Morgaine walked over to the bed, lifted the compress on
Vanye’s injured hand, shook her head. Then she went over to the door and slid the chair over in such fashion that no one outside could easily open the door.
“Are we threatened?” Vanye asked, disturbed by such precautions.
Morgaine busied herself with her own gear, extracting some of her own unguents from the kit. “I imagine we are,” she said. “But that is not why I barred the door. We are not provided with a lock and I grow weary of that minx spying on my business.”
He watched uneasily as she set her medicines out oh the table beside him. “I do not want—”
“Objections denied.” She opened a jar and smeared a little medication into the wound, which was wider and more painful than before, since the compress. The medication stung and made it throb, but numbed the wound thereafter. She mixed something into water for him to drink, and insisted and ordered him to drink it.
Thereafter he was sleepy again, and began to perceive that Morgaine was the agent of it this time.
She was sitting by him when he awoke, polishing his much-battered helm, tending his armor, he supposed, from boredom. She tilted her head to one side and considered him.
“How fare you now?”
“Better,” he said, for he seemed free of fever.
“Can you rise?”
He tried. It was not easy. He realized in his blindness and his concern with the effort itself, that he was not clothed, and snatched at the sheet, nearly falling in- the act: Kurshin were a modest folk. But it mattered little to Morgaine. She estimated him with an analytical eye that was in itself more embarrassing than the blush she did not own.
“You will not ride with any great endurance,” she said, “which is an inconvenience. I have no liking for this place. I do not trust our host at all, and I may wish to quit this hall suddenly.”
He sank down again, reached for his clothing and tried to dress, one-handed as he was.
“Our host,” he said, “is Kasedre, lord of Leth. And you are right. He is mad.”
He omitted to mention that Kasedre was reputed to have qu-
jalin blood in his veins, and that that heredity was given as reason for his madness; Morgaine, though unnerving in her oddness, was at least sane.
“Rest,” she bade him when he had dressed, for the effort had taxed him greatly. “You may need your strength. They have our horses in stables downstairs near the front entry, down this hall outside to the left, three turns down the stairs and left to the first door. Mark that. Listen, I will show you what I have observed of this place, in the case we must take our leave separately.”
And sitting on the bed beside him she traced among the bedclothes the pattern of the halls and the location of doors and rooms, so that he had a fair estimation of where things lay without having laid eye upon them. She had a good faculty for such things: he was pleased to learn his liyo was sensible and experienced in matters of defense. He began to be more optimistic of their chances in this place.
“Are we prisoners,” he asked, “or are we guests?”
“I am a guest in name, at least,” she said, “but this is not a happy place for guesting.”
There was a scratching at the door. Someone tried it. When it did not yield, the visitor padded off down the hall. .
“Do you have any wish to linger here?” he asked.
“I feel,” she said, “rather like a mouse passing a cat: probably there is no harm and the beast looks well-fed and lazy; but it would be a mistake to scurry.”
“If the cat is truly hungry,” he said, “we delude ourselves.”
She nodded.
This time there was a deliberate knock at the door.
Vanye scrambled for his longsword, hooked it to his belt, convenient to the left hand. Morgaine moved the chair and opened the door.
It was Flis again. The girl smiled uncertainly and bowed. Vanye saw her in clearer light this time, without the haze of fever. She was not as young as he had thought. It was paint that blushed her cheek and her dress was not country and innocence: it was blowsy. She simpered and smiled past Morgaine at Vanye.