Wall of Shiuan

But Morgaine gazed down on him now with a face that at last he knew, tired, inexpressibly tired, and sane.

“You take first rest,” he said. “I shall sit by the fire and keep an eye on the servants.”

She regarded him from half-lidded eyes, shook her head. “Go as I told you,” she said. “I have eased your conscience, so far as I can. Go on. You have given me matters to attend yet; now let me attend them.”

He gathered himself up, almost fell in doing it, his feet asleep, and he steadied himself against the mantel, looked at her apologetically. Her gaze, troubled and thoughtful, gave him benediction; and he bowed his head in gratitude.

Nightmares surrounded her at times. There was one proceeding in the courtyard and elsewhere in the hold this night Stop it, he wanted to plead with her. Take command of them and stop it. You can do it, and will not.

She had led an army once; ten thousand men had followed her before his age, and had been swept away into oblivion, lost Clans and kingdoms had perished, dynasties ended, Andur-Kursh plunged into a hundred years of poverty and ruin.

So clan Yla had perished in her service, to the last man, lost in the void of Gates; so passed much of Chya, and many a man of Nhi and Myya and Ris. Horrid suspicion nagged at him.

He looked back at her, where she sat, a lonely figure before the fire. He opened his mouth to speak to her, to go back and tell her what things he had begun to fear of this land, to hear her say that they were not so.

There were the servants, who would overhear and repeat things elsewhere. He dared not speak, not before them. He turned away toward the other room.

There was the softness of a down mattress, the comfort of fabrics smooth and soft; of cleanliness, that most of all.

She would call him, he reckoned, in only a little while; there was not that much of the night remaining. He slept mostly dressed, in clean clothing that he had discovered in a chest, the former lord as tall as he and no whit slighter, save in the length of arm and breadth of shoulder. The fine cloth rested easily on his hurts; it was good to feel it, to have stripped away the stubble of days without a razor, and to rest with his hair damp from a thorough scrubbing... in a place warm and soft, fragrant with a woman’s care, be she servant or murdered qujalin lady.

He wrested his mind from such morbid thoughts, determined not to remember where he was, or what things he had seen outside. He was safe. Morgaine watched his sleep, as he would watch hers in turn. He cast himself into trusting oblivion, determined that nothing would rob him of this rest that he had won.

Small sounds disturbed him now and then; once the opening of the outer door alarmed him, until he heard Morgaine’s soft voice speaking calmly with someone, and that door then close, and her light tread safely in the room next his. Once he heard her in the room with him, searching the closets and chests, and knew that soon enough she would call him to his watch; he headed himself back into a few treasured moments of sleep. He heard the splash of water in the bath, the room mostly dark save for a single lamp there and the fireplace in the next room; grateful for the small remaining time, pleased to know she also took the leisure for such comforts as he had enjoyed, he shut his eyes again.

And the rustle of cloth woke him, the sight of a woman, qujal, in a white gown, ghost-pale in the darkness. He did not know her for an instant, and his heart crashed against his ribs in panic, thinking murder, and of the dead. But Morgaine drew back the coverlet on her side of the great bed, and he, with some embarrassment, prepared to quit the other before she must bid him do so.

“Go back to sleep,” she said, confounding him. “The servants are out and the door is bolted on our side. There is no need for either of us to stay awake, unless thee is overnice. I am not.”

And in her hand was Changeling, that always slept with her; she laid it atop the coverlet, a thing fell and dangerous, in the valley that would be between them. Vanye rested very still, felt the mattress give as she settled beside him and drew the covers over her, heard the gentle sigh of her breath.

And felt the weight of Changeling, that rested between.

He held no more urge to sleep, his heart still beating rapidly. It was that she had startled him, he told himself at first—he found it disturbing that for that single instant he had not known her—frost-fair, frost-fair, an old ballad sang of her, and like frost, burning to the touch. It was kindness that she had not displaced him to the hearthside; it was like her that she was considerate in small things. Perhaps she would not have rested, having sent him to a pallet on the hard stone. Perhaps it was amends for the harsh words she had used earlier.