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 I regret it, I do, but such things happen in a war, and even worse.
She lifted her head and glared.  A war begun by the Prij, for the Prij. You
are still my enemy, Sei Arman. You hurt and killed my people, you seek to
crush my home. Don t imagine that I don t hate you.
 I don t. But I don t hate you or your people any more. He smiled, although
it was painful.  Kei is indeed  gidu , learned healer, if he could cure that
sickness in me.
 Kei s mother was one of the most skilled of our profession, my lord, but I
think he matches her already even though he s only twenty. If you really want
to make reparations for your crimes, then make sure he goes home and is
allowed to be a healer once more. He was born to it, it s his true love.
 I promise, I swear I will. Thank you. He stood.  I better let you go back to
your cooking.
 Yes, so I can spit in your omelette.
He only raised an eyebrow at her insolence.  If you so wish, lady Jena. I ve
eaten worse, I assure you.
That won a reluctant grin from his sworn enemy. Now, if only making Kei
smile were so easy....
Making Kei smile was in fact utterly beyond Arman s abilities, so he went
against his instincts, listened to Jena s advice, and continued to leave the
man alone as much as he dared. He had to be there for some meals, or Kei
wouldn t eat  careful and frankly sneaky enquiries had confirmed what he d
suspected, that Kei just didn t leave Arman s room if Arman were out, and the
other servants could hardly be ordered to wait on him. It was a juggling act
between giving him the solitude which seemed to be the only salve for his
soul they had, and making sure he didn t begin to starve again. He was losing
weight already but there didn t seem to be anything Arman could do about it.
He had no answer to the dilemma, however much he searched his heart.
He knew he d had no choice that day, even if Kei wouldn t ever believe him.
He had begun investigations into what exactly had happened at Vinri, but any
response would take many weeks to arrive, and it wouldn t bring the dead
back to life. It wouldn t change the fact that the executions had been at best
pointless and at worst, purely vindictive and cruel, carried out in the most
vicious way. He couldn t fix that either, but it meant that the images in Kei s
mind, his memories, were as painful as could have been designed. Arman
even wondered if killing Mekus the same way would help at all  that he
would seriously consider murdering a senator showed how desperate he was,
he knew  but he knew it wouldn t. The answer was not more death and
cruelty, any more than another death had eased Arman s heart when Loke
had died.
Loke...now, he would have known how to fix this. He would know
instinctively how to gain Kei s trust again, and how to heal that damaged
heart. But Arman was not Loke, and just didn t have a solution.
The military situation refused to change at all. If anything, the siege seemed
to be draining Kuprij more than Darshek, and there had been discreetly angry
exchanges in the senate over the policy. No direct criticism of Kita, of course,
but the senators were beginning to lose faith in the project. What they would
decide to do if they dropped the siege, Arman didn t know  he wasn t privy to
that level of discussion, at least, not yet. No, they would tell him when they
wanted some more innocent Darshianese murdered and not before, he
thought sardonically.
The Solstice came and went. Karus stayed in good health, but Arman felt
guilty for wishing that Kei and Jena would still be here for the festival,
because his wish had been granted in a way he d never wanted. The gods
perhaps punishing him for his loss of faith, he thought, which was nearly as
effective as punishing a woman for losing her virginity outside marriage. Once
lost, never recovered, no matter what the retribution. The gods had no more
claim on Arman s heart, they had broken their covenant with him too many
times.
He had insisted to Senator Mekus that he wanted an opportunity to
question the replacement hostages from Vinri when they arrived, which they
did two days after the Solstice. He had them taken to the blue reception hall
and then extracted their unofficial leader for a private audience in his office.
The man was sullen, with none of the air of pleasant cooperation that Arman
had come to associate with the first group of hostages, but Arman wasn t
going to hold that against him. He had good cause, he felt.  I want you to tell
me how the soldier died last month, why he was killed by your people. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]