The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [46]
It struck Rhodry as unjust to the extreme that he could remember none of them.
“Oh, look at this! You have a child back home.”
“I do?” The shock made him forget his mask of servility.
“You didn’t know? What did you do? March off with your army before she even knew she was pregnant, probably.” She burst out laughing. “Well, Deverry men are certainly like Bardek men in some crucial respects, aren’t they? I’m afraid the tiles can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl.” Still smiling, she took another apricot and ate it slowly while she thought. “I wonder about this Queen of Swords at the top. It seems such an odd place for her. Draw me two more.”
The pair turned out to be the Ace of Spears and the Raven.
“Oh!” Alaena gasped in honest shock. “How very sad! She was the one true love of your life, but it all ended tragically. What happened? It almost looks like she got sold into slavery, too, or married off against her will to some other man.”
Suddenly Rhodry remembered Jill, remembered the name to put with the blonde woman who at times had haunted his memory and his dreams, remembered with a rush of emotion his despair when he had lost her, somewhere along the long road. Dimly he could remember beginning to search for her, somewhere in dark woodlands …
“Rhodry, you’re weeping.”
“I’m sorry, mistress.” He choked back the tears and wiped his face on his tunic sleeve. “Forgive me. I loved her very much, and she was forced to go with another man.”
He looked up to find her watching him with a startled expression, as if he’d just materialized like one of the Wildfolk.
“No, you forgive me. I forget that you weren’t always a slave.” She looked down at the tiles and frowned, then swept her hand through the pattern. “Just take that fruit away, will you? Do whatever you want until it’s time for dinner.”
Since he had no other privacy, Rhodry went up to his bunk in the men’s quarters and lay down, his hands under his head as he stared at the ceiling and listened to the rain. Slowly he pieced together a few of his memories, but only a few. He knew that he had loved, that he still did love, with a fierceness that shocked him, this woman named Jill, but who she was, where he’d met her, why she’d been dragged away from him—they were all mysteries still. He wept again, but only briefly, a few tears of frustration more than heartbreak.
Although Alaena never referred to the incident again, from that afternoon on Rhodry was aware of a change in her attitude toward him. At times, he caught her watching him with a little puzzled frown, as if he’d become a problem for her to solve. Outwardly, nothing seemed to have changed; he spent his afternoons with her as before, learning the protocols of greeting and announcing guests of various ranks, and none of the others seemed to have noticed anything, except, perhaps, Disna. Suddenly Rhodry noticed that the maidservant had grown cold to him; whenever he complimented her, she gave him the barest trace of a smile or even a downright nasty look. When he tried to turn the whole thing into a joke and tease her about it, she refused to answer, merely walked away fast with her nose in the air, making him wonder if all those love affairs that had appeared in the tiles were doomed to remain in the past.
After some days the rain stopped, and Alaena went out to the marketplace. Since everyone in town seemed to be there, catching up on their shopping and gossip, they left the litter on a side street, hired a shopkeeper’s lad to watch it, and walked to the market itself. Carrying his ebony staff, Rhodry followed a few paces behind the mistress while she went from booth to booth, looking mostly at jewelry and silks while merchants groveled before her. Finally she motioned Rhodry up