Guardians Of The Keep

CHAPTER 29

As the end of my sojourn in Zhev’Na approached, I believed fortune had smiled on our venture. I had watched the Gray House through three more nights and seen no variation in the guard schedule. I had taken note of the lights on the third level-Gerick’s apartments-and had seen that all of the windows were dark well before the hour I called midnight. Only one small lamp on the corner of the balcony flickered throughout the night.

I hoped to get sent back to the Gray House with the repaired draperies and even dawdled about my work so perhaps Zoe might get annoyed with me again, but Dia was sent instead. No matter how I prompted her, Dia could tell me nothing about her errand. She had seen no one, noticed nothing interesting. I considered a midnight exploration of the Gray House, but as the deadline approached, I decided not to jeopardize my good luck-not until I knew what help was available.

And so came the fourteenth day. It began at dawn just as any other day. Dia made the trip to the cistern for the pail of wash water we all had to share, and I was fortunate to be second in line, so it was still reasonably clean. I had learned to be happy to get the dirt out from under my fingernails on occasion, saving anything more for the day I would be back in my own life.

Hours passed. For once, I didn’t notice my aching feet or punctured fingers. Terrified that I might miss the signal, I studied every face, jumped at every voice. Every sense remained alert, while in the back of my head I counted so as to be sure of the time. We stitched until two hours after sunset. Night… of course, night would be better. We retired, as usual, to the dormitory. When my eyes grew heavy in the airless heat, I decided to sit on the steps and let the cold night air keep me awake. But one of the women stirred restlessly, belching and moaning as if she were sick. I dared not move. The next thing I knew, it was dawn.

I buried my disappointment in an even higher state of alertness. We washed and shuffled across the courtyard to the sewing room, ate our morning cup of gruel after two hours of work, and the day proceeded, no different from any other day. Another night passed. Perhaps I had miscounted the days. Perhaps Gar’Dena had not meant fourteen days exactly, but only that fourteen, more or less, should see it done. No plan dependent on so many mysterious elements could be so precise.

On the twenty-first day, I soothed my rising panic with Gar’Dena’s assurances. They’ll not forget me. If they decide the plan has failed, I’ll be transferred back to the military encampment and sent back through the portal, just as Gar’Dena said. But my cynical self taunted me. The Preceptors wouldn’t have just sent you here to rot, would they? All these Dar’Nethi are so honorable…

I put such thoughts out of my mind. I had to trust someone.

But as more days passed, my doubts grew right alongside the calluses on my fingers. What had gone wrong? Why was there no attempt to retrieve me?

At the four-week mark, numb and terrified, I was sent to the Gray House once again, to deliver five gray tunics for the household slaves. Sefaro was in his storeroom, writing in a journal of some kind. His face brightened when he saw me.

“I’ve brought five tunics as ordered,” I said.

He nodded and inspected them carefully, then folded them and put them on one of his shelves.

“I’m also instructed by Kargetha to ask if it is time for the new banners to be made with the young Lord’s device? She has received no instructions.” I gave Sefaro the wooden token from Kargetha that would permit him to answer my questions.

“We’ve no need for the banners at present,” he said, after clearing his throat. His voice was rich and mellow. “The young Lord is no longer in residence.”

The slave reached out for my arm. “Are you quite all right, Eda?”

“Yes. Yes, of course.” Pressing my fingers to my lips, I fought back tears and terror until I could speak again. “I was just so surprised… that Kargetha didn’t know. She’ll want to know where he’s gone. And for how long.” Everything depended on Gerick being in Zhev’Na.

“Five days ago the young Lord rode off with a Zhid officer. I was not told when or if to expect him back.” His gaze held mine. “Tell Kargetha that I will be here taking care of matters as I have done these past weeks: the house, the kitchen, the fencing yard…” He smiled and raised his eyebrows, as if asking me whether I understood. Gerick’s wounded young sparring partner… I smiled weakly. I could not rejoice in anything.

For my first weeks in Zhev’Na, I had considered my true life as something apart and my existence as Eda the sewing Drudge only a moment’s aberration. But now this soul-deadening monotony encompassed my entire existence. The sewing women had lived this way for so long that I could find no tinder in them to answer what spark remained in me. They were uninterested in ideas or stories and called my attempts at conversation odd. When I suggested that we take a few moments before sleeping to clean the dormitory, so that perhaps the mice might find it less hospitable, I got only the blank stares and shrugs that might have followed an invitation to take wing and fly across the desert.

One afternoon, after I had tried to interest the sewing women in a simple game that might enliven the hours while we stitched, Zoe mentioned to Kargetha that I was distracting the others with my foolishness. The Zhid woman touched the tag on my ear and commanded me to cease my useless conversation. I had to do so, of course, as surely as if the compulsion had actually been attached to the tag. In the days of silence that followed her command, I speculated on whether the compulsions had really been put there after all. However would I know, when I dared not disobey?

After I had gone five days without a single word, Zoe mentioned to Kargetha that perhaps her command had been too effective. She had no objection to reasonable speech in the workroom, and I had made some useful suggestions about the work in the past. Kargetha was feeling indulgent that day and reworded her command. “I release you from my bond, Eda. Perhaps you are too stupid to know what is useless and what is not. Speak as you wish, unless two of your fellows tell you to be silent.”

“Thank you, your Worship,” I said, dipping my knee, but I didn’t resume my attempts. Two months had passed, and Gerick was gone, and I didn’t have anything to say any more. The prospect of living out the rest of my days in such a fashion was abhorrent. By comparison my years of poverty in Dunfarrie seemed endlessly stimulating. They had encompassed growth and change, the acquisition of new skills, the cycle of the seasons to mark the days… the height of the garden… the flight of birds… such beauty and variety. That I had considered life in Dunfarrie as near death as I could imagine pointed out a singular lack of imagination on my part. But then, who could ever have imagined the life of Zhev’Na?