Songs of the Earth (48 page)

Abruptly the other man looked up and stared directly at Gair. The gaze was both curious and knowing, as if the man knew who he was without having to be introduced. Yet Gair knew he looked no different to the hundred other gulls that swooped and squabbled around the pier. How could that be possible? Had Alderan recognised him, and told his companion? Unsettled, Gair rolled away from the harbour and flew back to the bell-tower.

Darin waited on the landward side, his spyglass trained on the dip where the road from the town wound out of the woods. ‘Who was it?’ he asked without looking round.

‘I didn’t recognise him. Some friend of Alderan’s, I think. He was there to meet him off the boat.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Brown, mostly,’ Gair said, rubbing his chilled hands together. ‘Brown skin, brown cloak, brown eyes. Face like an old shoe, looks like he spends a lot of time out of doors.’

‘Did you get close enough to hear what they were talking about?’

‘I don’t eavesdrop, Darin,’ Gair chided him gently.

‘Pity.’ The Belisthan closed the glass with a snap. His lips were bluish from the cold, his thin fingers so pallid they looked to be all bone, stripped of flesh. The weight he’d lost when he’d been sick before Eventide had never returned; if anything, he’d lost a little more. He’d grown gaunt, and his eyes glittered darkly in their sockets, the only colour in his face now two feverish patches high on his cheeks. ‘I wish I knew what they were talking about,’ he muttered.

‘Maybe we’ll find something out later,’ Gair said. ‘The gossip from the town usually finds its way up to Chapterhouse inside a day or so.’

‘Maybe.’

‘I need to get some breakfast. I’m due with Master Eavin in half an hour.’ Hauling on the rope, Gair lifted the trapdoor down to the bell chamber. ‘Darin? You coming?’

‘What? Oh, yes, yes.’ The Belisthan took a few steps towards the trapdoor then stopped and his gaze went out towards the harbour again. Pale fingers twitched over the spyglass, turning the little brass cylinder round and round.

‘Darin?’

‘I’m coming, I’m coming. Don’t nag.’

Gair let him precede him down the stairs. Following close behind, he could see how Darin looked out of every window they passed towards Pencruik, even when Chapterhouse’s walls had risen in the way. His deeply shadowed eyes were fixed on the same point, as if they could see clear through the stone. What was bothering him? There was something, for certain; he’d even stopped complaining about a lack of access to Renna’s shift. He was definitely not himself.

After supper, Gair went to Darin’s room to play chess. The Belisthan did not look at all well. His skin was greyish, and the
shadows around his eyes were darker, like bruises. Normally a quick-witted, bold player, now he stared at the board as if he had never seen it before in his life, and he played like it too, losing three games in a row.

Rather than start another, Gair pushed the board to one side. ‘You’re not yourself tonight. Are you all right?’

‘Hmm?’ Darin blinked at him. ‘Oh, yes, I’m fine. Just tired.’

‘Renna keeping you up late these days?’

‘I wish.’ A flash of the old Darin, then it was gone. ‘I’m not sleeping well at the moment, that’s all. Strange dreams.’

‘What about?’

‘I can’t really remember. I just wake up feeling like I’ve had a nightmare, but I can’t recall a thing about it.’

‘Do you think you should speak to Saaron?’

‘No, it’s all right. I don’t really want to talk about it.’

Gair drew the board towards him and began arranging the pieces. ‘He might be able to help.’

Darin’s arm swept across the table, scattering chessmen in all directions. The sleepy fuzziness was gone from his expression, replaced by a feverish energy. His dark eyes snapped. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he grated.

Gair shifted in his chair. He had never seen Darin like this before. ‘Yes,’ he said carefully, ‘so you said. Let’s set the board up for another game, shall we?’ He picked up the little figures and arranged them on the board.

A few seconds later Darin’s temper evaporated and he joined in, but before they had played a half a dozen moves each he was drowsing over his pieces. ‘Sorry, Gair,’ he mumbled, then yawned. ‘I can’t seem to stay awake.’

‘Then go to bed. We can play another day.’

‘All right.’ Without another word, Darin heeled off his mud-spattered boots and lay down on his bed. Within seconds his breathing had fallen into the rhythm of a deep sleep.

Gair fetched a blanket from the closet and spread it over him
before letting himself out. The Belisthan was definitely not himself, not by a country mile.

Aysha’s deep bath was full, thanks to Chapterhouse’s vast copper boilers and enlightened plumbing arrangements. Steam hung thickly in the air, fragrant with bergamot oil.

‘For someone who looks like a village goodwife, Esther’s got a mind you could crack rocks with.’

Gair massaged his temples to chase away a nascent headache. It had been a hard lesson with the matronly Master, possibly his hardest yet, drawing on the slow, deep Song of earth. He’d been the only one of the twelve students in the class who’d been able to keep up with her after the first hour, and dear Goddess, she had made him work for it.

‘She scares the lights out of me,’ Aysha said, wringing out a flannel in the hot water. ‘I always feel she’s about to turn me over her knee and paddle my behind. Close your eyes.’ She spread the flannel over his face.

Gair laid his head back and let the heat soak into him. ‘Oh, that’s good. A private bathroom is the hallmark of a civilised society,’ he sighed. ‘No more secondhand soap and other people’s navel lint. Bliss.’

