Wall of Shiuan

“Show me,” said Morgaine to the servants, “where are the best lodgings with a solid door and some secure room nearby where we can lodge this priest for his own protection.”

She spoke softly with them. One moved, and the others gathered courage, kneeling facing her, eyes downcast “There,” said the oldest of them, himself no more than a youth, and pointed toward the door that led inward, away from the central corridor.

There was a small, windowless storeroom opposite a lordly hall. Here Morgaine bade the priest disposed, with a bar across that door, and that chained, and the door visible by those who would guard their own quarters. It was Vanye’s to put the priest inside, and he did so, not ungently.

He hated the look of the priest’s eyes as he was set within that dark place, forbidden a light lest he do himself and others harm with it. The priest’s terror fingered at nightmares of his own, and he hesitated at closing the door.

Priest of devils, who would have worshipped at Morgaine’s feet, an uncleanness that attached itself to them, saying things it was not good to hear, Vanye loathed the man, but that a man should fear the dark, and being shut within, alone—this he understood.

“Keep still,” he warned Ginun last, the guards out of hearing. “You are safer here, and you will be safe so long as you do keep still.”

The priest was still staring at him when he closed the door, his thin face white and terrified in the shadow. Vanye dropped the bar and locked the chain through it—made haste to turn his back on it, as on a private nightmare, remembering the roof of the tower of his prison—Roh’s words, stored up in this priest, waiting to break forth. He thought in agony that he should see to it that the priest never spoke—that he, ilin, should take that foulness on his own soul and never tell Morgaine, never burden her honor with knowing it.

He was not such a man; he could not do it. And he did not know whether this in him was virtue or cowardice.

The sons of Haz had taken up their posts at the door. Morgaine awaited him in the hall beyond. He went to her, into the chambers that had been some great lord’s, and dropped the saddlebags that he had carried onto the stones of the hearth, staring about him.

More bodies awaited them: tapestries rent, bodies of men-at-arms and the one-time lords lying amid shattered crystal and overturned chairs. Vanye knew them. One was the body of an old woman; another was that of one of the elder lords, he that had made most grudging obeisance to Hetharu.

“See to it,” Morgaine said sharply to the servants. “Remove them.”

And while this was being attended, she righted a heavy chair and put it near the fire that still blazed in the hearth for its former owners, extended her legs to it, booted ankles crossed, paying no attention to the grisly task that went on among the servants. Changeling she set point against the floor and leaning by her side, and gave a long sigh.

Vanye averted his eyes from what passed in the room. Too much, too many of such pathetic dead: he had been of the warriors, but of a land where men fought men who chose to fight, who went armed, in notice of such intention. He did not want to remember the things that he had seen in Ohtij-in, alone or in her company.

And somewhere in Ohtij-in was Myya Jhirun, lost in this chaos, hidden or dead or the possession of some rough-handed marshlander. He thought of that, sick at heart, weighed his own exhaustion, the hazard of the mob outside, who spoke a language he could not understand, but he was obliged. For other wretched folk within the hold, for other women as unfortunate, he had no power to stop what happened—only for Jhirun, who had done him kindness, who had believed him when he said he would take her from Ohtij-in.

“ Liyo,” he said, and dropped to his knees at the fireside, by Morgaine. His voice shook, reaction to things already past, but he had no shame for that; they were both tired. “ Liyo, Jhirun is here somewhere. By your leave I am going to go and do what I can to find her. I owe her.”

“No.”

“ Liyo–”

She stared into the fire, her tanned face set, her white hair still wet from the rain outside. “Thee will go out in the courtyard and some Shiua will put a knife in thy back. No. Enough.”

He thrust himself to his feet, vexed by her protection of him, exhausted beyond willingness to debate his feelings with her. He started for the door, reckoning that she had expressed her objection and that was the sum of it. He was going, nonetheless. He had seen to her welfare, and she knew it.

“ Ilin,” her voice rang out after him. “I gave thee an order.”

He stopped, looked at her: it was a stranger’s voice, cold and foreign to him. She was surrounded by men he did not know, by intentions he no longer understood. He stared at her, a tightness closing about his heart. It was as if she, like the land, had changed.

“I do not need to reason with you,” she said.

“Someone,” he said, “should reason with you.”