Part 32 (1/2)

”You have a broken arm and ribs and a broken teg. Your precious dignity is going to have to suffer. If you make any more fuss about it I'll leave and you can welter on your snapped bones alone.” Briskly spoken, without malice: a 276.

irfttey doctor's threat to an immobilized client.

He glared at her. The hot-poker pain in his leg a.s.sured him that she was right, but he didn't have to like it. ”May you come to the same one day,” he muttered.

”I'd be ill-paid for helping you if I did,” she replied, turning away-but not before he saw her hurt expression.

Dewar bit his lip, regretting his hasty ill-wish, and drew on the Well, dulling his pain to discomfort. ”And I hope there's someone as kind as you've been to me, to help you then,” he added.

Startled, she glanced at him from the fireside, where she had begun taking clothes up and shaking them. Dewar smiled apologetically. ”I'm not used to being laid up like this,” he said. ”I never have been before. I'm no warrior.” He wondered how he had ever taken her for a man; her shape was obviously female, her rose-cheeked face young and wary. She wore a dress today, long full-skirted high-breasted brown wool, an ap.r.o.n too.

”Oh,” she said, not smiling back. ”You're much better today.” She lifted a dressing-gown and displayed it wordlessly, lifting her eyebrows.

To further smooth her temper, he said, ”All your doing. The soup last night was restorative as well as delicious. Thank you.” Dewar, with her help in managing his splinted arm, shrugged into the dressing-gown, wool and silk.

”There are hen's eggs for breakfast if you like them. The geese won't let me near.”

”I am at your mercy insofar as cooking goes.” He smiled again, warmly, trying to elicit a smile in return. ”And all else. Where are we?”

”A big house. There's n.o.body else here.”

”Your house?” She might be a maid, or some servant of the folk who'd fled the battles and disorder.

She looked at him sidelong while she folded linen.

”You're of Prospero's army,” Dewar realized, and regretted saying that. ”Let us not speak of the war,” he went on, to cover it. ”It is done.”

”Done,” she repeated, staring down at the white fabric, stopping. ”Is he dead?”

Sorcerer and a QentCeman 277.

”No, not dead as far as I know. He escaped them after being taken. You did not know?”

”I was-away from here.”

”Oh. Yes. There was a great and mortal battle; he was captured and he surrendered, but made his escape that very night. I daresay the Fireduke was sparked by it.”

”You did not see it?”

”The battle? I saw. I was in it. Some of it.”

”And they left you in the ditch like that! They are-” She stopped herself. ”I'll fetch breakfast,” she said, and left the folded clothes to hurry out.

”Eat with me,” Dewar called after her.

She did, subdued. Dewar wished he had not mentioned Prospero. What could have been her role in the army? Perhaps a surgeon. She must have been at Ith.e.l.lin, he thought, or perhaps caught out between one post and another. It would be more comfortable for both of them if they did not speak of the war and its ancillary issues. He would not bring it forward again.

As he ate an omelet, soft pungent cheese, and flat griddle-bread, he realized that she had given him no name, nor asked one, and he understood that she might not wish to know too much about him. Let there be a vacant s.p.a.ce around them for a few days until he could maneuver on his own, and then they would go their ways separately. That was wisest.

”Are there books in this house?” he asked her.

”I saw some. I'll bring them to you. Is your arm paining you?”

”A bit.” It throbbed and felt hot beneath the veil of the Well.

”You're moving around too much,” she said. ”I shall strap it so that you'll keep it still and allow it to set.”

Meekly, Dewar submitted.

Another great snowstorm battered the house. Dewar's chapped-faced surgeon sat sewing at the end of his featherbed, a blanket around her shoulders, and Dewar, bundled in blankets too, read to her. The house was cold; the cham- 278.

'LtizaBetfi Itfittey her was drafty. She thought it was because only the single room was heated. ”And the kitchen,” she had said that morning when she s.h.i.+vered in with his breakfast of salt-fish hash, stewed fruits, and griddle-bread, ”even with the fire there, yet that's colder. The pump's frozen,” she had said.

Dewar had said, ”We can melt snow.”

”Plenty of that. I'm glad I tied a rope to the barn yesterday when it clouded over. I'd have been blown away.” She had a mount in the barn, she had said.

”You could put him in the kitchen,” Dewar had suggested.

”I think not,” she had demurred; and, ”Anyway, we're housebound.”

”You're not. I am definitely housebound for another ten days.”

”True.” She had not promised, but all indications were that she'd stay till he could get around on his own. Besides, the weather was prohibitive.

”Would you consider selling me your horse then?”

She had shaken her head. ”I've no horse to sell you.”

”Oh, well. Would you consider finding one for me?”

”They left nothing behind. I wonder when the people who live in this house will come back.”

”Spring I suspect,” Dewar had said, twisting his mouth.

”That's true.” She'd brightened.

”Do you like chess?” he'd asked hopefully.

”I'm told I'm an execrably bad player. -I think I shall bring up food so we can hole up here.”

”And wood.”

”I filled the hall with that already,” she had said. After she had provisioned them, putting food in the hall with the wood, she sat down in front of the low fire with sewing in her cold hands. Dewar read a book that he had found beside his bed.

”What's that book about?” she asked when they ate lunch.

It was a Madanese account of the f.l.a.n.g.e Wars, written in Madanese by one of the admirals. ”History,” he said.

”Oh.”