Free Gate of Ivrel by C. J. Cherryh

protested. "They would as lief cut our throats as not if we cross them. And if you mean something else with them, some—"
     
    "Have a care," she said. "There is someone in the hall."
     
    Steps had paused. They moved on again, increasing in speed. Vanye swore softly. "This place is full of listeners."
     
    "We are surely the most interesting listening in the place," she said. "Come, and let us go down to the hall. Or do you feel able? If truly not, I shall plead indisposition myself—it is a woman's privilege—and delay the business."
     
    In truth he faced the possibility of a long evening with the
     
    mad Leth with dread, not alone of the Leth, but because of the fever that still burned in his veins. He would rather try to ride now, now, while he had the strength. If trouble arose in the hall, he was not sure that he could help Morgaine or even himself.
     
    In truth, he reckoned that among her weapons she had the means to help herself: it was her left-handed ilin that might not make it out.
     
    "I could stay here," he said.
     
    "With his servants to attend you?" she asked. "You could not gracefully bar the door against them yourself, but no one thinks odd the things I do. Say that you are not fit and I will stay here and bar the door myself."
     
    "No," he said. "I am fit enough. And you are probably right about the servants." He thought of Flis, who, if she entertained everyone in this loathsome hall with the same graces she plied with him, would probably be fevered herself, or carry some more ugly sickness. And he recalled the twins, who had slipped into the dark like a pair of the palace rats: for some reason they and their little knives inspired him with more terror than Myya archers had ever done. He could not strike at them as they deserved; that they were children still stayed his hand; and yet they had no scruples, and their daggers were razor-sharp—like rats, he thought again, like rats, whose sharp teeth made them fearsome despite their size. He dreaded even for Morgaine with the likes of them skittering about the halls and conniving together in the shadows.
     
    She left. He walked at his proper distance half a pace behind Morgaine, equally for the sake of formality and for safety's sake. He had discovered one saw things that way, things that happened just after Morgaine had glanced away. He was only ilin. No one paid attention to a servant. And Kasedre's servants feared her. It was in their eyes. That was, in this hall, great tribute.
     
    And even the bandits as they entered the hall watched her with caution in their hot eyes, a touch of ice, a cold wind over them. It was curious: there was more respect in the afterwave of her passing than the nonchalance they showed to her face.
     
    A greater killer than any of them, he thought unworthily; they respected her for that.
     
    But the Leth, the uyin that gathered at the high tables,
     
    watched her through polite smiles, and there was lust there too, no less than in the bandits' eyes, but cold and tempered with fear. Morgaine was supremely beautiful: Vanye kept that thought at a distance within himself—he was tempted to few liberties with the qujal, and that one last of all. But when he saw her in that hall, her pale head like a blaze of sun in that darkness, her slim form elegant in tgihio and bearing the dragon blade with the grace of one who could truly use it, an odd vision came to him: he saw like a fever-dream a nest of corruption with one gliding serpent among the scuttling lesser creatures—more evil than they, more deadly, and infinitely beautiful, reared up among them and hypnotizing with basilisk eyes, death dreaming death and smiling.
     
    He shuddered at the vision and saw her bow to Kasedre, and performed his own obeisance without looking into the mad, pale face: he retreated to his place, and when they were served, he examined carefully and sniffed at the wine they were offered.
     
    Morgaine drank; he wondered could her arts make her