Orisian pitied her, but it was a detached kind of pity. Few had been ready for what had happened since Winterbirth. Many suffered. More than most, Eshenna had at least made some kind of choice in the path her life had taken in recent weeks.
That path had led here, to a simple, bare house just outside Ive’s Guard compound. Erval, the town’s Captain-and a good man as far as Orisian could tell, though as deeply unsettled as anyone by the course of recent events-had made it available to Eshenna and Yvane without hesitation or demur. Judging by its dilapidated and damp state, Orisian suspected it had been empty for some time. Still, it served the purpose asked of it now: a place for the na’kyrim to shelter away from prying eyes, small enough that it could easily be watched over by the men Taim Narran had set to the task. Whether the more important role of those guards was to ensure no misguided townspeople caused trouble for Yvane and Eshenna, or to protect those townspeople from K’rina if necessary, Orisian did not know. No one did.
“K’rina still will not come inside?” he asked Eshenna.
She shook her head. “If we try to move her from the goat shed, she thrashes about. Howls.”
“But does not speak.”
“No. She never speaks.”
“You don’t look well,” Orisian murmured.
Eshenna gave a short, bitter laugh. She was feeding wood to a little fire. As she bent, and sparkling embers swirled up in front of her face, the gauntness of her features was apparent. Since leaving Highfast, she had thinned and her skin had grown paler, almost as if the Kyrinin half of her mixed heritage was asserting itself.
“If there’s anything I-anyone-can do for you, tell me,” Orisian said. “I’ll help if I can.”
“I know,” Eshenna sighed. She held a stubby chunk of wood in her hand, gazing down at it, running her long fingers over its flaking bark. “I need sleep. And I need the voices, and the storms, in the Shared to quieten. You can’t do that, can you?”
“No. I can’t.”
Eshenna threw the log into the flames and crossed her arms, staring blankly into the heart of the fire.
“Yvane will be a while yet. She spends a lot of time with K’rina.”
Orisian nodded silently and left the na’kyrim to her dark contemplations.
Behind the run-down house, stone walls enclosed a long, thin yard. Half of it was given over to dark, bare soil, which the inhabitants must once have cultivated. Snow was speckling the earth now. The rest was cobbled, running down a gentle slope to a ramshackle shed against the furthest wall. Orisian walked towards it, brushing snow from his hair as he went. He could hear the low voices of two of Taim’s guards coming from beyond the wall and the rumble of the slowly rising wind as it blustered about Ive’s roofs, but there was no sound from within the shed.
He pulled the door open and peered in. The stink of goats assailed him. The animals were long gone. The only light within came from a single tallow candle Yvane must have brought with her. K’rina was curled in the corner of the shed, on old straw, facing the wall. Yvane knelt beside her, sitting back on her heels. Neither of the na’kyrim stirred at Orisian’s arrival. He stepped inside.
“No change?”
“No,” said Yvane without looking round.
“You shouldn’t be in here alone,” Orisian said. “What if she attacked you? What if she tried to escape again?”
Yvane rose to her feet. There was just a hint of stiffness, the slightest unsteadiness, in the movement. Perhaps her years weighed a little more heavily on her now. Perhaps sleepless nights were taking their toll on her, as they did on so many others.
“She’s not some wild animal,” Yvane said softly. “Nor a prisoner, as far as I recall.”
“Maybe not, but we’ve paid a high price to bring her here. If we lose her, that price was for nothing. She’s tried to slip away once already.”
Yvane hunched forward a little to brush straw and dirt from her hide dress. She gave the task more attention than it merited.
“What?” asked Orisian.
“You’re wounded,” the na’kyrim muttered.
Orisian put a hand to the side of his face, tracing the great welt that ran up his cheek, feeling the yielding gap left by lost teeth. That was not what she meant, though. He knew the shape of her concerns, and it had nothing to do with the punishment his body had taken.
“Some wounds grow thick scars,” she said. “Enough wounds, enough scars, and you can hardly recognise the one who bears them. Ends up being someone completely different.”
Orisian grimaced and stared down at the flagstone floor. He did not want to hear this. It achieved nothing, ploughing over and over the same small field of Yvane’s preoccupations.
“When I first met you…” the na’kyrim began.
“When you first met me, all of this had only just started. I hadn’t seen then what I’ve seen now.”
Yvane sniffed and rubbed at her nose with the back of a grubby finger.
“None of us had, I don’t suppose,” she said. “I could see why Inurian had taken to you, back then. I could see a little something of what he must have seen in you. He always prized gentleness, thoughtfulness. Compassion.”
“There are other things I need-we need-more now.”
“Are there? You think Inurian would agree, if he was still here? You think he would find you as worthy of his affection now as he did…”
“Don’t,” Orisian snapped. He glared at her, and met those impassive, piercing eyes with a resilience he would once have thought impossible. He had much deeper reserves of anger to draw upon now, and it could armour him against even Yvane’s fierce gaze.
She smiled, a gesture that started sad and became something much darker and colder before it faded away. She looked down at K’rina.
“None of us had any idea how far all of this would go,” she muttered. “Except perhaps Inurian. He looked into Aeglyss’ heart back then and saw the poison in it.”
“We’ve got a prisoner. He talks of Aeglyss as a leader. A ruler, almost, in Kan Avor. As if they all follow him now.”
“Oh?” Yvane sounded barely interested.
“It makes K’rina more important.”
“As what? A club to beat Aeglyss with?”
“Or a key in a lock,” Orisian said, exasperated. “I don’t know. Something. It was you and Eshenna who told me she mattered in the first place. I didn’t want to find her like this. None of us did. But now we know the White Owls-Aeglyss-were seeking her. We can see that something, whatever it is, has been done to her. She’s important. Don’t blame me for wanting to understand how, and why. For wanting to know that there was a reason for my warriors to die finding her.”
Yvane held out a placatory hand. “We’ll disturb her,” she said, with a glance down at the prostrate woman in the straw. She bent and picked up the little candle. The flame died between her finger and thumb. For a moment there was only darkness and the wind rattling the roof shingles.
“Let’s go back to the house,” Yvane said.
They barred the door of the shed behind them.
“I need to know, Yvane,” Orisian said as they walked. “We all do. There’s no time left to be gentle, or cautious. Things are falling apart. If K’rina is to mean anything…”
“Mean anything?” Yvane snapped, coming to a sudden halt and jabbing Orisian in the chest. “She means as much as I do. Or you. That is precisely what she means. Or do you think a mere halfbreed must work harder than that to have meaning?”
“You know that’s not — ” Orisian protested.
“Something’s been done to her,” Yvane rushed on, uninterested in anything he might have to say. “That’s what you said. Well, she didn’t do it to herself. The Anain have scraped out her mind, as best we can tell. As if she was nothing, as if whatever thoughts and feelings were in there before mattered not at all. She’s a victim in all of this, as surely as anyone is. As surely as Inurian was, or Cerys or any of the others at Highfast.”
She hung her head. The two of them stood there in the dark yard, the wind rumbling overhead.