And Gilla was calling him.
Holy Anen blast me if I ever touch that wine again! he thought muzzily, and
perhaps presently he would remember just what wine it had been. But now that he
considered, he could not remember anything about what must have been an epic
binge, and that worried him. Gilla would be furious if she had had to drag him
home, and from the taste in his mouth he must have been sick, too. He groaned,
wishing fervently that he could pass out again.
‘Lalo! Lalo my darling, you’ve got to wake up! You wretched man, I heard you
open your eyes and look at me!’
Something wet ran down his neck and someone near him stifled a sob. Gilla?
Gilla? But she would never weep over him after a drinking bout – a pail of cold
water, maybe, but not tears. How long had he been unconscious, anyway?
As if he were trying to work an old lock with a rusty key, Lalo-opened his eyes.
He was lying on the pallet in his studio. Alfi and Latilla crouched at the foot
of it, watching him with wide, awed eyes. Vanda was behind them, but her face
held the look of one who has been suddenly released from fear. He turned his
eyes – he did not yet trust himself to move his head – to the bedside, and saw
Gilla. Her face was puffy and her eyes red from weeping, and as his gaze met
hers they glistened with another tear.
Without thinking, he reached up and brushed it from her cheek: then he stared at
his hand, pallid and veined and thin. And now that awareness of the rest of his
body was returning, he realized that he felt curiously light, and his other hand