There has been so much sorrow, all useless. In my pride, I too have brought grief on those who have done me no harm. I will do my uttermost to save Orain from the fate they have measured for him; it looks hopeless, but not all porridge cooked is eaten. But whichever way it goes, if I am alive at dawn I shall send word to Father and Luciella that I live and they must not grieve for me.
Jandria’s sorrow is worse than mine. Orain, if he dies, I will mourn, because he was my friend and because he died nobly for Carolin, whom he loves. But who could mourn, or have any feeling except relief, if Lyondri can do no more evil?
She held Jandria’s sobbing body in her arms, and at last felt her drop away into sleep.
She had slept for an hour or two, when Jandria shook her shoulder softly.
“Get up, Romilly. It is time.”
Romilly splashed her face with cold water, and ate a little more bread, but she refused wine. For this she must be perfectly alert. Carolin was waiting for her in his tent, his face composed and grim. He said, “I hardly need tell you that if you free Orain – or save him any more suffering, even if you must put your own dagger through his heart – you may name your own reward, even if you wish to marry one of my own sons.”
She smiled at the thought; why should she wish to do that? She said, speaking as if he were the Dom Carlo she had first known, “Uncle, I will do what I can for Orain because he was kind to me beyond all duty when he thought me only a runaway hawkmaster’s apprentice. Do you not think a Swordswoman and a MacAran will risk herself as well for honor as from greed?”
“I know it,” Carolin said gently, “but I will reward you for my own pleasure, too, Romilly.”
She turned to Jandria. “The boots will make too much noise. Find me a pair of soft sandals, if you will.” When Jandria had brought a pair of her own – they were too big, but Romilly bound them tightly on her feet – she tied her hair into a dark cloth, so that no stray gleam would give her away, and smeared her face with dirt so that it would not shine in a watchman’s lantern. Now she could go noiselessly into the city, and she feared no sentry-bird nor dog. At this hour, certainly, all but a few men would be sleeping.
Alderic said in a tone that brooked no denial, “I will go with you to the side gate.”
She nodded. He too had a touch of this laran. She held his hand, silently, as they stole on their soft shoes away from Carolin’s tent, making a wide circle away from the gates. Somewhere a dog barked; probably, she thought, sending out a questing tendril of awareness, at a mouse in the streets; but she silenced him anyway, sending out thoughts of peace and drowsiness…
“The gate will creak if you try to open it, even if you can quiet the sentry-birds,” whispered Alderic, and without a word, made a stirrup of his hand as if he helped her to mount a tall horse; she caught at the top of the small side-gate and climbed to the top, looking down on the sleeping city by moonlight.
She sent out her thoughts to the sentry-birds, sending out peace, quiet, silence . . . she could see them on the walls now, great ugly shapes with their handlers, like statues against the sky. A disturbance and they would scream, awakening all of Rakhal’s armies….
Peace, Peace, silence . . . through their eyes she looked down at the moon-flooded streets, which lay dark, with only, now and again, a single lighted window . . . one after another she reached out to investigate them. Ordinary laran was clouded, but reaching into the minds of animals, she could feel silence . . . behind one lighted window, a woman struggled to give birth to a child and a midwife knelt, holding her hands and whispering encouragement. A mother sat beside a sick child, singing in a voice hoarse with worry and weariness. A man wounded somewhere in the war tossed with the fever in the stump on his leg….