“A message?” Cilarnen asked. “How could a message come now?” Not only had it been snowing for some time—and Centaurs, as he already knew, did not think winter a suitable time for traveling—but a messenger would have come first to Grander’s house, and Grander would have insisted on feeding him, and Cilarnen saw no stranger faces gathered around the table for the noonday meal.
“What bird flies in winter?” Sarlin answered gaily, and the others laughed.
If Elves never asked questions—and Cilarnen realized, thinking back, that Hyandur had never asked him a single question on the entire journey to Stonehearth—the beastfolk seemed to more than make up for it, and worse, think a question was as good as an answer.
It was only one of their many annoying qualities.
Cilarnen knew he’d been very lucky to be taken in at Stonehearth. Winter without weather-spells to tame it was a terrifying thing. Without Grander’s kindness—yes, kindness, and charity, too—he would be dead by now.
But while he could manage to be polite, he could not manage to feel gratitude.
What made it worse was that he knew that the beastfolk were treating him far better than the Armethaliehans would have treated one of them if the situation were reversed. He was honest enough to admit that, even if he refused to say it aloud. Grander had even helped him barter his few personal possessions—his signet ring, his gold-and-sapphire chain, his pencase and penknife, and the handful of silver and copper coins in his pockets—to buy himself suitable garments in the days after his arrival, so that he would not start his time in Stonehearth too deeply in debt to Grander’s house. He’d had to pay a harness-maker—who had used his City boots as a template—to make him suitable footwear, but Sarlin had made his new clothes without charging him for her labor.
—«♦»—
“AND enough gold left over to buy cloth for summer clothes,” she’d said proudly, when she presented his new outfit to him a sennight after his arrival. “Unless you’ll be wanting to buy something else?”
“Keep it,” Cilarnen had said ungraciously, staring at the bizarre garments. “What is there here that anyone could want to buy?”
She’d looked hurt, and his conscience had pricked him.
“I’m sure you know what I need better than I do,” he’d said. He’d struggled to find something to praise, grateful in that moment that no one he’d ever known would see him wearing them. “The workmanship is very fine.”
“Ah,” Sarlin had said, perking up. “Spun and wove it myself, from our own sheep. You won’t find better. And I only charged you what I’d charge family—not what I could get for it at Spring Fair, either!”
“That’s… very kind,” he’d said, as it seemed to be expected.
“Do you need help with them? You not being used to our wild ways, and all? Or—Is your head paining you again?”
“No. I—I will manage. Excuse me.”
With the bundle of cloth in his arms, Cilarnen had fled to his room and quickly closed the door.
His new quarters were much smaller than the chamber he had shared with Hyandur. There were hooks on the walls to hold his few garments, and a pallet on the floor for sleeping. There was a chair—a welcome-gift from Marlen—and a small chest, which held a washbasin and a chamberstick. There was no stove, as the room backed on the great hearth’s chimney, and so was usually warm enough.
Cilarnen had flung the armful of clothing down on his pallet and pulled out one of the drawers of the chest. Inside was a small glass phial, half-full of a brown liquid so dark it was almost black. He’d regarded it longingly for a moment, then put it back in the drawer and closed it again.
The first day, when Sarlin had taken him to the Centaur Healer, only the hope that the concoction would poison him on the spot had induced Cilarnen to try her remedy. The syrup she compounded was bitter, dark, and thick as honey.
But it had stopped the headaches. Completely.
“
He’d ignored her prohibition. Once. He’d never been tempted to repeat the experiment, no matter how much he craved oblivion, for whatever “dream-honey” might be, the dreams it brought with it when he took too much weren’t nice ones.
