‘Isn’t she a little darling?’ Baroness Melidere laughed.
‘Yes, Baroness,’ Alean murmured. Then a small frown creased the girl’s brow. ‘I’ll never understand that,’ she said. ‘No matter how closely I watch her, she always manages to get her feet dirty.’ She pointed at Danae’s grass-stained feet. ‘Sometimes I almost think she’s got a boxful of grass hidden among her toys, and she shuffles her feet in it when my back’s turned just to torment me.’
Melidere smiled. ‘She just likes to run barefoot, Alean,’ she said. ‘Don’t you ever want to take off your shoes and run through the grass?’
Alean sighed. ‘I’m in service, Baroness,’ she replied. ‘I’m not supposed to give in to that sort of whim.’
‘You’re so very proper, Alean,’ the honey-eyed Baroness said. ‘If a girl doesn’t give in to her whims now and then, she’ll never have any fun.’
‘I’m not here to have fun, Baroness. I’m here to serve. My first employer made that very clear to me.’ She crossed the room to the two ‘sisters’ and touched Danae’s shoulder. ‘Time for your bath, Princess,’ she said.
‘Do I have to?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s such a bother. I’ll just get dirty again, you know.’
‘We’re supposed to make an effort to stay ahead of it, your Highness.’
‘Do as she tells you, Danae,’ Mirtai said.
‘Yes, sister dear,’ Danae sighed.
‘That was an interesting exchange, wasn’t it?’ Sparhawk murmured to Sephrenia.
‘Yes,’ the small woman agreed. ‘Has she been letting things slip that way very often?’
‘I didn’t quite follow that.’
‘She’s not really supposed to talk about symbols the way she just did when she’s around pagans.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t use that word to describe us, Sephrenia.’
‘Well, aren’t you?’
‘It sort of depends on your perspective. What’s so important about symbols that she’s supposed to hide them?’
‘It’s not the symbols themselves, Sparhawk. It’s what talking about them that way reveals.’
‘Oh? What’s that?’
‘The fact that she doesn’t look at the world or think about it in the same way we do. There are meanings in the world for her that we can’t even begin to comprehend.’
‘I’ll take your word for it. Are you and Mirtai sisters now, too? I mean, if she’s Danae’s sister and you are too, wouldn’t you almost have to be?’
‘All women are sisters, Sparhawk.’
‘That’s a generalisation, Sephrenia.’
‘How perceptive of you to have noticed.’
Vanion entered the room. ‘Where’s Ehlana?’ he asked.
‘She and Betuana are conferring,’ Sparhawk replied.
‘Who’s translating for them?’
‘One of Engessa’s girls from Darsas. What did you want to talk with her about?’
‘I think we’ll be leaving tomorrow. Engessa, Oscagne and I talked with King Androl. Oscagne feels that we should press on to Matherion. He doesn’t want to keep the emperor waiting. Engessa’s sending his legions back to Darsas, he’ll be going on with us, largely because he speaks Elenic better than most Atans.’
‘That doesn’t disappoint me,’ Mirtai said. ‘He’s my father now, and we really ought to get to know each other better.’
‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, Vanion?’ Sephrenia said it half-accusingly.
‘I’ve missed it,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve been at the centre of things for most of my life. I don’t think I was meant to sit on the back shelf.’
‘Weren’t you happy when there were just the two of us?’
‘Of course I was. I’d have been perfectly content to spend the rest of my life alone with you, but we’re not alone any more. The world’s intruding upon us, Sephrenia, and we both have responsibilities. We still have time for each other, though.’
‘Are you sure, Vanion?’
‘I’ll make sure, love.’
‘Would you two like to be alone?’ Mirtai asked them with an arch little smile.
‘Later perhaps,’ Sephrenia replied quite calmly.
‘Won’t we be a little under-manned without Engessa’s Atans?’ Sparhawk asked.
‘King Androl’s making arrangements,’ Vanion said. ‘Don’t worry, Sparhawk. Your wife’s almost as important to the rest of us as she is to you. We’re not going to let anything happen to her.’
‘We can discount the possibility of exaggeration,’ Sephrenia said. ‘The Atan character makes that very unlikely.’
‘I’ll agree there,’ Sparhawk concurred. ‘They’re warriors, and they’re trained to give precise reports.’
Vanion and Zalasta nodded. It was evening, and the four of them were walking together outside the city in order to discuss the situation apart from Norkan and Oscagne. It was not that they distrusted the two Tamuls. It was just that they wanted to be able to speak freely about certain things which Tamuls were culturally unprepared to accept.
‘Our opponent is quite obviously a God,’ Zalasta said firmly.
‘He says it so casually,’ Vanion noted. ‘Are you so accustomed to confronting Gods that you’re becoming blasé about it, Zalasta?’
Zalasta smiled. ‘Just defining the problem, Lord Vanion. The resurrection of whole armies is beyond purely human capabilities. You can take my word for that. I tried it once and made a horrible mess of it. It took me weeks to get them all back into the ground again.’
‘We’ve faced Gods before,’ Vanion shrugged. ‘We stared across a border at Azash for five hundred years.’
‘Now who’s blasé?’ Sephrenia said.
