Her hands feel so dry and hot when I grasp them. “Mother, we are taking you to a refuge. Polodos and Maraya intend to marry. They will take care of you and the babies. We’ll find Bettany. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Her half-unfocused gaze rests on me for a drawn-out while. “I dreamed we had been buried for so long,” she answers in a tone so weightless I fear it will float away and take her life with it.
“You need to rest and heal, Mother,” I say sternly.
When Kalliarkos reappears, Inarsis studies him with the sort of frown Father would use when he examined ranks of soldiers who hadn’t prepared their kit correctly. “What of the poet?”
Kal sweeps an arm heavenward with the same gesture an actor would use to flamboyantly indicate the Path of Honor. “He has fulfilled his part. Let us be on our way.”
Inarsis transfers his gaze to Mother. Her face has none of the luster that normally makes people stare at her, nor does her kind smile light the room like an offering of peace to soothe the world’s ills. Does he see beneath the grief and exhaustion to the beauty he expects from a woman whose Patron lover kept faith with her for twenty years? Or is he looking for something else? After a moment he approaches her with a dip of the knee, cupping his left hand so his little finger touches his breastbone.
“Honored Lady, with your permission I will convey you to the inn. I have arranged for a healer to examine you and the newborns.”
“We need a doctor,” says Cook, who has not the slightest compunction about contradicting an Efean man she cannot imagine might be a general.
Inarsis glances at the floor with a pinch of his lips, then up again. “I have already sent for a dame much experienced in midwifing.”
He does not rebuke her as a Patron man would a woman speaking out of turn, but he does not back down as Efean men normally must in the presence of Patrons. Cook looks to me, and I nod to show it is all right.
Mother relaxes into the sure embrace of his command. “Thank you, Honored Sir. I accept.”
I step back to allow the general to carry out his arrangements. With a frown Cook follows him into the garden. Amaya is still eating but Maraya is looking from Kal to me and back.
Lord Thynos slaps Kalliarkos’s shoulder. “Well done, my nephew. There should be another attendant, though. And what of the oracle?”