“You speak unkindly of love,” Noreê said, not as if she disapproved.
“I’m not talking about love at all. Naevros purchased her with a fantasy, the way he might have purchased a meat pie with money. He offered her the pretense of love, which was enough for her. For that she sacrificed everything, not for him.”
“Are you going to talk to him now?”
Aloê nodded.
“Perhaps I should ride with you,” Noreê suggested. “The presence of his two unattainable princesses might unnerve him.”
“What is a princess anyway?”
“A sort of female kinglet, I think. They have them in the unguarded lands. They are much sought after as mates, apparently, and people kill dragons and things to woo them.”
Aloê, who’d had occasion to kill a dragon herself, revolved this notion in her mind. “Odd,” she said. “Yes: let’s try to shake him up.”
They rode down to the city the next morning and arrived at Naevros’ house in the afternoon.
There was a cloud of watch-thains on the street outside Naevros’ little house. Aloê was surprised to see them there. Naevros had been released from the Well of Healing after swearing a self-binding oath to appear before the Graith when summoned. No guards were needed, but here they were.
Plus, they wore different badges, as if they belonged to different graiths. One group had green armbands; another sported red caps; a third wore purple leggings.
She rode Raudhfax through the milling crowd as if they weren’t there, causing a number to jump out of the way. She dismounted and strode toward the front door, ready to throttle anyone who hindered her.
She heard a timid voice say, “Your pardon, Vocate, but you are not allowed to enter.” She turned and prepared to leap at the speaker like a lioness taking down a deer . . . but he wasn’t speaking to her. A herd—no, three distinct herds of thain—were surrounding Noreê, who looked at them curiously with her dark blue eyes.
“Here, you,” Aloê said to them as a body, “get away from her.”
“I’m sorry, Vocate,” said a freckly fellow in purple leggings, “but our orders are that no one shall enter this domicile saving yourself.”
“Ours, too,” supplied a pimply youth with a green armband. “And ours!” chimed in a girl in a red cap, and in general all the cattle mooed the same song.
“Whoever may have given you those orders, and those badges of rank to go with them,” Aloê said, “you can’t suppose that their instructions are binding on us. Stand out of her way.”
“Sorry, Vocate. Orders.”
The herds lowed in unison: orders, orders, orders.
Aloê was about to lay a few of them on the ground using her songbow as a club when another voice spoke, breaking the spelclass="underline" “Don’t trouble yourselves, vocates. I’ll come down to you.” It was Naevros, standing at the window above his front door.
Neither Aloê nor Noreê responded, but Naevros disappeared, and in a moment the door opened and Naevros stepped out of it.
The thains stood out of his way as if he were carrying a bowlful of plague-infested pus. He was not. He carried nothing: not a sword at his hip, not a cloak on his shoulders against the chill of the summer day. His clothes looked old and ill-matched; there were buttons missing from the shirt and threadbare patches on the trousers. His reattached left hand hung from the end of his arm, barely moving. It had a slightly bluish look to it. He did not offer it, or the other hand, to Aloê or Naevros, but he did acknowledge their presence with a nod and a glance of his green eyes, which is more than he did for the thains.
“Let’s go down to the Benches and have a bite to eat,” he suggested. “I don’t suppose I’ll have many more chances to eat there, one way or the other.”
They agreed and they all walked together down the street to Naevros’ favorite cookshop.
“How’s Verch?” asked Aloê.
“Gone. Forever, this time,” Naevros said. “I fired him. I’d sell the house if I could find a buyer. I’ll need all the money I can get in the unguarded lands. Unless you plan to kill me.”
“You’ll have the option of exile, of course,” Aloê said.
“I’ll take it. Or did you imagine me drowning my sorrows in a pool of my own blood?”
Aloê noted the bitter bantering tone in his voice and chose to ignore it. “No,” she said frankly.
He winced and sighed. “Well, I suppose it’s too late to pretend now that I’m something other than I am.”
They sat in the garden, empty of other patrons as the blue chill of evening approached. Without looking at the server, a young woman with streaked hair who looked at him with sad, sympathetic eyes, Naevros ordered pork seared with cherries and thrummin on the side. Noreê had a plate of jeckfruit and grondil. Aloê ordered chicken and mushrooms, and they shared a carafe of the house wine.
“I suppose you’ve come to break down my resistance,” Naevros said, when they all had a glass. “You want to ask me questions, expecting no answers, just hoping to plant doubts that will soften the real examination on the Witness Stone. Is that it?”
“What if it is?” Aloê replied.
“If it is, to hell with it. Ask me your questions. I’ll answer. I’m not going to put on a defense. I did what I did, and I’ll pay for it without whining.”
Perhaps only a little whining, Aloê thought to herself. Naevros favored her with a green glance, and she wondered if he had understood her unspoken response. It repelled her, but their rapport was as strong as ever. Aloud she said, “I know what you did, and most if not all of your fellow conspirators. What I don’t understand is why you did it.”
“Don’t you?”
“No.”
“A simple reason, for a Guardian. I did it to maintain the Guard.”
She looked at him without speaking.
“No, really!” he insisted.
“You’ll have to put some more lines in the drawing, Naevros. I don’t see what you’re getting at. How did murdering Earno help maintain the Guard?”
“I don’t know all the details. But Lernaion and Bleys had a plan to save the Wardlands from the effects of the dying sun. Earno was planning to interfere with it, or they thought he was. So he had to be killed.”
“Why would you believe them?” Aloê asked.
Naevros seemed genuinely surprised. “Wouldn’t you?”
Aloê looked away instead of answering. She wondered if he had always been this stupid and she hadn’t noticed it, or whether something had happened to him. She marveled that she had ever felt torn between this clever, shallow, pretty man and ugly, powerful, crafty Morlock Ambrosius. She missed him very much at that moment, and there was a shrill, fearful quality to the feeling. She was worried that the loss was permanent, that he would never return from the journey he’d begun.
She pushed the feeling away. The food came then, and she managed to ask Naevros a few more questions through the meal, but she didn’t learn much, and she was increasingly convinced that she never would learn more from Naevros.
After the meal the two vocates parted company with Naevros and rode westward to the lockhouse in Fungustown.
“Would your father say Naevros was a real man?” Aloê said, breaking a long silence.
“Unquestionably. Why?”
“He seems the mirror image of Ulvana. He killed and lied and betrayed every trust so that he could have what he wanted.”
“A hero’s mantle, you mean? Yes, I agree with you there.”
“And what good would it have been to him if he had it?” Aloê asked. She felt the cool pressure of Noreê’s regard and turned toward the older woman. “Do you mean this was really about me? He was trying to impress me?”
Noreê laughed in surprise. “Your insight is sharp, Vocate. That is what I almost said. But I didn’t say it because, on second thought, it seems to me too superficial. Naevros always seems to have a woman against whom he measures himself and whom he tries to impress. If it weren’t you, it would be someone else. If you had ever yielded to his charms he would have despised you the way he does every woman he has seduced, and he would have found some other bitch-goddess to pray to.”