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down. When Ruari asked if she was hungry and offered her a heel of bread from
his belt pouch, she gave no sign she'd heard the question until he waved the
bread directly in front of her eyes. Then she took it into her hands, tearing
off crumbs, which she savored slowly. But she offered no conversation, no sign
that she recognized them.
Just blue-green eyes staring past the lamp, seeing things Pavek was certain he
didn't want to imagine.
"She'll be better in the morning, when she's had time to rest," Ruari said, as
much a question as a statement.
Pavek and Yohan exchanged worried glances and otherwise ignored the half-elf's
comment. There was an outside chance Ruari was right. Physically, Akashia
seemed unharmed. Her face was drawn, with dark smudges beneath her eyes and
hollows beneath her cheekbones, but there were no cuts or bruises that he
could see. She wasn't starving, and her clothes were clean, as was her hair.
In outward respects, Escrissar had cared well for his prisoner.
But Pavek knew how interrogators got their answers. He'd heard her moaning
and, looking into her beautiful but vacant eyes, he feared that in her
determination to keep Telhami's secret, she'd sacrificed everything that had
made her human.
Most templars, in a final act of brutal mercy, would-slash the
throat of a prisoner when they were done questioning him, but though
interrogators would question the dead without hesitation, they boasted
that they themselves never killed.
'There were those who would prefer her in this empty state: an
especially vile breed of slavers traded in mind-blasted men and
women, a breed scorned by their flesh-peddling peers-a sobering
condemnation when he considered it. Other than keeping her from that fate,
Pavek didn't know what manner of mercy he could give Akashia if her wits
didn't come back. Right now, that wasn't his problem, and that was mercy
enough for him.
"Grab some floor and get some sleep," he advised Ruari and Yohan. "I'll take
the first watch."
He threw the latch-bolt and put a slip knot in the string dangling from it, to
slow down anyone-the missing Zvain, included-who might try the door while
they slept. Then he pinched the lamp wick, and except for a faint
cast of moonlight through the isinglass stone set in the ceiling, the
bolt-hole became dark. Akashia made small, panicked noises that left him
sick with anger toward the interrogator who'd imprisoned and tormented her,
until Yohan-Pavek assumed it was the dwarf by the way the bed
creaked-whispered soft assurances that quieted her.
The sound of one person comforting another was strange to Pavek's ears. The
act simply hadn't occurred to him.
He wouldn't have known what to say or do. Kindness had played little part in
an orphan-templar's life. It had never seemed a serious loss.
Until now.
Urik was quiet above them. An occasional foot fell across the isinglass: a
mercenary patrol, exempt from curfew and paid to guard the property of Gold
Street. Templars weren't welcome here. Merchants didn't trust them. Pavek felt
safe with his back against the door and the gentle rumblings of sleep all
around him.
And through that quiet darkness, Dovanne came to haunt him. He'd expected mat,
with the bitter grief burning deep in his throat and behind his eyes. He
wondered what if anything would have changed if he'd known how to
console her as Yohan consoled Akashia, those years at the orphanage. Probably
they'd both be dead-too soft and sentimental to survive in the
templarate.
The bed creaked. Pavek rose into a crouch on the balls of his feet, the sword
he had never sheathed angled in front of him.
"Stand down," Yohan muttered, pushing the blade aside. He was a dwarf;
he could see in the dark. "I'll take over." "How is she?"
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"Better, I think. She said my name, but I don't know if she knew I was beside
her. I'm coming back, Pavek."
"So am I."
"Thought you might be. First, there's tomorrow. We're going to need a cart.
She's not going to be able to walk. I
could carry her to the Temple of the Sun. We're not poor-" "Not if you got
four gold pieces every time you delivered a load of zarneeka." Once again,
Pavek heard himself speaking more harshly than he'd intended. Even a
night-blind human could see-feel-the scowl suddenly creasing Yohan's face.
"For emergencies," the dwarf said, defensive and angry and shuffling away
through the dark before adding: "Go to sleep."
And Pavek stretched out where he was, thinking that it was easier to master
druid magic than life outside the templarate, where people cared about
each other and mere words held an edge sharper than steel.
*****
Curfew ended and the day began in Urik not with sunrise but with the
orator's daily harangue from a palace balcony. Pavek was awake and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]