Wall of Shiuan

But Roh was dead. Morgaine, who had witnessed it, had said that Roh was dead.

Vanye clenched both hands about Changeling’s cold sheath, averted his eyes from the fire and saw Jhirun awake and staring at him.

She had knowledge of Roh. Morgaine had left the matter to him, and he loathed what he had asked, realized it for what it truly was—that he did not want the answers.

Suddenly the girl broke contact with his eyes, hurled herself to her feet and for the shadows.

He sprang up and crossed the intervening distance before she could take more than two steps—seized her arm and set her down again on the cloak, Changeling safely out of her reach in the bend of his other arm. She struck him, a solid blow across the temple, and he shook her, angered. A second time she hit him, and this time he did hurt her, but she did not cry out—not a sound came from her but gasps for breath, when woman might have appealed to woman—not to Morgaine. He knew whom she feared most; and when she had stopped struggling he relaxed his grip, reckoning that she would not run now. She jerked free and stayed still, breathing hard.

“Be still,” he whispered. “I shall not touch you. You will be wiser not to wake my lady.”

Jhirun gathered Morgaine’s white cloak up about her shoulders, up to her chin. “Give me back my pony and my belongings,” she said. Her accent and her shivering together made her very difficult to understand. “Let me go. I swear I will tell no one. No one.”

“I cannot,” he said. “Not without her leave. But we are not thieves.” He searched in his belt and found the gull-ornament, offering it. She snatched it, careful not even to touch his hand, and clenched it with the other hand under her chin. She continued to stare at him, fierce dark eyes glittering. In the firelight. The bruised cheek gave the left eye a shadow. “You are his cousin?” she asked. “And his enemy?”

“In my house,” he said, “that is nothing unusual.”

“He was kind to me.”

He gave a sour twist of the lips. “You are fair to look upon, and I would hardly be surprised at that.”

She flinched. The look of outrage in her eyes was like a physical rebuff, reminding him that even a peasant girl was born with honor, a distinction that he could not claim. She looked very young, frightened of him and of her circumstances. After a moment it was he that looked aside.

“I beg pardon,” he said; and when she kept a long silence, still breathing as if she had been running: “How did you meet him, and when?”

“Last night,” she said, words that filled him with relief, on many accounts. “He came to us, hurt, and my folk tried to rob and kill him. He was too quick for us. And he could have killed everyone, but he did not. And he was kind to me.” Her voice trembled on the word, insistent this time on being understood. “He went away without stealing anything, even though he was in need of everything. He only took what belonged to him, and what I gave him.”

“He is dai-uyo,” he answered her. “A gentleman.”

“A great lord.”

“He has been that.”

Her eyes reckoned him up and down and seemed perplexed. And what are you? he imagined her thoughts in that moment, hoping that she would not ask. The shame of his shorn hair, the meaning of the white scarf of the ilin–perhaps she understood, reckoning the difference between him and Chya Roh, highborn, cousin. He could not explain. Changeling rested across his knee; he was conscious of it as if it were a living thing: Morgaine’s forbidding presence, binding him to silence.

“What will you do with him when you have found him?” Jhirun asked.

“What would you have done?”

She gathered her knees up within the fur and stared at him. She looked as if she were expecting him to strike her, as if she were prepared to bear that—for Roh’s sake.

“What were you doing,” he asked her, “riding out here with no cloak and no food? You cannot have planned to go far.”

“I am going to Shiuan,” she said. Her eyes brimmed with tears, but her jaw was set. “I am from the Barrow-hills, and I can hunt and fish and I had my pony—until you took him.”

“How did you get the dagger?”

“He left it behind.”

“It is an Honor-blade,” he said harshly. “A man would not so casually leave that behind.”

“There was the fight,” she said in a low voice, “I was going to give it back when I found him. I was only going to use it until then.”

‘To gut fish.”

She flinched from the spite in his voice. “Where is he?” he asked.

“I do not know, I do not know. He said nothing. He only left.”

Vanye stared at her, weighing her answers, and she edged back from him as if she did not like his expression. “Go to sleep,” he bade her suddenly, and rose and left her there, looking back nevertheless to be sure she did not make some rash bid to escape. She did not. He settled again on his stone by the fire, so that he could watch her. For a time she continued to stare at him through the flames; abruptly she flung herself down and hid herself in the cloak.