CHAPTER 31

THE trip home was slow, the pace set by the walking wounded among them. Gabrielle spent long hours wedged into a cart with Derkh or another of the grievously injured men and more time in the evenings working with the other bonemenders. By nightfall she was stiff and weary, more than ready for sleep.

Still, she found time to walk with Tristan and give him a full account of Jerome’s death. This time she was able to tell it with more sorrow than shame, and Tristan’s heartfelt reaction comforted her as much as Haloan’s wise words.

“He wasn’t alone, then. Thank the gods,” said Tristan. His voice roughened with emotion. “All this time I imagined the two of you, each dying alone and uncared for on that bloody field. It filled me with horror.” He stopped walking and turned her by the shoulders toward him, his blue eyes serious for once. “You shouldn’t have gone back, Gabrielle. It could have been the death of you. But thank you. Thank you for staying with him and easing his passage.”

They walked on awhile in silence, until Tristan began humming in time to their steps. Gabrielle recognized the tune as one they had sung at FirstHarvest. “That seems a long time ago,” she offered.

But Tristan didn’t hear. He was lost in his thoughts, his eyes far away. A second later he said, “Sorry. Did you say something?”

“So long ago I’ve nearly forgotten,” Gabrielle replied, amused. “Wandering the clouds, were you?”

Tristan was only a little sheepish. “I was thinking about Rosalie, if you must know. Maybe it’s seeing you and Féolan together; it makes me wish I’d been more serious with her.”

Gabrielle felt a pang of guilt. She had not told Tristan yet of her birth, and she hated to keep it from him. It was for Solange to hear it first, though. “How is it between you and Rosalie, anyway?”

“I wish I knew,” Tristan replied glumly. “Her father whisked her back to Blanchette when we first started mustering—thought it would be safer. She could be married by now.”

“Now that seems unlikely,” Gabrielle chided. “For one thing, I shouldn’t think there are too many marriageable men in Blanch-ette these days. Didn’t they all come up with Dominic to defend Chênier?”

Tristan seemed cheered at the thought. He turned to Gabrielle with a wheedling grin. “You could put in a good word for me with her father. Tell him, you know, how responsible and serious I’ve become.”

Gabrielle resisted the temptation to tease him. “I doubt you’ll have any shortage of people to put in a good word for you, Tris,” she said.

DERKH WAS SILENT AND GUARDED, perhaps with good reason. He got his share of dark looks from the soldiers who passed them by. It was one thing to give downtrodden Greffaire peasants free passage through the Basin lands, quite another to shelter the son of the invading commander. Tristan made a point of walking by Derkh’s cart, and the men of his unit followed his lead. In this way the boy’s presence gained grudging acceptance.

Féolan, however, was constrained in the young man’s company, and he knew very well why. Col’s death lay between them, a malevolent unseen presence. He said nothing until Derkh regained some strength. Then one evening when the others were hunkered around a fire, he asked him for a private audience. The road skirted the river here, and it was but a short walk to a sloping granite bank. Here Féolan pulled out his sword, laid it at the astonished boy’s feet and knelt before him.

“Féolan. What is this?” Derkh’s voice was unsteady, for he recognized the action.

“I owe you the blood-price, Derkh.” Féolan had learned the term in Gref Oris, and though the concept was savage, he could think of no other atonement that would satisfy a Gref Orisé citizen. “It was I who killed your father. I fought him fairly, face to face. Still, I am sorry for the grief I have caused thee.”

He looked up at Derkh in utter seriousness. “If you wish to kill me, I will not resist.” It was a deadly gamble, but Féolan believed he had read the boy’s character aright. He waited.

For one moment, Derkh was a breath away from snatching up the sword. Justice, his mind clamored. You shall have justice.

But it wasn’t justice, was it? Rather it had been justice for Féolan to kill an invader. He thought of Gabrielle, who had healed him not for fear of her life but out of simple compassion when it would have been “justice” to let him die.

With a shaky hand, Derkh picked up the sword and passed it back to Féolan. “Take it,” he said thickly. “It is my father who was the cause of ... “ He gestured back up the road. “It shames me to have been his son.”

“Nay, Derkh,” said Féolan softly. Here, he thought with a twist of pity, was another painful burden, one no boy should have to carry. “Hear what I say now,” he said, switching to Gref Orisé speech and laying a hand on Derkh’s shoulder. Derkh would not meet his eyes but did not shrug him away. “Your father’s actions, I doubt not, were true to his beliefs. From what I saw of your land, there is no great leeway given in the matter of beliefs. But Col was a courageous and loyal warrior, and he followed his duty as he saw it. You may disagree with his actions. But you need never be shamed at your parentage.”

