When Thera spoke, there was no hint of the anger on her face. Instead, she stepped sideways, seeming to block something from Alaysha's view "He's there," she nodded toward a sleeping figure, nude, on top of a bed made of rushes, and if Alaysha was right, softened by cattail seeds and goose down. The fluff of them must have taken thousands of plants to harvest to make such a bedding. Lucky Gael. Alaysha started toward him and stopped a few paces from the bed. Gael was most definitely sleeping. The bruises on his ribs were clearing and already turning yellow.
"He must be cold," she said to no one in particular.
"In this heat?" Thera said, taking the opportunity to work her way past the smouldering fire she'd been knelt over when Alaysha had entered. "Don't be foolish."
Alaysha had the nearly irresistible desire to cover Gael's hips. She had nothing but her own tunic to do so. "At least cover him, give him some dignity."
"A man needs no such consideration," Uta said, holding the flap of the door high enough to enter. The breeze danced through the space, picking up scents of balsam and wild onion. Thera stepped backwards again, moving so as to distract or attract attention, close enough now that Alaysha could smell the myrrh on her. What had she been doing, Alaysha wondered. And why didn't she want Uta to know.
Alaysha dared turn to examine the face of the crone and was instantly sorry she did.
The woman's hair must have been white, but it was too full of wet chalk blended into ropes that reached down to bare sagging breasts with nipples coated in chalk residue. The face creased itself in hundreds of wrinkles caked with the same chalk. It was almost as though she'd painted her face so often into the same pattern that the wrinkles traced the lines for her now. It was the eyes that frightened Alaysha the most. She expected them to be filming with age but they snapped with life and vigour. Vigorous they might be, but they were not good-humoured. They narrowed as they bore into Alaysha.
"You and this large man came for the boy Bodicca brought."
"We did."
"You know of her fate, then?"
Alaysha nodded, deciding she wouldn't think of the mess Bodicca's back had been in, that this Uta had made of it.
The crone eased her way to a doddering stand at Gael's bedside. "Best to leave, young one," she said. "We'll see you laden with beast and bounty."
Alaysha meant to push the woman away from Gael, but when she moved, so too did Thera, side stepping as though there was something behind her that she didn't want Alaysha to see, but there was nothing but shadows in the gloom of the lodge. A few furs and covers on a cot at the other end. Perhaps it moved, that pile, rising slowly, falling again like a sleeper breathing during light dreams. She thought to take a step toward it but caught Thera's eye; she could swear her legs had somehow got stuck in mud. Her feet, always bare, had muck seeping out between the toes; she could actually feel it squishing between them until she looked down to confirm it and nothing was there.
She darted a look at Thera. Alaysha could feel it already letting go, the sense of capture easing. Light flooded the lodge and a current of air washed over her arms.
"Leave," Cai said to her as she entered. "Find your young man and—do whatever it is you do with your men."
Thera took an almost conscious step forward; the look that passed between them earlier had returned. "The party –"
Cai glared at Alaysha, but nothing short of death could move her. The raiding party meant Edulph, and though he wasn't exactly an ally, he was much too much of an enemy for Alaysha to be ignorant of his welfare. Alaysha stiffened her back stubbornly.
The magnets never left Alaysha's face even when she answered Thera. "Only one remains. The man is gone."
Gone? Only one?
"I don't understand," Alaysha heard herself say."
Cai crossed her arms and the playfulness, the flirtation, the easiness of before was gone. Back again was the impassive stare, the trained face of the warrior. Oh how well Alaysha knew it.
"One Enyalian has returned," Cai said. "The rest are dead. Your man is nowhere to be found."
Edulph couldn't have killed them. Alaysha knew it; she also knew Cai didn't believe Edulph had killed them either. In fact, she thought everyone in the room believed him completely innocent and that left one very big problem.
Because no Enyalian she'd met so far seemed the least bit worried about attack. Until now.