Free Fortress of Dragons by C. J. Cherryh Page B

truth is, if you had died and if everyone had died, Hasufin didn’t care. It didn’t matter to him. It doesn’t matter to him now—if there’s anything left of him. If sorcery finds a way inside the wards, it won’t give you back what you had. Cefwyn might have, but Hasufin Heltain never would and never intended to. If you don’t know that, you don’t know what he was.”
    She was angry at what he said, but she might think on it. Perhaps she had already thought on it. Doubtless she had had ample time to think, sitting in a Teranthine nunnery in Guelessar with no fine gowns, no servants, no books, and no one who cared to please her.
    And in this moment of her retreat, he pursued, with a question which had troubled him since summer.
    â€œYou tried to kill Emuin,” he asked her, for someone at summer’s end had attacked Emuin and left him lying in a pool of blood. He could think of no one more likely than Orien Aswydd, who had commanded all the resources of Henas’amef. “Didn’t you?”
    She gave him no answer, but he had the notion he had come very near the truth: Orien or someone sworn to her. And he could think of many, many connections she had had among the servants and the nobility of the province, one of whom had perhaps stayed more loyal than most.
    â€œLord Cuthan’s gone to Elwynor,” he said. “Did you know that?”
    Perhaps she had not known it. Perhaps she was dismayed to learn that particular resource was no longer within her reach, when he was sure Cuthan had something to do with Orien Aswydd. Perhaps through Cuthan she had even known about the proposed rising against the king, and the Elwynim’s promised help.
    But she said nothing.
    He tried a third question. “Did you bring the attack on the nuns?”
    It was as much as if to ask: Did you wish your freedom from the nuns, and, Did you grow desperate because the plan had failed ?
    And: Did it work finally as you wished ?
    It all might have shot home, but Orien never met his eyes, and he somewhat doubted she heard…or that she knew any other thing. He only wished that if it were possible she could find another path for her gift, she would do differently. He wished it on her with gentle force, and with kindness, and she stepped back as if he had grossly assaulted her. The white showed all around her eyes.
    â€œI wish you well,” he said in the face of her temper, and included Tarien in the circle of his will. “I assure you I do, as Hasufin never did.”
    â€œYou take my lands,” Orien cried, “and wish me well in my poverty! How dare you!”
    It was a question, and he knew the answer with an assurance that, yes, he dared, and had the right, and did. The gray space intruded, roiled and full of storm; and in it, he did not retreat: Orien did. In the World, she recoiled a step, and another, and a third, until she met the wall. Tarien rose from her chair, awkward in the heaviness of her body, and turned to reach her sister, still holding to the chair.
    â€œIf Aséyneddin had won,” Orien said. “If you had died—”
    â€œYou promised Cefwyn loyalty,” Tristen said, “and you never meant it. Do you think you’d lie to Hasufin , and have what you wanted? If you lied and he lied—what in the world were you expecting to happen?”
    She had no idea, he decided sadly. Nothing at all Unfolded to him to make sense of Orien, but he suspected Orien’s thoughts constantly soared over the stepping-stones to the far bank of her desires, never reckoning where she had to set her feet to take her there.
    Flesh and bone as well as spirit, Mauryl had said to him, when he had been about to plunge down a step while looking at something across the room. He could hear the crack of Mauryl’s staff on incontrovertible stone, to this very hour. Look where you’re going, Mauryl would say.
    It was in some part sad that Orien had