She laughed. ‘So what about my navel lint?’

‘Yours I don’t mind. It’s other men’s navel lint I have a problem with.’ He dropped the cooling flannel into the water and looked up. She sat on the half-step behind him, her legs wrapped around him; his head was pillowed on her shoulder. Her tawny skin was dewy from the heat and her hair stood in soft peaks, like a cat come in from the rain.

‘Do girls get navel lint?’ he asked.

‘I thought it was strictly a male thing, to go with the excess body hair and tendency to scratch. Hold on, I’ll just find a man to check.’

‘I’m crushed.’

‘But you don’t have excess body hair.’ Aysha’s hands slid down over his chest to emphasise its comparative smoothness. ‘And I have never seen you scratch.’ They dipped below the water. ‘But in all other respects, you fit the definition.’

Gair closed his eyes, savouring her touch. It still had the power to thrill him, if anything even more so now. It didn’t matter whether it was the casual intersection of two hands reaching for the teapot, or the most intimate caress; the merest brush of her skin against his left him tingling. Like this, with nothing between them but the water, it sent shivers of pleasure out through his body from the point of contact like ripples from a pebble thrown into a pond.

‘Do you have to go?’

‘It’s a Council meeting. Sorry.’

‘When?’

‘About an hour.’

No sooner had his lessons finished than she had been in his mind. No sooner had he bid farewell to his classmates than he was on his way back up to the fifth floor, taking the steps two at a time when no one was watching. There was no awkwardness when she greeted him, still no feeling of boundaries redrawn into unfamiliar lines. She was just there in his arms as if she’d never left them. That had been only a little over an hour ago. A lot could happen in an hour.

‘It’ll only take me ten minutes to get ready,’ Gair said.

Under the water, her fingers curled around him. ‘I’d say you’re ready now.’

The summons came too quickly. Aysha reared above him, a sheen of sweat on her skin and her colours swirling around his as she shared herself with him. The red seemed deeper tonight, dark as wine, and the heat of her was intoxicating. When someone touched her mind, he saw and felt her flinch. Her fingers dug into his shoulders.

‘Damn it, not now,’ she groaned. She shut her eyes and kept moving, but her pleasure was slipping away from her. She tensed again. Whoever called her did not intend to be kept waiting. With a hissed curse she slumped forward.

‘I have to go,’ she said against his neck.

‘Was it Alderan?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

‘Best not keep him waiting, then.’

Lifting herself up, she studied his face. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’

‘If it was anyone else, I would.’ He held her face between his hands and kissed her, long and slow. ‘Go on. There’s always later.’

‘I don’t know how long the meeting will be.’

‘The sooner you go, the sooner it will be over.’

She eased herself off him and reached for her clothes at the foot of the bed. Gair watched her dress, enjoying with his eyes what he couldn’t touch with his hands.

Aysha threw his shirt at his head. ‘You’re staring.’

‘You’re beautiful.’

‘Liar.’ She opened the door, shooting him a smile as she blurred into her favourite kestrel shape. Then she was gone.

Gair waited until after Vespers, but she did not return. The bed in his room felt small and cold. He had grown accustomed to having Aysha next to him when he fell asleep, and he missed the warmth of her, the scent of her on the pillow. Staying in her bed to wait for her would have been worse. Surrounded by her perfume, the echo of her presence would only have made her absence cut more keenly.

The topmost chamber of the bell-tower was cold and exposed, but it suited Gair’s mood. He hadn’t fallen asleep for a very long time, and when he finally did, his dreams were dark and disturbing enough to wake him, gritty-eyed, well before dawn. Sword-practice
had been abandoned after barely an hour; even the babble in the refectory had set his temper on edge. When a harried-looking adept announced to the room at large that tutorials had been cancelled for the day, he had been both irritated at the lack of something to occupy himself, and absurdly relieved that he wouldn’t have to wrestle with the Song in his current humour.

Hunkered down in the lee of the wall Gair pulled his cloak tightly around him. Pellets of ice laced the wind and stung bare skin like horseflies. As a boy, he had gone out onto the fells with his pony on days like this, when he couldn’t settle. Sometimes he’d take one of the wolfhounds for company, and they’d roam the heathery slopes of the Long Glen until he’d walked off the restlessness. At the Motherhouse there had been the top row of the bleachers in the exhibition lists, or the grassy summit of Templemount on a free day. Whenever he felt that itch in his soul he craved high places, open to the wind and sky, as if by soaking in it he could bring a little space inside himself.

Absently he reached out for Aysha’s colours, skimming through the glowing patterns of Chapterhouse’s other residents. A dense, vivid blue globe shrouded Alderan’s study, solid as steel. The room, with the entire senior faculty inside, was still sealed up tight in a ward he knew he couldn’t even begin to unpick.

Whatever message had been brought on the sea-elf ship must be dire news. It had demanded a chaser’s speed, and had summoned the entire Council into a suppertime session that for all he knew had continued clean through the night. War, perhaps. Maybe Lord Kierim’s efforts to maintain peace in Gimrael had finally failed, as Alderan had predicted, and the Empire was bracing for insurrection. Maybe the Church would declare another crisis of the faith and send the Knights riding out to battle.