Wall of Shiuan

“And an open gate in the morning?”

Bydarra’s lined face was impassive, neither appreciating the barb nor angered by it. “We are perplexed,” said Bydarra. “While we are thus perplexed, our gates remain closed. Doubtless these matters can be quickly resolved. We will watch the roads for the lady you mention, and for you—a night’s hospitality.”

Vanye bowed the least degree. “My lord Bydarra,” he said, the words almost soundless.

They walked the winding corridor again, still ascending. Vanye kept Jhirun against his side, lest the guards think to separate them without resistance; and Jhirun hung her head dispiritedly, seeming undone, hardly caring where they were taken. About them a flurry of brown-clad servants bore trays and linens, some racing ahead, others rushing back again, shrinking against the walls motionless as they and their armored escort passed, averting their faces in terror unheard of in the worst bandit holds of Andur-Kursh.

Each bore a dark scar on the right cheek; Vanye noticed it on servant after servant they passed in the dim light, realized at last that it was a mark burned into the flesh, distinguishing the house servants from the horde outside. Outrage struck him, that the lords of Ohtij-in should mark men, to know their faces, as if this were the sole distinguishing of those who served them in their own hall.

And that men accepted this—to escape, perhaps, the misery outside—frightened him, as nothing human in this land had yet done.

The spiral branched, and they turned down that corridor, entered yet another spiral that wound upward yet a little distance, so that they seemed to have entered one of the outer towers. An open door welcomed them, and they were together admitted to a modest hall that was cheerful with a fire in the hearth, carpeted, with food and linens set on the long table in the midst of the room.

The servants who yet remained in the room bowed their heads and fled on slippered feet, pursued by the harsh commands of the chief of the escort. The guards who had entered withdrew; the door was closed.

A bar dropped down outside, echoing, the truth of qujalin hospitality. Vanye stared at the strength of that wooden door, anger and fear moiling within him, and forebore the oath that rose in him; instead he hugged Jhirun’s frail shoulders, and brought her to the hearth, where it was warmest in the room, that still bore a chill—settled her where she might rest against the stones. She held her shawl tightly about her, head bowed, shivering.

Gladly enough he would have cast himself down there to rest, but the urge of hunger was by a small degree greater, the sight of food and drink too much to resist.

He brought the platter of meat and cheese to the hearth and set it by Jhirun; he gathered up the bottle of drink, and cups, his hands shaking with exhaustion and reaction, and set them on the stones between them as he knelt down. He poured two foaming cups and urged one into Jhirun’s passive hand.

“Drink,” he said bitterly. “We have paid enough for it, and of all things else, they have no need to poison us.”

She lifted it in her two hands and swallowed a great draught of it; he sipped the brew and grimaced, loathing the sour taste, but it was wet and eased his throat. Jhirun emptied hers, and he gave her more.

“O lord Vanye,” she said at last, her voice almost as hoarse as his. “It is ugly, it is ugly; it is worse than Barrows-hold ever was. The ones that came here would have been better dead.”

The refuge toward which the Hiua had fled... he recalled all her hopes of sanctuary, the bright land in which they would escape the dying of Hiuaj. It was a cruel end for her, no less than for him.

“If you find the chance,” he said, “go, make yourself one of those in the yard outside.”

“No,” she said in horror.

“Outside, there is some hope left. Look at the ones that serve here—did you not see? Better the courtyard: listen to me—the gates may be opened during the day; they must open sometime. You came by the road; you can return by it. Go back to Hiuaj, go back to your own folk. You have no place among qujal .”

“Halflings,” she said, and spat dryly. She tossed her tangled hair and set her jaw, that tended to quiver. “They are half-blood or less, and doubtless I can say the same, if the gossip about my grandmother is true. We were the Barrow-kings, and halflings were the beggars then; they were no better than the lowlanders. Now, now we rob our ancestors for gold and sell it to halflings. But I will not crawl in the mud outside. These lords—only the high lords, like Bydarra—they are—they are of the Old Ones, Bydarra and his one son—” She shivered. “They have the blood—like her. But the priest—” The shiver became a sniff, a shrug of disdain. “The priest’s eyes are dark. The hair is bleached. So with many of the others. They are no more than I am. I am not afraid of them. I am not going back.”

All that she said he absorbed in silence, cold to the heart; that even a Myya could prize a claim to qujalin blood—he did not comprehend. He swore suddenly, half a prayer, and leaned against the lintel of the fireplace, forehead against his arm, staring into the fire and tried to think what he could do for himself.

