“She would not have ridden from me in such a way,” Cinnan said, also repeating himself for the third or fourth time, his face and eyes stubborn. “The love we found together could not have been put aside so easily by her, as though it were naught. The seetar is clearly mistaken.”
“There is no mistake,” I said as if it were a memorized speech, feeling the annoyance and frustration rising higher and higher in me. Cinnan was so frantic with worry that he was all but broadcasting, forcing me to keep my shield tightly closed, which may have been a good thing. He was barely making a token effort to acknowledge my presence among all those important l’lendaa as it was, and had just about called me a liar. Tammad wasn’t likely to get insulted on my behalf, not with the sympathy and compassion fairly oozing out of him for Cinnan’s loss, but my own reactions were another story. It was that damned concept of honor, that habit-forming drug that was coming at me from yet another slant. Cinnan wouldn’t have spoken to me like that if I’d been a man, but what did he have to worry about with a mere wenda?
“Cinnan, three seetarr have indeed been taken,” Rellis told him gently, rising to his feet to console the younger man. “Also are two serving wendaa gone from the house, none knowing to where. Had my niece remained behind, we would surely by now have found her. It is a virtual certainty that Aesnil departed in company with the two missing wendaa.”
“Where might three wendaa have gone to alone?” Cinnan demanded, finding nothing but further wildness in the truth he could no longer deny. “Who will there be to protect them upon such a journey, to hunt for them, to guide them? How did they dare to depart alone, and where have they gone?”
“They have gone to where Aesnil meant to go when we fled Grelana,” I said suddenly without knowing I was going to say it. “They have gone to Vediaster.”
The news was greeted with staring silence by everyone in the room, most especially by me. I could feel their eyes on me as a physical weight, but I was too busy closing a fist in the carpet fur and watching my hand holding the goblet tremble, to have attention to waste on stares. I wasn’t guessing about where Aesnil had gone, I knew, just as surely as if she had told me about it before leaving. The knowledge was a compulsion, like the compulsion about learning how to use a sword, and I had no more idea where the second conviction had come from than I had about the first.
“What leads you to believe such a thing, wenda?” Tammad asked in the deep silence, his voice calm and gentle. “Was it gotten from the seetar along with the rest?”
“No,” I said, still not up to looking around, not with the way I could feel those stares. “No, this is a thing I know in-another manner, yet am I just as certain. Aesnil has gone to Vediaster. ”
“To a land ruled and run by wendaa,” Cinnan said, distaste strong in his voice. “To a place where females dare to take to themselves the calling of warrior. I shall not allow Aesnil to remain among ones such as they, for she is not of their sort. I will ride after her and find her, else shall I not return. ”
“You shall not have to ride alone, Cinnan,” Dallan told him, rising to his feet as his father had done a few minutes earlier. “I will ride with you, and we will find my cousin together. ”
“Your presence will be most welcome, drin Dallan,” Cinnan answered with warm gratitude, moving across the carpet fur to clap Dallan on the shoulder. “As will be the presence of your blade.”
“I believe I, too, will accompany you,” Tammad said slowly, thoughtfully. “I must continue with the task I have undertaken to protect our people, yet are the directions many in which the task has already taken me. The road to Vediaster may be looked upon as no more than another direction.”
“Tammad, my friend, you, too, are most welcome,” Cinnan said, watching with a relieved smile as the big barbarian also rose to join everyone else. “Should we somehow lose the trail, your wenda may be of some aid in rediscovering it. Should you mean for her to accompany us.”
“You are correct in assuming I mean exactly that,” Tammad reassured the other big man, his hand going to his shoulder. “I have given my word that she shall not again be allowed to leave my side, and she may indeed prove to be of some assistance. As the day is nearly gone, let us depart with the new light.”
“No,” I said as Cinnan and Dallan agreed with Tammad, Rellis also nodding in approval, but none of them heard me. I was about as important in that gathering as a piece of furniture, the sort of furniture you put something down on without even looking, knowing it will be right where you expect it to be. I raised my voice and repeated, “No!” and the second time it got through to them.
“It would be foolish to depart sooner, Terril,” Dallan said with partial attention, speaking for them all. “When the new day begins, we shall begin as well.”
“That is not what I was referring to,” I said at once, before they could go back to their terribly important planning, getting to my feet to make it unanimous. “My disagreement referred to my presence, which will be absent from your distinguished company. I have no desire to join you, therefore shall I remain behind. My loss will be devastating, I know, yet are you l’lendaa and surely able to bear up beneath so terrible a load. You have my good wishes for your endeavor, though I scarcely believe you will find them necessary. Success, as always, will certainly be yours.”
I put my goblet of golden wine down on one of the small tables the room held, not bothering to drain it first, ignoring the thick silence I moved through. I knew I was being stared at for a third time, but I really didn’t care; they’d made it abundantly clear that I wasn’t one of them, that I wasn’t good enough to be one of them, so I’d made my answer just as clear. I was a Prime Xenomediator of the Centran Amalgamation, and I was damned if I’d be treated like a piece of furniture. I then walked to the door, opened it, and simply left.
When I got back to the apartment I shared with Tammad, a servant was there lighting the candles against the approaching darkness. She carried an enclosed candle that supplied the flame she passed around, and also had a bag over her shoulder that contained fresh candles to replace any that had burned all the way down. The bedroom had already been taken care of before my arrival, and the bathing room was quickly finished up. The girl smiled to me on her way out and I started to return the smile mechanically, but even that feeble gesture was lost to me when her opening of the door to the hall showed I’d been followed from Rellis’s entertaining room. The expression on Tammad’s face reflected his usual calm, but his mind was back to whirling behind that calm. I turned away from him and walked to the center of the room, and didn’t turn back even when I heard the door close.
“How long a trip do you think it will be?” I asked, looking at one candle flame that was destined to grow brighter as soon as it got darker. “You’ll probably find it hard to believe, but I’ll miss you.”
“I truly have no doubt of that, wenda,” he said with a sign, slowly moving across the carpet fur toward me. “And it has come to me that we have not as yet completed the discussion earlier begun between us. Clearly is it necessary that the matter be seen to. ”
“There’s very little that needs seeing to,” I said with a shrug, uncomfortably aware of how close he stood behind me. “I’ll be careful with my experimenting while you’re gone, and probably won’t even leave these rooms very often. How long do you think it will be before you get back?”
“Wenda, there is a great deal remaining to be seen to,” he argued, holding the tops of my arms, his deep voice fractionally less gentle. “This-experimenting you have done with Lenham and Garth has not been good for you, and there will be no more of it.”