“I am better,” said Josua’s wife, smiling. “Come in, Aditu, you are very welcome here.”
The Sitha sat on the floor near Vorzheva’s bed, her golden eyes intent on the sick woman, her long, graceful hands folded in her lap. Miriamele could not help staring. Unlike Simon, who seemed quite accustomed to the Sithi, she had not yet grown used to having such a foreign creature among them. Aditu seemed as strange as something from an old story, but stranger still because she was sitting right here in the dim rushlight, as real as a stone or a tree. It was as though the past year had turned the entire world upside down, and all the hidden things remembered only in legends had come tumbling out.
Aditu pulled a pouch from her gray tunic and held it up. “I have brought something to help you sleep.” She spilled a small cluster of green leaves into her palm, then showed them to Geloë, who nodded. “I will brew them for you while we talk.”
The Sitha appeared not to notice Gutrun’s disgruntled stare. Using a pair of sticks, Aditu levered a hot stone from the fire, knocked off the ashes, then dropped it into a bowl of water. When a cloud of steam hung over it, she crumbled in the leaves. “I am told we will remain here one more day. That will give you a chance to rest, Vorzheva.”
“I do not know why everyone is so frightened for me. It is only a child. Women bear children every day.”
“Not the prince’s only child,” Miriamele said quietly. “Not in the middle of a war.”
Aditu was using the hot stone to further crush the leaves, pushing it about with a stick. “You and your mate will have a healthy child, I am sure,” she said. To Miriamele, it sounded incongruously like the kind of thing a mortal might have said—polite, cheerful. Maybe Simon was right after all.
When the stone was removed, Vorzheva sat up to take the bowl, which still steamed. She took a small sip. Miriamele watched the muscles in the Thrithings-woman’s pale neck move as she swallowed.
She’s so lovely, Miriamele thought.
Vorzheva’s eyes were huge and dark, though heavy-lidded with fatigue; her hair was a thick black cloud about her head. Miriamele’s fingers crept up to her own shorn locks and felt the ragged ends where the dyed hair had been cut off. She could not help feeling like an ugly little sister.
Be still, she told herself angrily. You’re as pretty as you need to be. What more do you want—do you need?
But it was hard to be in the same room with boldly beautiful Vorzheva and the feline, graceful Sitha and not feel a little frowsy.
But Simon likes me. She almost smiled. He does, I can tell. Her mood soured. But what does it matter? He can’t do what I have to do. And he doesn’t know anything about me, anyway.
It was strange, though, to think that the Simon who had pledged her his service—it had been a strange and painful moment, but sweet, too—was the same person as the gangling boy who had accompanied her to Naglimund. Not that he had changed so much, but what had changed … He was older. Not just his height, not just the fuzzy beard, but in his eyes and in the way he stood. He would be a handsome man, she now saw—something she would never have said when they stopped in Geloë’s forest house. His prominent nose, his long-boned face, had gained something in the intervening months, a rightness that they hadn’t had before.
What was it that one of her nurses had said once of another Hayholt child? “He has to grow into that face.” Well, that was definitely true of Simon. And he was doing just that.
Little surprise, though, she supposed. He had done so many things since leaving the Hayholt—why, he was almost a hero! He had faced a dragon! What had Sir Camaris or Tallistro ever done that was braver? And although Simon played down his meeting with the ice-worm—while at the same time, Miriamele had seen, he was dying to boast a little—he had also stood at her side when a giant had charged. She had seen his bravery then. Neither of them had run, so she was brave, too. Simon was indeed a good companion … and now he was her protector.
Miriamele felt warm and strangely fluttery, as though something swift-winged moved inside of her. She tried to harden herself against it, against any such feelings. This was not the time. This was definitely not the time—and soon there might not be time for anything. …
Aditu’s quietly musical voice pulled her back to the tent and the people who surrounded her. “If you have done all that you wished to do for Vorzheva,” the Sitha was saying to Geloë, “I would like to have your company for a little while. I wish to speak to you of something.”
