in the hall, she’d felt tiny, but sitting while he stood made her feel like a dog at his feet. Sybilla would have stood, but she was as yet unsteady on her feet, her balance thrown off by the lack of sight and her injuries.
‘Lady,’ he said in a tone more respectful than she thought possible from their last encounters, ‘are you well?’
‘What does your healer report to you?’ she asked in a voice unused to speaking. She’d had little to say over these last days.
‘Teyen said your wound no longer bleeds and the dizziness is lifting. Is that true?’
Although his words seemed to show an interest in her condition, there was no concern underlying them. She could hear that much. Strange, how she noticed that now. Without sight, she had only hearing to provide her with information about the world, and people, around her. Sighing, she nodded in reply.
‘And the pain?’ he asked. Sybilla noticed a slight inflection in his voice, one she might not have if forced to look upon him.
‘‘Tis not the worst I have ever suffered through,’ she said.
He grunted instead of answering then. She listened as he moved from her side and walked to the other side of the room.
Into that corner. It stood as empty now as she was.
‘There are things we must discuss, lady.’
Sybilla tried to feel something, anything—even fear would have been welcomed to show she yet lived—but nothing was there inside. Even a fool would have been afraid of what was to come.
‘Such as?’ she asked, simply to make this audience end sooner … so that she could return to her silent, dark world.
‘Your men will not answer my questions. I tried to … encourage them to do so, but they will not betray you.’
Dark threats swirled in his voice. Her men were alive? She clutched the arms of the wooden chair, curious for the first time in days.
‘Who yet lives?’ A tiny thread of hope to hear the names of those who’d done so much to protect her tingled deep within her heart.
‘Only a handful of your men were killed in the battle,’ he answered, with a tinge of insult echoing in his words. ‘It took little time or effort to breach the puny defences of this manor and keep.’
At another time she might herself bristle at the insult offered to her as lady of this manor and keep, but none of her past pride rose to fuel her ire.
‘How do you ask them to betray me?’
If he clenched his jaws any tighter, his teeth were sure to break. Soren held his anger in check and let out a breath. Did she know she tried his scant patience with every word she spoke?
He stepped away from her, walked a few paces and turned to observe her with a bit of space between them. Teyen’s reports over the last sennight seemed accurate—the lady did not appear ill, though the bruises on her forehead and face retained the dark purple shades and swelling of a still-fresh injury. He could not see her eyes, for clean bandages covered them. Even uncovered, her eyes did not see. Now, she gripped the wooden arms of the chair in which she sat and he noticed her fingers relaxing and tightening when he’d mentioned her men. It was the only sign of interest in anything he’d witnessed from her in days.
Oh, she might not know it, but he’d watched her many times since his arrival and since that terrible outpouring of grief had happened. She sat as she did now or remained abed for hours at a time—moving hardly at all, asking for or about nothing. The spirit he’d witnessed in the hall when she tried to protect her people from him had been extinguished like the flame of a candle in the wind.
But, correctly, he’d guessed that her people would be her weakness as much as she was theirs. With a few well-placed and timed threats, he’d forced their co-operation in repairing the damage done to the walls and in organising the stores of the manor. Soren needed more information, though, information that only the lady seemed to possess.
‘I need the rolls of the manor, to find how many owe service here and how many belong to the land. You know their location.’ He would have missed the slight nod if he’d not been watching her. ‘Where have you hidden them?’
‘Is Algar dead, then?’ she asked in a soft voice.
Part of him urged him to lie to her—not to add to the burden of guilt she must carry—but he tamped it down. The daughter of Durward deserved no such consideration, he told himself again.
‘Aye, he is dead. We found his body in the rubble of the wall, along with four others.’
He could have told her that they were following her with orders to get her to safety, but those words would not flow from his tongue. Unwilling to dwell on that small measure of courtesy granted to a woman he came here prepared to hate, he repeated his demand.
‘Where did he hide the rolls? Or did you accomplish the deed?’
The silence went on for several minutes with no sign of an answer in the offing from her. Soren used his leverage then.
‘You put their lives in danger, lady, with your refusals. How many more must die because of you?’
Her indrawn breath told him of his success in piercing the lady’s apparent lack of concern.
‘You would kill them for something not in their control?’
‘If it will gain me that which I need, aye,’ he said, using her inability to see in this battle of wills. Clearly, she could not hear his lack of resolve and now had no visual cues to use to decide whether he bluffed or not. Memories of his own days spent blinded by his injury threatened, but he gathered his control and prevented them from flaring.
‘Tell me the names of those who died and I will take you to that which you demand.’
He laughed aloud at her attempt to bargain with him. A bit of spirit yet remained within the woman and it pleased him somehow. He preferred to face a strong enemy, to sharpen and hone his skills against a worthy adversary, than against a frightened woman with nothing to risk or lose. Soren also knew the value of timing in a battle, and this was nothing less, so he turned without another word and left. Let her sit and worry over his choice for a bit.
He strode down the stairs, having a care for the steepness of the steps. His eye could not discern the depth of something, especially a thing cloaked in the shadows, well enough yet, so he braced his hand on the wall as he moved downwards to the landing. Such a limitation served as a constant reminder of all he’d lost with Durward’s blow and served to strengthen his resolve to overcome it as well. He’d learnt to adjust the aim of his bow quickly to sharpen the accuracy of his arrows’ flight. But, simple things like staircases thwarted his attempts to appear as he once was—confident, accomplished and skilled. Guermont, who now stood as his second-in-command here at Alston, met him at the bottom.
‘This encounter would seem better than your last one with the lady,’ Guermont said, walking at his side through the hall to the door that led out to the yard. ‘The guards have reported no outbursts from her since the first one.’
‘Has she asked to leave her chambers? Have her maids asked?’ Soren asked.
Guermont
