Misery's Child (The Cadian Chronicles) (19 page)

“I’m not
sleepy....”

But she was and
she did.

***

It took no effort
to stay awake; he wasn’t sure he would ever sleep again. As a man of twenty
summers, Scearce was not unacquainted with desire but never had it shaken all
his senses as it did now. The earlier twinges of his manhood, the stir of his
blood at the sight of lovely maiden crossing the village green, had been but a
pale intimation of this.

By Oman, she was
so beautiful. As delicate as any sprite in a calla mundie, as lovely as any
flower that ever dared to bloom in the lush gardens of
his
own
homeland. That first stolen glance had not prepared him for the
sheer wonder of her with hair uncovered and unbound, her eyes moist and
wide....

Sweet Mother, I must stop thinking of her. I have
held Oman’s bride in my arms and felt her heart beat against mine. Surely I
have committed some sort of blasphemy.

The first time
they’d met, she’d been seven. Seven and as sturdy as a boy-child, running after
him on strong legs whose chubby knees peeked out from beneath her short play
skirts. She’d been a pretty child, yes, but sexless as an angel fallen from
Oman’s heaven. Unlike other younger children he knew, she didn’t cry and whine all
the time, not even when she stumbled and skinned her knees or elbows. She
didn’t try to make him play with her dolls the way Whimal’s daughters did,
always begging him to sit at the little table in the nursery and drink make-believe
tea.

The next time they’d
met, she was barely ten summers along. She was beginning to grow tall and
slender, her face having lost the baby fat of infancy. She no longer ran,
having changed her play skirts for longer ones. But she still laughed, gaily
and often. He had enjoyed her company far more than Jonil’s, who was already
the kind of boy who liked to push and shove for no reason at all.

He realized,
guiltily, that neither of them had mentioned the two summer’s worth of letters
that had passed between them. Or how they had stopped. By the beard, they must
have written twice a fortnight, filling the pages with any and every thought
that passed through their heads.

And here she was
again. Transformed and yet the same.
Beautiful and yet not
proud.
Sweet and yet not simple.
Charming and yet completely guileless.
She seemed to have no
idea of her effect on him. The innocence and trust in her wide, blue-green eyes
had only made the fire inside burn hotter.

A lock of your hair would be prize enough
.... He could have bitten his tongue off in shame.
How could he have said such a thing?

Perhaps, he
thought, he’d said it so plainly because he meant it. The truth in his heart
had unlocked his tongue at long last.

Did his mother ask
him to stop writing to her before or after Lilli’s dedication? He did not know
and didn’t dare ask Lilli. Oh, he must have loved her all along, a true match
for his heart and soul who now stirred his body more than he had thought
possible.

But now she was
already pledged to another with whom he dare not compete.

Chapter 11: Lillitha’s Return

She woke to find
him sleeping a few feet away, still leaning against cold stone with his cloak
wrapped about him. She sat up. The pressure of her bladder made her wince as
much as the soreness of her back. The mean bedroll of the pilgrimage camp would
seem a luxury after sleeping on rock.

She sat for a
moment, uncertain. She did not relish the idea of going out into the open
alone, but neither did the dimmer recesses of their hiding place look
particularly inviting. The cave continued around a sharp bend, gradually
narrowing to an impassable fissure in the rock.

Then she reasoned
that if there were any wild animals in there, they would have shown themselves
before now. She had no idea who or what might be outside. She crept as far into
the cave as she dared and relieved herself, grimacing at the indelicacy.

She felt much
better as she returned and sat back down on the saddle blanket.

She did not know
how long she watched him sleep, perfectly content to study the lines of his
face.

Finally the sun
crept into the mouth of the cave, falling with full force into his face. She
saw his eyelids
flicker,
the long lashes twitching as
wakefulness came to him. For a moment he looked at her as if he’d forgotten who
she was. Then he smiled shyly and rubbed a hand over his face.

He rose stiffly,
his mouth tightening as he took a step.

“Good morn to you,
sir.”

“Good morn to you,
lady.”

Suddenly they both
laughed at how ridiculously formal they sounded, as if they were in a reception
hall and not a grimy cave.

“Excuse me.” He
looked uncertain, his cheeks reddening. “I have to—um. Well, just excuse
me for a moment. I’ll be right back.”

“Where—?
Oh,” she said lamely, realizing the meaning of his embarrassment. He obviously
needed to relief himself just as she had. Her own face flushed and she turned
quickly into the shadows of the cave as he ducked into the sunlight. She
wondered just how much more intimate they could get.

“Are you hungry?”
he asked cheerfully as he returned. His hands rummaged in the saddlebags. “I
still have that bread and the paggie.”

She nodded.
“Famished.”

They shared the
bits of food and passed the flask between them.

“As soon as we
find the rest, I’m going to find a scalding hot mug of tea,” she declared.

“You can have the
tea,” he grinned. “I could use a good stiff drink.”

“Have I driven you
to drink, then?” she teased.

He grunted,
chewing the hard bread. “Not you. The bandits. As long as you were awake, I had
to at least pretend to be the brave rescuer. Then you fell asleep and I
realized I had actually drawn my sword on Torian bandits. If I had stopped to
think I never would have done it.”

“Lucky for me that
you did,” she said softly.

“I didn’t
mean—“ He looked stricken again. “I only —”

“I know, Scearce.”
She smiled at him gently. “I know what you meant.”

He sighed.

“Well, that hasn’t
changed. You always did know what I really meant no matter how my tongue might
mangle it. It’s only that I’ve never been in a fight before.
Only
drills and competition.
I suppose that’s what the old veterans mean when
they talk about battle blood.”

