The Paladin Part 18

"You'remy household," he said. "That's all. You want this. All right. You've got it." He took her hand in his. Hers was like ice, listless. "Let's do this in sensible order. Get a good night's rest. Start out in the morning." He put his hand on her hip and she flinched. "Changed your mind about tonight?"

"I-" Her teeth were chattering.

"Let me tell you: I almost married back in Chiyaden. Lady Meiya and I-were lovers in everything but the act. After that, I had no other women but courtesans. I'm telling you the truth. A boy was in love with a girl who became his emperor's wife. The boy and the girl were fools-who never took the chance they had to be happy. Honor meant everything to them, even when she despised her husband. And G.o.ds knowhe despised the Emperor. -Maybe we did choose right. Or maybe I'm twice a fool to have waited with you-but I'm used to waiting for women, you understand. And I'll go on waiting until you come tomy bed. If it's not tonight, that's all right. If it's never-that's all right. Whether we sleep together isn't the important thing. The important thing is the reason I'm going with you. The most important thing is the center of everything I've taught you. You know what that is now? You know why I'm going?"

She nodded, bit her lip and broke into tears. She hugged him and held onto him a long, long time.

A dog, he thought, would take advantage of a tired, distraught girl who had carried everything in the world alone. Even if he wanted to. Even if he figured it was a chance that would never come again and that she had no idea what she wanted.

So he held her like a brother and rocked her a moment and finally set her back by the arms and said: "Let's have supper. Let's not go off like lunatics, after you've waited two years. I'm not putting you off.

I'm just saying let's pack in good order and not start out tired. Tomorrow if everything's in order, day after if it's not. All right?"

She wiped her eyes, turned her face away, embarra.s.sed, and broke away from him, not hard, just not looking at him, not then, nor when she squatted down and busied herself at the hearth, wiping her eyes from time to time on her sleeve.

He came and squatted down peasant-style where he could see her face.

"I still want you," he said, in the case she had mistaken that. G.o.ds, it was true. He hoped he had not made his point too strongly. "I just don't want to push you into anything. You make up your own mind.

All right?" "I made it up," she said, between clenching her jaw and wiping her eyes.

"You're not scared of me. After all this."

She shook her head fiercely. Lying, he thought. And reckoned she had had her courage all put together and he had done the wrong thing. He put out his hand, rubbed the back of her neck. Her muscles were hard as stone. But she allowed the touch, and went on working, measuring out the rice, ignoring him.

"h.e.l.l with dinner," he said.

She shrugged his hand off, not looking at him, and turned and reached for the water-dipper.

"Hungry, are you?" he muttered.

"Everything in good order," she said, giving him his own back.

It was a d.a.m.ned nervous supper, out on the porch. Her hands were shaking. His were, though not so conspicuously. They said not half a handful of words to each other. She hardly looked at him; and he kept looking at the yard, the stable, the place that had been home. His thinking narrowed itself to the road, to reaching Hua, to a possibility of getting away from that and getting back to the road-he planned his retreats the way he had taught the girl, right along with the action.

And he chided himself for the morose turn of his thoughts. But it was a long road home again; and the ones who came home again-would not be the man and woman who had left. Not after the things they would do in Hua. Or that would be done to them.

She took the bowls and washed them, and he lit the lamp and made down a bed for them, both their mats together.

By that time she had come back again, and seeing what he had done with her mat, she looked apt to bolt from the door; but she set the bowls down by the door and looked at him, then went to her side of the room where he had piled their gear and undressed with her back to him.

He undressed and when she delayed, taking more time than the matter ought, he went over to her and put his arms around her from behind, feeling the tension in her from head to foot.

"It's all right," he said into her ear. "No lady ever complained of me." He ran his hand over her skin, soft as any lady's to his calloused hands, and felt her shivering like a rabbit. "There's no hurry."

Ten years on this mountain and he could hold off a little longer. He could d.a.m.ned well wait the little time she needed. An hour, two hours, if that was what it took, "I'll get you some wine," he said, and slapped her a stinging blow on the rump, the way he had done a few times in their working together. She jumped. "Both of us, all right?"

She gave him a shocked look, halfway offended, he thought, in her young pride. He got the wine down and poured a potful. And gave her a little smile, seeing her standing there somewhat confused and worried-looking.

