Juliet Marillier - Cybele's Secret

coming back to Barsam with revised bids, but I don’t believe anyone was keen enough to act immediately. Except for Duarte Aguiar. He was still there when we left Barsam’s house; I imagine he remains in the race. And they say he’s ruthless. I expect he, too, will be there in the morning, ready with an offer. I’ll go early, but not so early that I disturb Barsam’s household and risk offending him. I can outbid Duarte. The man’s purse cannot be bottomless.”

“He must be quite wealthy,” I’d said. “He couldn’t maintain the Esperanca without a good source of funds, surely.”

“Perhaps he has a rich family,” Father had said. “Stoyan, I will need you in the morning. Not straight after breakfast, but a little later.”

Now, in the semidarkness of our quarters, Stoyan had found what he was looking for: a strip of linen and a small pot of something pungent. “A salve,” he explained. “It should bring down the swelling. Will you…?”

I hitched the skirt of my nightrobe up toward my knee and put my foot on the other chair. I made myself breathe slowly as I felt Stoyan’s hands on my ankle, gently massaging in the ointment. A confusion of sensations filled me: pain, certainly, but something else as well, something I liked more than was appropriate. I valued our friendship; I knew he did, too. I liked the way he was there when I needed him, strong, quiet, and capable. Anything further between us—the sort of relationship Irene had hinted at—would be all wrong. There were so many arguments against such a development that I would not even entertain the idea of it.

When he was done, Stoyan wrapped my ankle in a neat bandage. “This Aguiar,” he murmured as he bent to fasten the ends of the linen securely, “you like him?”

A startling question. “What do you mean by ‘like him’?” I asked.

“You spoke much to him tonight. As if he were not an acquaintance but a friend. There was a smile in your eyes as you did so. I wonder if you have not heeded my warning. He seeks to exploit you, Paula. I see this in his face.”

Cautiously, I returned my foot to the ground. “It does feel much better with the strapping,” I acknowledged. “Thank you, Stoyan. And don’t worry about Duarte. He loves to flirt. If it hadn’t been with me, it would have been with some other woman. It means nothing.”

“You did not answer my question.” He was rolling up the extra bandage, stowing things away.

I tried to summon an honest answer. “It seems wrong to say I like him if there’s any possibility he was the one who threatened Antonio. But he appeared quite shocked when I suggested that, so maybe I was wrong. Duarte is interesting to talk to, full of surprises. He seems to enjoy the same kinds of things I do, books and ideas in particular. I’m flattered that he wants to talk to me. But I don’t trust him. And maybe you can’t actually like someone unless you have trust in them.” The topic was uncomfortable, especially in the middle of the night. “You should go back to sleep,” I said.

“Why were you crying? What did you see in your dream?”

“I dreamed about Tati.” My voice sounded small and forlorn; I couldn’t help it. “She was in the Other Kingdom, and she was saying how much she missed her family and that she would undertake a quest just to be allowed to see us….”

A sudden wave of homesickness came over me. I covered my face with my hands, unable to stop the tears. Stoyan moved to kneel by my chair and put his arm around my shoulders, muttering something indistinct. I gave myself up to weeping. It was only when the flood began to abate that I realized I was holding on tightly with my face pressed against his shoulder and that he was whispering words of comfort against my hair and doing his own share of holding. So much for heeding my own good advice.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I muttered, pulling back. “How embarrassing for you. I can’t believe I did that. It may be hard for you to believe, but I’m actually not the crying sort of girl. In your company, I seem to have been doing it regularly. Please don’t tell Father I was so upset. He’d be worried.”

“As you wish.” Stoyan had withdrawn to a safe distance. His face was in the shadows, and I had no idea what he thought of my inappropriate behavior or my attempt at an apology. “Master Teodor is not the only one who worries,” he went on. “With your ankle injured, you are still more vulnerable. I cannot teach you what I planned to; not yet. But I can show you a trick that you may use even when not at your full strength. Let me demonstrate….”

So it was that, in the middle of the night, I learned a way of getting out of someone’s grasp by cunning rather than by physical strength. We even practiced it, in a modified form that would not strain my ankle. It kept me so occupied that there was no chance to brood on anything else. When the combat session was over, I felt obliged to deliver a lesson in return. By the light of a candle, I made Stoyan practice the letters of the Greek alphabet. He had a remarkably steady hand; I had observed that with our tree exercise. All the same, his fingers holding the twig trembled as he wrote in the sand tray, as if this task were something of which he was deeply fearful. It seemed to me he expected to fail, and the prospect terrified him. I realized I would have to take it more slowly than I had planned. Would a month be long enough to convince him that he could do this? Could he find the will to continue after I was gone?

“We must try to sleep,” I said when we were done and the implements of the lesson were neatly packed away. “Tomorrow is a big day.”

“Today,” said Stoyan. “Thank you, Paula. I hurt you. You responded with kindness. What can I say?”

I smiled. Didn’t he realize he was a very model of kindness? “You can just say good night and sweet dreams,” I told him. “Or no dreams, that might be better. We’re friends, Stoyan. Friends do this sort of thing for each other; it comes with the job.”

“Good night, Paula.” His voice was almost inaudible. “I am honored to be your friend.”

I was in the library, the real one this time, with a second box of manuscripts beside me and my mind darting from one thing to another. I was on my own. Perhaps my pale face and shadowed eyes had alerted Irene to my need for time alone this morning.

If it hadn’t been for the dream, I might have preferred a quiet day at the han waiting for Father to do his deal with Barsam the Elusive and bring Cybele’s Gift safely back. Once we had obtained it, we planned to lock it away and not to take it out again until we were due to board the Stea de Mare in a few weeks’ time. But if there was any chance I might see Tati again, if there was even the slightest possibility I could tell her that I missed her just as much as she missed me and that I would do everything I could to help her win the right to visit us, then I was bound to be in the library waiting for her today.

I began sorting through the contents of the box, hoping the unseen hands that were guiding my mission might provide me with the document I’d been studying in my dream, with its apple-picking girl. I was willing Tati to