Now the girl turned that dark-eyed gaze onto Pelaya and her father, examining them as carefully as she had the surroundings, which was strange in itself: should she not have been looking first at the nobles who had summoned her? Pelaya found the inspection a little unnerving.
“Your name is Nira, is it not?” she asked the girl. “Someone wants to meet you. Do you understand me?”
The girl nodded. “Yes, Nira. Understand.” Either she had not been in Hierosol long or she was far more stupid than she looked, because her accent was barbarous.
Not for the first time that day, Pelaya wondered what she had stumbled into. A simple friendship had become something larger and much less comfortable. She was reassured that her father and his bodyguard were here to ensure that nothing was passed between the prisoner and this servant girl and that no tricks were attempted.
Now Perivos stepped forward. He spent a moment examining the girl Nira as thoroughly as she herself had inspected everything and everyone else. “So this is her?”
“Yes, Father.”
“I wish Olin Eddon would hasten himself. I have better things to do...”
“Yes, Father. I know.” She took a breath. “Please, be kind to him.”
He turned on her with a look of surprise and annoyance. “What does that mean, Pelaya?”
“He is a kind man, Father. Babba. He has always been polite to me, proper in his speech, and always insists that his guards stay—and my maid as well. He says I remind him of his daughter.”
Her father gave a little snort of disbelief. “Many young women remind him of his daughter, it seems.”
“Father! Be kind. You know his daughter has disappeared and both his sons are dead.”
The count shook his head, but she could see him softening. More subtle than her sister, she had learned ways to bend him gently to her will, and sometimes he even seemed to collaborate in his own defeats. “Do not badger me,” he said. “I will grant him the respect of some privacy—he is a king, after all—but I do not like it. And if anything untoward occurs...”
“It won’t, Father. He’s not like that.” Pelaya Akuanis was far too ladylike to curse even to herself, and did not know any really useful curse words in any case, but Olin’s favor was costing her more than the prisoner could know. She could not besiege her father for favors like this very often: it would be long months before she could expect to get her way in anything important again. I hope it’s worth it for him, talking to some laundry trollop. But she knew even in her disgruntled state that wasn’t quite fair: there was unquestionably something more to this girl, this Nira, although Pelaya still could not guess what it might be.
Olin and his guards arrived even as a quiet rumble of thunder growled through the northern sky. A storm was on the way. Pelaya’s father stepped forward and bowed his head to the prisoner.
“King Olin, you are a persuasive man, or else we would not all be standing in this garden with the rains sweeping toward us and my supper waiting. My daughter has risked her father’s love to bring you and this young woman here.”
Olin smiled. “I think that might be an exaggeration, Count Perivos, from the things your daughter has said about you. I have a headstrong girl child myself, so I appreciate your position and I thank you for indulging me when you did not need to.” He lowered his voice so the bodyguard standing a dozen steps away could not hear. “Did you receive the letter? And is it any help to you?”
Pelaya’s father would not be so easily swayed. “Perhaps. We will talk about it at some other time. For now I will leave you to your conversation...if you will swear to me on your honor that it is nothing against the interests of Hierosol. It goes without saying that it is nothing lewd or immoral, either.”
“Yes, it goes without saying,” said Olin with a touch of asperity. “You have my word, Count Perivos.”
Her father bowed and withdrew himself a little way.
“Do not be frightened, child,” Olin said to the laundry girl. “Your name is Nira, I am told. Is that correct?”
She nodded, watching the bearded man with a different kind of attention than she had given to the garden or Pelaya or anything else, almost as if she recognized him—as if they had met before and the girl was trying to remember where and when. For a moment Pelaya felt a kind of chill. Had she done something truly wrong here after all? Was she unwittingly helping an escape plan, something that would cost her father his honor or maybe even his life?
“Yes,” the girl said slowly. “Nira.”
“All I want to know from you is a little about your family,” Olin said gently. “That red in your hair—I think it is rare in this part of the world, is it not?”
The girl only shrugged. Pelaya felt a need to say something, if only to remind the man that she was still sitting here, part of the gathering. “Not so rare,” she told him. “There have been northerners in Xand for years—mercenaries and folk of that sort. My father often talks about the autarch’s White Hounds. They are famous traitors to Eion.”
Olin nodded. “But still, I think such a shade is uncommon.” He smiled and turned to the laundry girl. “Are there mercenaries from Eion in your family, young Nira? Northerners with fair hair?”
The girl hesitated for a moment as she made sense of his question. Her fingers moved up to the place where another little curl of hair escaped her scarf and pushed it back beneath the stained homespun cloth. “No. All...like me.”
“I see something in you of a family that I know well, Nira. Be brave—you have done nothing wrong. Can you tell me if your family came from the north? Are there any family stories about such things?”
She looked at him a long time, as though trying to decide whether this entire conversation might be some kind of trick. “No. Always Xis.” She shrugged. “Think always Xis. Until me.”
“Until you, of course.” He nodded. “Someone told me that your parents died. I am very sorry to hear it. If I can do anything—not that I have much favor here, but I have made a couple of kind friends—let me know.”
She stared at him again, clearly puzzled by something. At last she nodded.
“Let her go now,” Olin said, straightening. “I am sure she hasn’t had her supper yet and I have no doubt she works hard all the day.” He stood. “Thank you, Pelaya, and thank you, Count Perivos. My curiosity is satisfied. Doubtless it was just a fluke of light and shadow that tricked me into seeing a resemblance that was not there—that could not be there.”
Pelaya’s little maid took Nira back to the servants’ dormitory, and Olin went with his guards back to his chambers. As she walked back across the garden toward their residence, a part of the citadel only a little less sumptuous than the lord protector’s own quarters, Pelaya took her father’s hand.
“Thank you, Babba,” she said. “You are the best, kindest father. You truly are.”
“But what in the name of the gods was that all about?” he said, scowling. “Has the man lost his wits? What connection could he be searching for with a laundry girl?”
“I don’t know,” Pelaya said. “But they both seem sad.”
Her father shook his head. “That is what you said about that stray cat, and now I awake every morning to the sound of that creature yowling for fish. Both your King Olin and his laundry girl have places to live. Do not think to bring them home.”
“No, Papa.” But she too wondered what had brought two such strange, different people together in a Hierosol garden.
The sky thundered again and the first drops of rain began to spatter down. Pelaya, her father, and the bodyguard all hurried to get out of the open air.