"This isn't a duel," he said, and nodded toward the mat. "Get on over there." She went. She sat down crosslegged, her usual way, and he took a healthy drink from the pot, sat down and gave it to her.

"Big one," he said.

She gulped down two huge mouthfuls, and blinked and pa.s.sed it to him.

He took a drink and pa.s.sed it back. She took two more.

"That ought to do it," he said, and took one more himself. She was looking a little pale and sickly.

"Come on," he said, holding out his hand. "Face about, the other way."

"What are you going to do?"

"Nothing. Come on." As she edged about with her back to him. He rubbed her back and her shoulders, and uncrossed his legs and pulled her back then into his arms. He felt the panic in her, arranged his arms to let hers free. "There." He ran his hand gently over her skin. Her arms rested on his and he felt her sigh, finally, like a long-held breath, her shoulders relaxing against him.

"Good," he said, and worked lower, keeping his mind from what he was doing, deliberately, thinking that this had to be a long, slow night. He talked to her, nonsense. But the shivers grew fewer, and less frequent, even when his hand touched between her legs; and finally she jerked, doubled up, and nearly left his hold.

d.a.m.ned surprised, he thought. She had that look on her face when she twisted over and looked at him.

He felt his own reactions getting out of control then.

"Come on," he said, pulling her up against him. She had very little trouble taking the cues. He intended to have her atop. She turned to get him there, and he was careful going into her, with about the last control he had.

She was utterly still for a moment. Then he began to move, and finished faster than he would have wanted. But she wrapped strong legs around him and wrapped her arms around him and held on, just held him, for a long, long time, until he finally, realizing he was lying on her, eased over and held her the same way, gently.

"Was that bad?" he asked.

"No," she said after a moment.

"Did I hurt you?"

"No."

He lay there quite still a moment, wondering if he wanted to go on with the questioning.

Dammit, it mattered. But he was not going to ask question by question.

She tightened her arms around his neck, hard, with her considerable strength-not hurtful: trying, he thought, to say things too complicated to explain to a man. And he embraced her gently, a little pressure of his arms, thinking things too complicated to say to anyone that young and that old. He thought he knew what she was saying: too separate, too different; and both about the same, that it was nothing like the poets, nothing like a physical release, nothing that this could settle. It just started things, that was all, that made matters more complicated than they had ever been.

But she was glad to be where she was, he thought. Maybe she was glad he was going with her. Maybe not. Maybe she knew she was being a fool. Maybe he was an older, wiser witness than her notions wanted.

Maybe she had gotten fond of him, and he was more than an older, second-choice man to fill in for whatever she had lost-or dreamed, in a young girl's way, of having.

A man got older. A man got wary of caring for things too deeply. A man got wiser and ended up on a d.a.m.n mountain. A man could die alone up here.

There were a lot worse things than following a fool girl to Hua. There was a terrible end to it, of course; but lives always came to that, in some year; this spring's rabbit ended up a stain in the snow, but the world never cared, and the rabbit had no long memory of it either.

Chapter Ten.

He had never expected her to get up from his bed with any different att.i.tude: he had lived with Taizu long enough to know better than that: everything was ordinary with Taizu. She began to get up, waking him with her moving, she said she was going down for her bath, everything as matter of factly as if nothing had happened.

He reached out and grasped her wrist. "Well?"

"Well?" she echoed, worried-sounding. She was only a shadow against the light coming from under the door and through the cracks of the shutters.

"Was it all right?" he asked her.

A sort of motion of her head. He could not tell what.Yes , he thought.

"Don't I get an answer?" he asked.

She took his hand that was holding her wrist and pulled his fingers from her. Then she held that hand in both of hers.

They had made love again in the night. He was not sure who had started that. She might have. Certainly he had needed no reason, whether or not she had intended to come up close against him, and he had gone slower in the act this time, to give her the pleasure she had missed the last time. But he had fallen asleep again after, till she moved and waked him in the dawn.

She gave him no answer now, except the pressure of her hands around his.

Well, maybe, he thought, that was as fair an answer as she could give-no courtesan's glibOf course, my lord. Taizu thought about things. Taizu thought for days on a matter before she ever opened hermouth. He could imagine the pensive line between her brows and the fierce tightening of her mouth. Then she slipped away from him, grabbed up her clothes on the way to the door and fled in a flash of daylight.

