The dead do not sleep, as do the living. They are told at slumber time to sit down and not move about, for fear of disturbing the living members of the household. The cadavers obediently take themselves to whatever out-of-the-way spot can be found for them and wait, motionless and silent, through the sleeping hours.
“They do not sleep, but are they dreaming?” Alfred wondered, regarding them with wrenching pity.
It may have been his imagination, but he fancied that during this time when contact with the living was forgone, set aside until the morrow, the faces of the dead grew sad. The phantasm shapes hovering over their physical husks cried out in despair. Lying on his bed, Alfred tossed and turned, his rest broken by the restless sighs of whispered keening.
“What a quaint fancy,” said Jera, over breakfast.
The duke and duchess and Alfred dined together. The earl had already broken his fast, she explained apologetically, and had gone downstairs to work in his laboratory. Alfred was able to obtain only a vague idea of what the old man was doing, something about experimenting with varieties of kairn grass to see if he could develop a hardy strain that could be grown in the cold and barren soil of the Old Provinces.
“The moaning sound must have been the wind you heard,” Jera continued, pouring kairn-grass tea and dishing up rashers of torb. [1] (Alfred, who had been afraid to ask, was vastly relieved to note that a living female servant did the cooking.)
“Not unless the wind has a voice and words to speak,” Alfred said, but he said it to his plate and no one else heard him.
“You know, I used to think the same thing when I was a child,” said Jonathan. “Funny, I’d forgotten all about it until you brought it up. I had an old nanny who used to sit with me during sleep-time and, after she died, her corpse was reanimated and, naturally, she came back into the nursery to do what she’d always done in life. But I couldn’t sleep with her in there, after she was dead. It seemed to me she was crying. Mother tried to explain it was just my imagination. I suppose it was, but at that time it was very real to me.”
“What happened to her?” Alfred asked.
Jonathan appeared slightly shamefaced. “Mother eventually had to get rid of her. You know how children get something fixed in their minds. You can’t argue logically with a child. They talked and talked to me but nothing would do but that nanny had to go.”
“What a spoiled brat!” said Jera, smiling at her husband over her teacup.
“Yes, I rather think I was,” said Jonathan, flushing in embarrassment. “I was the youngest, you know. By the way, dear, speaking of home—”
Jera set down her teacup, shook her head. “Out of the question. I know how worried you are about the harvest, but Rift Ridge is the first place the dynast’s men will come searching for us.”
“But won’t this place be the second?” Jonathan inquired, pausing in his eating, his fork halfway to his mouth.
Jera ate her breakfast complacently. “I received a message from Tomas this morning. The dynast’s men have set out for Rift Ridge. It will take them at least a half cycle’s march to reach our castle. They’ll waste time searching, and then another half cycle’s journey back to report. If Kleitus even cares about us anymore, now that he has this war to fight, he’ll order them to come here. They can’t possibly arrive in Old Provinces before tomorrow. And we’re leaving this cycle, once Tomas returns.”
“Isn’t she wonderful, Alfred?” said Jonathan, regarding his wife admiringly. “I would have never reasoned any of that out. I’d have run off wildly, without thinking, and landed right in the arms of the dynast’s men.”
“Yes, wonderful,” mumbled Alfred.
This talk of troops searching for them and sneaking about in the slumber-time and hiding completely unnerved him. The smell and sight of the greasy torb on his plate made him nauseous. Jera and Jonathan were gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes. Albert lifted a largish piece of torb off his plate and slipped it to the dog, who was lying at his feet. The treat was graciously accepted, with a wag of the tail.