The Walls of Air Page 0,46

through the other ankle.' Her cold, careless eyes returned to Gil. 'Was that a one-handed cut?'

Gil drew a shuddering breath and nodded. She wondered if her father had cried the first time he'd killed some Japanese he didn't know. In a voice that sounded hideously matter-of-fact, she said, 'Yeah. What happened to you, Caldern?'

The big captain scratched his head. 'Were had for chump,' he drawled in his north-country accent. 'Chappy come yellin' murder down the way, and 'twere no others to call. I followed, and a pretty chase he led me; and lost of him after a'. Sorry it is I am, lass.'

Gil shook her head, closing her eyes again against the light. 'You couldn't have known.'

'Not something anyone would have guessed,' Janus' voice said, and the Commander loomed suddenly from the darkness. 'We never thought to be posting guards on the gate to keep folk from throwing them open at night.' He elbowed his way through the press to stand behind her, as large and solid as a Mack truck. 'Are you well, Gil-Shalos?'

'Fine,' she said quietly. The one person who could have comforted the pain in her soul was camped somewhere in the middle of the plains; she wanted only to sleep.

She heard Janus say to the others, 'Show's over for the night, children; time to clear out the College of Surgeons. The alarm's out - there's probably not a Dark One in a hundred miles, but it's an all-troops patrol of the Keep, just to be sure.'

There was scuffling, moans, chaff and vivid curses in the pungent tongue of the Wathe. Through her closed eyes Gil heard them leaving, Gnift flirting outrageously with Melantrys, and Janus and Caldern conversing in their unintelligible north-country dialect. The noises faded, amid a jangle of sword belts and mail. Lonely darkness returned. 'Can I get you anything?'

Gil opened her eyes again, surprised. In her thin peasant skirts and black cloak, Minalde sat on the next bunk.

'You can get me some water, if you will.'The girl turned away to dip some out of the communal tank. 'What are you doing here?'

'They told me you'd been hurt,' Aide said simply. 'They woke me to sign the papers to arrest Parscino Pral.' She came back with the dripping cup in her hands. 'Can you sit up to drink?'

'I think so. Who's Parscino Pral?' 'The man whose foot you cut off.' Aide spoke very matter-of-factly as she helped Gil sit up a little further against the collected pillows of the entire barracks. The slightest movement ground the broken ends of the collarbone together in the bruised mess of the torn flesh. 'He was one of the wealthiest merchants in Gae. The man you killed was Yard Webbling, his partner. Pral says the third man was Bendle Stooft.'

'He was.' Gil remembered now, the faces falling into place. Pral had been a member of Alwir's coterie of merchants, the day Janus had been released by the Penambrans. Bendle Stooft had been there, too, dressed in green velvet and ermine. She didn't remember Yard Webbling at all. But already it was only a matter of

academic interest. Aide certainly didn't look upset. But then, Gil thought, Aide has seen far more men die than I could ever imagine. Since the fall of Gae, her life has been nothing but a wilderness of flight and horror. She was certainly less than likely to waste good guilt over a man or two killed and a shut door that condemned three others.

'Could you identify him before a tribunal? Aide asked.

'Sure,' Gil said, 'no problem.'

Aide blew out two of the room's three lamps. 'Would you like me to stay for a while?' she asked.

Her eyes closed again, Gil said quietly, 'No. Thank you, though.' She heard the girl hesitate; then quick, light footfalls pattered through the empty barracks and out into the Aisle beyond.

Bendle Stooft was brought to trial late the following morning, in the big cell Alwir had taken over for his audience hall in the Royal Sector. Gil recognized him immediately. The soft, slack face and receding button chin had swum through the confusion of last night's dreams. He sat now in a carved chair, nervously fiddling with the jewels in his rings, so that his hands glittered with a fireworks display of topaz and green in the warm gold of the candlelight. It was a formal occasion; candles banked the long and strangely carved ebony table at which the tribunal sat, giving them the curious appearance of holy statues enshrined