The War, page 35
And there had been an endless whirl of work, one that Laufeia had embraced gladly, but she had forgotten to seize the slow moments when they came, had forgotten Mordred. And she did not mean to let it go by another day.
She carefully pushed the door open.
The room was tiny, scarcely more than a cubicle for a bed; but it was bright with sunshine that poured in through a wide-open window on the opposite wall. On her left was an open closet, and on her right the bed, and on the bed—staring out the window—
“Mordred!”
He swung his head around, startled.
How different he looked! She realized that she had not seen him since the day he left Ceristen. There were tight lines of pain around his eyes and his mouth, contracting in his forehead. Dark rings of sleeplessness circled his eyes. He was so thin. Worst of all, the old darkness and suffering inside had not left him. If possible, it seemed to have grown.
“Mordred,” she murmured, sorrowfully.
He studied her, a tired, quizzical look. “Laufeia? Nobody told me you were here.”
“Oh, Mordred, where does it hurt?”
“Please, no, Laufeia.”
“Tell me, Mordred! I want to know.”
“Girls . . . ” He breathed in raggedly and bit down hard on his lower lip. “Think you can kiss it and make it better. Well . . . you can’t.”
She stamped her foot. “Talking hurts you, I can see that.”
Mordred stared coolly and shrugged the tiniest shrug, which made him catch his breath in a broken gasp.
“Is there nothing you can do without pain?” she cried, half in tears.
He answered nothing.
She flung herself onto a chair and sobbed, angry in part, in part sad, mostly miserable.
“I can see you are getting along very well in here,” came Irene’s voice, cutting dryly into her stormy weeping.
“Irene, go out,” Mordred ordered sternly.
“I am not inclined to obey mandates coming from my patients,” Irene retorted. “They rarely want what is good for them.”
“Irene,” said Mordred, his voice was steely and calm, “leave the room. At once. Your assistance is not required here. Laufeia will call you if it is.”
“I will know if my assistance is required,” returned Irene, and she went out.
No sooner had the door shut than Mordred lost consciousness and pitched back onto the bed.
Laufeia flew up in a panic and dashed over to him, putting her hand over his bloodless lips and brow, snatching his hands, but even as she gasped out his name his chest heaved violently and he came out of it with a shaken ghost of a laugh. “Little . . . goose,” he told her, his words faint and breathless. “If I’d been dying, Irene—would have come back in. It was my silly self—repressing all the pain while I talked to her. She probably knew it . . . figures I’m properly punished now. Thinks I won’t do it again.”
“Oh, Mordred!” she exclaimed, exasperated by his willful stupidity.
His eyes drifted closed, ribs lifting in those quick, struggling breaths. He opened them again by a pitiful effort. “I’m sorry, Laufeia. I didn’t want to make you—cry. It does hurt, if you want to know, it hurts everywhere, my chest, my shoulders, my stomach, my leg, my head—even my neck aches. Please, Laufeia. You know it’s not easy for me to give in. I didn’t want you to cry. Please forgive me.”
“Of course I do,” Laufeia choked out. She did know how hard it was for Mordred, how he hated to even mention an injury, much less how it hurt. She had been unfeeling herself, and put him in a situation where he was forced to give way, apologize, and try to comfort a childish sister.
Mordred’s chest heaved again in a faint, hoarse cough. Laufeia sprang up.
“Let me get you some water, Mordred. Your throat must be dry.”
“Oh, I’ll be all right,” said Mordred, relaxing against his pillow with a faint smile.
“Nonsense,” said Laufeia and she rose to fetch the pitcher on a stand by the window.
The quarrel was over.
CHAPTER 33
“SO OUR DRAGON ATTACK PROVED largely a success,” finished the general, bending over the many maps and diagrams on the table. The other captains in the room gathered around to study them as well.
“Excellent,” said Jedediah Crayes lazily, not bothering to look, as he claimed to have all the maps memorized.
