Tan was so thin and pale, and he looked so cold… She took one of his hands in both of hers. His fingers were cold as ice. She said over her shoulder, “Geroen, would you please build up the fire?”
The captain silently added a pine log to the fire, so that its resinous scent blended with the fragrance of the honeysuckle. Then he said again, “My lord…”
Bertaud turned to him, raising his eyebrows.
“My lord,” Geroen repeated more firmly. “I’ve prepared a full report for you. All the damage that was done—not much out in the town, not that that’s to my credit, which I know very well. More to the house.” He hesitated and then said, “I should never have let those Linularinan bastards get a foothold on this side of the river, as I know very well. All the harm we suffered—My lord, I acknowledge it’s my fault and my failing—”
Mienthe looked up in astonishment, though she didn’t let go of Tan’s hand. “That’s not true—”
“Certainly it seems unnecessarily simplistic,” Bertaud said mildly. “Mie, you’re well enough here? Will you send me word immediately in the case of any change, or tonight in any case? Captain Geroen, you must tell me all that happened in my absence.” He took the captain’s arm, turning him gently toward the door. “I shall assuredly be glad of your report. But let’s not be too hasty in declaring where the fault lies, shall we?” He led the other man out, and the door swung gently shut behind them.
Mienthe immediately forgot them. She leaned forward, studying Tan’s drawn face. He was still breathing. About the same, Iriene had said. Mienthe thought he was worse: more still, more fine-drawn, colder.
If this were an epic romance, she would sit by his bed until at last he wasted away—that was the phrase an epic would use: wasted away. Wasted, indeed. What a terrible waste Tan’s death would be. Bertaud had said Jos had saved them all, and of course he had; and so had Kes, and Kairaithin; and the Arobern by his courage, and Iaor by his generosity; and so had she, and what a very strange thought that was. But most of all Tan had saved them all, by knowing at the last what law to use to bind the world properly.
In a romantic epic, she would have fallen in love with Tan, and now she would watch him slowly waste away, and then she would go fling herself to her death from the highest tower of the house. Not that even the highest tower of this house was very tall, and it was surrounded by gardens and not paving stones. Probably, even if she were such a fool, she would only break her leg or something. So the romances had every detail wrong.
Or nearly every detail.
A mage who was also a friend could break this stillness. Mienthe came closer to being a friend than anybody else, but she wasn’t a mage. I just did things that came to me to do, she had said to Bertaud, and that was true. Nothing came to her now, though she would have welcomed an urge to draw a spiral, any sort of prompting toward anything that might help. But there was nothing, though she tried to clear her mind and heart invitingly. She had no idea how to coax Tan out of his deep silence.
She might find a quill, fold his fingers around it, and offer him a book with blank pages. The feel of a feather quill, the smell of paper—that might draw him out of himself. Except, not if he had burned out his gift. Mienthe thought; then the grief of realizing his loss might drive him further away into his silence rather than drawing him back into the world.
She leaned forward, reached out with one hand, and touched his cheek. “Tan,” she said, and realized with a faint despair that she did not even know with any certainty whether that was his name at all. He lied so easily about who he was… He lied with his words and his voice and his face, and then told the truth with his own blood, drawn out on the page… She said her own name instead, because she knew that it, at least, was true.
His eyelashes fluttered.
Mienthe was too startled to move, or to speak again.
“Mienthe?” he whispered, in a voice as scraped and raw as though he’d bound new law into the world by shouting and not with a quill.
That broke her stillness. Mienthe laughed, and found she was weeping. As weak as his voice was, the echo behind it was very strong. In fact, the echo behind him was suddenly very strong. She knew at once, though she could not have said how, that he had not lost his legist gift, that he had not lost anything. In every way that mattered, he was still himself, and she was suddenly glad of the strange new perception that let her be certain of that. She said through her tears, “Tan! I’m here—so are you—we’re safe, we’ve fixed everything, we’re all done, we’re home—Do you remember everything? Do you remember anything?”