She knew, he thought. Maybe, hurting him, she’d hurt herself—maybe gotten the pain of his burns. He didn’t know, nor wanted to go close to her, but he had no choice but go to Lord Crissand as their immediate lord, and the source of all help. He knew Paisi was right.
They rode halfway up the hill, to the Bryalt shrine, where there was a house of healing, and a fountain for washing on the public side street. They washed there, letting the soot stain the water, and the lay brother who attended the place came out to provide his services.
“We have no money,” Elfwyn informed the old man first of all. “It went in the fire. But you can ask the duke.”
The old man looked at them, and looked at the two fine horses, which told a different story, then shook his head and waved his hand. “You wait,” he said, “you wait,” and he went into his little shrine. He came out with unguents and bandages, and would have tended Elfwyn’s burns first, but Elfwyn insisted the man deal with Paisi’s hands, which were much worse.
He was only getting to Elfwyn’s hurts when a panting handful of the duke’s own servants showed up from the street, bringing more unguents, and two cloaks, which they refused to put on, being so dirty—“I can’t,” Elfwyn said, and by then the pain and the exhaustion all but overwhelmed Paisi, who simply sat down against the fountain rim and had his head in his hands. He felt like doing the same.
“His Grace had a report,” the foremost servant said, “and wishes you may come up to the hall as soon as you can.”
It was what they had to hope for, on a day in which they had lost every material possession except two horses they couldn’t feed, and Elfwyn bent down, the one to make the decisions now, as Paisi had done, down at Gran’s farm.
“We have to get up and go,” he said, his head close to Paisi’s, his bandaged hand on Paisi’s shoulder. “I’ll help you get up. When we get up there, there’ll be a place to stay, a roof over our heads, and whatever we need. The duke has sent his own servants down. I think the gate-guards or the priest must have sent word up the hill. Paisi, can you stand up?”
Paisi managed it, and with the servants’ help, and the priest’s, they got onto the horses and rode up the hill and through the gate to the stables.
There they turned the horses over to His Grace’s stablemaster and limped on into the scullery, where His Grace’s own physician came down to see to them, and the chief of his servants came to see they had drink enough, and a little watered wine, and warm water to wash in, besides new clothing.
Servants led the way to rooms upstairs, in an arrangement not unlike the Guelesfort, though much older. It was all carved, dark wood, and there was, again, a small servants’ quarters where the staff wanted to bed Paisi down.
“No,” Elfwyn said. “He’s not my servant. He’s my brother.”
“I ain’t,” Paisi said quietly. “Cousins, at best, by adoption, as is, an’ I’m his man, an’ shall be. But I’ll stay close by m’lord tonight, if ye will—he’ll rest best if I do.”
It was quiet, after the servants left. It was deathly quiet.
And, clothes and all, lying atop the coverlet, they went to bed.
“We’re back where we was,” Paisi said, lying on his side by him. “ ’Cept it ain’t the Guelesfort.”
“It’s my fault!” Elfwyn cried, tears welling up, and Paisi put his hand on his shoulder, gently so.
“Ain’t. Gran’d have a fit to hear ye say it, so don’t. If it was her, lad, that was an old, old war, your ma wi’ Gran an’ Lord Tristen. Ye ain’t nothin’ t’ that fight, yet. Ye may be. But ye can’t be yet, so no such talk. If ye was a wizard, say, I’d ask why ye didn’t See it, ye know—”
“I did See it. I Saw it in my dreams.”
“Oh, aye, an’ maybe I saw fire, too, which could mean Gran might burn the soup: it’s one thing to See, it’s another to know what ye Seen, an’ still another t’ stand up an’ fight the likes of her.”
“I tried, and I shouldn’t have gone up there. I thought I could do it, and I was an utter fool. I thought the ring would keep me safe, and I didn’t think about Gran and you not being protected, the same.”
“Aye, but Gran were a witch, an’ Saw clear as can be if it was in her to See it. You was there, lad, right enough, but there was Lord Tristen himself could ha’ stepped right in—he can do that. He can arrive like lightnin’. I know’t him to do it. An’ he didn’t come, nor know ye was steppin’ into trouble, so ye can’t blame yourself for not knowin, nor’d Gran ever blame her Otter for what a witch herself couldn’t stop.”
He wept for Gran, quietly. It was all he had left to do. Sleep came down on him in the middle of the day. He slept into dark, and waked when servants brought supper in, but neither he nor Paisi ate much.
He lay awake after that, dry-eyed, and thought black thoughts about his mother, just upstairs, unscathed, a hateful and dangerous proximity that he would have to ignore just to share this roof, which he wouldhave to share, perhaps for the rest of his days, thanks to his mother’s ruining his chances in Guelessar. Gran was dead, part of that heap of ashes, not even a grave to mark her place in the world, while his mother lived on, smug and happy, he could imagine it, in having destroyed a woman so much her better—
He grew angry, terribly angry, and anger unleashed the hate Gran had always advised him to avoid—hatred of his mother and his circumstances, alike, as if his soul had burned as raw as his hands last night. He didn’t sleep. He couldn’t, now. It seemed forever before daylight crept into the unfamiliar windows of an elegant room, a clear sky with a slight pall of chimney smoke rising into it.
Town smoke. More burning, tame burning, by people who thought fire was their servant.
Paisi waked, stretched, knocked his hand into the bedpost inadvertently, and winced. He blinked, perhaps taking a moment to realize where he was, and to remember their circumstances.
“I’d better get breakfast for us,” Paisi said, as if they were back in the Guelesfort.
“Let servants wait on us,” Elfwyn said. “They will.”
“Not on me,” Paisi said. “I’d rather be stirring about, m’lord, I had, and I know me way about this place like the back o’ me hand.” Paisi had served in the Zeide before, when he was Lord Tristen’s servant, and Master Emuin’s before he left. “Servin’ here was no shame, m’lord,” Paisi informed him. “It was somethin’ I was proud of.”
“Then do that,” Elfwyn told him, surrendering the whole matter, and watched Paisi leave. He lay abed for a few moments after Paisi had left, wishing he could pull the covers over his head and spend the next several days asleep, but the pain of his burns and the memories behind his eyelids gave him no rest at all, and he had never even taken off his boots last night, no more than Paisi had. He got up in defeat, washed the finer marks of the soot off his face, now that clear daylight was coming through the windows.
But before he had finished, a flow of servants started through the doors, bringing buckets of water, and trooping through into the bath. Others brought a wealth of clothes—far more than a plea of Paisi’s would have arranged. He let the servants bathe him: the water hurt his burned hands; he dressed in his own choice of the abundance the servants provided him, plain brown, but very fine. A gray-bearded man of serious mien—he remembered him as Lord Crissand’s physician—came in and renewed the salve and bandages.
“Paisi was burned worse than I,” he informed that man, who reported Paisi was bathing and changing down in the scullery, where he likewise would be treated. “My apprentice,” the physician said, “is very skilled, young sir.”
He was glad at least that Paisi hadn’t had to wait for such comforts. Breakfast arrived, a choice of breads, on fine pewter plates, with jams, a pile of what looked to be boiled and peeled eggs, with a plate of smoked fish and another of cheese. It was more than he could possibly eat… but he knew from Paisi that nothing he sent back went to waste in the kitchen.