Zanna, too, was feeling as though she had ventured into a dream. First dear Tarnal, and now Hebba—and she had managed to rescue her dad, after all! Though common sense told her that the blissful interlude must of necessity be brief—for the hunt would soon be on for her father—she put the thought firmly away from her. Tomorrow would take care of itself. Damn it, she had earned this respite, and she was going to make the most of it.
Hebba came to her with a cup of taillin. “There, my lovey, this will tide you over. I’m making you some soup right now…”
Zanna sipped the hot drink appreciatively. Surely, nothing in her life had ever tasted so good. It was laced with strong spirits and sweetened liberally with honey, and as she drank it, she could feel the warmth spreading right down to her achingly empty stomach. When she glanced up through the fragrant steam, she saw that her dad also held a cup in his hand. He winked at her across the hearth and lifted his drink to her in a silent, heartfelt toast.
Tarnal was walking a staggering Benziorn up and down the room, muttering imprecations under his breath. He had a cup on the table, and one on the shelf by the door, and was feeding the spluttering physician with strong taillin at every turn. Zanna smiled as she watched him, so intent and angry, with his brows drawn down over his gray eyes in a scowl at Benziorn’s intransigence and his hair glowing burnished gold in the lamplight. He caught her eye, and his angry frown changed to a reassuring grin. “Don’t worry, Zanna,” he told her. “I’ll have this wastrel sobered up in no time. He’s a good physician when he’s not in his cups, and he’ll fix up your dad in no time, you’ll see.”
It was so good to see him again. Although they had only been apart for a matter of months, he seemed to have matured in her absence, and strikingly so. I wonder if I seem the same to him? Zanna mused. Had she been meeting him now for the first time, she would be thinking of him as a man, not as a lad. She noticed that he was tall and strong enough to haul the struggling physician along behind him as he paced grimly back and forth. Suddenly, Zanna wondered what the blazes he was doing in Nexis. Because of the urgency of getting Vannor to a place of refuge, there had been no time for explanations as they had come up through the town. And where was Yanis? What was he doing now? Thinking of the handsome, dark-haired leader of the Nightrunners, Zanna lapsed into a dream…
She must have dozed, because the next thing she knew, the kitchen was filled with a delicious aroma, her stomach was growling, and Hebba was shaking her gently by the shoulder. “Come on, lass—I know you need to sleep, but you’ll do it all the better for some good hot soup inside you. That Benziorn’s gone to look at your dad, and so you just eat up, then we’ll make you up a proper bed—though the good gods only know where, what with Dulsina’s young nephew in the best room…”
As she had done so often at home, Zanna shut out Hebba’s flutterings, concentrating instead on filling her empty stomach with the wonderful soup—until the name of Yanis fell upon her ears like a thunderbolt. “What?”
Perversely, the old cook stopped talking at once. “What did you say,” Zanna repeated carefully, “about Yanis?”
Hebba looked at her as though she had just fallen out of the skies. “Why, his fever’s up again, poor lad, and what with that no-good physician nowhere to be found all day—”
“Just a minute,” Zanna interrupted her sharply. “You mean, Yanis is here?”
“Why, yes—tucked up in the spare room next door, poor lamb, and—” This time, she was interrupted by the crash of splintering pottery, and the banging of the door. Hebba looked down at the shards of her best bowl amid the puddle of soup that was spreading across the hearth, and planted her fists on her ample hips. “Well,” she said, to the empty room at large. “That young lass has been learning her manners from them smuggler lads, and no mistake.”
To Zanna’s horror Yanis stared wide-eyed at her without a trace of recognition. His limp, dark hair clung to a face that was flushed and sheened with sweat, and the bedclothes were twisted about his body from his restless movements. The stained bandage around his arm gave her the reason for his fever. Zanna felt a chill go through her. She couldn’t lose him—not Yanis! Her fear was abruptly replaced by a flare of anger. Surely Tarnal had said that Benziorn was a good physician? If he was really any good, how could he have let his patient get into this state? And that useless, drunken sot was at this very minute treating her father? Zanna’s blood turned cold at the thought, and she had to steel herself not to rush from the room and demand an accounting of Benziorn.
Calm down, she told herself firmly. Think. We’re fugitives now, my dad needs help urgently, and good or bad, Benziorn is the only physician we’ve got. We’re lucky to have him, at that. Once she’d come to think things through, she also realized that Yanis had only been neglected this long because of herself and her father. Even Hebba had been too busy to make him comfortable. Well, at least Zanna could do something about that.
Carefully, she straightened the Nightrunner’s twisted sheets and rearranged his pillows, trying to disturb him as little as possible, and firmly keeping in check her desire-made possible at long last—to hold him, to touch his face, to stroke his hair. She found water in a jug on the table beside the bed, and a cloth to bathe his face. She tipped some of the water into a mug and managed to get him to swallow a little, though most went down his chin. Having made up the fire and filled and trimmed the lamp, it seemed that she had reached the limit of what she could do for him at present. He certainly seemed to be resting more comfortably now. With a guilty start, Zanna remembered her father. Benziorn should nave finished looking at him now. She ought to go and see how he fared. She was just heading toward the door, when Yanis began to murmur. Zanna turned back, her heart lifting with hope. Was he coming out of his delirium?
It seemed not. Yanis was restless again, rolling from one side to the other, undoing her efforts to straighten his bedding and muttering fretfully all the while in slurred, unintelligible tones. All her efforts to soothe and reassure him were of no avail, and she began to grow frightened. She was about to go and fetch Benziorn or Hebba when, to her relief, he seemed to grow calmer again. As his speech became more clear, Zanna leaned closer to listen. What was he saying?
Yanis’s eyes flew open, and he stared uncomprehendingly into Zanna’s face. “Emmie?” he called weakly. “Fire, climb down… Safe journey, beautiful sad Emmie…”
Zanna shot bolt upright. Who the bloody blazes was Emmie? Some woman—that was clear enough. Maybe it was just some old granny that he’d helped downstairs to the kitchen fireside—one of the smugglers, perhaps—but no. She knew perfectly well that there was no Nightrunner with that name. And he had called her beautiful… Suddenly, Zanna felt cold all over—then flushed hot with furious humiliation. What had this idiot been doing in her absence? He hadn’t the sense of a newborn babe! Well, she told herself very firmly, she was much too sensible to worry about the escapades of a stupid smuggler. She had much more important things—like her dad—to look after—and she’d be willing to wager that this Emmie, whoever she was, couldn’t have single-handedly rescued Vannor from the clutches of the Mages.
Yanis had fallen silent now, but he was still thrashing about in his covers, turning his neatly made bed back into a jumble of twisted linen. Zanna looked coldly at the mess and its fevered perpetrator. Let this Emmie come and straighten it for him, if she was so bloody wonderful—she had wasted quite enough time on Yanis! She turned her back and forced herself to walk away without a backward look. She needed her rest, too—she had only just realized how unutterably weary she was—and she had to find her father. He needed her, at least. Only when she couldn’t find the door handle did she stop to wipe her eyes.