She tilted her head to one side. "But did it happen?"
He placed the tub on the stool he'd sat upon a moment before and took her foot and part of her calf in hand. For a moment, Amara was acutely conscious of the sensation of his skin upon hers, the way the cloak and her skirts had fallen to reveal her leg nearly to the knee. She felt her face heat, but if the Steadholder took note of it, he gave no sign. He slipped her injured foot into the water, then motioned for her to put the other there as well. Her cold-numbed feet tingled unpleasantly, and steam curled up from the tub.
"How did you hurt your leg?" he asked her.
"I slipped and fell," she replied. She repeated to him her story, about carrying a message to Garrison on behalf of her master, adding in a fall just before Tavi found her.
The Steadholder's expression darkened. "We'll have to send him word. You're not in any shape to continue traveling for another day or two. Wait until your feet have warmed up. Then dry them off and have a seat." He turned toward a larder, opened it, and withdrew a homespun sack full of tubers. He dropped that, a large bowl, and a small knife on the table. "Everyone under my roof works, lass. Once you warm up, peel these. I'll be back directly to see about your arm."
She lifted a hand, resting it over the bandage on her opposite arm. "You're just going to leave me here?"
"With that ankle you won't be going far. And there's another storm rising. The closest shelter, other than this hall, is the Princeps' Memorium, and it
looks like you've already cleaned that place out." He nodded toward the scarlet cloak. "I'd be thinking about what I was going to say to Count Gram about that, if I were you. Safeguarding the Memorium is his responsibility. I doubt he's going to be terribly happy with you. Or your master, whoever he is." Bernard turned and started to leave through the doors to the hall.
"Sir," Amara blurted. "You didn't tell me if it was true or not. What Tavi said about the Marat."
"You're right," he said. "I didn't." Then he left.
Amara stared after the man for a moment in frustration. She looked from the doorway he'd vanished through, down to her feet in the steaming basin, and then back up again. Sensation was returning to her feet in an uncomfortable ripple of sharp pinpricks. She shook her head and waited for the feeling in her feet to return to something closer to normal.
A maddening man, she thought. Confidence bordering upon arrogance. She would not be so poorly treated in any court in the Realm.
Which was the point, of course. This was not one of the cities. Here, on the steadholt, his word was literal law, on nearly any matter one could name-including the disposition and nondebilitating punishment of a runaway slave. Were she a slave in fact, rather than in fiction, he could have done nearly anything to her, and as long as he returned her in one piece, and capable of fulfilling her duties, the law would support him as though he were a Citizen. Instead of caring for her and leaving her in a warm room with her feet in a hot bath, he could have as easily stabled her with the animals or put her to any of a number of other uses.
Her cheeks flushed again. The man had affected her, and he shouldn't have. She had seen him riding an earthwave-he was an earthcrafter, after all. Some of them could affect the temperaments of animals and the base natures of human beings, as well, draw out raw, primal impulses that otherwise would never surface. That would explain it.
But then, and more to the point, he had been very gentle with her, when he held her. He needn't have done so much as let her onto his land, and he had all but forcibly pressed hospitality onto her. Despite his threats and words, he hadn't locked her in a cellar or shown anything but concern and kindness.
Amara stirred her feet in the water, frowning. The Steadholder was clearly a man who commanded some measure of respect in his people. His steadholt was solid and obviously prosperous. The holdfolk she had seen
had been clean and well fed. His reaction to the boy had been severe, in its own fashion, but restrained by the standards of most of the Realm. Had the man wanted her, he could simply have taken her, and not bothered with crafting her into a frenzy.
The contrast of his strength, physical and otherwise, against several demonstrations of gentleness was a surprising one. Though she had no doubts that he could be a hard man when called upon, she sensed a genuine kindness in his manner and an obvious love for the boy.
Amara drew her feet from the tub and patted them dry with the towel, then lowered herself from the table and perched gingerly on another stool. She reached for the paring knife and one of the tubers and started skinning the peel off of it, dropping the peel in a smooth spiral into the tub of water she'd just used and depositing the flesh of the root into the bowl the Stead-holder had left her. The task was soothing, in its own way, repetitive, comforting.
She had been through a lot in the past few hours. Her world had been shaken, and she'd faced death at close quarters more than once. That might explain the sudden vibrance of her emotions, of her pure physical reaction to the Steadholder. He was, after all, an imposing and not unattractive man, she supposed. She might have had the same reaction to anyone in such proximity to her. Soldiers reacted that way often, when death was so near at hand, seizing at any opportunity to live life more richly, more fully. That must have been it, Amara decided.
But that got her no closer to accomplishing her mission. She blew out a frustrated breath. Bernard had neither confirmed nor denied the encounter with the Marat. Any mention of it, in fact, seemed to have made him increasingly evasive. Much more so, she thought, than was reasonable for the situation.
She frowned over that thought. The Steadholder was hiding something.
What?
Why?
What she wouldn't have given, at that moment, to be a watercrafter, to have been able to sense more about him-or to have had more experience in reading people's expressions and body language.
She had to know more. She had to know if she had a credible witness to bring before the local Count or not. She had to know if the First Lord's fears were viable.
Bernard came back a few moments later, carrying another bowl under one arm. The Steadholder lifted his eyebrows, his expression surprised. Then he scowled at her, coming over to stand by the table.
"Sir?" she asked. "Did I do something wrong?"
"Crows, girl," Bernard said. "I thought you'd still be warming your feet up."
"You wanted me to peel these, sir."
"Yes, but-" He made an irritated noise. "Never mind. Sit back, let me see your feet again. And your arm, while we're at it."
Amara settled back on her stool, and the Steadholder knelt down on the floor in front of her, setting the bowl to one side. He lifted her feet, grunted something, and then reached into the bowl, drawing out a small jar of some kind of pungent-smelling ointment. "You've got some cuts, from the hills," he said. "Doubt you even felt them, as cold as your feet were. This should help keep them clean and numb some of the pain, when you start getting the feeling back."
He smoothed on the ointment with broad, gentle fingertips, on both feet. Then he drew out a roll of white cloth and a pair of shears. He wrapped her feet carefully in the cloth and finally drew from the bowl a pair of slippers with flexible leather soles and a pair of grey woolen socks. She began to protest, but he shot her a glare and put both socks and slippers on her. "Big feet, for a woman," he commented. "Had some old slippers that should do for a while."
She studied him quietly, during the process. "Thank you. How badly off are they?"
He shrugged. "They look like they'll be all right to me, but I'm no water-crafter. I'll ask my sister to take a look at them when she's feeling better."
Amara tilted her head to one side. "Is she ill?"