Текст книги "Tatterdemalion "

Автор книги: Anah Crow

Соавторы: Dianne Fox
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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

with his will as he spoke.

Lindsay took Ezqel’s dry, strong hand and struggled to standing, looking for Dane. Lindsay expected

to see Dane getting to his feet, tossing back his hair. But Dane was still on the ground. The snow under him and behind him where he had dragged himself was full of an impossible amount of blood. He had his cheek

to the snow as though it were a pillow and his eyes were still open, fixed on some point in the distance. The wind tugged forlornly at his hair and coat, begging him to wake.

“No.” Lindsay clawed out of the pack that was weighing him down and dropped to his knees beside

Dane. “Oh, no. Dane,” he whispered brokenly, pushing damp strands of hair out of Dane’s face. “God,

Dane…” He stroked Dane’s cooling cheek, his eyes stinging with tears. He’d never lost anyone before. He

had no idea what to feel.

Lindsay had tried, but it wasn’t enough, not even when it mattered most—he was too broken. Dane

was dead. Lindsay’s mind could hardly bear the idea. It was too awful to contemplate that Dane was gone.

Lindsay bent to press a light kiss to Dane’s white, empty face. “I’m sorry, Dane.”

“Why apologize? All things live out their purpose.” Lindsay’s head jerked up and he stared at Ezqel

in horror. Still, there was regret in Ezqel’s expression. “I did not think this would happen so soon, that it would end this way. Come.” He gestured for Lindsay to move away. “I will carry what remains back. There

may be some use left in it.”

Lindsay flinched, but he backed off obediently, getting to his feet again. He didn’t know what to say,

what to do, so he stayed still and silent while he watched Ezqel gather up Dane’s body. His head hurt, his

heart hurt, he was shaking. But he had to keep moving. For Dane, who had brought him this far. Keeping

an eye on Ezqel, he backed away to pick up and put on his pack. After a moment’s thought, he found

Dane’s pack, as well, and took hold of it to drag it along behind himself. It was so heavy, Lindsay couldn’t lift it, but he couldn’t let it go.

Ezqel tugged Dane’s coat closed as he rolled him over, hiding the black and red ruin where his belly

had been, and picked Dane’s body up as though it weighed nothing. He slung the body over his shoulder

and straightened.

“Come,” he said again. “It’s growing cold.” He led the way toward the trees he’d come through,

where a path ran into the woods.

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Lindsay followed blindly, lost in his own thoughts, trying to figure out what he could’ve done

differently to save Dane. The fact that Dane was dead kept slipping away from him, and his mind went

back again and again, as though it could correct an error and change the present.

Dane’s pack dragged sullenly behind Lindsay, wrenching at his arm and nearly bringing him to his

knees every time it caught on this root or that stone. Lindsay couldn’t bring himself to let it go. It might’ve had something important in it, but that wasn’t why. Dane’s clothes were in there, all of them soaked with

Dane’s scent, and maybe twined here and there with his long, black hair.

The path went places that were not the same as the landscape Lindsay had walked through with Dane.

He lost track of their direction by the first turn and hardly noticed how the path widened from a narrow scar in the forest’s flesh to a wide, smooth passage between looming trees.

Dane had spoken as though they were a day’s travel away, but before Lindsay’s pride gave out and he

begged Ezqel to stop, he realized that the journey was almost over. The air grew warmer and, at last, they

were walking up a stone path, under an iron archway, and into a sleeping garden. A hedgemaze hid the

extent of the garden from Lindsay’s view, but he could see the still, white forms of statues where the hedge opened into little alcoves. The statues looked so realistic and unique and human, for all that they were

marble, that Lindsay was filled with a dread certainty that they were not statues at all.

“We are home,” Ezqel said, without pride or enthusiasm, when they passed below another archway.

As if at his beckoning, a house stood there, like something out of a fairytale, and a man and a woman

waited for them at the door. The house seemed to exist inside a tiny oasis of warmth within the freezing

forest. There was green grass here, and roses climbed the trellises by the doors and windows. Lindsay was

shivering still, but by now, it was more shock than chill.

“You will go with Taniel.” Ezqel stopped on the path. Dane’s corpse hung over his shoulder, hair

trailing longer than the limp hands, swinging slowly. “I may see you before you sleep, but I think not, by

the look of you. Taniel will have questions for you, and you may bathe and eat in the meantime. Izia.” He

nodded at the woman. “Come with me. We will see if you can get any use of this thing.” With that, he took

a branching path that led around the side of the house, carrying Dane away.

