There was no need of the sentry-birds this day, and Romilly, still weak and confused after yesterday’s fierce efforts and the evil dreams of the night, was glad of it. Yet as she rode, in the favored place near Carolin and his advisers, she was not really conscious of herself or of her own horse, so much was she riding with Sunstar at the head of the troops. Orain was riding near them, and she heard him talking easily and as equals with Lady Maura and Lord Ranald.
“You have the Serrais laran, Ranald, it would be no trouble to you, I dare say, to learn to handle the birds; it is near enough the MacAran Gift, which I saw in Mistress Romilly all those weeks when we travelled together.” From her distance Romilly could sense the memory of how Orain had watched her, with tenderness not unmixed with something else, something akin to love. She knew now why Orain avoided her, because he could not see Romilly now without me painful memory of the boy Rumal who he had thought he knew, and he felt like a fool, layers of awareness overlapping and blurring.
Ranald said, “I am willing to try. And perhaps Mistress Romilly would be willing to school me. Though like all she is arrogant and harsh of tongue-” and Maura’s merry laughter, saying that he was not used to women who did not regard him, a Ridenow lord, as a special creation for their delight.
“Oh, come, Maura, I am not all that much of a womanizer, but if women were made by the Goddess Evanda for the delight of men, why should I refuse the Lady of Light her due by failing to worship Her in her creation, the loveliness of women?” he laughed. “No doubt She will punish you, one day, Orain, that you deny her due.” And Orain’s good-natured laughter, and Romilly knew that she was listening to a conversation not meant for her ears. She tried to shove it away but she did not know how, except by turning her attention elsewhere, and then she was riding again with Sunstar and too aware of Carolin. It was not a comfortable day, and when that evening Ranald came and asked if he could assist her to dismount, and said that he wished to learn the ways of the birds, so that he could fly one while Lady Maura was oath-bound not to do so, she was short with him.
“It is not so simple as all that. But you may try to approach them; however, do not complain to me if you should lose a fingernail or even an eye!”
She did not like the way he looked at her. It reminded her all too much of Dom Garris, or even Rory, as if he had physically fingered her young breasts with rude hands; she was painfully aware of his look – I have never felt this way before – and of the open desire in it. But he had done nothing, said nothing, how could she make any objection to it? She drew her cloak about her as if she was cold, and gestured him toward the birds.
He lowered his eyes and she knew he had picked up some sense of her unease. He said quietly, “Forgive me, mestra, I meant no offense.” No more than Carolin could he seek to force any attentions on a woman unwilling, since he would share the victim’s shock and distress, her sense of violation even at a rude look. But he was not used to women who were not of his own Hastur-kind who would be aware of this sensitivity.
Yet a woman who has not laran – it is like coupling with a dumb beast, hardly alive . . . she saw the scalding crimson on his turned-away neck and wished she knew how to tell him that it was all right. He approached the birds; she sensed the way in which he reached out to them, trying to echo the sense of harmlessness; to extend his senses toward the birds with nothing but the friendliest feelings. For a moment Romilly waited . . . then Temperance lowered her head and rubbed it against the scratching-stick in the Ridenow lord’s hand.