She looked up at him from where she knelt. “Am I all right?”
Those wide eyes, their shape so familiar to him—no, not hers, her sister’s—blinked slowly once, twice, thrice. Noetos wondered whether he ought to repeat the question. Had it not been simple enough?
“Of course she’s not all right, Father,” Anomer said from beside him, then turned to the girl. “Here, come with us, Lenares. You need food and drink. We’ll talk of what we should do about all this after you’ve eaten.”
He stretched down an arm. Hesitantly she took it, although her white face and hurt eyes remained totally focused on Torve.
“I don’t want to leave him,” she said.
“Let those skilled in healing tend him. You should let us tend you.”
Clearly reluctant, Lenares allowed herself to be led away a short distance from Torve, but kept her head turned so the Omeran would not be out of her sight for a moment. Despite her oft-expressed dislike of being touched, she made no motion to prevent Anomer rearranging her dishevelled clothing. She seemed not to notice it.
That’s the other reason she unnerves me, Noetos thought. He had never seen anyone able to devote themselves so completely to one thing at the expense of everything else.
The Omeran servant was in poor condition. His wound had been cauterised but, however well the procedure had been done, the red mess between his legs was clearly giving him intense pain. Noetos was not certain what had happened to precipitate this, but it seemed the mercenary had discovered Torve and Lenares engaged in an intimate act—the intimate act, apparently—and had decided to castrate the fellow.
“Who was this Dryman, that he could do this to you?” Noetos asked.
Torve offered no reply.
Captain Duon lowered himself to his haunches with a groan. “Aye, that’s the question. I may have some answers for you. It is time to lay everything out for all to hear, I think. Then we can judge what must be done.”
“Here?” Arathé asked, her hands flashing. “Are we safe here? Won’t the gods hear our conversation?”
“Who knows?” the southerner replied. “I doubt we’re safe anywhere. But I think we may have a short time to ourselves before the gods return to resume their meddling. The Father has achieved his purpose, and the Son and Daughter are disembodied for now. We must take this time to decide what we are to do next, and for that you need to hear what I have to say.”
Stella raised her head from bending over another prone figure. “I do not mean to offend,” she said, “but whatever answers you provide may be somewhat suspect. Before we hear from you, we need to discuss the matter of the voice in your head. I am wary of our plans being overheard.”
“But I can assure you—”
Stella shut him up with a wave of her left arm. “Later. First we attend to the injured. There is a man over here bleeding from the head. His brother does not seem capable of dealing with him.”
“You know who those two are, don’t you?” her guardsman growled. “Two of the Umerta boys. Lenares’ brothers. The southerners apparently hired them as porters.”
There was the briefest quiver in the woman’s arm, the smallest suggestion that she wanted to withdraw, but she said, “And now they are hurt. We must care for them nonetheless.”
“Like they cared for you?” Noetos said, pointing at her missing forearm and hand.
“That… wasn’t the Umertas.”
Beside her, the guardsman stared at his feet.
“More to talk about,” said Noetos. “Or perhaps more secrets. Well, if we are to cleanse and bind these wounds, we need water and cloth.”
“In hand,” the guardsman said. “Kilfor and his father have gone back to one of the other rooms in this place. There was a pool of cold water there. There’s plenty of cloth in our packs, spare clothes and the like. We have all we need.”
So there was nothing for Noetos to do but sit and wait. Others attended those who needed help, others made decisions, others did the things necessary for human survival and comfort. He sat on the sand and ate food handed to him, then lay down and tried to rest, while all around him people busied themselves.
He found the experience of not being needed profoundly unsettling.
An indeterminate time later—it seemed like an hour, but time felt greasy here and it could have been a few minutes or a day or more—Stella asked Duon to explain the voice