“What good has it done?” he cried. “There are men on Haven who know everything these men knew!”
“No,” she said, shaking her head at him. “If Veswees has been as capable as I judge him to be, if he has used what I told him, and if everything is happening as I have seen it happening, the old men of the Tribunal are already dead or under sentence of death, and Haven’s store of P’naki is lost forever, buried so deep no one will ever find it. It doesn’t matter who knows about it if none of the stuff exists. I am just me, Aufors.
The only difference between this dripping wet Jenny and the Jenny you knew before is that I know what my task is.”
“After all this?” he cried. “Still more?”
“Only a little more. I have yet to explain,” she said, wiping her eyes with her fingers, rocking to and fro, picking up her child to rock him with her in an endless, swaying comforting motion, the motion of a cradle or a rocking chair in some homely quiet place. “Someone has to explain.”
After a time she swallowed her tears and rose again to move off toward Terceth, who had stopped when he first caught sight of all the bodies piled in the distance before him. They joined him silently and walked with him to the sea, where they made a rough camp and waited.
That night, deep in the dark hours, when Aufors was securely locked in sleep, Genevieve swam out into the sea with Dovidi. He was hungry, and she had nothing to feed him. There among the little wavelets she called a tiny call, a wee meeping call, and a warm sea creature came to share its milk between its calf and Dovidi, who drank it underwater and was satisfied.
It was an innocent, necessary thing to do, but Genevieve did not tell Aufors about it on the morning. Given his temperament and present mood, there might be some things it would be better for him not to know.
A day later, the Frangian ship returned to take them home.
It was not long thereafter that Genevieve woke one dawn to the sound of the siren-lizards in the vines. She knew the room well, her own tower room at Mrs. Blessingham’s, and she was alone in the room as she had used to be, for Aufors was at Langmarsh House, with Dovidi. It was time, she felt, they should get to know one another and feel their kinship. Though Aufors still gave her very strange looks from time to time, she continued day by day being as dull as possible, as merely motherly as she could manage, and his doubts became less frequent. When she felt like singing, she repressed the urge. Repression was no more than she had practiced for many years, and doing so now might help him accept the situation. Aufors himself felt he was accepting it, though it required all his forbearance and powers of pragmatic analysis to do so.
Genevieve slipped out of bed and went to the window. Sun sparkled on leaves, siren-lizards sang, the world seemed unchanged. A pity it seemed so, considering how it was changed. Nothing was as it had been before.
They had returned from Mahahm aboard the Frangian vessel, bringing the Marshal’s body, though not the Prince’s, whose hands Aufors had taken some pleasure in severing from the Marshal’s neck. Genevieve had felt the sands of Mahahm a proper tomb for the Marshal, but Haven’s propriety required that he be buried in the tomb of his ancestors. By all means, she had told herself. Bury him in Langmarsh. Do nothing that might reduce her respect among the women of Haven, for they would find her announcements hard enough to accept from a Duchess, much less a disreputable commoner.
Now a siren-lizard dropped from a tree branch onto the windowsill and stared at her, as though about to speak.
“It’s a strange feeling, being here again,” she murmured to it, leaning into the breeze. “I’d honestly rather be elsewhere, in Galul, perhaps, but someone has to explain to the women of Haven, and since most of them respect the schools in which they were reared, the schools are the best place to start.”