“What did you discuss?” I asked Vai once we were back out on the river.
“I can’t speak of it.” To a man raised as he had been, such secrets were sacred. He was careful not to touch me. Even Rory was unusually solemn, in a mood I might have called brooding.
Bee said, “I did not see you, Rory. Were you with the men?”
“I don’t like temples. They make my skin itch.” He perused our faces as if he expected to uncover a rebuke. “I saw a terrible thing while you three were about your feasts and friendly talk! These people wish they were not bound to the mage House, but they bind people in their turn, don’t they? While they feast and sing and sleep, aren’t there people who serve?”
“Everyone must work,” said Vai, with a shake of his head.
The river’s voice almost drowned out Rory’s words, for he could barely choke them out. “I heard a noise in one of the byres as I was sniffing about as I like to do at dusk. There was a man handling a woman who did not want him. He pushed her down into the dirty straw and pulled up her skirt and shoved his part into her. She did not cry out for help or fight but I could smell her humiliation and shame. So I pulled him off. I told him I was the spirit of vengeance visited upon men who abuse helpless women. He laughed at me. He said the woman is a slave and thus a whore because slaves have no honor. So I showed him my true face. And he pissed himself and ran off. Then the woman reviled me. She said she was taken from her village by soldiers when she was young and sold months later to the blacksmith’s father. Any man in the village can use her as he wishes, just as he said. She will be punished now for what I have done. So I was ashamed for having done a thing to bring trouble on her. I told her she could escape with us.”
“Lord of All,” muttered Vai.
“But she refused! She said she has a healthy boy child who has been adopted as a son by a village man who has only daughters. He means the boy to marry one of the girls and inherit his cottage. If she runs, the boy will be turned out. She cannot let the chance go that he will have a good life. How can this be true? How can people live, with their spirits crushed day after day?”
“Blessed Tanit protect her!” murmured Bee.
Rory trembled with hissing fury. “I thought the radicals mean to free people who are bound to serve others. But what of people like her? I should have stolen the boy and made them both come with us, but I was a coward.”