Lindsay wanted to stop them, to make them bring Dane back. Dane wasn’t a thing to be made use of.

He wanted to protest or cry out, but he didn’t know how to do anything but be silent. Didn’t know how to

Tatterdemalion

do anything but do as he was told. And, like that, Dane was gone. The world closed over him and only the

heavy pack at Lindsay’s feet was left as a reminder that Dane had ever been there at all.

“Let me help you.” Taniel was tall and thin, with tawny skin, slanted, dark eyes and raggedly cut,

silky black hair. His robe, a soft brown velvet version of what Ezqel had worn, hung on him like he was a

coat rack. He picked up Dane’s pack in one hand, sliding it out of Lindsay’s numb fingers before he could

protest, and slipped his other hand into Lindsay’s in its place. “Come in,” he urged, drawing Lindsay

toward the front door.

“Where are they taking him?” Lindsay looked back to the path where Ezqel and the woman, Izia, had

disappeared with Dane.

“To one of the outbuildings,” Taniel said quietly. He was a little older than Lindsay, by the look of

him, but that could have been meaningless. “Every place has its purpose. Come, you need to wash, and

you’re cold.” The door swung open as they approached and Lindsay crossed the threshold into Ezqel’s

home.

Lindsay, through the numb pain of loss, could tell they were in a kind of place he’d never been before.

It was not the architecture or the furniture, though that looked like it had been designed from the

illustrations of a children’s book. The air itself was different, as though there were another element mingled with it. There was light from above, from hanging lamps, but Lindsay was sure the air itself was glowing.

His footsteps, and Taniel’s, were silent on the stone floor of the foyer.

The door closed behind them and Taniel guided Lindsay past a staircase that spiraled up to nowhere—

there had been no second floor or tower that he recalled from outside—and into a huge, warm sitting room.

That place reminded him so much of Cyrus’s sitting room, down to the chair that should have been Dane’s

right by the fire, that Lindsay was afraid his next inhalation would never come.

Another staircase wound slowly up the wall of the circular room until it was lost in the shadows

overhead. Taniel drew Lindsay toward one of several small doors under the stairs. “A bath is waiting for

you. You could shower, instead, but the water would be cold.”

“You’ve already drawn a bath?” Lindsay looked around the rooms, confused. Ezqel must have known

they were coming, though, and prepared for their arrival. His arrival. “Where do I…where should I put my

clothes?” They were a mess of mud and snow and smears of blood.

“Of course. We have been waiting.” There was a small hall, narrow and dim and another closed door

beyond that. “This is the bathing room. I will take you to your room to sleep later. Leave your clothes here.

I do not think you will wish to wear them again.” Taniel opened the bathroom door for Lindsay.

Blue-tinted light came in through a stained glass window—a maritime scene with a mermaid on a

rocky outcrop among high waves—that was wavy with age. The bathroom was a century behind even the

most primitive facilities Lindsay had used, with a minimal toilet and shower and a freestanding tub that had

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a firebox built into it. There were towels over the firebox so that they would be warm, and a robe on a hook beside them.

Lindsay shrugged out of his backpack and coat, looking around for somewhere to put them. He left

them next to where Taniel had set Dane’s pack and turned to Taniel as he stripped out of his shirt. “Ezqel

said you had some questions for me?”

“I do, but you should bathe first, and rest, should you not?” Taniel gave Lindsay a sympathetic look.

“Ezqel does not understand things as others do anymore. Izia and I still do. If you have need of some

privacy…”

Lindsay shrugged. He hadn’t had the luxury of privacy in years, until he’d come to Cyrus’s house. At

least in this place and time, he had a choice. “Whatever is convenient for you.” Privacy would only give

him time to lose himself in grief, and that would come soon enough whether Taniel stayed or left.

“We can speak now, if you prefer.” Taniel’s expression was sad. “I will need to know about your

family history and your personal experiences. You can tell me when you wish to rest.” He took a book out

of a pocket in his robe and perched on the edge of the toilet lid. “Please tell me when you are ready to

begin.”

Lindsay ducked his head and finished undressing, then slipped into the bath. It was warm and the

blood on his hands swirled away quickly. Like that, Dane was gone. Even in the hot water, Lindsay was

cold. Without Dane, it felt like he could never get warm again.

“What did you need to know?” he asked, so that he wouldn’t cry remembering Dane washing his face

with a cool cloth and worrying over him.