“Largely a success, aye,” said Captain Murray. “But it was hardly a dent in the forces arrayed against us. We cannot hold them off indefinitely, nor can we begin to drive them away.”
Jedediah Crayes shut his eyes in obvious exasperation. “Thank you, Captain Murray, for your encouraging sentiments which we have heard from several different sources a thousand times.”
The room fell silent, and the informal meeting drifted away from the center of the discussion room to its edges.
“I suppose you haven’t seen anything lately of that Mordred brat?” Jedediah Crayes remarked to the general.
The general looked up, his dark eyes saddening suddenly. “He is under the care of a hospice in the city. He was severely injured in the battle when his dragon fell on him.”
Jedediah Crayes blinked at him briefly. With an exclamation he leaped up and dashed out of the room.
~
Laufeia reached up, stretching on tiptoe to tuck the fluttering cloth into the window frame. “There, does it not look home-like?” she said to Mordred, surveying the bit of white linen hanging over the top of the window like a curtain.
Mordred looked over as though trying to appear interested for her sake. He managed a tolerant, tired smile and stared at the wall across again.
There were footsteps banging in the hall. The door slammed open with a force that made Laufeia jump, and a lithe, hawk-faced man stormed in. “What do you think you were doing, you idiot?” he shouted at Mordred, flinging an accusing finger at him. “Getting yourself practically killed in the stupid battle, and then not telling me a word about it! No, Jedediah Crayes waits in the dark for three days before anybody thinks to enlighten him to what is going on. ‘Oh yes, make sure Jedediah Crayes doesn’t find out about this. He doesn’t want to know that I was stupid and let dragons fall on top of me.’ How witless can you get? What do you think you were doing? Is that enjoyable to you, stupidity? An enjoyable pastime?”
Laufeia took a step forward, about to tell him to stop shouting at Mordred, when she noticed that Mordred was sitting up, his eyes bright and an amused grin pervading his face.
“Are you quite finished?” he asked in his lilting, mock-serious voice, a voice Laufeia had not heard him use since his return from Delgrass.
“No! Yes!” The man swung his arm in an irritated gesture, hitting the wall.
Mordred started to laugh, but it ended in a gasp and he lay back, biting his lip until it turned white.
Jedediah Crayes’ entire demeanor instantly changed, his face sobering. He came forward, twitching his head slightly in a movement of anger or disapproval. “Little idiot,” he muttered, but the tone was almost gentle. “Are you all right? No, don’t tell me, I know your formula. ‘I’m fine.’ You’re not fine. Dragon fell on top of you? Do you mind explaining why you’re not dead?”
“To begin with,” said Mordred wearily, though he still smiled a little as he spoke, “the dragon was shot close to the ground. It didn’t fall particularly far. Also it fell with the saddle over my chest, so I wasn’t quite so crushed.”
“Crushed enough, I should imagine,” Jedediah Crayes muttered grimly, his gaze flickering to Mordred’s chest. “Did you break every single one of your ribs?”
Mordred took a shallow breath and flinched again. “Sometimes it feels like it,” he murmured faintly, the pretense down for a moment. His eyes blinked and he looked up at Jedediah Crayes. “But I’m all right.” He smiled oddly. “You needn’t worry about me.”
“I don’t worry about anyone,” said Jedediah Crayes gruffly. “I have no friends to worry about.”
“I know,” said Mordred with that peculiarly knowing smile. He shut his eyes.
“Who are you anyway?”
It took a moment for Laufeia to realize he was barking the question at her. She lifted her chin and met his sharp gaze steadily. “I am his sister, sir.”
“I believe you,” he said with a careless shrug, dropping the close scrutiny. “Princess of Dirion, eh?”
“What? Mordred, what did you—”
“He made me tell him, sister,” said Mordred, sounding like if he were less exhausted he would have laughed. “It is all right. I trust him not to repeat it in public settings.”
Laufeia took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
~
“Mordred!”
