The Tuginda, thinner and hollow-eyed, was sitting up, propped against the wall behind the bed while Melathys combed her hair. Kelderek, taking one of her hands between his own, asked whether she would like him to bring her some food. She shook her head.
'Later,' she answered. Then, after a little, 'Kelderek, thank you for helping me to reach Zeray: and I must ask your forgiveness for deceiving you in one matter.' 'For deceiving me, saiyett? How?'
'I knew, of course, what had become of the Baron. All news reaches Quiso. I expected to find him here, but I did not tell you. I could see that you were badly shocked and exhausted, and I thought it better not to trouble you further. But he would not have harmed you; neither you nor me.'
'You don't need to ask forgiveness of me, saiyett, but since you have, it's given very willingly.'
'Melathys has told me that now that the Baron is gone there's no possibility of our finding help in Zeray/
She sighed deeply, staring down at her sunlit hands on the blanket with a look so disappointed and hopeless that he was moved, as people are apt to be by pity, to say more than he could be sure of.
'Don't distress yourself, saiyett. It's true enough that this is a place of rogues and worse, but as soon as you're well enough we shall leave – Melathys, you and I and the Baron's man. There's a village not far to the north where I hope we may find safety.'
'Melathys told me. The servant has set out to go there today. Will the poor man be safe?'
Kelderek laughed. 'There's one person who's sure of it and that's himself.'
The Tuginda closed her eyes wearily and Melathys put down the comb.
'You should rest again now, saiyett,' she said, 'and then try to eat something. I'll be off to the kitchen, for there's a fire to be lit before I can cook.'
The Tuginda nodded without opening her eyes. Kelderek followed Melathys out of the room. When he had laid the fire, she lit it with a fragment of curved glass held in a sunbeam. He was content to stand and watch as she busied herself with the food, only speaking a word occasionally or trying to anticipate her need of this or that. The room seemed as full of calm and reassurance as of sunlight, and for the time being the future caused no more anxiety to him than to the joyous insects darting in the brightness outside.
Later, as the day, moving towards noon, filled the courtyard with a heat like that of summer, Melathys drew water from the well, washed the household clothes and laid them in the sun to drv. Coming back into the shade of the house, she sat down in the narrow window-scat, wiping her neck and forehead with a rough cloth in place of a towel.
'Elsewhere, women can go and wash clothes in the river and take it for granted,' she said. 'That's what rivers are for – laundry and gossip: but not in Zeray.' 'On Quiso?'
'On Quiso we were often less solemn than you may suppose. But I was thinking of any town or village where ordinary, decent people can go about the business of life without fear: yes, and without dragging shame behind them like a chain. Wouldn't it be fine -wouldn't it seem like a miracle – just to go to a market, to bargain with a stall-keeper, to loiter in the road eating something that you'd bought fair and honestly, to give some of it away to a friend while you gossiped by the river? I remember those things – the Quiso girls came and went a good deal on the island's business, you know: in some ways we were freer than other women. To be deprived of little, common pleasures that honest people take for granted – that's imprisonment, that's retribution, that's grief and loss. If people valued such things at their worth, they'd give themselves more credit for the common trust and honesty on which those things depend.'
'You've got some compensation. Most women can't use words like that,' answered Kelderek. 'It's a narrow life for a village girl -cooking, weaving, children, pounding clothes on the stones.'
'Perhaps,' she said. 'Perhaps. Birds sing in the trees, find their food, mate, build nests. They don't know anything else.' She looked up at him, smiling and drawing the cloth slowly from side to side across the back of her neck. 'It's a narrow life for birds. But you catch one and put it in a cage and you'll soon find out whether it values what it's lost.'
He longed to take her in his arms so strongly that for a few moments his head swam. To conceal his feelings he bent over his knife and half-finished fish-hook. 'You sing, too,' he said. 'I've heard you.'
'Yes. I'll sing now, if you like. I sometimes used to sing for the Baron. He liked to hear old songs he remembered, but really it was all the same to him who sang them – Ankray would do. By the Ledges, you should hear him!' 'No – you. I can wait to hear Ankray.'
She rose, peeped in at the Tuginda, left the room and returned with a plain, unornamented hinnari of light-coloured sesttiaga wood, much battered along the finger-board. She put it into his hands. It was warped and more than a little out of true.
'Don't you say a word against it,' she said. 'As far as I know, it's the only one in Zeray. It was found floating down the river and the Baron put his pride in his pocket and begged the strings from Lak. If they break there aren't any more.'
Sitting down again in the window-seat, she plucked the strings softly for a while, adjusting and coaxing the hard-toned hinnari into such tune as it possessed. Then, looking into her lap as though singing to herself alone, she sang the old ballad of U-Deparioth and the Silver Flower of Sarkid. Kelderek remembered the tale – still told as true in that country – how Deparioth, abandoned by traitors in the terrible Blue Forest, left to wander till he died and long given up for lost by friends and servants, had been roused from his despair by a mysterious and beautiful girl, dressed like a queen in that desolate wilderness. She tended his hurts, found him fruits, fungus and roots fit to cat, restored his courage and guided his limping steps day by day through the maze of the woods, until at last they came to a place that he knew. But as he turned to lead her towards the friends running to meet them, she vanished and he saw only a tall, silver lily blooming where she had been standing in the long grass. Heart-broken, he sank weeping to the ground, and ever after longed only to recover those days of hardship that he had spent with her in the forest. Give back the miry solitude, The thorns and briars outstretched to bless. There lay my kingdom, past compare: This court's the desert wilderness.
Ending, she was silent, and he too said nothing, knowing that there was no need for him to speak. She plucked the strings idly for a while and then, as though on impulse, broke into the little song 'Cat catch a fish', that generations of Ortelgan children had known and played on the shore. He could not help laughing with delight to be taken thus by surprise, for he had neither heard nor thought of the song since he himself had left Ortelga.
'Have you lived on Ortelga, then?' he asked. 'I don't remember you when I was a child.' 'On Ortelga – no. I learnt that song as a child on Quiso.'
'You were a child on Quiso?' He had no recollection of what Rantzay had once told him. 'Then when -'
'You don't know how I came to Quiso? I'll tell you. I was born on a slave-farm in Tonilda and if I ever knew my mother I can't remember her. That was before the Slave Wars and we were simply goods to be prepared for sale. When I was seven the farm was taken by Santil-ki-Erketlis and the Heldril. A wounded captain was making the journey to Quiso to be healed by the Tuginda, and he took me and a girl called Bria, to offer us to be brought up as priestesses. Bria ran away before we reached the Telthearna and what became of her I never knew. But I became a child of the Ledges.' 'Were you happy?'