She waited for a moment. There was no motion in the face or behind the closed lids of the eyes, but the hand she held moved to squeeze her own, so slightly the movement would have been invisible to anyone watching.
Suddenly, his eyes wide, Abasio stirred. He heard . . .
“Xulai,” the woman spoke in her mind. “There is no time left to hide it. Open it now.”
Wonderingly, Xulai stared at his face. “You heard her!”
He nodded, putting a finger before his lips. She pulled the box from her pocket and set it on the bed, prying up the close-fitting lid. Inside, cushioned in lamb’s wool, was an orb the size of a large grape, delicately patterned in blues and greens. It might have been made of glass, perhaps? Or perhaps it actually was a kind of fruit? And yet . . . it seemed large. In her sight it expanded, becoming huge, as though she looked at the world from a great distance. Surely those blue areas were seas, and the green ones were forests. Surely those white things were clouds . . .
The chipmunk came from her pocket, sat on her shoulder, and peered. Xulai reached for the orb, then drew back as the voice of the Woman Upstairs spoke in her mind: “Take it. Put it in your mouth, child. Don’t be afraid! Quickly!”
Xulai froze in place. She had heard the words, actually heard them, as though they had been called loudly but from an infinite distance. Abasio put his hand on her shoulder and shook her, very slightly. She stared at the orb, measuring it with her eyes. The chipmunk crept toward the orb, sniffing at it.
“It’s too big,” she whispered, to the walls, to herself, perhaps to the chipmunk.
“It isn’t really,” Abasio said firmly.
“Yes, it is,” Xulai asserted angrily. Not for someone grown-up, perhaps, but for her, it was too big.
“Just put it in your mouth for a moment,” the chipmunk told her. “To warm it. Poor thing’s cold!”
Xulai stared at it.
Abasio said lightly, teasingly, “Pretend it’s a sugar drop. You’ve eaten sugarplums bigger than that. Chipmunk is right. Warm it up.”
He watched as her lips closed around it.
The thing in her mouth came alive in an instant. It was like a squirming tadpole, a slippery fish, and she gagged, trying to spit it out. Abasio put his hands across her lips, hugged her tightly, for she was a good deal stronger than she looked. She squirmed as she felt the thing dive down her throat, vanishing like a frog into a pond.
“Not too big?” queried the chipmunk, cocking its head to one side. “Not at all.”
She glared at it, forgetting the woman, forgetting herself in sudden anger, snarling, “It wasn’t your mouth it was squirming around in!” She put her hands to her sides, thrust them under her dress, felt her stomach. Not a flutter, nothing there to say she had swallowed some lively thing. Except a kind of creeping warmth, a feeling of . . . well, the way she felt sometimes when Precious Wind let her have a few sips of wine. Soft inside. Warm. Really wonderful.
Abasio heard words, fleetingly, a whisper. “Friend. We hoped you would come in time. Thanks.”
Stunned, but conscious of the girl’s anger, he managed to whisper, “Xulai, it was what she wanted, what she needed.” He put his hand on her shoulder and shook her. “Look at her, Xulai. Look at her!”
Before her on the bed the woman lay unchanged, except . . . except that her lips were very, very slightly curved upward in the ghost of a smile. Xulai took the lax hand in her own, waited for words in her mind, looking at the curved lips, definitely a smile. No words came. She leaned forward to feel the woman’s breaths upon her cheek, softly, barely, a long, long time between. As she knelt there, a quiet wind came into the room. The fire blazed up. The wind circled, as though it were searching for something, then gathered itself from all corners of the room and gusted into the fireplace, the flames leaping up behind it as it fled up the chimney and away from Woldsgard toward some other, more suitable place.
“Ah,” whispered Abasio. “Look, sweetheart. The pain is gone. Look at her.”
And it was true. The pain was gone. The face was peaceful. The hand she held had relaxed; the lines were gone from her face; the room was changed. All the strain, the hurt was gone. The room, too, was at peace.
“Tranquil,” said Abasio in a strange, choked voice. “She is full of quiet. We can let her sleep.”
After a silent time Xulai rose, the chipmunk still on her shoulder, and they left the silent room. They passed the footman where he slept snoring in his chair and went down the wicked stairs and out into the kitchen garden.
Abasio held out his hand. “I’ve taken shelter in the courtyard with the other travelers. I can find my way there. Give me the awl you borrowed from the shoemaker . . .”
“How did you know I did?”
“I saw you take it. I followed you here when you left. I’ll return it. Sleep well.”
As he turned away, she saw tears on his face. He felt pity for the princess, no doubt, for he was a kind man. “Abasio,” she called. He turned, leaned down toward her. She reached up and kissed his cheek. “You were kind, and she called you friend. Thank you.”
She turned back toward the stairs as he, moving as though under some compulsion of quiet and necessity, found his way through the interior gates leading to the courtyard, where he pushed the shoemaker’s awl through a gap in the shutters of the stall. He managed to exchange casual greetings with a sergeant who moved slowly across the paved area from wall to wall, checking on the guards. There were other wagons and several peddlers bedded down in the area near the stable, and he wended his way among them