Gutrun made a rumbling noise, which Miriamele guessed was meant to convey the duchess’ impression of people who would go off and tell secrets. Geloë either ignored or did not hear her wordless comment, and said: “I think what she needs now is sleep, or at least some quiet.” Now she turned at last to Gutrun. “I will look in on her later.”
“As you wish,” said the duchess.
The witch woman nodded to Vorzheva, then to Miriamele, before following Aditu out of the tent. The Thrithings-woman, who was lying back now, raised her hand in farewell. Her eyes were almost closed. She appeared to be falling asleep.
The tent was silent for some moments except for the tuneless humming of Gutrun as she sewed, which continued even as she held the cloth close to the fire to examine her stitchery. At last, Miriamele stood up.
“Vorzheva is tired. I will leave, too.” She leaned forward and took the Thrithings-woman’s hand. Her eyes opened; it took them a moment to fix on Miriamele. “Good night. I’m sure it will be a fine baby, one that will make you and Uncle Josua very proud.”
“Thank you.” Vorzheva smiled and closed her long-lashed eyes again.
“Good night, Auntie Gutrun,” Miriamele said. “I’m glad you were here when I came back from the south. I missed you.” She kissed the duchess’ warm cheek, then delicately untangled herself from Gutrun’s motherly embrace and slipped out through the door.
“I haven’t heard her call me that for years!” Miriamele heard Gutrun say in surprise. Vorzheva mumbled something sleepily. “The poor child seems so quiet and sad these days,” Gutrun went on. “But then again, why shouldn’t she …?”
Miriamele, walking away through the wet grass, did not hear the rest of what the duchess had to say.
Aditu and Geloë walked beside the whispering Stefflod. The moon was covered in a net of clouds, but stars glinted higher up in the blackness. A soft breeze was blowing from the east, carrying the scent of grass and wet stones.
“It is strange, what you say, Aditu.” The witch woman and the Sitha made a peculiar pair, the immortal’s loose-limbed stride reined in to match Geloë’s more stalwart tread. “But I do not think there is harm in it.”
“I do not say that there is, only that it bears thinking about.” The Sitha laughed hissingly. “To think that I have grown so embroiled in the doings of mortals! Mother’s brother Khendraja’aro would grind his teeth.”
“These mortal concerns are your family’s concerns, at least in part,” Geloë said matter-of-factly. “Otherwise, you would not be here.”
“I know that,” agreed Aditu. “But many of my people will walk a long way around to find some other reason for what we do than anything that smacks of mortals and their affairs.” She leaned down and plucked a few blades of grass, then held them to her nose and sniffed. “The grass here is different than that which grows in the forest, or even on Sesuad’ra. It is … younger. I cannot feel as much life in it, but it is sweet for all that.” She let the loose blades flutter to the ground. “But I have let my words wander. Geloë, I do not see any harm in Camaris at all, except that in him which would harm himself. But it is odd that he keeps his past a secret, and odder still when there are so many things he might know that could aid his people in this struggle.”
“He will not be pushed,” said Geloë. “If he tells his secrets, it will be in his own time, that is clear. We have all tried.” She shoved her hands into the pocket of her heavy tunic. “Still, though, I cannot help being curious. Are you sure?”
“
No,” Aditu said thoughtfully. “Not sure. But an odd thing Jiriki told me has been at the back of my thoughts for some time. We both, he and I, thought that Seoman was the first mortal to set foot in Jao é-Tinukai’i. Certainly that is what my father and mother thought. But Jiriki told me that when Amerasu met Seoman she said that he was not the first. I have long wondered about that, but First Grandmother knew the history of the Gardenborn better than anyone—perhaps even better than silver-faced Utuk’ku, who has long brooded on the past, but never made its study an art, as Amerasu did.”
“But I still don’t know why you think the first might have been Camaris.”
“In the beginning it was only a sense I had.” Aditu turned and wandered down the bank toward the soft-singing river. “Something in the way he looked at me, even before he recovered his wits. I caught him staring at me several times when he did not think I was looking. Later, when his sense had returned, he continued to watch me—not slyly, but like someone who remembers something painful.”
