Paks interrupted. “I can’t forget how it was for me. That must not happen to you, Marshal-General, or anyone else if I can prevent it. I’m not a Kuakgan; their powers come from the health of living things. Even the touch of iynisin blood can be fatal; their malice infuses it with evil. King Kieri, remember, had but a scratch … and it was a Kuakgan who healed him.”
Arianya took a deep breath and nodded. “Well, then. If I need a Kuakgan, I’d best find one.” She pushed away from the pillow and swung her legs over the side of the bed; dizziness blurred her vision. Paks’s arm steadied her.
“Not you—one of us. You lost more blood than you know.”
By the next day, Arianya was back at work, accompanied always by a High Marshal or one of the paladins, while somewhere—she did not know where—someone, almost certainly Paks, sought a Kuakgan willing to help her. She felt better, though still weak, and dug through the paperwork that had accumulated during her illness. Arvid had organized it for her and explained his reasons when she asked.
“I never expected a thief-assassin to be this good at organization,” she said on the third day, leaning back and shaking out a hand cramp.
Arvid ducked his head. “If I were good at organization, I would be head of the Guild in Vérella,” he said.
Arianya looked at him. “Do you wish you were?”
“No … not now. But it still gripes me that I was fooled—”
“And it gripes me that I was fool enough not to anticipate the attack that left me flat for hands of days. I must let that go—and so must you.”
“Speaking as the Marshal-General,” he said, this time with a tinge of humor.
“Yes. Precisely. Arvid, you’re now in the Fellowship of Gird, and though we value your knowledge of the Guild, we value you—you as a yeoman of Gird—more. If I fix my mind on my failure … I will fail again. The same with you.”
“I am well rebuked,” Arvid said, though the glint in his eye left her in doubt about the depth of his contrition. “But I prefer not to fail.”
“I, also. You do realize that you have gone far beyond your duties as one of the scribes?”
“Yes, Marshal-General.”
“In another quarter-year—no, it’s less now—your candidate year will be completed. Have you thought what you will do when you are no longer a yeoman-candidate and under your Marshal’s direct command? You have not missed a drill night but one; isn’t that right?”
“Saving the time on the journey north, Marshal-General.”
“And honest as well. Arvid … Gird speaks to you. You have some purpose here, more than just one letter in a page of writing. Has Gird given you any hints lately?”
Arvid scowled, staring at the floor, and rocked backward and forward on his heels. “Marshal-General, Gird is … hard to understand sometimes. There are hints … but I do not know how to interpret them.”
“Tell me.” When he said nothing, she waited until finally his head came up and he met her gaze. She nodded.
“It cannot be … what I understood,” Arvid said. “I am not shy of my past, Marshal-General, as you know. I was what I was; it made me what I am; it is … real. But it is not the life that leads … anywhere … in the Fellowship, I mean.”
“Gird was a peasant,” Arianya said. “Luap was a bastard, and I know your opinion of him. So what impediment is there for you in any position Gird might suggest?”
“I’m starting late,” Arvid said.
She sighed.
Daughter, do not waver.
“Arvid, you have done all you could to become a good yeoman … you have observed the duties, you have said the words. By that measure, you are a good yeoman. But I cannot see you working the rest of your life among the scribes, copying out one document after another. You are not that kind of man—you know that.”
Now it was his turn to sigh. “I cannot leave my son,” he said. “Until he is grown—”
“He fares well,” Arianya said, “Both in the grange and with his fellow junior yeomen. He is happy—or so the yeoman-marshal for juniors reports.”
Arvid nodded. “He is indeed happy and healthy, and I intend to keep him so.”
“So do we all,” Arianya said. His eyes widened briefly, then narrowed.
“You would take me from him?”
“No. You are his father. But you need to know, and accept, that you are not the only one wishing him well and happy. Should you fall—and that may happen to anyone by a strike of lightning from the sky, by a fall, by someone’s carelessness with a horse and cart, as well as by malice—you should know that others will care for your son.”