The questions began. They kept him busy, kept him thinking about everything except what had

happened to Dane. After he’d cleaned up, Taniel helped him into the robe that should have been warm—it

was heavy and soft with fur at the throat and wrists, and hot from hanging by the firebox—but Lindsay was

still cold.

“Here. You can’t go barefoot.” Taniel pulled a pair of slippers—Lindsay thought they were slippers,

though they could have been shoes from another era—out from below the firebox and knelt to help Lindsay

into them.

Dane had always let him dress himself, and Vivian. It was easy, though, to fall back into passivity.

The slippers were fur-lined leather and they fit him perfectly, just like the robe. How was it, Lindsay

wondered, that they could know he was coming, know what would fit him, and yet not find him in time to

save Dane? He had to bite his lip not to sob at the thought.

“Come.” Taniel straightened and took Lindsay’s hand as though Lindsay were a child. “We must go

to the library.” So they went, hand in hand, through the faerie house.

They crossed the warm sitting room, where a black cat curled up in the chair that Dane would have

favored, and passed the fireplace that was almost as high as Lindsay, a great arching maw full of pale

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yellow fire. The cat opened its golden eyes to watch Lindsay, the tip of its tail twitching. It could have been a trick of the firelight, but Lindsay thought he saw something sad in its expression before it dropped its

head to groom one paw.

On the other side of the fireplace, a door with runes carved over the lintel stood partway open. Taniel

led him in and, defying possibility, the room was round as well. Could you fit more round things in a small space than square? Did magic have no corners? It was filled with books, and went up three stories to a

domed roof, beyond which was a cloudy sky shedding soft flakes of snow. What was the illusion, the snow

or the garden outside the front door?

Taniel led him to a chair at a table near where the wall swelled out like a belly, covered in a mosaic of

flames. It was warmer here and Lindsay realized that this must have been the back of the other fireplace—

sparks and books rarely fared well together. For a moment, he thought his vision was wavering from

exhaustion or hunger or grief, but then he understood that the mosaic was moving like the flames on the

other side.

“I will get the family books,” Taniel said. “From what you say of your magic, it will not be easy to

track your lineage.”

Lindsay sat where he was told, cold in spite of the radiant heat from the wall, and stroked the soft

black and brown fur at the cuffs of his robe. Some use left in it, Ezqel had said. Would the fae mage take Dane’s long, black hair or Dane’s sharp, ebony claws? Maybe Dane’s golden skin would be of use for

something.

“Why not?” he asked, to drag his mind away from the morbid images it was dredging up.

“If you think about it,” Taniel said, stopping halfway up a ladder with his robes clutched in one hand,

“it’s very hard to find an illusionist.” He smiled at Lindsay. “Especially one who doesn’t want finding.”

“Good,” Lindsay muttered, before he could stop the word. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to find him

once Ezqel fixed him, none of them. He didn’t want to be part of this anymore, didn’t want to think of what Cyrus would say or do when Lindsay told him Dane had died.

Cyrus had given Lindsay to Dane. He wondered to whom Dane had belonged. He couldn’t imagine

Dane belonging to anyone but Cyrus. The way Dane had curled around him, protecting him, was so at odds

with the way Cyrus treated Dane, like Dane was just a dog. Would Cyrus even miss him? Had Cyrus even

deserved him? Lindsay hadn’t.

Taniel came back with a tome the size of his torso and thunked into the chair across from Lindsay,

startling Lindsay away from the tears that were threatening.

“Now. We start here.” Taniel flipped the book open. It looked like a giant phone book, but from what

Lindsay could see, it was all gibberish. Taniel pulled a lens on a necklace out from under his robes and

turned the dials around it, pausing to think before deciding on the final setting. Using the lens, he began to read, and as he read, from time to time, he spoke. It was only to tell Lindsay what he was looking for, in

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which book, but it was enough to keep Lindsay from falling into the pit of grief that yawned open with

every breath.

Taniel had four books of Anglo-Saxon mage lines open in front of him and he was squinting at the

pages, trying to work out where Lindsay’s family might have branched off, when he straightened and shook

his head. “Might I take a little of your blood?” he asked, focusing on Lindsay, who had given up on

pretending he was fine and had curled up in the chair, watching the mosaic move. “Just a pinprick is all I

need. I will go and get a needle from Izia.” Taniel closed the books and got up, smoothing out his robes.

