Wall of Shiuan

He was not such a man; he could not do it. And he did not know whether this in him was virtue or cowardice.

The sons of Haz had taken up their posts at the door. Morgaine awaited him in the hall beyond. He went to her, into the chambers that had been some great lord’s, and dropped the saddlebags that he had carried onto the stones of the hearth, staring about him.

More bodies awaited them: tapestries rent, bodies of men-at-arms and the one-time lords lying amid shattered crystal and overturned chairs. Vanye knew them. One was the body of an old woman; another was that of one of the elder lords, he that had made most grudging obeisance to Hetharu.

“See to it,” Morgaine said sharply to the servants. “Remove them.”

And while this was being attended, she righted a heavy chair and put it near the fire that still blazed in the hearth for its former owners, extended her legs to it, booted ankles crossed, paying no attention to the grisly task that went on among the servants. Changeling she set point against the floor and leaning by her side, and gave a long sigh.

Vanye averted his eyes from what passed in the room. Too much, too many of such pathetic dead: he had been of the warriors, but of a land where men fought men who chose to fight, who went armed, in notice of such intention. He did not want to remember the things that he had seen in Ohtij-in, alone or in her company.

And somewhere in Ohtij-in was Myya Jhirun, lost in this chaos, hidden or dead or the possession of some rough-handed marshlander. He thought of that, sick at heart, weighed his own exhaustion, the hazard of the mob outside, who spoke a language he could not understand, but he was obliged. For other wretched folk within the hold, for other women as unfortunate, he had no power to stop what happened—only for Jhirun, who had done him kindness, who had believed him when he said he would take her from Ohtij-in.

“ Liyo,” he said, and dropped to his knees at the fireside, by Morgaine. His voice shook, reaction to things already past, but he had no shame for that; they were both tired. “ Liyo, Jhirun is here somewhere. By your leave I am going to go and do what I can to find her. I owe her.”

“No.”

“ Liyo–”

She stared into the fire, her tanned face set, her white hair still wet from the rain outside. “Thee will go out in the courtyard and some Shiua will put a knife in thy back. No. Enough.”

He thrust himself to his feet, vexed by her protection of him, exhausted beyond willingness to debate his feelings with her. He started for the door, reckoning that she had expressed her objection and that was the sum of it. He was going, nonetheless. He had seen to her welfare, and she knew it.

“ Ilin,” her voice rang out after him. “I gave thee an order.”

He stopped, looked at her: it was a stranger’s voice, cold and foreign to him. She was surrounded by men he did not know, by intentions he no longer understood. He stared at her, a tightness closing about his heart. It was as if she, like the land, had changed.

“I do not need to reason with you,” she said.

“Someone,” he said, “should reason with you.”

There was long silence. She sat and stared at him while he felt the cold grow in her.

“I will have your belongings searched for,” she said, “and you may take the horse, and the Hiua girl, if she is still alive, and you may go where you will after that.”

She meant it. Outrage trembled through him. Almost, almost he spun on his heel and defied her—but there was not even anger in her voice, nothing against which he could argue later, no hope that it was unthought or unmeant. There was only utter weariness, a hollowness that was beyond reaching, and if he left, there would be none to reach her, none.

“I do not know,” he said, “to what I have taken oath. I do not recognize you.”

Her eyes remained focused somewhere past him, as if she had already dismissed him.

“You cannot send me away,” he cried at her, and his hoarse voice broke, robbing him of dignity.

“No,” she agreed without looking at him. “But while you stay, you do not dispute my orders.”

He let go a shaking breath, and came to where she sat, knelt down on the hearthstones and ripped off the cloak she had lent him, laid it aside and stared elsewhere himself until he thought that he could speak without losing his self-control.

She needed him. He convinced himself that this was still true; and her need was desperate and unfair in its extent and therefore she would not order him to stay, not on her terms. Jhirun, he thought, would be on his conscience so long as he lived; but Morgaine—Morgaine he could not leave.

“May I,” he asked finally, quietly, “send one of the servants to see if he can find her?”

“No.”

He gave a desperate breath of a laugh, hoping that it was an unthought reaction in her, that she would relent in an instant, but laugh and hope died together when he looked at her directly and saw the coldness still in her face. “I do not understand,” he said. “I do not understand.”

“When you took oath to me,” she said in a thin, hushed voice, “one grace you asked of me that I have always granted so far as I could: to remain untouched by the things I use and the things I do. Will you not grant that same grace to this girl?”

“You do not understand. Liyo, she was a prisoner; they took her elsewhere. She may be hurt. The women out there—they are a prey to the marshlanders and the mob in the court. Whatever else, you are a woman. Can you not find the means to help her?”

“She may be hurt. If you would heal her, leave my service and see to it. If not, have mercy on her and leave her alone.” She lapsed into silence for a moment, and her gray eyes roamed the room, with its torn tapestries and shattered treasures. From the courtyard there was still shouting and screaming, and her glance wandered to the windows before she looked back to him. “I have done what I had to do,” she said in an absent, deathly voice. “I have loosed the Barrows and the marshlands on Shiuan because it was a means to reach this land most expediently, with force to survive. I do not lead them. I only came among them. I take shelter here only until it is possible to move on. I do not look at what I leave behind me.”

He listened, and something inside him shuddered, not at the words, which deserved it, but at the tone of them. She was lying; he hoped with all his heart that in this one thing he understood her, or he understood nothing at all. And to rise now, to walk out that door and leave her, took something he did not possess. In this, too, he did not know whether it was courage or cowardice.

“I will stay,” he said.

She stared at him, saying nothing. He grew afraid, so strange and troubled her look was. There were shadows beneath her eyes. He reckoned that she had not slept well, had rested little in recent days, with no companion to guard her sleep among strangers, with no one to fill the silence with which she surrounded herself, implacable in her purpose and disinterested in others’ desires.

“I will make discreet inquiry,” she said at last. “It may be that I can do something to have her found without finding her... only so you know clearly what the conditions are.”

He heard the brittleness in her voice, knew what it masked, and bowed, in shaken gratitude, touched his brow to the hearthstones, sat up again.

“There is surely a bed to be had,” she said, “and an hour or more before I shall be inclined to need it.”

He looked beyond her, to the open arch of the shadowed next room, where the servants had begun stirring about, the removal of the former owners completed. There was a light somewhere within, the opening and closing of cabinets, the rustle of fabrics. A warm bed: he longed toward it, exhausted—luxury that he seldom knew, and far different from the things he had expected at the end of this ugly day.

It was far different, he thought, from what many others knew this night: Jhirun, if she still lived, Kithan, bereft of power, Roh—fled into the storm and the flood this night, in his private nightmare that centered upon Morgaine—Roh, with Abarais before him and the chance of defeating them.

But Morgaine gazed down on him now with a face that at last he knew, tired, inexpressibly tired, and sane.

“You take first rest,” he said. “I shall sit by the fire and keep an eye on the servants.”

She regarded him from half-lidded eyes, shook her head. “Go as I told you,” she said. “I have eased your conscience, so far as I can. Go on. You have given me matters to attend yet; now let me attend them.”