He never quite remembered how it happened that Derkh was pressed against him, crying in great gasping sobs that wrenched his thin shoulders. It didn’t matter. Féolan held him until he was done, and thus was their friendship sealed.

BETWEEN FÉOLAN AND GABRIELLE too, a strange tension hung. It began imperceptibly, but seemed to Gabrielle in the latter part of the journey to grow with every step they took toward Chênier. The delight they found in each other’s presence became muted, their silences awkward where once they had been full of ease. Their conversation was careful, not quite so freely spoken from the heart.

Her own uncertainty for the future was the cause. As she neared her home, it loomed over her, pulling her in too many directions. She did not know how to speak of it to Féolan, and it made her withdrawn and oversensitive.

They were about a day and a half from Chênier when Féolan raised the matter directly. They were having a rare meal alone. Tristan was eating with the men of his unit. Derkh, who walked or rode Arda for short distances now, still tired quickly and was dozing in the shade. Féolan returned from the cook tent with a distinctly unappetizing menu—cold stew from the night before and a round of stale flat bread. Looking at the congealed gray broth in her bowl, Gabrielle wrinkled her nose. “Nasty.”

“Enough to turn one altogether against Human cookery,” Féolan agreed.

Gabrielle flared, the humor lost on her. “This sludge is not ‘cookery,’ and you know it. There’s nothing wrong with the food I was raised on!” She dug her spoon into the ugly-looking stew, raised it to her lips—and could not make herself eat it. What was wrong with her, snapping at an innocent jest? She set the bowl beside her on the ground and took a deep, deliberate breath before meeting Féolan’s eyes. In them she read concern, not offense, and that unsettled her further, ready as she was to be angry.

“I’m sorry, Féolan,” she said. “That was uncalled for.” She didn’t feel better, though. She felt “all in a turmoil”—her mother’s expression.

There was a careful pause as they both searched for the words to put things right again.

“Is it well with thee, Gabrielle?” asked Féolan, lapsing into the more formal speech that came naturally to him at serious moments. “You seem ... “

“I know I haven’t had much time for you,” she cut in. “But I have to put the patients first.” She had declined to resume leadership of the bonemenders, content to leave it with Manon, who had done an admirable job in her absence. But she had still taken on full duties.

“I know you do,” he said quietly. “A calling is not a thing that can be set aside on a whim. And I was not about to complain about the lack of your company, well though I would love more of it.”

“I would too,” confessed Gabrielle. She felt calmer, her defensiveness falling away. They had had so little chance to be alone together.

“I was going to say, you seem worried. Though I’m not sure that is quite the right word. Is it near the mark?”

It was. Suddenly the bottled-up words came out in a rush. “So much in my life has changed, Féolan, with no chance to understand it. I have not even properly mourned my father yet. And what will come after? I try to imagine what our life will be, and I cannot see it. Am I to leave Gabrielle behind and become Twylar? My family is still my family, no matter my birth. And my work ... It’s not conceit, I don’t think, to say that these people—my people—need me in a way the Elves do not. When I made my vows, it was them I promised to serve ... “

She paused, searching for her next words. “Your home is so beautiful and its people also. There could be happiness for me there, I think. But Féolan, am I to turn my back completely on Verdeau?”

She had not glanced at him once while speaking, determined to say it all, whatever his reaction. Now she was surprised to see him looking so unperturbed. He laughed out loud at her obvious relief.

The horns sounded, and they were on the road again before Féolan spoke.

“Perhaps you’ll want to live in Chênier still, or spend half of each year there,” he mused. “Many Elves divide their time between two settlements where they have close ties. My own parents have been several years now in Moonwash settlement, visiting my mother’s people.

“Or maybe,” he smiled, “the role of First Ambassador will be a real position now, and we will travel the roads of the Basin together, you mending the sick while I conduct terribly important talks with terribly important people.”

Gabrielle thought of Féolan’s parents, away “visiting” for years rather than weeks, and understanding blossomed within her.

“We have time, Gabrielle,” Féolan said, reaching out to fold her hand in his. “Time to experiment and see what feels right. Time to find a life that welcomes us. You don’t have to hurry your path.”

They did have time, more time than Gabrielle had ever imagined. The road ahead was long, but for now she need only see as far as the next destination. And that was easy.

She was going home.