“That could have been anything—a resemblance to someone.” Geloë frowned. “Or perhaps he was feeling shame over the way his friend John, the High King, hunted your people.”
“John’s persecution of the Zida’ya occurred almost entirely before Camaris came to the court, from what the archivist Strangyeard has told me,” Aditu replied. “Don’t stare!” she laughed. “I am curious about many things, and we Dawn Children have never been afraid of inquiry or scholarship, although we would not use either of those words.”
“Still, there could be many reasons Camaris stared. You are not a common sight, Aditu no-Sa’onserei—at least not for mortals.”
“True. But there is more. One night, before his memory was returned, I was walking by the Observatory, as you named it—and I saw him walking slowly toward me. I nodded, but he seemed absorbed in his shadow-world. I was singing a song—a very old song from Jhiná-T’seneí, a favorite of Amerasu’s—and as I passed him, Geloë, I saw that his lips were moving.” She stopped and squatted by the riverside, but looked up the the forest woman with eyes that even in the darkness seemed to glimmer like amber coals. “He was mouthing the words to the same song.”
“Are you sure?”
“As certain as I am that the trees in the Grove are alive and will blossom again, and I feel that in my blood and heart. Amerasu’s song was known to him, and although he still wore his faraway look, he was singing silently along with me. A playful song that First Grandmother used to sing. It is not the sort of tune that is sung in the cities of mortal men, or even in the oldest sacred grove in Hernystir.”
“But what could it mean?” Geloë stood over Aditu, looking out across the river. The wind slowly shifted direction, blowing now from behind the encampment that lay just uphill. The normally imperturbable forest woman seemed faintly agitated. “Even if Camaris somehow knew Amerasu, what could it mean?”
“I do not know. But considering that Camaris’ horn was once our enemy’s, and that our enemy was also Amerasu’s son—and once the greatest of my people—I feel a need to know. It is also true that the sword of this knight is very important to us.” She made what was, for a Sitha, an unhappy face, a faint thinning of the lips. “If only Amerasu had lived to tell us her suspicions.”
Geloë shook her head. “We have been laboring in shadows too long. Well, what can we do?”
“I have approached him. He does not wish to talk to me, although he is polite. When I try to guide him toward the subject, he pretends to misunderstand, or simply pleads some other necessity, then leaves.” Aditu rose from the grass beside the river. “Perhaps Prince Josua can compel him to talk. Or Isgrimnur, who seems the nearest thing to a friend Camaris has. You know them both, Geloë. They are suspicious of me, for which I do not blame them—many mortal generations have passed since we could consider the Sudhoda’ya to be our allies. Perhaps at your urging, one of them may convince Camaris to tell us whether it is true that he was in Jao é-Tinukai’i, and what it might mean.”
“I will try,” promised Geloë. “I am to see the two of them later tonight. But even if they can convince Camaris, I am not sure there will be any value in what he has to say.”
She ran her thick fingers through her hair. “Still, we have learned precious little else that is of use lately.” She looked up. “Aditu? What is it?”
The Sitha had gone rigid, and stood with her head cocked in a most unhuman way.
“Aditu?” Geloë said again. “Are we attacked?”
“Kei-vishaa,” Aditu hissed. “I smell it!”
“What?”
“Kei-vishaa. It is … there is no time to explain. It is a smell that should not be in the air here. Something bad is happening. Follow me, Geloë—I am suddenly fearful!”
Aditu sprang away up the river bank, swift as a flushed deer. Within a moment she had vanished into the darkness, heading back toward the encampment. Following her, the witch woman ran a few more paces, muttering words of worry and anger. As she passed into the shadow of a congregation of willows that grew on a hill overlooking the streambank, there was a convulsive movement; the faint starlight seemed to bend, the darkness to coalesce and then burst outward. Geloë, or at least Geloë’s shape, did not reemerge from the tree-shadows, but a winged form did.
Yellow eyes wide in the moonlight, the owl flew in pursuit of swift Aditu, following the whisper-faint mark of her passage across the wet grass.