Mordred managed a small smile for Therelane, and tried to conceal how tired he was of the level of shock that he was greeted with. Did he really look so dreadful? he wondered disinterestedly. Jedediah Crayes had been far preferable to the dull repetition that everyone else gave.
“Mordred—” Therelane stammered, coming forward into the room.
“Did you slip away just to come see me?” Mordred inquired flatly.
“Nay! Of course not! There’s little going on right now. I asked leave. Are you—Mordred, are you—”
“Am I all right? Hardly. Am I suffering? Not as much as a few days ago. Am I tired of people looking at me like I turned into a werevulture? Rather. Thank you for asking.”
He saw Therelane’s face fall and knew how sarcastic he had sounded. “I’m—sorry, Therelane.” He shut his eyes, turning his face away into the pillow. “I can’t seem to keep a rein on what comes out of my mouth.”
Therelane was beside him, laying his hand quickly on Mordred’s. “No, Mordred. It’s all right, truly. It was a lack-wit’s reaction I gave, only I was surprised—but I should have known better. Besides, I behaved as bad as you when I was recovering, if not worse.”
Mordred opened his eyes and sent Therelane a sheepish grin. “I doubt it. But thank you.”
“If Irene comes to see you as often as she did me,” Therelane went on brightly, “I shouldn’t wonder you feel snappish. Five minutes of Irene is enough to set most anyone on edge.”
It was an attempt to divert him, and a rather obvious one, but Mordred did not care. He was ready to talk to someone else who knew. “If only she would not come and tell me that she hopes I am getting enough sleep, that she hopes I am not exerting myself, that she hopes no-one has been exciting me or upsetting me. If only she would not prod my broken leg every single day and talk about how she hopes it will not heal crooked, and about the hundreds of young men she saw who broke their legs and never walked straight again!”
He knew he had pressed himself too far and bit his lip against the arrows of pain shooting through his ribs. His body was trembling and sweating with the strain of speaking so long and loudly. But he was glad to have said it.
Therelane’s hand tightened on his own. “Aye, I know. It will be all right, Mordred. I hated to have her talking to me like that as well, but if you were really in danger of a crooked leg she would tell you straight out, not just talk about it on and on.”
“I guessed that,” said Mordred faintly; he had, but it felt that much better to hear Therelane say it aloud.
“You’re tired,” said Therelane. “I ought to go, most likely.”
“Nay, don’t—it will pass.”
“Maybe, but I haven’t long to stay anyway. Mordred—” Therelane hesitated. There was an unspoken anxiety of some kind in his soft grey eyes, something he wanted to say.
“Aye?”
“Mordred, you know the leader?”
Mordred felt a sick twinge in his stomach with the sudden, sharp return of memories he had forgotten for days. “What about him?”
“How he found you that night—and I knocked him out. How I—I failed to kill him. Mordred, I didn’t even think.”
Mordred could barely remember. He felt a vague hint of recollection, of a sharp pain tracing through his arm, of the leader’s face framed against the stars. Therelane saying something.
Therelane was watching him, his eyes filled with worry and guilt.
“You haven’t anything to blame yourself for, Therelane,” he said softly. “We were both a little—shaken. Besides, what would killing him have done in the end? Someone else would have taken command of the army.”
Therelane nodded, his face easing—but not completely. “Mordred, he still wants—”
“Hush,” said Mordred fiercely, not caring for the pain that flooded his chest at the vehement motion. “Don’t talk about that to me. Who knows who might hear. It doesn’t matter, Therelane.”
The enemy was still outside Orden. They had not breached the defense. And he? He was trapped here until he healed. He was safer than he had been for months. And the last thing that he wanted was to talk about the leader to Therelane.
“All right,” Therelane said unwillingly. “I—”
“Go,” Mordred said sharply. “Please, go.”
He buried his face in the pillow until the door opened and Therelane’s footsteps faded down the hall.
