The Charnel Prince - J. Gregory Keyes [149]
“What about you?” he asked. “I’ve never seen you so subdued.”
She grimaced slightly. “It’s a lot to take in,” she said. “I’m a hostler’s daughter, remember? A few months ago my greatest worry was that Banf Thelason might get drunk and start a fight or Enry Flory might try and run off without paying for his ale. Even when I was with Aspar when he was tracking the greffyn, it was pretty simple. Now I don’t know who we’re supposed to be fighting. The Briar King? The praifec? Villagers gone mad? Who does that leave out? And what good am I?”
“Don’t talk like that,” Stephen said.
“Why not? It’s what Aspar has been saying all along. I’ve denied it, come up with excuses, but down in the marrow, I know he’s right. I can’t fight or track, I don’t know much of anything, and every time there’s a brawl, I have to be protected.”
“Not like Leshya, eh?” Stephen said.
Her eyes widened. “Don’t be cruel,” she whispered.
“But it’s what you’re thinking,” he said, surprised to hear such bold words coming from his mouth. “She’s beautiful, and more his age. She’s Sefry and he was raised that way, she can track like a wolf and fight like a panther, and she seems to know more about this whole business than the rest of us put together. Why wouldn’t he want her instead of you?”
“I—” She choked off. “Why are you talking this way?”
“Well, for one thing, I know how it feels to think you’re useless,” he said. “And no one can make you feel as perfectly useless as Aspar. It’s not something he does on purpose—it’s just that he’s so good at what he does. He says he doesn’t need anything or anyone, and sometimes you actually believe him.”
“You, useless?” she said. “You’ve saint-given talents. You’ve knowledge of the small and the large and everything between, and without you we wouldn’t have the faintest idea what to do.”
“I wasn’t saint-blessed when Aspar met me,” he pointed out, remembering vividly the holter’s undisguised contempt, “and Aspar certainly thought I was dead weight. By the time we parted, I thought he was right. But I was mistaken. So are you, and you know it.”
“I don’t—”
“Why did you follow Aspar, Winna? Why did you leave Colbaely and your father and everything you knew to chase after a holter?”
She bent her mouth to one side, a habit he found winsome. “Well, I never maunted to actually leave Colbaely,” she said, “not for this long. I thought Asp was in danger and went to warn him, and then I reckoned I’d go back home.”
“But you didn’t. Why?”
“Because I’m in love with him,” she said.
That pricked a peculiar feeling in Stephen, but he pressed on through it. “Still, you must have been in love with him for a while,” Stephen said. “It didn’t happen that fast, did it?”
“I’ve loved him since I was a little girl.” She sighed.
“So why, suddenly, did you do something about it?”
“I didn’t intend to,” she said. “It’s just—I found him all laid out on the ground. I thought he was dead, and I thought he would never know.”
“Why did you imagine he would care?”
She shook her head and looked miserable. “I don’t know.”
“May I tell you what I think?” Stephen asked.
Winna tossed her hair out of her face. It had been cut short when he met her, but now it was getting pretty long. “Why not?” she said morosely. “You’ve been about as blunt as I can imagine already.”
“I think you saw in that moment that Aspar was missing something. He’s strong and determined and skillful, and he’s smart, in his way. But he doesn’t have a heart, not without you. Without you, he’s just another part of the forest, wandering farther and farther from being human. You brought him back to us.” He paused, retracing the words in his mind. “Does that make any sense?”
Winna’s brow crinkled, but she didn’t say anything.
“It’s why the three of us work so well together,” he went on. “He’s the muscle and the knife and the arrow. I have the book knowledge he pretends to disdain, but knows he needs, and you’re sovereign to us both, the thing that ties us all together.”
She snorted. “Swordsman, priest, and crown?”
He blinked. She was