“I would not help him against you.”
“You are without defense. You are ignorant, and without defense.”
Heat rose to his face, anger. “Doubtless,” he said.
“I could remedy that, Vanye. Become what I am, accept what I serve, bear what I bear.”
The heat fled, leaving chill behind. “No,” he said. “No.”
“Vanye—for your own sake, listen to me.”
Hope was in her eyes, utterly intense: never before had she pleaded with him for anything. He had come with her: perhaps then she had begun to hope for this thing that she had never won of him. He remembered then what he had for a time forgotten, the difference there was between Morgaine and what possessed Chya Roh: that Morgaine, having the right to order, had always refrained.
It was the thing she wanted most, that alone might give her some measure of peace; and she refrained.
“Liyo,” he whispered, “I would do anything, anything you set me to do. Ask me things that I can do.”
“Except this,” she concluded, in a tone that pierced his heart.
“Liyo—anything else.”
She lowered her eyes, like a curtain drawn finally between them, lifted them again. There was no bitterness, only a deep sorrow.
“Be honest with me,” he said, stung. “You nearly died in the flood. You nearly died, with whatever you seek to do left undone; and this preys on your mind. It is not for my sake that you want this. It is for yourself.”
Again the lowering of the eyes; and she looked up again. “Yes,” she said, without a trace of shame. “But know too, Vanye, that my enemies will never leave you in peace. Ignorance cannot save you from that. So long as you are accessible to them, you will never be safe.”
“It is what you said: that one grace you always gave me, that you never burdened me with your qujalin arts; and for that, for that I gave you more than ever my oath demanded of me. Do you want everything now? You can order. I am only ilin. Order, and I will do what you say.”
There was warfare in the depths of her eyes, yea and nay equally balanced, desperately poised. “O Vanye,” she said softly, “thee is asking me for virtue, which thee well knows I lack.”
“Then order,” he said.
She frowned darkly, and stared elsewhere.
“I tried,” he said in that long silence, “to reach Abarais, to wait for you. And if I could have used Roh to set me there—I would have gone with him—to stop him.”
“With what?” she asked, a derisive laugh; but she turned toward him again, and even yet her look pleaded with him. “If I were lost, what could you have done?”
He shrugged, searched up the most terrible thing that he could envision. “Casting Changeling within a Gate: that would suffice, would it not?”
“If you could set hands on it. And that would destroy you; and destroy only one Gate.” She took Changeling from her side and laid it across the arms of her chair. “It was made for other use.”
“Let be,” he asked of her, for she eased the blade fractionally from its sheath. He edged back, for he trusted her mind, but not that witch-blade; and it was not her habit to draw it ever unless she must. She stopped; it lay half-exposed, no metal, but very like a shard of crystal, its magics restrained until it should be wholly unsheathed.
She held it so, the blade’s face toward him, while opal fires swirled softly in the qujalin runes on its surface. “For anyone who can read this,” she said, “here is the making and unmaking of Gates. And I think thee begins to know what this is worth, and what there is to fear should Roh take it. To bring this within his reach would be the most dangerous thing you could do.”
“Put it away,” he asked of her.
“Vanye: to read the runes—would thee learn simply that? Only that much—simply to read the qujalin tongue and speak it. Is that too much to ask?”
“Do you ask it for yourself?”
“Yes,” she said.
He averted his eyes from it, and nodded consent