~
There was a strange, eerie sameness to the room from day to day. Fred rested on the bed, clinging to life by a frail thread that should break at any moment. Fiona came to his side each day for an hour, or as long as Irene could spare her, watching as his face slowly hollowed and his body grew gaunt. She gave him water, small dipperfuls, and held his dry lips shut until he had swallowed it. But he never moved or made the slightest sign of consciousness.
Yet strangely, this day, a hope budded painfully in her heart.
He had already lasted beyond what Irene had expected of him. “A few days,” she had said, surely meaning no more than two or three. Yet this was the sixth day, and he still lived. Could it be—
She did not want to let herself think it, did not want to let herself hope. Better to say farewell, and be at peace. But the thought wormed its way through, for in her heart she did not really want to stop it.
Could it be—that because his body had held onto life those few days longer, that a balance might be tipped? Could his frame, battered and blood-drained, begin to slowly heal?
And she thought of Fred’s loving face looking upon hers, not as her betrothed but as her husband, and thought of sun on Thiranu, and a home for the two of them, and a child, all the things that she had put behind her, and knew that she wanted him to live again. And she began to cry, because while she had accepted his death, its promise had been resigned and bittersweet. But now, the grief would return tenfold.
She did not cry long. Only once had she wept with total abandon at his bedside. She only let her head rest quietly on his chest, an aching storm lashing within her.
At last she rose to go. But while she still held his hand fast, gazing down at him, she felt it stir distinctly against her own.
A tide of wild emotion surged through her so shockingly swift and powerful that she sank to her knees again and buried her head in her hands.
It was moments before she could stand. His hand did not move again, but she took it and kissed it lightly before she left, joy quivering through her whole self. She forgot even to be afraid to hope.
~
Mordred watched the sun-motes dance in the shaft that fell across his bed. For some reason, the pain was worse today; he did not know why—he had learned there was no reason to it. It was strange how when one’s body hurt so much, nothing seemed to matter or be real except the pain.
Someone entered, not Irene’s steps and not Laufeia’s. Mordred looked up, and saw Inspector Dickson.
He fell back against the pillow, teeth shut hard. How dare he come now—at all the times when he was weakest, he delighted to come—
“What do you want?” he asked through tight lips, staring up towards the ceiling, refusing to look at Inspector Dickson.
“I’ve been told to see to the wound on your arm.”
“What needs to be seen about it?” The effort needed to keep his voice and face cold and distant, free from any hint of pain, was intense. If Inspector Dickson did not go soon enough, he would end by passing out again . . .
~
Inspector Dickson looked down at the young man’s hard, disdainful face, feeling more tired than ever of the fight. Maybe—maybe Mordred was tired of it, too; he had none of the usual sarcastic rejoinders.
He was close, so close to admitting how much he had been in the wrong, so close to saying the words that he almost believed—I’m sorry. Because, after all, he had been in the—
Mordred spoke, his voice heavy with bitterness. “Well, go on. Or are you wondering where you left the salt, to rub into it?”
The injury of that blow, falling as it did into his own contrite thoughts, maddened Inspector Dickson like a taunted bull. He had been wrong; Mordred was not tired of the fight, not sorrowful, not remorseful. The more he thought on it, the more unfair it seemed to him, and the more furious he became. If Mordred wanted to keep the strife alive, so be it! He would give him what he asked for. He would enter wholeheartedly into everything that Mordred called him. He would stoke the fires as hot as Mordred wished them to be.
“I seem to have left it behind today,” he said deliberately in answer to Mordred’s gibe about the salt. “I hope my presence will be enough to discomfit you.”
With a cold restraint he set about cleaning the wound. He did not try to hurry through the task.
~
Inspector Dickson came daily to look at Mordred’s arm after that. Mordred pretended that it was because Inspector Dickson had asked for the duty, though he did not believe any such thing. But he began to see a change in him, as their paths crossed again and again. For a little while he could not discern what it was.
Then he saw that Inspector Dickson was not trying to rein in his anger any longer. He no longer tried to argue his own justification from deeds in the past. More than that, he sought to provoke Mordred. He wanted Mordred to be angry with him.
