"Tan was hungry, wasn't she?" Lad said as his brother cleaned him, reminding me yet again of an overlarge child.
Kichlan flicked me another see how you rile him up look before answering. A whole day on his collecting team and I already had a look. "Yes, very." He refolded the towel and arranged it beside his plate. "Now, finish your food or it will be too late for apple pie."
I wouldn't have believed Lad could eat any faster than he was, but he did. Kichlan, on the other hand, had left a third of his food untouched. When Lad, still chewing his final mouthful, peered hopefully into the empty pot, Kichlan scraped the rest of his meal onto Lad's clean plate. I caught a look of tenderness on Kichlan's face as his brother happily kept eating.
Nothing like the look he gave me, that one.
"Good boy, Lad." Eugeny cleared the table. I started to stand, but the old man touched a thin hand to my shoulder, and I stayed seated. "Help us with the pie, there's a boy?"
I felt uncomfortable and acutely useless as the men left me at their table and fussed with the food. It wasn't the same as being waited on by the servants of friends or associates.
The pie was good, the apples soft, the pastry cinnamonspiced and sugary. And I told them so, Lad especially, and found myself thanking them over and over for their time, for their effort, for their food and water and soap. Finally, when the food was all cleared and I was no longer bound to sit and be waited on, Kichlan's look had become something quite different. I saw confusion there and even, if he turned his head to a certain angle, pity.
Pity was new. I was still getting used to it.
"Well, the bell is late," Eugeny said as I hovered in the kitchen door, unsure what I was expected to do next.
"Is it?" I couldn't hear the bell peals this far from the Tear River. And my watch was gone.
"You and the boys will be leaving early, I expect."
Lad was already sleepy, full and warm, wearing a heavy-lidded expression. He yawned. "Always."
I thought of my long coach ride. "Indeed."
"Bed then, I would say." Eugeny rubbed his hands together; they sounded like fragile pieces of paper.
Kichlan jerked his head toward me. "You can have my-"
"Nonsense," Eugeny cut across him, voice quiet but firm. "We will make a pallet for her before the fire. Cushions and blankets." He glanced at me. "You do not mind, do you?"
After the bath and the bandages and the food, I could hardly gripe about sleeping arrangements. "Of course not."
"Settled then." Eugeny shuffled through the corridor and into the second downstairs room. "You two go and get to sleep," he called.
For a moment Lad looked at me, Kichlan looked at Lad, and I glanced between them. Then Lad jumped up, wrapped his arms around my shoulders and squeezed. "'Night, Tan!" He placed a wet kiss on my ear, before letting me go and heading up two stairs at a time.
"See what I mean." But as Kichlan followed his brother he wasn't giving me the look. If anything, he seemed relieved. Maybe a little pleased.
"In here, miss," Eugeny called from the base of the stairs, where I stood listening to the brothers' footsteps over my head. What would happen to the water?
Another fire was lit in the second room, but this time nothing cooked above it. Clothes had been strung up between the rafters of the squat ceiling and the room smelled like damp cloth. Eugeny was putting the final touches on a very basic bed on the floor: draping a woollen blanket over three large cushions. The clear stems of goose feathers peeked out of a corner seam of the most worn of the three.
I'd seen more comfortable places to sleep in my time. But it was warm, and dry, and my stomach was full.
"Here." Eugeny passed me a thick quilt. "Don't mind the firelight, do you?"
I was used to sleeping in darkness, used to an apartment warmed by busy pions that had travelled across the city skyline just for me. I shrugged. "I can face the other way if it's a problem." Silently, I wasn't sure I wanted my back to the flames. What if a log fell and sent embers into my highly flammable bedding?
"Good." Eugeny fussed with the improvised bed for a moment. From the frown on his face I guessed he was worrying about more than stray goose feathers. Possibly flying embers in the middle of the night?
"They're good boys," he said again. My possible death by inflammable bedding was not on his mind, then.
"Yes." So he'd said.
"Likes you, Lad does." Eugeny glanced at me, and gave up all pretence of bed-making. "Be careful with him, girl. He's likable now, in a good mood and has his brother with him. But Lad, he's not all there. If the mood takes him…" He hesitated. "Well, you be careful."
A chill settled over me that had nothing to do with the corridor at my back, or the damp clothes surrounding me. "Tell me what you mean." And perhaps some part of my old identity as the centre of a nine point circle reasserted itself, then. I think he heard it in my voice.
"Kichlan can keep him calm, can keep him settled," Eugeny whispered to the flames. "You would not know Lad if you saw him in a dark mood. Not his fault, mind you. Just sometimes his thoughts won't go in order, his hands and feet and words won't do what he wants them to do. That's what he told me, anyway."
Eugeny approached me. He clutched at my hands, forcing the blanket from my fingers. In his intense gaze, watery eyes pale and worried, I thought I caught a glimpse of my own face rimmed by dark shadows. One hand held my wrist, vice-like, while the other pulled up the sleeve of his patched shirt.
A jagged scar tore through his upper arm and disappeared toward his shoulder. I shuddered at it, at the premonition of what my own skin would look like. My face and neck and shoulder and side.
"They stitched me up too." He confirmed my fears. "Couldn't afford the healers. Nice old woman who worked in the hospital, just emptying food trays and chamber pots is all she did, she told me about the golden root. Would have been much worse if she hadn't. Sure of that."
I was paralysed by his scar – a mirror of mine. "Why-?"
"Lad did this to me."
I balked, tried to pull away. After a moment's tugging the old man gave in.
"You find it hard to believe. Trust me, there's more than one Lad in there, more faces than you've seen. And when Kichlan isn't beside him, he can be dangerous." Eugeny pulled his sleeve down and smoothed the cloth. "But don't blame him, girl. Not Lad's fault he is the way he is. Just thank Kichlan for being there, always with him."
Still feeling numb, I nodded.
"And be careful." Eugeny pushed past drying clothes, draped in his way like enormous leaves in a musty forest. "He hurt a girl once, Kichlan told me. Veche would have imprisoned him if Kichlan hadn't been there. If he hadn't promised them he'd stay with Lad for the rest of his days. He protects Lad, and he protects others from Lad. The boy likes you. So be careful."
Eugeny left me to my fireside bed. It took me longer than it should have to fall asleep on it, and that wasn't all due to the feathers sticking into me through the blanket.
6.
I woke with faint sunlight flitting over my eyelids in a drying-clothes-in-the-breeze dance, and a goosefeather poking the soft skin between my underarm and right breast. Wincing, I sat up. I couldn't remember a less comfortable night's sleep.
"Awake, are you?" Eugeny appeared, sweeping a shirt aside.
I nodded, mouth padded with dry yarn.
"Better than the boys, you are. I'll get you water, and a good meal to start the day."
Eugeny bustled from the room, feeling clothes as he went. Something caught in my throat and I coughed noisily, before wiping flecks of ash from the edges of my eyes. A pleasant start to the morning.
When Eugeny returned with a large bowl of warm water and a towel I realised there would be no bath today. My clothes had been washed and hung in the room with me. Eugeny passed me everything but the jacket with a rueful shrug of one shoulder. "Couldn't get the coat completely dry, I'm afraid."