Lindsay swallowed hard. He hated needles. “There isn’t another way to get the information you

need?”

“I could try another way.” Taniel looked at Lindsay thoughtfully, and collected the book in which

he’d been taking notes. “I will consult with Ezqel, then I must find the correct tools. If you grow weary, I suggest you rest. There is food in the kitchen if you are hungry. I will be some time, if I am to do it without your blood.” He flashed Lindsay a small smile. “You are wise. Most surrender such precious things too

easily. I will return.” He gave Lindsay a bow and hurried out of the library, closing the doors behind him

and leaving Lindsay alone in the dusty silence.

Distractions gone, the silence ate at Lindsay’s control. He bowed his head over the table and took

slow, deep breaths, trying to delay the inevitable thoughts. He had no luck. He could see it all in his mind, the way Dane had thrown him aside, the way Jonas had borne him down the hill, the sounds Dane had

made when Jonas’s claws tore into him. Lindsay wished he’d done something sooner, wished he’d done

something differently, to save Dane. It was all too late. He gave in to the tears, to the wracking sobs,

curling in on himself for whatever small amount of comfort it would bring.

The last thing Dane saw was his own hand clutched around Jonas’s ankle. The last thing he heard was

Lindsay’s desperate cry. His name.

Where he went, he had no name. The rising dark was familiar, he had seen it so many times before

and always it had faded in the face of his healing. He could feel his heart stutter. With too much to heal, his throat torn open and every organ shredded, his magic couldn’t stay ahead of the darkness.

This time, the darkness never waned.

Out of the darkness, pain. It wasn’t any pain he’d ever felt before, it was a pain that encompassed his

entire awareness, his whole self. It was all his failure, distilled. In the dark, he was nothing but agony. It went on forever. Hell. He was in hell. He’d never believed in it, but he was in it now, and it had no ending.

Dane.

He knew that voice. It carried with it the smell of honeysuckle and hibiscus and magic. Crushed grass

under his skin, the salt of the sea in his hair, the sun flowing into his bones. Something in him tried to push it away, a dying reflex, but it persisted. The pain was worse, almost enough to erase him entirely.

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Stop fighting me. The words snapped through his pain. Now is not the time for your pride.

Pride. He had no pride. He had nothing but pain and a fading sense that he had once been more than

that.

That’s better.

It was as though he were being gathered up in someone’s hands, cradled and lifted out of the dark.

Memory rushed through him. Dirt roads, a split-rail fence, a well, chickens scratching in the dust, a dog

barking, hooves on packed soil. He could smell a wood stove and evergreens and a cold wind out of the

north. His hands were warm in a pair of woolen mittens. The years went by like snowflakes. Sometimes

they caught in the wool of his mittens and he could see them, each different than the last, gleaming and

perfect.

There was so much he had forgotten, so much he’d wanted to forget. The smell of latrines and mud

and blood and gunpowder. Wet wool on his skin and gangrene stench overwhelming every other scent.

Starvation and the weight of an iron collar, the cold bars of a cage. Laughter. His blood splashing into a basin.

Cyrus, his hair as black as a raven’s wing and his skin unlined, laughing. The wind sweeping across a

field and gathering up a storm of flowers. Vivian with her hair bound up in the ofuku style, like a souvenir doll in her kimono. Not Vivian. Omasami. Later, she was Vivian, with lace and a cameo at her throat, her

waist pulled small as a daisy stem by her corset. His own hands on the corset laces and her chirping

admonishments when he was too careful with her.

He wanted to remember those things, not the scream of mortar fire and the wail of dying, not the

weight of a stretcher in his hands, not the alien feel and stink of a gun. Human wars were terrible things, against nature. Mage wars were wars of natural forces.

His wings tore out of his shoulders and spread like twin sails, his claws ripped into the earth and flung

him up against the pull of gravity, toward the sky. That, he remembered, in his dreams. The wind spoke in

his ears and lifted him high, through the night and into the day, into the midst of battle. When mages

warred, high in the mountains above the human realm or in the heart of the desert, they fought with storm

and lightning and fire, with tooth and claw, with swords and arrows. Dane had fought on faerie soil, on land that was not earth, had torn the throat out of a dragonet, had dragged angels out of the sky.

He remembered the moment that he was broken, the agony of it that was nothing next to the agony of

being betrayed, and none of that was anything like the pain of now. Everything in him still raged against

that moment. He dreamed that it had not happened and woke in the prison of his own body.

