He listened, and something inside him shuddered, not at the words, which deserved it, but at the tone of them. She was lying; he hoped with all his heart that in this one thing he understood her, or he understood nothing at all. And to rise now, to walk out that door and leave her, took something he did not possess. In this, too, he did not know whether it was courage or cowardice.
“I will stay,” he said.
She stared at him, saying nothing. He grew afraid, so strange and troubled her look was. There were shadows beneath her eyes. He reckoned that she had not slept well, had rested little in recent days, with no companion to guard her sleep among strangers, with no one to fill the silence with which she surrounded herself, implacable in her purpose and disinterested in others’ desires,
“I will make discreet inquiry,” she said at last. “It may be that I can do something to have her found without finding her… only so you know clearly what the conditions are.”
He heard the brittleness in her voice, knew what it masked, and bowed, in shaken gratitude, touched his brow to the hearthstones, sat up again.
“There is surely a bed to be had,” she said, “and an hour or more before I shall be inclined to need it.”
He looked beyond her, to the open arch of the shadowed next room, where the servants had begun stirring about, the removal of the former owners completed. There was a light somewhere within, the opening and closing of cabinets, the rustle of fabrics. A warm bed: he longed toward it, exhausted—luxury that he seldom knew, and far different from the things he had expected at the end of this ugly day.
It was far different, he thought, from what many others knew this night: Jhirun, if she still lived, Kithan, bereft of power, Roh—fled into the storm and the flood this night, in his private nightmare that centered upon Morgaine—Roh, with Abarais before him and the chance of defeating them.
But Morgaine gazed down on him now with a face that at last he knew, tired, inexpressibly tired, and sane.
“You take first rest,” he said. “I shall sit by the fire and keep an eye on the servants.”
She regarded him from half-lidded eyes, shook her head. “Go as I told you,” she said. “I have eased your conscience, so far as I can. Go on. You have given me matters to attend yet; now let me attend them.”
He gathered himself up, almost fell in doing it, his feet asleep, and he steadied himself against the mantel, looked at her apologetically. Her gaze, troubled and thoughtful, gave him benediction; and he bowed his head in gratitude.
Nightmares surrounded her at times. There was one proceeding in the courtyard and elsewhere in the hold this night Stop it, he wanted to plead with her. Take command of them and stop it. You can do it, and will not.
She had led an army once; ten thousand men had followed her before his age, and had been swept away into oblivion, lost Clans and kingdoms had perished, dynasties ended, Andur-Kursh plunged into a hundred years of poverty and ruin.
So clan Yla had perished in her service, to the last man, lost in the void of Gates; so passed much of Chya, and many a man of Nhi and Myya and Ris. Horrid suspicion nagged at him.
He looked back at her, where she sat, a lonely figure before the fire. He opened his mouth to speak to her, to go back and tell her what things he had begun to fear of this land, to hear her say that they were not so.
There were the servants, who would overhear and repeat things elsewhere. He dared not speak, not before them. He turned away toward the other room.
There was the softness of a down mattress, the comfort of fabrics smooth and soft; of cleanliness, that most of all.
She would call him, he reckoned, in only a little while; there was not that much of the night remaining. He slept mostly dressed, in clean clothing that he had discovered in a chest, the former lord as tall as he and no whit slighter, save in the length of arm and breadth of shoulder. The fine cloth rested easily on his hurts; it was good to feel it, to have stripped away the stubble of days without a razor, and to rest with his hair damp from a thorough scrubbing,… in a place warm and soft, fragrant with a woman’s care, be she servant or murdered qujalin lady.