Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [147]
“Oh, thank you,” muttered Foix into the blessed silence.
“I used to carry on not unlike that, from time to time, in my first grief,” murmured Ista across to him, in uncomfortable reminiscence. “Why in five gods’ names did no one ever smother me and put themselves out of my misery? I may never know.”
A rasping voice from within the wagon said, “Bastard’s demons, now what?”
A flash of relief crossed Arhys’s features. “Illvin! Out here!”
A padding of bare feet; Illvin, wearing only his linen robe and looking much like a man wakened too early after a night of too much revelry, stumbled out and stood blinking into the bright morning, one lean hand grasping the canvas frame for balance.
His eye fell on Ista, and his face lit. “Witless!” he cried in delight. This odd greeting, Ista concluded belatedly, was actually addressed to his horse, who flicked its ears and snuffed, flaring its gray nostrils, and almost, but not quite, moved from the spot on which its rider had bade it stand. “Royina,” Illvin continued, giving her a nod. “I trust Feathers-for-Wits here has gone well for you? Five gods, did no one think to cut his feed?”
“He is a most perfect gentleman,” Ista assured him. “I find him very shapely.”
Illvin looked down at Catti, now slumped over against Goram’s shrinking shoulder. “What’s this? Is she all right?”
“For the moment,” Ista assured both him and Arhys, who was eyeing his wife even more uncertainly. “I, ah . . . required that she change chairs with you for a little while.”
“I did not know you could do that,” said Illvin cautiously.
“Neither did I, till I tried it a moment ago. The demon’s spell is unbroken, just . . . reapportioned.”
Arhys, his face rigid with his discomfiture, nevertheless knelt and gathered Cattilara up in his arms. Illvin felt his right shoulder and frowned; his frown deepened as his glance took in a slow red leak starting on Cattilara’s shoulder. He leaned aside for his burdened brother to duck back into the wagon. Ista handed her reins to Liss and scrambled from her saddle across to the wagon seat; Illvin extended a hand to swing her safely aboard.
“We must talk,” she told him.
He nodded in heartfelt agreement. “Goram,” he added. His groom looked up with open relief in his face. “Get this wagon turned around and headed back to Porifors.”
“Yes, my lord,” said Goram happily.
Ista ducked after Arhys and Illvin as Foix began calling instructions to his men to help back and turn the team. Arhys laid Cattilara, her head lolling, down on the pallet he had just vacated. It was dim and musty under the canvas after the bright light outside, but Ista’s eyes quickly adjusted. The other servant, Cattilara’s woman, and the page squatted fearfully at the back of the wagon among three or four small trunks. It seemed modest provision for the journey, though the marchess’s jewel case no doubt reposed somewhere within the baggage.
Arhys sent the manservant and the woman forward to sit with Goram. His page, round-eyed with worry, settled near him; he gave the boy a reassuring ruffle of the hair. Arhys sat cross-legged by his wife’s head. Illvin handed Ista down onto the pallet opposite; she felt her scabs crack under their pads as she folded her knees. Illvin started to settle cross-legged next to her, realized the inadequacy of his narrow robe for that position, and sat instead on his knees.
Arhys glowered down at his wife. “I can’t believe she’d think I would desert Porifors.”
“I don’t imagine she did,” said Ista. “Hence this deceit.” She hesitated. “It’s a hard thing,