The dog. The dog had never known his own kind, never known the old laws and ways—all the dog

knew was the way of men. The dog lived on the edge of the camps, scrounged what the humans would

throw him, let himself be used. Dane had pitied him once, let him live, and had regretted it since. He

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remembered the girl, her halo of dawn-red hair and her eyes like gems. For a moment, he’d thought she

could be saved. But things moved on, and she was gone.

And he remembered his failure. He remembered the stink of his own entrails and the smell of snow,

the slurry of blood and earth under his knees. A small voice calling for him. Things undone.

“I have him now,” a woman said.

Somewhere, an animal was howling in pain.

“Can you shut him up?”

“Patience, Ezqel. He’s barely here.”

“He shouldn’t be wasting his energy, then.”

The pain was receding, taking the shape of a body, flesh wrapped around a soul. It dwindled to a pain

Dane could know and understand and enfold, putting it away inside him. When the animal fell silent, he

knew the voice had been his.

“You need to be still.” A woman’s small hands pressed his flesh and he realized that he must have

been trying to get up. All his impulses were still trying to drive him to his feet, to stop the dog.

Jonas. Hate seared his synapses, branding his mind with the reflex. He tried to speak, but nothing came out.

“He wants the dog. Jonas is gone, Dane. I have judged him as I saw fit.”

Dane cast about for the source of the voice, but could see nothing. It was so dark. Clawing at his eyes

left his fingers wet.

“Your sight will be the last to return,” the woman said, dragging his hands away. “And it will take

longer if you put out your eyes. I need you to breathe. Try to breathe for me.” She pressed her hands

against his chest, once, twice, again, and then her mouth was on his like a kiss, forcing her breath into him.

His body stuttered and he gagged. Something under his ribs was struggling. “Relax,” she said.

Dane felt panic surge through him as his body came to understand that it wasn’t living. The silence in

his ears was deafening. No pulse. No heartbeat. No rise and fall of breath. He was full of Ezqel’s magic,

and the woman’s, but no life. The woman breathed for him again and he heard the creak of his ribs swelling

outward. Her breath was green, like a tree, and full of life that he drew in greedily.

“Come on,” she said softly. “Come back.” He felt her hands on his chest, passing into him, through

muscle and bone. Her magic filled him up and his body drank it in. He felt her shaking as the black in his

vision turned to gray. “You have to want this,” she whispered.

“He’s been trying to die for years,” Ezqel said flatly. “I thought he had some use left, but…”

When the woman breathed into him again, Dane took her breath from her, tore it from her lungs, tore

Ezqel’s magic from him by every thread his will could gather. Rage drove him to take what he wanted, to

pillage both of them without consideration for what it might do to them. The woman fell away from him,

but still, Dane was not sated.

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“Enough.” Ezqel’s hand falling sharply across his face cleared his sight and broke his hold on their

power. Dane sucked in cool air and his pulse stuttered frantically in his ears. He breathed again and his heart spasmed before falling back into its old rhythm. Above him, the snow fell on the curved glass roof of a conservatory.

“I won’t have you striking my patient.” The woman’s voice was cold. Dane turned his head to look

for her. He felt a surge of guilt at taking from her so violently. She was a plain woman, unremarkable, and pale as though she had been bled. “Thank you for your help, though,” she said to Ezqel.

“He knows little so well as being angry.” Ezqel’s eyes were fixed on Dane, his jaw set. His hair

glowed like a beacon against the greenery in the conservatory, the greenery that was nowhere near as green

as his eyes. “I knew you’d come back, if only to spite me.”

Dane’s mouth still wouldn’t work, and what he’d say, he knew would only make things worse. You

were the one who wanted me back. His mouth was too dry to spit. Rage made his heart stagger and ache.

“You’re welcome,” Ezqel said archly, to both of them. “Put him in the guest room when you’re done

patching his holes, Izia. I believe Taniel is looking for me.” He drew his hood up over his hair. The sound of hinges and a snake of cold air marked his departure.

Dane tried to ask where Lindsay was. He didn’t trust Ezqel not to have dragged Dane back alone to

prove a point, leaving Lindsay to Jonas. The words came out mangled, in various languages scraped up out

of his memory.

“If you’re asking about your friend, he’s well enough. Worry about yourself.” Izia pried his mouth

open with her strong, cold fingers, and laid something green-tasting and leafy on his tongue. She closed his mouth on it with her palm under his jaw. “Keep that in your mouth. It’ll make your heart beat evenly.

