“Liyo,” he said, and dropped to his knees at the fireside, by Morgaine. His voice shook, reaction to things already past, but he had no shame for that; they were both tired. “Liyo, Jhirun is here somewhere. By your leave I am going to go and do what I can to find her. I owe her.”
“No.”
“Liyo—”
She stared into the fire, her tanned face set, her white hair still wet from the rain outside. “Thee will go out in the courtyard and some Shiua will put a knife in thy back. No. Enough.”
He thrust himself to his feet, vexed by her protection of him, exhausted beyond willingness to debate his feelings with her. He started for the door, reckoning that she had expressed her objection and that was the sum of it. He was going, nonetheless. He had seen to her welfare, and she knew it.
“Ilin,” her voice rang out after him. “I gave thee an order.”
He stopped, looked at her: it was a stranger’s voice, cold and foreign to him. She was surrounded by men he did not know, by intentions he no longer
understood. He stared at her, a tightness closing about his heart It was as if she, like the land, had changed.
“I do not need to reason with you,” she said.
“Someone,” he said, “should reason with you.”
There was long silence. She sat and stared at him while he felt the cold grow in her.
“I will have your belongings searched for,” she said, “and you may take the horse, and the Hiua girl, if she is still alive, and you may go where you will after that.”
She meant it. Outrage trembled through him. Almost, almost he spun on his heel and defied her—but there was not even anger in her voice, nothing against which he could argue later, no hope that it was unthought or unmeant. There was only utter weariness, a hollowness that was beyond reaching, and if he left, there would be none to reach her, none.
“I do not know,” he said, “to what I have taken oath. I do not recognize you.”
Her eyes remained focused somewhere past him, as if she had already dismissed him.
“You cannot send me away,” he cried at her, and his hoarse voice broke, robbing him of dignity.
“No,” she agreed without looking at him. “But while you stay, you do not dispute my orders.”
He let go a shaking breath, and came to where she sat, knelt down on the hearthstones and ripped off the cloak she had lent him, laid it aside and stared elsewhere himself until he thought that he could speak without losing his self-control.
She needed him. He convinced himself that this was still true; and her need was desperate and unfair in its extent and therefore she would not order him to stay, not on her terms. Jhirun, he thought, would be on his conscience so long as he lived; but Morgaine—Morgaine he could not leave.
“May I,” he asked finally, quietly, “send one of the servants to see if he can find her?”
“No.”
He gave a desperate breath of a laugh, hoping that it was an unthought reaction in her, that she would relent in an instant, but laugh and hope died together when he looked at her directly and saw the coldness still in her face. “I do not understand,” he said. “I do not understand.”
“When you took oath to me,” she said in a thin, hushed voice, “one grace you asked of me that I have always granted so far as I could: to remain untouched by the things I use and the things I do. Will you not grant that same grace to this girl?”
“You do not understand. Liyo, she was a prisoner; they took her elsewhere. She may be hurt. The women out there—they are a prey to the marshlanders and the mob in the court. Whatever else, you are a woman. Can you not find the means to help her?”
“She may be hurt. If you would heal her, leave my service and see to it. If not, have mercy on her and leave her alone.” She lapsed into silence for a moment, and her gray eyes roamed the room, with its torn tapestries and shattered treasures. From the courtyard there was still shouting and screaming, and her glance wandered to the windows before she looked back to him. “I have done what I had to do,” she said in an absent, deathly voice. “I have loosed the Barrows and the marshlands on Shiuan because it was a means to reach this land most expediently, with force to survive. I do not lead them. I only came among them. I take shelter here only until it is possible to move on. I do not look at what I leave behind me.”