“Even the peasants know we had healing powers once,” she said conversationally. Garin’s coughs slowed; he gasped, his heart racing beneath Luap’s hand.
“Little enough lately,” Luap said. “Gird says he heard rumors, tales from old granddads, nothing recent. You say you lack them.”
“Mmm.” She didn’t pursue it, for which he was less grateful than he felt he should be. By her tone she would pursue it later. Garin lay back, spent and silent, barely able to sip a few spoonsful of broth. He was going to die, and not sing those songs, and although there was no way Luap could blame Gird, he did anyway. Gird cared for this boy no less than any other, but no more. It had seemed to Luap that if he could interest Gird, if he could only get Gird to understand why the boy was important, he would then do something and the boy would live. What that something might be, he could not of course define. But Gird’s response had been, as always, impersonally compassionate. He hated seeing anyone suffer; he had sat beside the boy while Luap slept, on the worst nights, comforting him as tenderly as a mother; but he had shaken his head at Luap’s vehemence, insisting that this boy’s death was no more tragic than another’s.
Was it because so many of his own children had died or disappeared? Because Raheli would bear him no grandchildren? Or was it the gnomish influence?
“I can’t believe Gird would really mind that,” the Rosemage said softly. Luap started, and glanced at the boy, who lay dozing now, unaware. “Healing, I mean.”
“I can’t do it.” His hands had fisted; he flattened them with an effort. “Arranha says I’d have to claim all the magery—that it would be like trying to see only green, or only red, to use only the healing. And he’s not even sure I’ve got it. Besides, as you very well know, I promised Gird and the gods that I would not become a magelord. No more magicks: that’s what I said, and what he holds me to.”
“You’ve asked him about this?”
“Not specifically, no. He knows, though. He knows what it would take, and my oath binds me.” Never mind he had broken it more than once, by intention and later by accident. Never mind that time in the cave; no one would know that until—unless—he told. Where he could, he was loyal to it.
“You should ask him. He’s a farmer; they care about living things. For healing, he might let you try—”
“No.” His power bled into that; the word ached with power. She looked at him, opened her mouth, and shut it again. He wondered if she knew he was lying. He wondered so many things she might know, and he dared not ask—better that she think he knew already, or didn’t care to know, than that he hungered for that knowledge he lacked.
“I hope he’s better soon,” the Rosemage said, putting out a hand to Garin’s hair. Then she left, without saying more, and Luap sat struggling with his unruly desires.
Soon enough he heard, from down the corridor, Rahi’s voice raised to Gird, and Gird’s gusty bellow in reply. He did not want to know what she said, or what Gird said to her; he could imagine it well enough. Gird’s taste for ale had been nearly disastrous once in the war; he’d conquered it then. Now, in peace, why shouldn’t an old man have some pleasure? But Rahi would have none of that; he had overheard much the same quarrel before. She would drag up times past, from her childhood; Gird would glower for days.
The silence, abrupt and startling, drew him from his musings. Had the woman murdered him? Had he clouted her? He heard what might have been sobs. Should he investigate, or leave them to settle things?
“You blundering old fool!” Rahi said. She had waited in the corridor, trying not to hear Luap and the Autumn Rose, trying to calm herself, but when she looked in Gird’s door, her anger flared again. Gird slouched against his work table, eyes red-rimmed and bleary. He and his clothes were clean enough, but the room still smelled like a hangover. “I come all the way to Fin Panir to—to tell you something important, and you’ve gone off drinking with some lout who probably wasn’t even a veteran—”
“He was!” His voice rasped, as if he had a cold as well as a hangover. “He was from Burry, and I remembered him—”
“Better than you remembered your vow not to drink so much.” She bit back the other words she wanted to say; disappointment soured her rage. She had hoped for so much from this meeting. She needed so much from it.
“We’re not at war!” Whatever energy he’d summoned to achieve that bellow brought life to his eyes, “It’s not the same thing!”
“It’s still wrong.” Rahi realized she was going to cry an instant before the tears came, but too late to turn away and hide them. Sobs choked her as she fought them down; she could say nothing. Gird’s face changed, concern replacing anger.
“Rahi! What is it, lass?” He was still bigger than she, more massive; the hug she had imagined enclosed her before she knew it. He pulled her head to his shoulder and stroked her hair, murmuring soothingly. She gave in to it, and let her tears fall. When they ceased, she felt odd, empty. Gird released her before she actually moved, and waited silently for what she might say. She wished that blowing her nose could take longer; she wasn’t sure what that would be.
“I . . . wanted to change my mind,” she said at last.
“About marrying again?” he asked. His voice held a note of hope. He had insisted all along that she could remarry, even if she could not bear children. With all the orphans war had made, he’d said, she could have a dozen children.
“No.” She took a long breath, swiped at her face with her sleeve, and looked him in the face. “I said once that I was your daughter no longer, only your soldier. But you’re right, the war’s over.”
“Lass—” A tentative smile, that widened when she managed to smile back. He reached out again, and she moved into another embrace. “Rahi, lass, you don’t know how I’ve needed that. . . .” She felt him sigh. “And there I was drunk, as you said. You’re right, it was stupid.”
“It’s all right,” said Rahi softly, “but not if you keep doing it.” She felt his chest shake with an almost-silent chuckle.
“Eh, that’s the daughter I remember. Tell me now, what changed your mind?”
Rahi told him about the dance in her grange, and the way she had felt restored to family connections. “And so I thought you might be feeling the same—not fitted in, with no vill or family—”
“I have, sometimes. I’ve tried to tell myself they’re all my kin, but I know they’re not. After Pidi disappeared that winter—” Gird shook his head. Raheli remembered her younger brother, her only surviving sib, riding off into the snow and never arriving at the next grange. She had not known until spring that he had disappeared; she would never know what had happened. That was the spring she had almost hated the grain that sprang green in the furrows.
“Da,” she said, feeling that old comfortable word in her mouth again. “Da, I still can’t marry—I still can’t have children—”
“I know. It’s all right, Raheli Mali’s child, it’s all right.” His eyes squeezed shut a moment; she saw the shine of tears when he opened them.
It was not all right, but it would be later. She still felt angry that he had been on another drunken binge; she could see by the color of his face and the change in the texture of his skin that he was not well. But her impulse had been right, to restore the family link she herself had broken—not broken, she told herself now, but set aside.
They sat awhile in silence, one on either side of the work table, then Rahi remembered the other good reasons she had found for coming the long way to Fin Panir. He had set her saddlebags on the floor; she retrieved them, and spread out her grange records and the comments from the past year’s courts.
“The soil’s different, where I am now, from home—where we lived before. The Code allows for easing the grange-set in a dry year, but where I am the farmers lose grain more often to mold in a wet year. If you allow the local Marshals to adjust the grange-set based on the yield of sound grain—that wouldn’t take a complete revision of the Code—”