Her hand touched his shoulder, gently, timidly; he turned his head and looked at her, finding only a frightened girl. The heat at his side became painful; he suffered it deliberately, not willing to think clearly in the directions that opened before him.

“I am not going back,” she repeated.

“We shall leave here,” he said, which he knew for a lie, but he thought that she wanted some promise, something on which to build her courage. He said it out of his own fear, knowing how easily she could tell the lords of Ohtij-in all that she knew: with this promise he meant to purchase her silence. “Only continue to say nothing, and we shall find a way to leave this foul place.”

“For Abarais,” she said. Her voice, hoarse as it was, came alive. The light danced in her eyes. “For the Well, for your land, and the mountains.”

He lied this time by keeping silent. They were the greatest lies he had ever told, he who had once been a dai-uyo of Morija, who had fought to possess honor. He felt unclean, remembering her courage in the hall, and swore to himself that she would not come to hurt for it, not that he could prevent. But the true likelihood was that she would come to hurt, and that he could do nothing.

He was ilin , bound to a service; and this one essential truth he did not think she understood, else she would not trust her life to him. This also he did not say, and was ashamed and miserable.

She offered him food, and a second cup of the drink, attacking the food herself with an appetite he lacked. He ate because he knew that he must, that if there was hope in strength, it must be his; he forced each mouthful down, hardly tasting it, and followed it with a heavy draught of the sour drink.

Then he rested his back against the fireplace, his shoulders over-warm and his legs numb from the stones, and began to take account of himself, his water-soaked armor and ruined boots. He began to work at the laces at his throat, having to break some of them, then at the buckles at his side and shoulder, working sodden leather through.

Jhirun moved to help him, tugging to free the straps, helping him as he slipped off first the leather surcoat and then the agonizing weight of the mail. Freed of it, he groaned with relief, content only to breathe for a moment. Then came the sleeveless linen haqueton, and that sodden and soiled, and bloody in patches.

“O my lord,” Jhirun murmured in pity, and numbly he looked at himself and saw how the armor had galled his water-soaked skin, his linen shirt a soaked rag, rubbing raw sores where there had been folds. He rose, wincing, stripped it off and dropped it to the floor, shivering in the cold air.

Among the clothes on the table he found several shirts, soft and thin, that came of no fabric he knew; he disliked the feel of the too-soft weaving, but when he drew one on, it lay easily upon his galled shoulders, and he was grateful for the touch of something clean and dry.

Jhirun came, timidly searching among the qujalin gifts for her own sake. She found the proper stack, unfolded the brown garment uppermost, stood staring at it as if it were alive and hostile—a brown smock such as the servants wore.

He saw, and swore—snatched it from her hands and hurled it to the floor. She looked frightened, and small and miserable in her wet garments.

He picked up one of the shirts and a pair of breeches. “Wear these,” he said. “Yours will dry.”

“Lord,” she said, a tremor in her voice. She hugged the offered clothing to her breast. “Please do not leave me in this place.”

“Go dress,” he said, and looked away from her deliberately, hating the appeal and the distress of her—who looked to him, who doubtless would concede to anything to be reassured of his lies.

Who might the more believe him if she were thus reassured.

Unwed girls of the countryside of Andur and of Kursh were a casual matter for the uyin of the high clans—peasant girls hoping to bear an uyo ’s bastard, to be kept in comfort thereafter: an obligation to the uyo , a matter of honor. But therein both parties knew the way of things. Such a thing was not founded in lies or in fear.

“Lord,” she said, across the room.

He turned and looked at her, who still stood in her coarse peasant skirts, the garments held against her.

The tread of men approached the door outside, an ominous and warlike sound. Vanye heard it, and heard them pause. Jhirun started to hurry to his side.

The bar of the door crashed back. Vanye looked about as it opened, whirling a chill draft into the room and fluttering the fire; and there in the doorway stood a man in green and brown, who leaned on a sheathed longsword—fronted him with a look of sincere bewilderment.

“Cousin,” said Roh.

Chapter Eight

“Roh,” Vanye answered, and heard a rustle of cloth at his left; Jhirun, who drew closer to him. He did not turn his head to see, only hoping that she would stay neutral. He himself stood in shirt and breeches; and Roh was armored. He was weaponless, and Roh carried a longsword, sheathed, in his hand.

There had been no weapons in the room, neither knife with the food nor iron by the fire. In desperation Vanye reckoned what his own skill could avail, a weaponless swordsman against a swordsman whose primary weapon had been the bow.

Roh leaned more heavily on the sword’s pommel and shouted over his shoulder a casual dismissal of the guards in the corridor, then stood upright, cast wide his arm in a gesture of peace.