Then, just as Crispin was thinking so, struggling to make a dream’s peace with these apprehended truths, beginning to lift a hand in farewell to the loved woman behind the forest god, the zubir was gone, confounding him again.
It disappeared as it had in the road in fog, and did not reappear. Crispin stopped breathing in his dream, felt a hammer pounding within him, and did not know that he cried aloud in a cold room in a Sauradian night.
Ilandra smiled in the palace. They were alone. No barriers. Her smile cut the heart from him. He might have been a body lying on a road then, his chest torn open. He wasn’t. In his dream he saw her step lightly forward: nothing between, nothing to bar her now. ‘There are birds in the trees,’ his dead wife said, coming into his arms,’ and we are young.’ She rose up on her toes and kissed him on the mouth. He tasted salt, heard himself say something terribly, hugely important, couldn’t make out his words. His own words. Couldn’t.
Woke to the wild wind outside and a dead fire and the Inici girl-a shadow, a weight-sitting on his bed beside him wrapped in his cloak. Her hands clutched her own elbows.
‘What? What is it?’ he cried, confused, aching, his heart pounding. She had kissed .. .
‘You were shouting,’ the girl whispered.
‘Oh, dear Jad. Oh, Jad. Go to sleep …’ He struggled to remember her name. He felt drugged, heavy, he wanted that palace again. Wanted it like some men want the juice of poppies, endlessly.
She was silent, motionless. ‘I’m afraid,’ she said.
‘We’re all afraid. Go to sleep.’
‘No. I mean, I would comfort you, but I’m afraid.’
‘Oh.’ It became unfairly needful to order his thoughts. To be here. His jaw hurt, his heart. ‘People I loved died. You can’t comfort me. Go to sleep.’
‘Your . .. children?’
Every word spoken was drawing him farther from that palace. ‘My daughters. Last summer.’ He took a breath. T am ashamed to be here. I let them die.’ He had never said this. But it was true. He had failed them. And had survived.
‘Let them die? Of the plague’?’ the Inici woman on his bed said, incredulous. ‘No one can save anyone from that.’
‘I know. Jad. I know. It doesn’t matter.’
After a moment, she said, ‘And your … their mother?’
He shook his head.
The god-cursed shutter was still banging. He wanted to go out into the savage night and rip it from the wall and lie down in the icy wind with Ilandra. ‘Kasia,’ he said. That was her name. ‘Go to sleep. It isn’t your duty to comfort here.’
‘Not a duty,’ she said.
So much anger in him. ‘Jad’s blood! What do you propose? That your lovemaking skills transport me to joy?’
She went rigid. Drew a breath. ‘No. No. No, I … have no skills. That wasn’t. .. what I meant.’
He closed his eyes. Why did he have to even address these things now? So vivid, so rich a dream: on tiptoe, within his arms, a gown he remembered, the necklace, a scent, softness of parted lips.
She was dead, a ghost, a body in a grave. I am afraid, Kasia of the Inicii had said. Crispin let out a ragged breath. That shutter still banging along the wall outside. Over and over and over. So inane. So … ordinary. He shifted in the bed.
‘Sleep here then,’ he said. ‘There is nothing to fear. What happened today is over now.’ A lie. It didn’t end until you died. Life was an ambush, wounds waiting for you.
He turned on his side, facing the door, making room for her. She didn’t move at first, then he felt her slide under both blankets. Her foot touched his, moved quickly away, but he realized from the icy touch how cold she must have been with the fire dead. It was the bottom of the night. Spirits in the wind? Souls? He closed his eyes. They could lie together. Share mortal warmth. Men bought tavern girls on winter nights for no more than this sometimes.