“At least you know
that you can do it,” she said. “Handle yourself well in the heat of the moment,
I mean. My father always says that’s real courage—forgetting that you’re
scared out of your mind long enough to do what’s needed. You certainly reacted
better than I did.”

 
“Oh, no,” he said hastily. Then he
grinned again. “You were brave enough to bite one of them. It was probably
lucky for that fellow that I hit him with the hilt of my sword when I did. No
telling what damage you might have done to him if I hadn’t.”

 
She shook her head. “No. Yanna told me to
stay in the litter but I didn’t. I just panicked.”

She thought, too,
about the small dagger the cadia had pressed into her hands. She had not even
thought about using it. She couldn’t have used it even to save her own life.
She had dropped it somewhere outside the litter as soon as the hands had
grabbed her.

“Don’t be so hard
on yourself. I’ve been trained to fight all my life. You weren’t.”

She shrugged.

She repaired her
wimple and kerchief as best she could as Scearce saddled the horse. In the
daylight, she saw that her burlang was streaked with dirt and one sleeve was
ripped at the seams. What a sight she must make!

He mounted and
extended an arm, lifting her easily to sit in front of him on the horse. Last
night she had scarcely been able to think but now she realized just how
improper this was. She practically sat across his lap with her back pressed so
hard against his chest that she could feel his heartbeat without even trying.
She could feel, too, one hard muscled thigh against her buttocks, the other
under the crook of her knees. Her legs, crossed as modestly as she could
manage, dangled against one of his calves.

She could sense
his discomfort in the way he brought his arms gingerly around her to pick up
the reins.

Talking it made it
easier not to think about it. So she talked.

Conversation must
have helped relax him as well, for he was far more talkative than he’d been
last night, though his voice had a grim determination to it. After a time of
awkwardness, she felt herself leaning into him, sinking into the rhythm of the
horse’s gait instead of tensing against it.

He talked about
how silent his father had been since his mother’s passing. She nodded,
remembering the silences at her own family’s house in the days that followed
Jonil’s death.

 
“He was always so loud,” he said. “My
mother used to tell him to hush all the time, that she was standing just two
jackles away, not two parsecs. After she died, he just... closed up. I don’t
know. He wanders her gardens and sometimes I find him just sitting at her
dressing table. He hardly talks to anyone.”

“I know,” she said
softly. “I never saw my father cry until the day of Jonil’s funeral. Then he
just stood there, his arm around my mother, staring at the pyre with tears
running down his cheeks. He didn’t make a sound, but it scared me, I
think.”
 

She felt him nod
into her wimple.

“We expect our
father’s to be able to withstand anything,” he agreed. “I was so afraid of his
grief, I didn’t even try to talk to him at first. It was as if I thought the
sound of my voice might cause him to break somehow. I never thought of my
father as breakable before. Why is it that sorrow makes it so hard to speak?”

“I think it’s
because when someone we love passes, we feel guilty that we are still here
while they are not. Talking, smiling, eating. It all seems so wrong that we
should go on as if nothing has changed.”

Twice Scearce
paused to check the direction, squinting into the steadily climbing sun and
studying the lay of the land around them.

“I know we came
this way. I remember that hill and that dead fen tree over there —”

“I don’t remember
any of this. I must have had my eyes closed.”

“Don’t worry,
we’ll find them.”

Finally they
crested a small rise.

“See? What did I
tell you? Right where we left them.”

“Rowle! Rowle!
Come quickly!” Ersala wept and laughed at the same time, wringing her hands.
“Lilli, are you really all right? Oman be praised, I cannot believe it—”

It had taken
longer than Scearce predicted to find them, but here they were, at last!
Lillitha slipped down from the horse nimbly, intending to run to her mother.
But as soon as her feet touched the ground, loss overwhelmed her and she could
barely stand.

How could she have
dismounted so swiftly, so thoughtlessly! In one careless moment, she’d left
him, without thinking. She looked up at him, but he was staring over her head,
still as stone. It was as if last night and this morning had never happened.

She realized
abruptly that they had to act as though it had not. She was consecratia once
more. She would never see Scearce again except in a crowd of onlookers. She
would probably never be able to speak to him again.

Her mother threw
her arms about her, wetting her face with tears, then touching her gently all
over as if to assure herself that Lilli was really safe and of one piece.

“I’m all right,
muma, really and truly.” People gathered around her, shouting praises to Oman
and Mother Leah and laughing with relief. She was suddenly claustrophobic and
clutched her torn veils around her as best she could. “Is everyone all right?
Father and Paul, Marta? Iafrewn, is she safe?”

Rowle shoved his
way into the circle and grabbed her a fierce hug, lifting her feet from the
ground. “Oh, my dearest child, thank Oman you are safe!”

She giggled
happily, not caring who saw her in the arms of her father or what they might
think. She held to him tightly and kissed his rough cheeks with tears streaming
down her own. Over his shoulder she spied Paul, beaming so widely that his face
seemed about to break in two. Even Marta seemed to smile a little.

Blue cadian robes
swung into view as Rowle set his daughter gently back on her feet.

“Sister
Lendenican, is Iafrewn—” Lillitha began.

“Iafrewn is well,”
the cadia said crisply, her eyes crinkling into deep pockets of a perfunctory
smile. “We shall all offer our thanks to Oman for your safe return as soon as I
have tended to you—”

Ersala sputtered
as the cadia took Lilli’s arm. “I can see to my own child, Sister!”