She looked at the passage again. "Oh. So it is." She let out a small, embarrassed laugh. "It does change the meaning, doesn't it?"
"Just a bit." Gerin started to reach and to touch her hand in added praise, but thought better of it. Selatre made little fuss over accidental contact these days, but she remained unhappy about anything that wasn't an accident. He went on, "Even with the slip, you're doing marvelously well. You've picked up your letters as fast as anyone I've ever taught."
"Letters are simple," she said. "Seeing how they fit together and make words is harder." She looked around the room that served Castle Fox as a library. "And so many words there are to read! I'd never imagined."
Now Gerin laughed, bitterly. "When I look at them, I see how few there are. It's a good collection for the northlands—for all I know, it may be the only collection in the northlands—but it's a chip of wood drifting on the sea of ignorance. I studied down at the City of Elabon; I know whereof I speak."
"As may be," Selatre said. "When Biton abandoned me, I thought I would be empty of knowledge, of the feeling of knowledge passing through me, forevermore. This is a different sort from what the god gave directly, but it's worthy in its own way. For that I thank you."
She hesitated for a moment, then set her hand on top of his, very lightly, before she jerked it back. Gerin stared at her. Then a snarl of rage, a noise like ripping canvas, jerked his gaze to the doorway. Fand had chosen that moment to walk by. The fury on her face was frightening. Gerin waited for her to scream at him, but she stalked away instead. That worried him more than her usual firestorm would have.
"I'm sorry," Selatre said. "Your leman does not favor me, and I've gone and made matters worse."
"Not that much worse," he answered. "Things have been going, mm, imperfectly well for a while already."
She sighed and said, "I must confess, I don't altogether understand. If things between you and her have not gone well, as you tell me, why do you still seek her bedchamber?"
He felt his face heat. From anyone else, that question would have got nothing more than a sharp, None of your affair. With Selatre, though, he tried to be as honest as he could. Maybe that sprang from lingering awe and respect for the oracular role she'd once had, maybe just because, by her nature and not Biton's, she called forth such honesty. After a little thought, he said, "Because what goes on in the bedchamber, as you say, is one of the few good things we have left between us. Has been one of the good things, I should say."
Selatre caught the distinction. "Has been but is no more, do you mean?"
"I suppose I do." The Fox gnawed on the inside of his lower lip. "You've seen children balance a board or a branch on a rock and make a game out of going up and down, up and down?"
"Of course," she answered. "I've played that game myself. Haven't you?"
He nodded, then went on, "Van and I have played it with Fand, these past couple of years. But staying in balance, the two of us with one woman, isn't easy, any more than keeping the board in balance on a stone is. And I seem to be the one who's falling off." He laughed, ruefully but without much anger. "I shouldn't be surprised that's happening, not when Fand has a temper like boiling oil. I ought to be surprised we've kept the balance as long as this."
"You would have kept it longer, if not for me," Selatre said. "She thinks you're out to have me take her place."
"I know she does," Gerin said. "That isn't what I intended when I brought you here to Castle Fox."
She studied him. For a moment, he thought the fathomless wisdom of Biton still looked out through her eyes. Then he realized the wisdom he saw was her own, which made it no less intimidating. "Do you intend that now?" she asked. Even if he'd intended to evade, she didn't make it easy; though she hardly had her letters, she used words with a precision the rhetoricians down in the City of Elabon might have envied.
"By Biton or Dyaus—whichever you'd rather, Selatre—I swear I do not want you to take Fand's place in my life," he answered steadily. "If you think I am in the habit of swearing false oaths, you can best judge my likely fate in the world to come."
"Only a fool mocks the gods, and whatever else you may be, lord Gerin, you are no fool," Selatre said. "For that, and for the truth you've shown me thus far, I will believe you."
"And for that I thank you," the Fox said.
"Shall we return to the chronicle?" Selatre asked. "There, with the words before us on the parchment, we have less room for misunderstanding."
"That is probably a good idea." Gerin listened to her read. Every sentence seemed to come with more confidence than the one before it. Now that she'd grasped the principle, she was showing she could apply it. Some men took years to reach the place where she'd come in moonturns. Some men gave up in dismay and never got there at all.
He was proud of her, and pleased with himself for having guessed so well where she would fit into the life of Fox Keep and the human fabric of the holding as a whole. She and Fand didn't fit; Van had foreseen that more clearly than he had himself. And Van and Fand still seemed to be getting along as well as Fand ever got on with anyone.
Under the usual busy stir of his thoughts, Gerin remembered something else as well—Selatre had reached out and taken his hand. He didn't know how much that meant; he didn't know if it meant anything. Of one thing he was sure: he wanted to find out.
* * *
Rain plashed down on Castle Fox, filling puddles in the courtyard and turning the ditch around the palisade to the muddy beginning of a moat. Harvest lay far enough ahead for the peasants to look on the storm with relief rather than alarm.
In any other year, that would have made Gerin do the same. Now a cloud-filled sky and curtains of water kicking up myriad splashes everywhere only raised his hackles; the wet weather reminded him too vividly of the storm that had rolled through the day his band of warriors fought the pack of monsters.
Planting his feet with care on the slippery steps, he mounted to the palisade and peered south. He could see the peasant village near the castle. The broad thatched roofs of the huts there would keep most of the rain away from the walls of wattle and daub, but he knew serfs would be patching them with fresh mud after the downpour rolled away eastward.
Beyond the village, at the edge of visibility through the rain, lay the woods. Gerin wished he could peer inside them, see into each windfall and cave, under each fallen tree. He feared monsters sheltered in some of them. He did not have the men he would have needed to form a cordon around his entire border, but without such a cordon, how was he supposed to hold off the creatures?
He was thinking so hard, he did not notice anyone coming up to join him until footfalls jarred the timbers beside him. Van wore a conical hat of woven straw that kept the rain off his face. "Wondering what's out there, Captain?" the outlander asked.
"I know what's out there," Gerin answered glumly. "I'm wondering how close it is and how soon we'll have to worry about it right here. But as a matter of fact, when you asked I was wishing bronze were cheaper."
"Begging your pardon, Fox, but I have to tell you I don't follow that one," Van said.
"If bronze were cheaper—if we had more copper and especially more tin—we could afford to make more weapons. Then the peasants could have 'em, and that would give them a better chance of killing the monsters instead of getting eaten."
"Mm, likely you're right." Van's features turned blunter and harder as he frowned in thought. "But even if you are, I'd lay you five to one that a lot of your vassal barons wouldn't fall in love with the idea of giving their serfs swords and spears and helms and cuirasses."