Inkdeath

27. LOST AND BACK AGAIN

It was dark when Gwin woke Roxane. She still didn't like the marten, but she couldn't bring herself to chase him away. She had seen him sitting on Dustfinger's shoulder too often. Sometimes she thought she still felt the warmth of his hands on Gwin's brown coat. Since his master's death the marten had allowed Roxane to stroke him. He never used to let her do that before. But he also used to kill her chickens before, and now he spared them, as if that were part of their unspoken agreement – his thanks for her letting him, and no other living creature, follow her when she went to his master. Only Gwin shared her secret and kept her company when she sat beside the dead man for an hour, sometimes two, losing herself in the sight of his still face.

He's back! said Gwin's bristling coat as he jumped up on her breast, but Roxane didn't understand. She pushed the marten away when she saw how dark it still was outside, but he persisted, hissing at her and scratching at the door. Of course, she thought at once of the patrols that the Milksop was only too likely to send to isolated farms at night. Heart thudding, she reached for the knife that lay under her pillow and threw on her dress, while the marten pawed more and more impatiently at the door. Luckily, he hadn't yet woken Jehan. Her son was fast asleep. Her goose wasn't giving the alarm, either… which was strange.

Barefoot, she went to the door, knife in hand, and listened, but there was nothing to be heard outside, and when she cautiously went out into the open air she felt as if she heard the night itself breathing deeply and regularly, like someone asleep. The stars shone down on her like flowers made of light, and their beauty hurt her weary heart.

"Roxane…"

The marten shot past her.

It couldn't be true. The dead did not come back, even when they had promised they would. But the figure emerging from the shadows near the stable was so very familiar.

Gwin hissed when he saw the other marten sitting on his master's shoulder.

"Roxane." He spoke her name as if he wanted to savor it on his tongue, like something he hadn't tasted for a long time.

It was a dream, one of the dreams she had almost every night. Dreams in which she saw his face so clearly that she touched it in her sleep, and next day her fingers still remembered his skin. Even when he put his arms around her, carefully, as if he wasn't sure whether he had forgotten how to hold her, she didn't move – because her hands did not believe they would really feel him, her arms did not believe they could hold him again. But her eyes could see him. Her ears heard him breathing. Her skin felt his, as warm as if the fire were inside him, after he had been so terribly cold.

He had kept his promise. And even if he was coming to her only in a dream, it was better than nothing… so much better.

"Roxane! Look at me. Look at me." He took her face between his hands, caressed her cheek, wiped away the tears she so often felt on her skin when she woke. And only then did she draw him close to her, let her hands tell her that she wasn't just embracing a ghost. It couldn't be true. She wept as she pressed her face to his. She wanted to hit him for having left her for the boy's sake, for all the pain she had already felt on his account, so much pain, but her heart gave her away, as it had the first time he came back. It always gave her away.

"What is it?" He kissed her once more.

The scars. They were gone, as if the White Women had washed them away before sending him back to life.

She took his hands and laid them against his cheeks.

"Well, who'd have thought it!" he said, stroking his own skin with his fingers as if it were a stranger's. "They've really gone! Basta wouldn't like that at all."

Why had they let him go? Who had paid the price for him, as he had paid it for the boy?

Why did she ask? He was back. That was all that mattered, back from the place from which there was no return. Where all the others were. Her daughter, the father of her son, Cosimo… so many dead. But he had come back. Even if she saw in his eyes that, this time, he had been so far away that something of him was still left there.

"How long will you stay this time?" she whispered.

He did not answer at once. Gwin rubbed his head against his neck and looked at him, as if he, too, wanted to know the answer.

"As long as Death allows," he replied at last, and placed her hand on his beating heart.

"What does that mean?" she whispered.

But he closed her mouth with a kiss.