He glanced at me, nodded shortly, and did not ask again. He and I were slaves, we lived in a complicity of silences.
Remen wouldn't let me leave the infirmary that morning, saying that the Mother was coming in to look at both me and Miv; so I sat on the bed and examined my lumps and cuts, which were extensive and interesting. When I got bored with them I recited from The Siege and Fall of Sentas, chanting the lines. Along near noon, Miv finally woke up, and I could go over and talk to him. He was very groggy and didn't make much sense. He looked at me and asked me why I was two. "Two what?" I said, and he said, "Two Gavs."
"Seeing double," said old Remen, coming over. "A whack on the head'll do that. —Mistress!"and he went down in the reverence, and I did too, as the Mother came into the room.
She checked Miv very thoroughly. His head looked misshapen on the left from the swelling, and she looked into his ear and pressed his skull and cheekbones softly. Her face was concerned, but finally she said, "He is coming back," in her deep, soft voice, and smiled. She was holding him on her lap, and she spoke tenderly. "Aren't you, little Miv? You're coming back to us."
"It roars," he said plaintively, squinting and blinking. "Is Oco coming?"
Remen, shocked, tried to get him to address the Mother properly, but she waved him away. "He's only a baby," she said. "I'm glad you decided to come back, little one." She held him a while, her cheek against his hair; then she put him back in his crib and said, "Now go to sleep again, and when you wake up your sister will be here."
"All right," Miv said, and curled up and shut his eyes.
"What a lamb," the Mother said. She looked at me. "Ah, you're up, you're afoot, good for you," she said. She did look like her slender daughter Astano, but her face, like her body, was full and smooth and powerful. Astano's glance was shy; the Mother's gaze was steady. I looked down at once, of course.
"Who hurt you, lad?" she asked.
Not to answer old Remen was one thing. Not to answer the Mother was quite another.
After an awful pause I said the only thing that came to me: "I fell into the well, Mistress."
"Oh, come," she said, chiding but amused.
I stood mute.
"You're a very clumsy boy, Gavir," said the musical voice. "But a courageous one." She examined my lumps and bruises. "He looks all right to me, Remen. How's the hand?" She took my hand and looked at the splinted finger. "That'll take some weeks," she said. "You're the scholar, eh? No writing for you for a while. But Everra will know how to keep you busy. Run along, then."
I bobbed the reverence to her and said, "Thank you," to old Remen, and got out. I ran to the pantry, and found Sallo there, and even while we were hugging and she was asking if I was really all right, I was telling her that the Mother knew my name, and knew who I was, and called me the scholar!
I didn't say that she had called me courageous. That was too immense a thing to talk about.
When I tried to eat, it didn't go down very well, and my head began thumping, so Sallo went with me to the dormitory and left me on our bed there. I spent that afternoon and most of the next day there, doing a lot of sleeping. Then I woke up starving hungry and was all right, except that I looked, as Sotur said, as if I'd been left out on a battlefield for the crows.
It was only two days since I'd been in the schoolroom, but they welcomed me back as if I'd been gone for months, and it felt that way to me too. The teacher took my injured hand in his long, strong-fingered hands and stroked it once. "When it heals, Gavir, I am going to teach you to write well and clearly," he said. "No more scrawling in the copybook. Right?" He was smiling, and for some reason what he said made me extremely happy. There was a care for me in it, a concern as gentle as his touch.
Hoby was watching. Torm was watching. I turned around and faced them. I reverenced Torm briefly; he turned away. I said,