Part 39 (1/2)

He sat down next to her. She s.h.i.+vered in the cold, and he put a burly arm around her. Her dress had been torn in places, as though she had blundered through th.o.r.n.y bushes, and blood stained one bare arm.

'Don't touch me,' she whispered, but he didn't let her go and she said nothing further.

Another life destroyed.

Gradually he became aware she was mumbling to herself. He knew he should leave her, that she wouldn't want anyone to overhear, that she was likely not even aware of his presence, but he stayed. The honest truth was it did him good to comfort someone. It reminded him that he could still be of use.

'Mahudia,' she said. 'Mahudia, she is nothing. Nothing. I have seen her numbers. Slavery. Sold into slavery. One mother sells, the other buys. One eaten by a lion, the other by guilt.'

The words plucked at Robal's soul. 'Merla, don't.'

'Don't call me that!' she said, lifting her head and fixing him with bleary eyes. 'And don't touch me.'

'I'm sorry, Lenares.'

He let her go, and she promptly plunged back into his arms.

'Why me and not my sister?' she cried, then burst into tears.

'I don't know,' he said, racking his brains for something to say. He was not much for giving words of comfort. 'Perhaps it was necessary. Maybe you wouldn't have developed your skill with numbers had you stayed here.'

He cupped her pale face in his hands. 'Don't you think you have had a lucky escape? What sort of life would you have had here?'

She looked up at him, blinking furiously. 'What? I was poor all my life. Mahudia found me in an alley, eating sc.r.a.ps from the midden heaps. The cosmographers gave me a home, but we always lived with nothing. What sort of life would I have had here? I could have had anything I wanted, you silly man.'

'Except love, seemingly,' Robal replied. 'Don't forget that.'

Her face crumpled. 'You are right. My father slept with all his daughters. I would not have wanted that. I have no memory...no memory of anything-of this place, of parents, brothers or sisters.'

'But you are certain the story is true?'

'Oh yes. I knew even before Heredrew told me. I listened carefully to Martje and checked her numbers. She has built this place on lies. Every brick of it was earned through deception. She sold horses doctored to hide their infirmities, s.h.i.+pped them off to far away places where they could not be traced back to her. She held her sons here with false claims about her health, when they would rather have left to seek their fortunes. Her daughters she kept home with threats. Only Cylene has escaped her. I know so much about my mother, and everything I know makes me hate her even more. I wish Heredrew had killed her. I wish it wasn't true.' She swallowed. 'I wish I had never found out.'

He pulled her forehead to his lips and kissed her gently. 'Not all truth is good,' he whispered.

A noise behind them. He turned to find Stella staring at him. She said nothing, but she didn't need to: he could read the message written there. He wanted to cry out, to explain himself, but for some reason he held back.

Why should I bother? Why so desperate to appear virtuous in her eyes?

'What's wrong?' he said. 'Isn't a man allowed to offer comfort to a travelling companion? Or were you waiting for me to claim that this isn't what it looks like?'

She smiled weakly. 'Not what it looks like? It looks like you care for someone who needs caring for. Of course you can offer her comfort. But please be careful; she's vulnerable.'

Robal laughed. 'I've never met anyone less vulnerable in my life,' he said. 'Except, perhaps, the man you offer comfort to.'

Stella pursed her lips together. 'Do you really expect me to stand here and answer such accusations? Or have I misjudged you? Robal, you are my guard. You've been close by me ever since we left Instruere. Even if I'd had a mind to, I could not have shared intimacy with the man.'

'But you love him all the same,' he told her, as if revealing a truth of which she was unaware. Which perhaps she was. Many people denied things they shouldn't feel.

'If you know my feelings as well as you claim, you know it's much more complicated than that,' she said. 'I cared for him at the end of the Falthan War, nursed him back from the brink of madness. And he and I are two of a kind. That makes for bonding, Robal. It doesn't necessarily lead to love.'

'Fair enough,' he said. 'He's the kind of man best loved from a safe distance; if any distance is safe enough, that is. My first wife was like that.'

Turning his head, he sneaked a sidelong glance at Lenares, the truthfinder. She wasn't wearing the disgusted expression she adopted when in the presence of lies, so maybe Stella was telling the truth. Of course, the girl's mind may have been somewhere else, but Robal doubted it. This one was sharp.

'So tell me, guardsman,' Stella said, sitting on the bench next to him. 'What do you think is really going on?'

'What do you mean?' He swallowed.

'I mean, do you really believe this is coincidence? Lenares just happening to find out she is some long-lost child of a wealthy family? A secret twin sold into slavery? Robal, it doesn't feel right.'

He nodded at the girl in his arms, her eyes closed as if asleep. 'Don't you think she would know if there was some sort of confidence trick being run? Anyway, who benefits from this?'

'Many parties, if Lenares remains behind, as her mother is suggesting. Particularly the Daughter, who will undoubtedly break free if Heredrew withdraws his support for her.'

'I am growing stronger,' Lenares said, her voice m.u.f.fled by Robal's tunic. 'I don't need his help.'

'Lenares, Robal, please consider this. The hole in the world interferes with the proper running of the earth. Earthquakes, fireb.a.l.l.s, storms, whirlwinds. We've seen this. What if it-if the G.o.ds acting through it-can interfere with time as well as s.p.a.ce? What if they can mess with our memories? What if they can change what has happened? Could they not have engineered this?'

'No, Stella, no,' he said gently. 'If we start doubting our memories, we can never know anything for certain. I won't live in a world like that. Besides, do you think your immortal friend would be fooled?'

Stella sighed. 'Right now, Robal, my belief in the Undying Man is the only thing keeping me sane,' she said. 'That, and the earthy good sense of a certain guardsman.'

She smiled as she rose to her feet, and his poor heart turned over, just as it always did.

Earthy good sense? He watched her walk away, her body silhouetted in the light from the stained-gla.s.s door. Good sense was exactly what he lacked, he thought, when it came to earthy things. For, as he traced the outline of her with his eyes, he knew he'd do anything to make her his own.

CHAPTER 17.

NIGHT OF DESIRE.

CONAL HAD BARELY DRIFTED off to sleep when the knock came. Soft, gentle, on the edge of hearing, the tapping was a sound he would undoubtedly not have heard had he been more deeply asleep. A woman's knock.

It could be her.

He remembered Stella's fierce avowal earlier in the evening: she would see the task completed, then see the Destroyer dead. He now saw her complicity for what it was: a sham designed to encourage the Destroyer to lower his guard, to let her slip under it. Courageous woman!

He felt his manhood stiffen at the mere thought of her. She had obviously kept her true feelings well hidden, so she might well feel for him what he felt for her. Certainly he had no real rival for her affection. Not the boorish, ignorant guard, nor the lout from the prairies. And certainly not the suave charlatan who specialised in destroying lives.

He imagined her at the door, begging admittance. Once inside his room, she would outline a bold and dangerous plan to put an end to the Undying Man, then seal it with another offer...

'Are you awake?'

His heart sank. Not Stella. Some other voice, some other woman, but something to which he had to give reply. Awkward, given he was still embarra.s.singly tumescent.

'Just give me a moment, please,' he answered, gritting his teeth, willing things to soften. As always, thinking of his mother did the trick. Eventually Conal was composed enough to crack the door open.