You’re all over the place, and you’re still bleeding. I’m going to cover your wounds. It may take another

day to heal you.”

Once, he would never have died. The curse had followed him beyond that threshold, into the black

and the pain. Had he really been dead? When the woman returned, he tried to question her with his eyes.

“I wasn’t sure we’d get you back,” she said quietly. “You’re very determined. I can see why you

frustrate him so.”

Dane rolled his eyes at that. Ezqel deserved all the frustration Dane could cause, except that going to

the trouble would bind him even closer to the mage. Now, he risked being beholden to Ezqel for his life. He could hardly work out the meanings of it all. Everything went dark for a moment while he was turning

things over in his head, and he forced his eyes open as fear spiked through him. He could still see. His eyes had just fallen shut.

“The herbs will make you sleepy.” Izia leaned over him and patted his cheek. “You need to rest.”

Dane didn’t want to sleep. The idea of going into the dark again so soon made tension ripple through

him.

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“You won’t die,” Izia assured him. “That part is over. You need some fluids and some time to heal,

but you’re back with the living. Rest will heal you faster than anything else. Let me stop you from leaking all over the place and I’ll set you up with fresh fluids.”

Dane caught sight of a pole with several limp bags hanging from it. Saline. Maybe some herbal

concoctions to replace his blood. It was so strange. He’d never been hurt or sick like this before. He

thought he should be afraid, but the animal in him shrugged it off and curled up to sleep. Things went dark again. When the beast slept, so did the man. Everywhere they went, they went together, even to death and

back.

It was dark when Taniel put a hand on Lindsay’s shoulder and shook him gently. Lindsay found that

he was still at the table where he’d sobbed himself to sleep, head in his arms, and there was a blanket

tucked around him.

“It’s very late,” Taniel said. “You slept a long time. I will be going to bed soon and I cannot leave you

here. Come and eat, and I will show you to the guest room. I got a great deal done while you slept.” A lamp burned on the desk and the light bounced off of several arcane instruments that had not been there before.

Lindsay blinked up at Taniel, confused for a moment, but then it all came rushing back to him. What

had happened, where he was, everything. He gathered up the blanket and stood, rubbing at his sleep– and

tear-crusted eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

“You were tired. Creatures sleep when they need to rest or heal.” Taniel offered Lindsay a hand to

steady himself. “You should eat if you can.”

Dane had often offered to hold Lindsay’s hand when he needed support. Lindsay couldn’t bring

himself to accept Taniel’s hand, not just now.

“I’ll try,” he said, nodding. He hadn’t eaten in…a long time. When they’d stopped for breakfast,

sitting on the heavy logs and listening to the birds.

Taniel took Lindsay to a kitchen that looked like an illustration from a child’s book, with the fat, old

black stove and hanging herbs and the beautiful embroidered curtains. This room, too, had no corners.

Beyond the windows, it was night, soft and velvety and dense; Lindsay could almost feel it curled around

the faerie house like a great, black cat.

“There’s some fresh custard,” Taniel offered, coaxing Lindsay as though Lindsay were half his age.

“And some biscuits. I could make you tea. Izia’s better at it than I, but I haven’t seen her all day.”

“That sounds fine.” Lindsay wasn’t sure he’d be able to finish even that. He stood in the center of the

room, feeling lost and alone.

“Come, sit.” Taniel pulled out the chair nearest the wood stove for Lindsay. It was red with little blue

and white flowers painted on the back and arms, like a nursery chair grown large. Lindsay sat, obediently,

at the end of the worn wooden table. Someone had cut roses, the blowsy, rude, wild ones, and arranged

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them haphazardly in a yellow pitcher. Taniel hurried about the kitchen, sandaled feet hushed on the stone

floor, robes swishing about his legs, as he served Lindsay up a bowl of sweet, creamy custard with a few

biscotti, and set to making him tea.

Lindsay ate, and drank the tea when it was ready, but he wasn’t really awake for any of it. He stared

off at the old stone walls, feeling sick and sad. Finally, he pushed away the last dregs of tea and murmured,

“I think I haven’t slept quite enough. You said something about a bed?”

“Yes. Izia is usually in charge of the guest room, but…” Taniel held his hands out to Lindsay. “If

there is no fire there yet, I can build you one. I don’t know where she is. I’m sorry, it’s rude of us. Ezqel must have put her to another task.”

“Thank you.” Lindsay wasn’t concerned about the rudeness. He only wanted to be alone, so he could