Separation

Right now, she really didn’t want to think about that too much. It was going to be difficult enough to obtain a release for the companions, without Markos interfering on personal or sec grounds.

Sineta led them into the baronial quarters, acknowledging the greetings of the sec guard with a regal nod as they passed. Outside, it was warm and bright, but within the building it was dark and cool, with the shades drawn over the windows and only candlelight to illuminate the room. For, as all the houses in the village, the baronial quarters consisted of one room, with separated areas for kitchen, latrine and ablutions. These small areas didn’t take away from the richly textured decorations and hangings on the walls of the main area, nor from the beautifully hand-carved furniture and ornamentation that stood on the rush matting. As with Sineta’s abode, there were signs of status within the community, but no sense of ostentation.

A healer stood in attendance a short distance from the baron’s bedside, close enough to respond to his call, but not close enough to be a hindrance on either his guests or himself in speaking freely. Markos was seated on a chair by the side of the bed; the baron was propped up on pillows.

It was Mildred’s first sight of the baron, although she had heard much of him from his daughter. Her first thought was that Barras was dying. There was nothing she would be able to do, except make his decline easier. He was stick-thin as he lay on the bed, naked from the waist up, his lower half covered with a thin sheet. She could see his ribs sticking painfully through dry skin that held a gray pallor. His cheeks were sunken, almost as much as his eyes. His hair was white, with the odd streak of gray to remind people that once it had been more than the current sparse covering. His arms had lost all flesh, all muscle. He moved while talking to the sec boss, and his movements were stiff and painful, as though any movement at all was an effort. It looked to Mildred, even at first glance, as though the baron were suffering from a cancer that had eaten away at him and was now ready to claim that last spark that kept him alive.

And yet, when he looked away from the sec boss to see his daughter and Mildred enter the room, the sunken eyes blazed with life once more and in the gaunt, drawn face Mildred could see echoes of the man he had once been. Echoes of the fine-boned structure this once-handsome man had passed down to his daughter.

“Sineta, it is early. Even though the light pains me to watch now, I can tell from the lightness of the air itself that it is still the day. You do not usually come until the darkness has fallen and the shadows of imagining fill the room. There must be good reason to change the routine of one who, like her father, lives by the habits of the hunter.”

Sineta smiled, ignoring the barely disguised scowl that crossed Markos’s face. She leaned over her father and kissed him gently on the cheek.

“Sineta, I would bid you leave to wait until I have finished my business with your father,” the sec boss said with a barely held politeness. “I am making my report and there is little to interest you.”

“I hope you will not feel this way if you have your wish and attain my hand in marriage. The consort of a female baron should not be so disrespectful…”

Markos gritted his teeth and looked away. Sineta’s barb had hit home. Without looking at her, he rose to leave. As he did so, his eye caught Mildred’s and she could see within a discomfort at his position.

“I would only marry for the sake of the people, to give them a baron who would try to do the right thing,” he stated, looking at Mildred all the while. “There would be no disrespect to you, as that would be likening to spit in the eye of Pilatu.”

Sineta softened, placing a hand on his arm. “I know you only wish to do that which you think is best. But perhaps you should be open to other ways and ideas…and perhaps you should remain, as you will want to hear what I have to say.”

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