For a bit we just wandered through the town, talking little. She commented on my bruised face; I said only that I had fallen. The wind was cold and relentless, so the market stalls were near empty, of both customers and vendors. She paid much attention to Smithy, and he reveled in it. On our walk back, we stopped at a tea shop, and she treated me to mulled wine and made so much of Smithy that he fell over on his back and all his thoughts turned into wallowing in her affection. I was struck suddenly by how clearly Smithy was aware of her feelings, and yet she did not sense his at all, except on the shallowest level. I quested gently toward her, but found her elusive and drifting today, like a perfume that comes strong and then faint on the same breath of wind. I knew that I could have pushed more insistently against her, but somehow it seemed pointless. An aloneness settled on me, a deadly melancholy that she never had been and never would be any more aware of me than she was of Smithy. So I took her brief words to me as a bird pecks at dry bread crumbs and let alone the silences she curtained between us. Soon she said that she could not tarry long, or it would be the worse for her, for if her father no longer had the strength to strike her, he was still capable of smashing his beer mug on the floor or knocking over racks of things to show his displeasure at being neglected. She smiled an odd little smile as she told me this, as if it would be less appalling if somehow we thought of his behavior as amusing. I couldn’t smile and she looked away from my face.
I helped her with her cloak and we left, walking uphill and into the wind. And that suddenly seemed a metaphor for my whole life. At her door, she shocked me with a hug and a kiss on the corner of my jaw, the embrace so brief that it was almost like being bumped in the market. “Newboy …” she said, and then, “Thank you. For understanding.”
And then she whisked into her shop and shut the door behind her, leaving me chilled and bewildered. She thanked me for understanding her at a time when I had never felt more isolated from her, and everyone else. All the way up to the keep Smithy kept prattling to himself about all the perfumes he’d smelt on her and how she had scratched him just where he could never reach in front of his ears and of the sweet biscuit she’d fed him in the tea shop.
It was midafternoon when we got back to the stables. I did a few chores and then went back up to Burrich’s room, where Smithy and I fell asleep. I awoke to Burrich standing over me, a slight frown on his face.
“Up, and let’s have a look at you,” he commanded, and I arose wearily and stood quiet while he went over my injuries with deft hands. He was pleased with the condition of my hand and told me that it might go unbandaged now, but to keep the wrapping about my ribs and to come back to have it adjusted each evening. “As for the rest of it, keep it clean and dry, and don’t pick at the scabs. If any of it starts to fester, come and see me.” He filled a little pot with an unguent that eased sore muscles and gave it to me, by which I deduced that he expected me to leave.
I stood holding the little pot of medicine. A terrible sadness welled up in me, and yet I could find no words to say. Burrich looked at me, scowled, and turned away. “Now stop that,” he commanded me angrily.
“What?” I asked.
“You look at me sometimes with my lord’s eyes,” he said quietly, and then as sharply as before, “Well, what did you think to do? Hide in the stables the rest of your life? No. You have to go back. You have to go back and hold up your head and eat your meals among the keep folk, and sleep in your own room, and live your own life. Yes, and go finish those damn lessons in the Skill.”