Roland ignored him. He slipped both hands into the bag and lifted the wizard's glass out. He held it up to his eyes, unaware that he had smeared it with droplets of Jonas's blood. The ball did not mind; this was not the first time it had been blood-touched. It flashed and swirled formlessly for a moment, and then its pink vapors opened like curtains. Roland saw what was there, and lost himself within it.
CHAPTER X BENEATH THE DEMON MOON(II)
1
Coral's grip on Susan's arm was firm but not painful. There was nothing particularly cruel about the way she was moving Susan along the downstairs corridor, but there was a relentlessness about it that was disheartening. Susan didn't try to protest; it would have been useless. Behind the two women were a pair of vaqueros (armed with knives and bolas rather than guns; the available guns had all gone west with Jonas). Behind the vaqs, skulking along like a sullen ghost which lacks the necessary psychic energy to fully materialize itself, came the late Chancellor's older brother, Laslo. Reynolds, his taste for a spot of journey's-end rape blunted by his growing sense of disquiet, had either remained above or gone off to town.
"I'm going to put ye in the cold pantry until I know better what to do with'ee, dear," Coral said. "Ye'll be quite safe there ... and warm. How fortunate ye wore a serape. Then . . . when Jonas gets back ..."
"Ye'll never see sai Jonas again," Susan said. "He won't ever - "
Fresh pain exploded in her sensitive face. For a moment it seemed the entire world had blown up. Susan reeled back against the dressed stone wall of the lower corridor, her vision first blurred, then slowly clearing. She could feel blood flowing down her cheek from a wound opened by the stone in Coral's ring when Coral had backhanded her. And her nose. That cussed thing was bleeding again, too.
Coral was looking at her in a chilly this-is-all-business-to-me fashion, but Susan believed she saw something different in the woman's eyes. Fear, mayhap.
"Don't talk to me about Eldred, missy. He's sent to catch the boys who killed my brother. The boys you set loose."
"Get off it." Susan wiped her nose, grimaced at the blood pooled in her palm, and wiped it on the leg of her pants. "I know who killed Hart as well as ye do yerself, so don't pull mine and I won't yank yer own." She watched Coral's hand rise, ready to slap, and managed a dry laugh. "Go on. Cut my face open on the other side, if ye like. Will that change how ye sleep tonight with no man to warm the other side of the bed?"
Coral's hand came down fast and hard, but instead of slapping, it seized Susan's arm again. Hard enough to hurt, this time, but Susan barely felt it. She had been hurt by experts this day, and would suffer more hurt gladly, if that would hasten the moment when she and Roland could be together again.
Coral hauled her the rest of the way down the corridor, through the kitchen (that great room, which would have been all steam and bustle on any other Reaping Day, now stood uncannily deserted), and to the iron-bound door on the far side. This she opened. A smell of potatoes and gourds and sharproot drifted out.
"Get in there. Go smart, before I decide to kick yer winsome ass square."
Susan looked her in the eye, smiling.
"I'd damn ye for a murderer's bed-bitch, sai Thorin, but ye've already damned yerself. Ye know it, too - 'tis written in yer face, to be sure. So I'll just drop ye a curtsey" - still smiling, she suited action to the words - "and wish ye a very good day."
"Get in and shut up yer saucy mouth!" Coral cried, and pushed Susan into the cold pantry. She slammed the door, ran the bolt, and turned her blazing eyes upon the vaqs, who stood prudently away from her.
"Keep her well, muchachos. Mind ye do."
She brushed between them, not listening to their assurances, and went up to her late brother's suite to wait for Jonas, or word of Jonas. The whey-faced bitch sitting down there amongst the carrots and potatoes knew nothing, but her words
(ye'll never see sai Jonas again)
were in Coral's head now; they echoed and would not leave.
2
Twelve o' the clock sounded from the squat bell-tower atop the Town Gathering Hall. And if the unaccustomed silence which hung over the rest of Hambry seemed strange as that Reap morning passed into afternoon, the silence in the Travellers' Rest was downright eerie. Better than two hundred souls were packed together beneath the dead gaze of The Romp,, all of them drinking hard, yet there was hardly a sound among them save for the shuffle of feet and the impatient rap of glasses on the bar, indicating that another drink was wanted.