was suddenly a lie between them.
And more than that: for he saw suspicion in her look, a quiet and horrid mistrust. In the long silence that followed, their horses side by side, he wished that she would rebuke him, quarrel, remind him how little caution he had used and what duty he owed her, anything against which he could argue. She said nothing.
“What would you?” he cried finally, against that silence. “That you had come later?”
“No,” she said in a voice strangely subdued.
“It was not for me,” he surmised suddenly. “It was Roh you wanted.”
“I did not,” she said very quietly, “know where you were. Only that Roh had sheltered in Ohtij-in: that I did hear. Other word did not reach me.”
She fell silent again, and in the long time that they rode in the rain he clutched her warm cloak about him and reckoned that she had only given him the truth that he had insisted on knowing—more honest with him than he had been with her. Roh had named her liar, and she did not lie, even when a small untruth would have been kinder; he held that thought for comfort, scant though it was.
“Liyo,” he asked finally, “where were you? I tried to find you.”
“At Aren,” she replied, and he cursed himself bitterly. “They are rough folk,” she said. “Easily impressed. They feared me, and that was convenient. I waited there for you. They said that there was no sign of you.”
“Then they were blind,” he said bitterly. “I held to the road; I never left it. I thought only that you would leave me and keep going, and trust me to follow.”
“They knew it, then,” she said, a frown settling on her face. “They did know.”
“It may be,” he said, “that they feared you too much.” She swore in her own tongue, at least that was the tone of it, and shook her head, and what bided in her face then, lightning-lit, was not good to see.
“Jhirun and I together,” he said, “walked the road; and it brought us to Ohtij-in, out of food, out of any hope. I did not know what I would find; Roh was the last that I expected. Liyo, it is a qujal-ruled hold, and there are records there, in which Roh spent his time.”