Simon had been restless all evening. Talking with Aditu had helped, but only a little. In a way, it had made him even more unsettled.
He desperately wanted to speak with Miriamele. He thought about her all the time—at night when he wanted just to fall asleep, during the day whenever he saw a girl’s face or heard a woman’s voice, at odd moments when he should be thinking of other things. It was strange how she had come to mean so much to him in the short time since she had returned: the smallest change in the way she treated him stayed in his mind for days.
She had seemed so strange when he had met her by the horses the night before. And yet, when she had accompanied him to Isgrimnur’s fire to hear the singing, she had been kind and friendly, if a little distracted. But now she had avoided him all day today—or at least so it seemed, for everywhere he looked for her he was told that she was somewhere else, until it began to feel as though she was staying a step ahead of him on purpose.
The twilight had gone and darkness had settled in like a great black bird folding its wings. His visit with Camaris had been brief—the old man had seemed fully as preoccupied as he was, barely able to fix his attention on explaining the rank of battle and the rules of engagement. To Simon, consumed with worries more heated and more current, the knight’s litany of rules had seemed dry and pointless. He had made excuses and departed early, leaving the old man sitting by the fire in his sparsely-furnished campsite. Camaris seemed just as happy to be left alone.
After a fruitless exploration of the camp, Simon had looked in on Vorzheva and Gutrun. Miriamele had been there, the duchess said—whispering so as not to wake the prince’s sleeping wife—but had left some time before. Unrewarded, Simon had returned to his search.
Now, as he stood at the outer edge of the field of tents, at the beginnings of the wide halo of fires that marked the camps of those members of Josua’s company to whom a tent was, at this moment, an unimaginable luxury, Simon puzzled over where Miriamele might be. He had walked along the riverbank earlier, thinking that she might be there keeping company with her thoughts by the water, but there had been no sign of her, only a few New Gadrinsett folk with torches, night-fishing with what appeared to be little success.
Maybe she’s seeing to her horse, he thought suddenly.
That was, after all, where he had found her the night before, not too much earlier in the evening than it was now. Perhaps she found it a quiet place after everyone else had gone down to supper. He turned and headed for the dark hillside.
He stopped first to say hello to Homefinder, who received his
greeting with a certain aloofness before condescending to snuffle at his ear, then he headed up-hill toward the spot where the princess had said her horse was picketed. There was indeed a shadowy figure moving there. Pleased with his own cleverness, he stepped forward.
“Miriamele?”
The hooded figure started, then whirled. For a moment he could see nothing but a smear of pallid face in the depths of the hood.
“S-Simon?” It was a shocked, fearful voice—but it was her voice. “What are you doing here?”
“I was looking for you.” The way she spoke alarmed him. “Are you well?” This time the question seemed tremendously appropriate.
“I am …” She moaned. “Oh, why did you come?”
“What’s wrong?” He took a few paces toward her. “Have you …?” He stopped.
Even in the moonlight, he could see that the silhouette of her horse seemed somehow wrong. Simon put out his hand and touched the bulging saddlebags.
“You’re going somewhere …” he said wonderingly. “You’re running away.”
“I am not running away.” The earlier tone of fear gave way to pain and fury. “I am not. Now leave me alone, Simon.”
“Where are you going?” He was caught up in the strange dreaminess of it—the dark hillside with its few lonely trees, Miriamele’s hooded face. “Is it me? Did I make you angry?”
Her laugh was bitter. “No, Simon, it’s not you.” Her voice softened. “You have done nothing wrong. You have been a friend when I didn’t deserve one. I can’t tell you where I’m going—and please wait until tomorrow to tell Josua you’ve seen me. Please. I beg this of you.”
“But … but I can’t!” How could he tell Josua that he had stood by and watched as the prince’s niece had ridden away by herself? He tried to slow his excited heart and think. “I will go with you,” he said finally.
“What!?” Miriamele was astonished. “You can’t!”
“I can’t let you go off by yourself, either. I am your sworn protector, Miriamele.”