"And she really got you over a horse, up the Vale to the hospice, and tied to a tree without you getting loose? Damn, she's such a scrap of a thing."
"I don't think I'm cut out to deal with women. Especially ones who don't think well of me."
"Ouch! Damnable, useless . . ." Tin pots and spoons clanked untidily. "I don't know how she keeps this stuff from burning. Here, take the part that's not black. Tomorrow you can cook."
"It's fine. Don't worry. I could eat a raw kibbazi."
Thoughts of breakfast set my own stomach rumbling, and I considered sitting up.
"So . . . the other one . . . how did the Lady find out about you?"
The morning's easy humor fled as quickly as the morning chill. I held still.
"Stars of night, Paulo, I'd decided to tell her who I was. I thought . . . well, after what I had learned that night when I looked into the past, I convinced myself she was innocent. I wanted to believe it. Things had changed . . . were changing . . . between us, and I couldn't lie to her any more. So I went to her house and knocked on the door of her lectorium, and she opened it with an oculus in her hand. I swear, if there were a god of dunces, I would be his most exemplary servant."
He paused for so long, I thought he had said all he was going to. But I felt more than heard him inhale and breathe out again slowly, as a warrior does when trying to ease the pain of a battle wound. "She tried to pass it off as something new. Something innocent . . ."
He told Paulo of his brief struggle with the Lady, and the long, dreadful hours that followed, ending with him bolted to a slab of shellstone, forbidden to sleep. And he told of the ordeal of the past weeks as he had feared he was going mad and of his horror that he might become what others named him. What I had named him.
If I hadn't already learned how close these two were, that morning would have taught me. Constrained by philosophy and custom that forbade us to measure our fellows by which of the Hundred Talents they bore or the strength of power they could bring to their gifts, we Dar-'Nethi spoke very little of sorcery. And we certainly did not dwell on our personal lacks or our feelings about them, unless we were talking with someone closer than kin. Gerick did not detail the torments D'Sanya had inflicted on him in her hospice workshop, but he was astonishingly frank about his humiliation at being so speedily and so roundly overcome, and about his terror as he lay helpless to avert his own disintegration.
"… The worst point was when I felt the power growing," he said, "this huge, overwhelming, monstrous disease inside me . . . and I knew it was the same vile thing I'd grown when Notуle and I worked with the oculus in Zhev'Na. But this time, instead of feeling horrid, the power felt . . . right. Even when I was twelve, I loathed their power at the same time I craved it. But now I lay there knowing I was going mad and knowing the consequences if I did, yet feeling as if I was whole for the first time in my life. If I hadn't discovered that I could expend some of it by manipulating my visions, I would have used it to get free . . . focused it through the oculus . . . used the damnable device . . . and that would have been the end of me. Earth and sky, Paulo, I was so close—"
"But you didn't."
"Not yet. But I'm still not safe. . . ."
He paused, and I tugged the corner of the blanket slightly to uncover one eye.
He had stretched his bandaged hands out in front of him. They were trembling, and he glared at them as if they were diseased. "I feel like a siege cannon with the fuse burning."
He was afraid of sorcery. I could not have been more surprised if someone had snatched me out of my own skin and set me down in an entirely new Jen. It had never occurred to me that a Lord of Zhev'Na could be afraid of anything, much less his own past or his own power. To look at him, ragged and filthy, unexceptional in size, picking up his spoon and gratefully devouring our daily slop of porridge as if it were sweet cream, having just heard him say he'd come a finger's breadth from retaking his place as a Lord . . .
I deliberately shifted weight onto my shoulder just so the sharp little warning would ensure I was awake.
Jen'Larie yna Sefaro, incapable ex-slave, involved in matters of such universal consequence . . . The thought came near choking me. Vasrin Shaper must find great humor in implausibility and incongruity. Yet, somehow, listening to Gerick's admission of his own fears and incapacities led me to analyze his experiences with more clarity than I'd been able to thus far.
He was probably right about the oculus having a particular hold on him. The Lords had deliberately molded him to be susceptible to its lure. I had been an unwilling witness to that. But about sorcery and power … he didn't have the least idea what he was talking about. Truth lay right in front of him, as bald as the rock, truth that must set our course over the next hours. He couldn't see it. And it seemed I was the only person available to do something about that. I just wasn't sure how to broach the subject.
Feeling a bit resentful, I threw off my blanket, sat up, and sniffed the dry air. "Is it truly impossible for a man to cook a meal without charring it beyond recognition?"
Chapter 27
"Someone's here to see you, my lady," said Aimee, knocking on the door of my bedchamber and poking her head inside. "She says her name is V'Rendal, an Archivist."
"One moment," I said, tugging on the leather strap that bound my small case.
Twenty-four wretched days had passed since Paulo and Jen had set out for Zhev'Na, three more than I had sworn to wait. Aimee had arranged for a cousin to drive me northward by carriage, believing it the best way for me to travel discreetly now that the roads in and out of Avonar were so heavily guarded. Unfortunately this night was the first the carriage had been available. Every vehicle and animal that could be spared was being used to transport men, women, and supplies for the Dar'Nethi army being assembled on the northern borders. An enormous force of Zhid had been sighted in the northern Wastes, marching toward the Vales and Avonar. But nothing more was going to delay my going to Karon. Nothing.
T'Laven reported that Karon seemed confused and disoriented, one moment asking where Gerick was, the next incapable of communicating his own name, and the next overcome with grief and guilt, recalling the Lady's report that Gerick had been executed for treachery. The Healer had chosen not to tell Karon of our belief that Gerick lived or of Paulo's mission. He was concerned that Karon might inadvertently reveal our secrets to others at the hospice. If we were to have the smallest chance of saving Gerick, we could not let D'Sanya know what we were doing. But imagining Karon grieving alone for Gerick tore my heart.
"Supper is laid, as well, and Qis'Dar will be here with the carriage within the hour."
"Thank you, Aimee. Any word from T'Laven?"
"He says he will meet you at the Nightingale, the new guesthouse just outside the north gate. I'm to dispatch a message stone when you leave here. And do take your cloak, my lady; the weather seems to be taking an ill turn." Even as she spoke, the night sky outside my window flashed with lightning, and thunder rolled over the mountains in a constant grumble.
"I'll follow you down." The whole universe had taken an ill turn as far as I could see.
The young woman vanished back into the dark passage. With her servants called up to war, Aimee was having to mind the magical house lamps herself and was rarely home to do it. Her house had become a patchwork of darkness and lamplight.