“With his servants to attend you?” she asked. “You could not gracefully bar the door against them yourself, but no one thinks odd the things I do. Say that you are not fit and I will stay here and bar the door myself.”
“No,” he said. “I am fit enough. And you are probably right about the servants.” He thought of Flis, who, if she entertained everyone in this loathsome hall with the same graces she plied with him, would probably be fevered herself, or carry some more ugly sickness. And he recalled the twins, who had slipped into the dark like a pair of the palace rats: for some reason they and their little knives inspired him with more terror than Myya archers had ever done. He could not strike at them as they deserved; that they were children still stayed his hand; and yet they had no scruples, and their daggers were razor-sharp—like rats, he thought again, like rats, whose sharp teeth made them fearsome despite their size. He dreaded even for Morgaine with the likes of them skittering about the halls and conniving together in the shadows.
She left. He walked at his proper distance half a pace behind Morgaine, equally for the sake of formality and for safety’s sake. He had discovered one saw things that way, things that happened just after Morgaine had glanced away. He was only ilin. No one paid attention to a servant. And Kasedre’s servants feared her. It was in their eyes. That was, in this hall, great tribute.
And even the bandits as they entered the hall watched her with caution in their hot eyes, a touch of ice, a cold wind over them. It was curious: there was more respect in the afterwave of her passing than the nonchalance they showed to her face.
A greater killer than any of them, he thought unworthily; they respected her for that.
But the Leth, the uyin that gathered at the high tables,
watched her through polite smiles, and there was lust there too, no less than in the bandits’ eyes, but cold and tempered with fear. Morgaine was supremely beautiful: Vanye kept that thought at a distance within himself—he was tempted to few liberties with the qujal, and that one last of all. But when he saw her in that hall, her pale head like a blaze of sun in that darkness, her slim form elegant in tgihio and bearing the dragon blade with the grace of one who could truly use it, an odd vision came to him: he saw like a fever-dream a nest of corruption with one gliding serpent among the scuttling lesser creatures—more evil than they, more deadly, and infinitely beautiful, reared up among them and hypnotizing with basilisk eyes, death dreaming death and smiling.
He shuddered at the vision and saw her bow to Kasedre, and performed his own obeisance without looking into the mad, pale face: he retreated to his place, and when they were served, he examined carefully and sniffed at the wine they were offered.
Morgaine drank; he wondered could her arts make her proof against drugs and poisons, or save him, who was not. For his part he drank sparingly, and waited long between drafts, toying with it merely, waiting for the least dizziness to follow: none did. If they were being poisoned, it was to be more subtle.
The dishes were various: they both ate the simple ones, and slowly. There was an endless flow of wine, of which they both drank sparingly; and at last, at long last, Morgaine and Kasedre still smiling at each other, the last dish was carried out and servants pressed yet more wine on them.
“Lady Morgaine,” begged Kasedre then, “you gave us a puzzle and promised us answers tonight.”
“Of Witchfires?”
Kasedre bustled about the table to sit near her, and waved an energetic hand at the harried, patch-robed scribe who had hovered constantly at his elbow this evening. “Write, write,” he said to the scribe, for in every hall of note there was an archivist who kept records properly and made an account of hall business.
“How interesting your Book would be to me,” murmured Morgaine, “with all the time I have missed of the affairs of men. Do give me this grace, my lord Kasedre—to borrow your Book for a moment.”