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 p.arents. died. I am very sorry to hear it. If I can do anything not thai 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 satis¬fied. 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 sump¬tuous 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, scowl¬ing. "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.
.
19
Voices in the Forest
But each night Pale Daughter heard Silvergleam singing and her heart
ached for him, until at last she fled her father's house and ran to her
beloved. So beautiful was she that he could not bear to send her away,
although his brother and sister warned him that only evil would come of it.
But Silvergleam made Pale Daughter his wife, and together they conceived
a child who would make a new and greater song of their two melodies, a
strange song which would thereafter sound through all the Tale of Years.
— from One Hundred Considerations out of the Qar's Book of Regret
EVEN WITH HER INJURIES, Briony knew she should put as much distance as she could between herself and Landers Port, but instead she stayed close to the walls of the city in the two days after the attack, sheltering where she could and eavesdropping on the conversa¬tions of other travelers, trying to find out for certain what had happened to Shaso. The destructive fire that had taken the life of one of the city's wealthiest merchants was on everyone's lips, of course, and all seemed to agree that except for the one lone manservant she'd seen, only the women of Dan-Mozan's house had survived the night's terrible events.
Her last unlikely hopes finally dashed, Briony realized that if the baron's guards knew that more than one fugitive had taken refuge in the Dan-Mozan hadar, they would be looking for her. Young man's clothing was an indifferent disguise, especially when it was a young Tuani man's clothing
and she no longer had the tools to make herself look like someone of that nice. She daubed her face and hair with dirt, trying to make herself less no ticeable, but she knew her disguise would not survive real scrutiny for more than a few moments. She had to leave Landers Port, that was alclass="underline" if she was
caught mooning around the town gates Shaso would have died for nothing-
a bitter thought, but the only one that moved her when her own desires were muted by grief and rage. She missed the old man fiercely. Had Effir's nephew Talibo stood before her again, she would gladly have killed the lit¬tle traitor a second time.
Foolishly thinking she had already lost everything, Briony was learning daily that the gods could always take more from you if they wished.
She quickly discovered that she was not suited for life as an outlaw-in fact, all the tales of romantic banditry she had ever heard now began to seem like the crudest lies imaginable. It was impossible to live out of doors in even as mild a winter as this, even with the gods-sent gift of the woolen cloak she had taken from the hadar when she ran; Briony spent a large part of each day's travel just searching for unguarded barns or storehouses where she could sleep without freezing. Even so, after only a few nights she found herself with a wracking cough.
The cough and her sore mouth (still tender from where Talibo had struck her) made it difficult to eat, but she soaked bread in the little pot of wine so it would soften, then chewed very slowly and carefully so as not to pain her loosened teeth and split lips any more than necessary. Even so, her small cache of food was gone in a couple of days.
The only thing that saved her at first was the number of small towns and villages dotting the hillsides along the coast road west of Landers Port. She moved from one to the next, taking shelter where she could and finding an occasional scrap of untended food. She dared not attract attention when her enemies were doubtless searching for her, so she could not beg for help in public places. Despite her hunger, though, Briony did her best to avoid real theft-not for moral reasons so much as practical ones: what good to have escaped an attempt on her life only to be caught and imprisoned in some goatyard village in the middle of nowhere?
Still, within a few days the gnawing of her empty stomach began to overwhelm her. She had never been hungry for more than a short time in all her life and was painfully surprised to discover how it conquered every¬thing else, drove out all other thoughts. Her cough was getting worse as
well, wracking her body until she felt dizzy. Sometimes she stumbled and fell in the middle of the road for no reason other than weakness. She knew she eould not go on much longer without becoming either a beggar or a thiol She decided she would rather risk the first-people didn't get hanged for begging.
The first place she approached in search of alms, a steading on the out¬skirts of a nameless village along the Karalsway, the market road that wound south from the Coast Road, proved unsympathetic to beggars: before she could speak to the wild-haired man standing in the doorway of the cottage he stepped aside and let out a huge brindle dog. The creature ran at her like the Raging Beast that had fought Hiliometes, and Briony only just barely got back over the steading's low wall before it caught her in its slavering jaws. As it was, she tore her lifesaving wool cloak on a stone, an injury which seemed as painful to her as if it had been her own flesh. She retreated into the woods, still sick and sore and hungry, and although she disliked herself for doing it, she wept.