So Shoka sat on the porch in the cool morning, with the polished bronze bowl hooked to the post, a pan of warm water in front of him, judiciously sc.r.a.ping the stubble from his chin. That he did most every day, when he got around to it. But this time he had put his scalplock up in its clip at the crown, the rest of it, still black and still thick as any boy's, to hang down his back. There were weather-lines about the face, sun-frown graven about the eyes and the edges of the mouth; but overall, looking at that image in the bronze, he saw an appalling similarity between himself and a certain younger man, and said to himself: Haven't learned a thing, have you?

He was finishing when Taizu came up the hill from her bath-she still preferred the spring, for whatever reasons; and he had rather the rainbarrel, which was not so cold a walk afterward. She looked at him sitting there in his old guise, her eyes widened, and she stopped there, with her wet shirt hugged about her in the chill.

He shook water from his razor and dried it, flattered and pleased at that look, that fed a vanity he had not known he had, and for which he was, all taken, a little regretful: d.a.m.ned nonsense, he thought, in the same moment, because it was not Shoka the man she was seeing. It was Saukendar the fool. The one the world knew.

But it did not please her.

What in h.e.l.l's the matter?he wondered, and froze, afraid suddenly, and not even knowing the answer.

She was afraid, he thought.

Of what? n.o.blemen?G.o.ds knew she had cause.

"Something the matter?" he asked her.

"No, master."

"Master, h.e.l.l. M'lord, if you like. Shoka if you don't." He rested the hand and the razor on his knee.

"About last night-"

"I'm cold. I want to get dressed."

"Girl, I'm more than fond of you, if you haven't figured that out. I'd have you for my wife, if you want that."

She looked at him still, so still, and drew herself up with one breath and a second, sharper one. She stood there a moment looking at him, gathering her composure. Then she bit her lip and ran the steps right past him.

"Doesn't that even get an answer, girl?"

He heard her stop. He heard her standing by the door, the little movements of breathing, against the hush of dawn. "I'm not a lady."

He turned around where he sat, and looked at her, figuring some of what was going on, at least. "My wife is whatever she wants to be. Mywife is a lady. That's what I'm offering, dammit. Idon't think I've insulted you."

A long silence. She looked toward the dark doorway, not at him, a long, long time. And the hand came up toward the scar which, G.o.ds witness, he had not so much as thought about, not last night, not this morning.

That d.a.m.ned scar and everything that went with it.

No tears. He feared she was going to cry in the next moment, and his gut tensed up; but she kept her composure. And never looked his way.

"Master Shoka, please don't come with me. Let me do this. Then I'll come back and be your wife. I'll be whatever you like. Juststay the h.e.l.l out of my trouble!"

He sat there, still, calm, while a girl cut at him in a way that no one on earth would do and walk away from-if he had not sensed the pain in her, and the woman's honor she had, not to take morning-promises of a man that he might be fool enough, having shared a bed with her-to mean for three and four hours.

"I put no conditions on anything," he said. "I couldn't stop you from coming here. Now you can't stop me from leaving this place. You see-preventingthings is very difficult. So I taught you. So I let you go. And now you can't stopme ."

"Yes, master Shoka." A hoa.r.s.e and hollow tone, as if she foreknew defeat and played the game for courtesy's sake.

"I'm no fool, girl. I pa.s.sed my own adolescence a long time ago. Give me that."

Silence.

"That's what you think, is it? I'm a fool?"

"No, master Shoka."

Bitterness overwhelmed him, a sudden vivid recollection of Meiya's grave, carefully painted face, a meeting in a garden, in the palace:Marry someone. For the G.o.ds' sake- And a thought, sharp-edged, that Meiya had traveled into that hazy nowhere-land of legends, a d.a.m.ned romance the country-folk told in wintertimes. Saukendar and lady Meiya. As if he, plain Shoka, had no right to tamper with that, or change the ending.

Master Saukendar. . . .

-Dammit to h.e.l.l, I'm still alive!

And if I want a Hua pig-girl in Meiya's place, isn't that my right?

I never wanted to be a d.a.m.n legend. "Dress," he said sharply. "Then get out here. Or if you've changed your mind about going to Hua, say.

You're not obliged to be a fool, you know. Or if you're set on it, then we'll go today. Whatever you choose."

She went inside. He picked up his shirt from beside him on the boards, put it on, belted it this time, and looked up at a thump and crash of something from inside the cabin.

Temper. Yes.