Jaelle started to move away, then suddenly reached out and caught Peter’s hand. She said, “I cannot believe it. You are so like to my cousin Kyril, and yet… let me see your hands! How many fingers have you?”
“Normal number,” said Peter, “four and a thumb- oh, my God!” He was looking down at Jaelle’s slender hand, lying in his own. “You have six fingers on each hand,” he said numbly.
“Yes. The Ardais and the Aillard blood-those who bear it have the extra finger,” Jaelle said. “Is it wholly unknown among Terrans? Rohana is Aillard by birth, and her husband an Ardais; and all of her children have the Aillard hands.” She began to laugh hysterically. “If Rumal had-had bothered to count your fingers-” she got out between spasms, “you would now be hanging-in pieces-from his castle wall.”
She could not seem to stop laughing; Magda came and tried to calm her, and at last, really frightened, reluctant but afraid that it was the only way to stop her, took her shoulders and shook her hard. Jaelle began to cry as hysterically as she had laughed. “You’d be dead,” she got out between sobs, “you’d be dead-”
She has ridden too far; she is still not strong. Magda said to Peter, “Can you take her on your saddle? We must get away from here before nightfall,” and watched as Peter tenderly lifted Jaelle on his horse, got on and supported the drooping girl, his arm holding her upright against him. Magda mounted her own horse, and took the reins of Jaelle’s, leading it after them. And already-she realized a long time afterward-she knew then what was going to happen.
Part III
JAELLE n’ha MELORA,
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Chapter TWELVE
The ceiling was painted blue, with a border and a design of little stars in gilt. At first Jaelle could not imagine where she was. Then she remembered that she had slept in this room during her one extended visit to Castle Ardais, in her sixteenth year.
“Before you renounce your heritage as Comynara” Kindra had warned her, speaking more seriously than she had ever before spoken to her foster-daughter, “you must first know what it is that you are renouncing.” So to Ardais Jaelle had gone, protesting, to remain a full half-year. She had not been happy there; she had felt, she told Rohana once rebelliously, like a fish in a tree.
But I am not sixteen years old anymore? Why am I here? She shifted her weight, and at the sharp stab of pain in her wounded shoulder, remembered. Where were her Terran companions? They had come late at night, she remembered, and she had told the servants at the gate to bear word to the Lady Rohana that her kinswoman had come to spend midwinter-night, bringing two friends. She remembered Rohana, graciously welcoming them all, and her dismay when she saw Jaelle’s bandaged face. The rest was blurred. Jaelle was lying in a big bed, wearing a long-sleeved nightgown, trimmed with lace at the neck and wrists. She supposed it belonged to Rohana, or to her daughter; she herself possessed no such garments, and it was too fine for a servant. One of the sleeves had been slit to accommodate the folds of bandage at her shoulder; her face, too, had been bandaged freshly. She looked around the room and saw a second bed near the window, and the Terran woman asleep in it, but at that moment Magda turned over and looked at her.
“You look better,” she said. “When you were carried up here the night before last, I thought you were dying.” Magda got out of bed and came to Jaelle’s side. She, too, was wearing one of the lace-trimmed gowns; though she was so tall it came only midway down her calves. Her dark short hair had been washed and was curling around her cheeks.
Jaelle said, “I really don’t remember anything after we got here; did you carry me here, or-” She hesitated, not remembering his Darkovan name, unwilling to use the Terran one where they might be overheard.
“No, dom Gabriel himself did you that honor.”
Jaelle smiled wryly. “Poor dom Gabriel! How my kinswoman’s husband dislikes me! Or, at least, dislikes having a Free Amazon in the family!”