“Lady Nerilka, if you leave now”
“I am leaving,” she said in a firm low voice as they entered the kitchen’s back corridor.
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“and in this fashion, Lord Tolocamp”
She halted and faced Capiam at the archway into the busy, noisy kitchen. “will miss neither me nor my dower.” She lifted the demijohn. She sighed with exasperation, glancing at the door through which the drudges had exited. “I can be of real use in the internment camp for I know about mixing medicines and decocting and infusing herbs. I shall be doing something constructive that is needed rather than sitting comfortably in a comer somewhere. I know your craftsmen are overworked. Every hand is needed.
“Besides,”she gave him a sideways glance that was almost co-quettish“I can slip back in whenever it’s necessary.” She patted the keys in her pouch. “Don’t look surprised. The drudges do it all the time. Why shouldn’t I?”
Then she moved on and he followed her quickly, unable to think of any counterargument. The moment she passed the arch from the kitchen, her posture changed, her stride altered, and she was no longer the proud daughter of the Hold but a gawky woman, head down, shuffling, awkwardly overburdened and resentful.
Once out in the great roadway, Capiam looked, trying not to ap-pear furtive, to his left, to the main forecourt and stairs. Tirone and the dozens of harpers and healers regularly in attendance at Fort Hold were moving down the ramp.
“He’ll be watching them! Not us,” Nerilka said. She chuckled. “Try to walk less proudly, Master Capiam. You are, for the moment, merely a drudge, burdened and reluctantly heading for the perimeter, terrified of coming down sick to die like everyone in the camp.”
“Everyone in the camp is not dying.”
“Of course not, but Lord Tolocamp thinks so. He has so informed us constantly. Ah, a belated attempt on his part to prevent the exo-dus! Don’t pause!” she added, again in that authoritative voice.
Capiam would have halted in consternation but for her warning. He saw four guards hurrying after Tirone’s group.
“You can walk as slowly as you want, that’s in character, but don’t stop,” she advised.
She watched, too, and if her eyes sparkled and she grinned at the discomfiture of her father’s guards, there was no one but Capiam to observe her unfilial delight. At that distance, Capiam couldn’t tell whether the guards were halfhearted in their efforts or not. There was a brief melee from which Tirone and his companions continued
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unhurriedly down the roadway to the Harper Hall. Nerilka and Capiam continued toward the perimeter.
The internment camp had been established to the left of the massive Fort Hold cliff, in a small valley out of the direct view of the Hold. The guards lines had been set above it, in full view of Lord Tolocamp’s windows. A rough timbered shack had been erected as a guard shelter from which temporary fencing had been built in both directions. Guards constantly patrolled the fence.
Nerilka’s three drudges deposited their burdens at the guardhouse where others were leaving baskets of food. Then the men had begun to retrace their steps to the Hold, empty yokes balanced on their
shoulders. “If you go past the perimeter. Master Capiam, you will not be
permitted back,” Nerilka reminded him.
“If there is more than one way into the Hold, is there only one past the perimeter?” Capiam asked flippantly. “I’ll see you later,
Lady Nerilka.”
As they approached the shack, guards were being assigned to carry certain of the baskets and bales into the prohibited area where a group of men and women waited patiently for the exchange to be
made.
“Here now, Master Capiam.” The guardleader came striding up, his expression alarmed. “You can’t go in there without staying”
“I don’t want this medicine heaved about, Theng. Make sure they
understand it’s fragile.”
“I can do that much for you,” Theng replied, and he strode diffidently to add the demijohn to one side of the bales. “This is to be handled carefully and preferably by a healer. Master Capiam says it’s
medicine.”
The internees moved forward to collect the supplies, and Theng backed up. Nerilka was right behind him and as he turned to come back to the guardhouse, she slipped past him and joined those picking up the baskets as if she were one of them.