And indeed, Ricolf's next words were utterly mundane: 'With all this hurrah behind you, you'll be all in a sweat to get back to Fox Keep, so I don't suppose you'll stay the night. You'll be wanting a trussed fowl, then, or some such, to hold the ghosts out of your head.'
'Aye, that would be kind of you,' the Fox agreed. 'Do you know, though, Selatre seems to calm them-not altogether, but partway-by herself. I suppose it's because she was Biton's intimate for so long.'
'Does she?' Ricolf's tone irked Gerin, but not enough to make him rise to it. The older baron shrugged and said, 'I'll see what sort of bird the kitchen crew can scare up for you.'
Instead of a hen, Ricolf's cooks presented Gerin with a trussed duck that tried to bite his hand and quacked furiously when he stowed it in the back of the wagon. It kept quacking, too. 'Can't say as I blame it,' Van remarked as he got onto the wagon's seat himself. 'I wouldn't be happy if anybody did that to me, either.'
'Can you tie something around its beak?' Gerin asked Selatre when the duck went right on making a racket after the wagon rolled out of Ricolf's keep and headed up the Elabon Way once more.
'Oh, let it squawk. What else can it do, poor thing?' Selatre said. Since she was in the back of the wagon with it and had to endure more of the noise than Gerin did, and since Van had already said more or less the same thing, the Fox let her have her way. Nonetheless, by the time the sun neared the western horizon, he looked forward to lopping off the duck's head for more reasons than just keeping the ghosts happy.
When they stopped to camp for the night, he steered the wagon off the road to a little pond that had enough saplings growing close by to screen it away from the casual glance of anyone on the road by night. Van got down and began gathering dry leaves and twigs for tinder.
Gerin descended, too. He went around to the back of the wagon and said to Selatre, 'Hand me out that pestiferous duck, if you please. We'll eat him tonight, but he's already had his revenge. My head aches.'
The ex-Sibyl seemed merely practical, not oracular, as she picked up the duck by the feet and held it out to Gerin, warning, 'Be careful as you take him. He'll do his best to bite; he won't just quack.'
'I know.' Trying to take the duck from Selatre without touching her as he did so didn't make things any easier for Gerin, but he managed, and didn't bother mentioning the extra awkwardness. If that was how Selatre was going to be, he'd accept it as best he could.
Once he had the duck, he set it on the ground. He made himself stand by and not offer Selatre a hand as she got down from the wagon, wondering all the while how long he'd need before not offering aid became automatic for him. Then Selatre stumbled over a root, exclaimed, and started to fall. Altogether without thinking, Gerin jumped forward and steadied her.
'Thank you,' she said, but then stopped in confusion and jumped back from him as if he were hot as molten bronze.
'I'm sorry,' he said, though apologizing for having kept her from hurting herself struck him as absurd.
She shivered as she looked down at the arm he'd grabbed, then nodded with the same sort of deliberation Gerin had shown when he kept himself from helping her down a few moments before. 'It's all right,' she said. 'However much I try to stay away from them, these things will happen now that I'm so rudely cast into the world. I may as well do my best to get used to them.'
The Fox bowed. 'Lady, on brief acquaintance I thought you had good sense. Everything you do-this especially- tells me I was right.'
'Does it?' Selatre's laugh came shaky. 'If that's so, why do I feel as if I'm casting away part of myself, not adding on anything new and better?'
'Change, any change, often feels like a kick in the teeth,' Gerin answered. 'When the Trokmoi killed my father and my elder brother and left me lord of Fox Keep, I thought the weight of the whole world had landed on my shoulders: I aimed to be a scholar, not a baron. And then-' He broke off.
'Then what?' Selatre asked.
Gerin wished he'd managed to shut up a few words earlier. But he'd raised the subject, so he felt he had to answer: 'Then a few years ago my wife ran off with a horseleech, leaving me to raise our boy as best I could. His kidnapping was what made me come to Ikos.'
'Yes, you've spoken of that.' Selatre nodded, as if reminding herself. 'But if you hadn't come, by everything else you've told me, the creatures that dwelt in the caves under Biton's temple would have killed and eaten me after the earthquake.'
'If the earthquake would have happened had I not come,' Gerin said, remembering the words of doom in the last prophecy Biton had issued through Selatre's mouth.
Van came around the wagon. 'I've already got the fire going,' he announced. 'Are you going to finish off that duck, or do you aim to stand around jabbering until the ghosts take away what few wits you have left?' He turned to Selatre. 'Take no notice of him, lady, when he gets into one of his sulks. Give him a silver lining, as you did, and he'll make a point of looking for its cloud.'
'To the hottest of the five hells with you,' Gerin said. Van only laughed. The nettle he'd planted under Gerin's hide stung the worse for bearing a large measure of truth.
The Fox dug a trench in the ground with his dagger, then drew sword and put an end to the duck's angry squawking with a stroke that might have parted a man's head from his shoulders, much less a bird's. He drained the duck's blood into the trench for the ghosts. Van took charge of the carcass. 'It'll be greasy and gamy, but what can you do?' he said as he opened the belly to get rid of the entrails.
'Gamy or no, I like the flavor of duck,' Selatre said. 'Duck eggs are good, too; they have more taste than those from hens.'
'That's so, but hens are easier to care for-just let 'em scavenge, like pigs,' Gerin said. He glanced around. 'Even though we were slow with the offering, the ghosts are still very quiet. Lady, I think that's your doing, no matter that we happened to touch again.'
Selatre cocked her head to the side, listening to the ghosts as they wailed and yammered inside her head. 'You may be right,' she said after she'd taken their measure. 'I remember them louder and more hateful than this when I was still living in my village, before Biton made me his Sibyl. But I am Sibyl no more; the god himself said as much, and your touch sealed it-' She shook her head in confusion; the dark hair that had spilled over one shoulder flew out wildly.
Gerin said, 'I don't think holiness is something you can blow out like a lamp. It doesn't so much matter that I touched you-certainly I didn't do it with lust in my heart, or aiming to pollute you. What matters is that the god touched you. My touch is gone in an instant; Biton's lingers.'
Selatre thought about that and slowly nodded, her finely molded features thoughtful. Watching her in the firelight, Gerin decided Van had been right: she was attractive enough to make Fand jealous. Was she more attractive than the Trokme woman? Their looks were so different, the comparison didn't seem worthwhile. But that it had even crossed his mind made him wonder if Ricolf hadn't been wiser back at his keep than the Fox had thought at the time.
He scowled, angry at himself for so much as entertaining that notion. Selatre said, 'What's wrong? You look as if you just bit into something sour.'
Before he could come up with anything plausible, Van saved the day, calling, 'Come over here by the fire, both of you, and bite into something that's going to be gamy and greasy, like I said before, but better all the same than a big empty curled up and purring in your belly.'
The duck was just as Van had predicted it would be, but Gerin fell to gratefully even so. A full mouth gave him the excuse he needed for not answering Selatre's question, and a full belly helped him almostif not quite-forget the thoughts which had prompted that question in the first place.
The wagon came out from behind the last stand of firs that blocked the view toward Castle Fox. 'There it is,' Gerin said, pointing. 'Not a fortress to rival the ones the Elabonian Emperors built in the pass south of Cassat, but it's held for many long years now; the gods willing, it'll go on a bit longer.'
Selatre leaned forward in the rear of the wagon to see better, though she was still careful not to brush against the Fox or Van. 'Why are most of the timbers of the palisade that ugly, faded green?' she said.
Van chuckled. 'The lady has taste.'
'So she does.' Gerin refused to take offense, and answered the question in the spirit in which he hoped it had
