She smiled at him. Her smile was like a ray of sun. She went out.
He lay stiff as a knotted twig, for about an hour, terrified of everything, and of himself. Then the terror went off. Securely alone, he bragged to himself. The woman liked him after all. She wanted to help him because she fancied him. As for Dro, who could be so useful being so famous, Myal could get around him. As for Ghyste Mortua, that was just a wild romantic fantasy, the sort a minstrel had to have, had to pretend to believe in. And the wonderful song he would make of the ghostly town, its shrivelled towers, the greenish fireflies spinning in its endless dusks–the song was already partly formed in his head, his fingers. The quest was all he needed. To travel hopefully. Certainly, not to arrive.
He dozed, and woke at early evening to the priests’ supper bell. No one had bothered to bring him anything to eat, but he felt fine. Fit and self-assured.
He swaggered over to the refectory and strode in on long, reasonably steady legs.
The priests looked up nervously, their pudgy faces bulging with food.
Myal sauntered along the tables, tore off a wing of roast chicken, took up a brimming mug of yellow cider.
“Really, my son,” they remonstrated, “guests do not eat in the refectory.”
“This was paid for, wasn’t it,” Myal demanded, frowning at them, “by my friend Parl? Before he had to go on ahead of me. Pass me that loaf. And the salt.”
He caught a glimpse of himself in a polished ewer. He had moved abruptly into one of his handsome phases. His hair was burnished, his features were chiselled. He looked just like the prince he had always known he really was. That man with the strap—how could that thing have been the genetic father of Myal?
Myal lounged in a chair. He had some ham, ordered a bath. He stole three purses out of two habits.
In the middle of the night, happily bleary from a soak in hot water and a liver soaked in cider, he wandered back across the compound for the purposes of nature. Then, with a sense of his own ridiculous generosity, he returned the purses, though not exactly into their owners’ pockets. He threw them instead nimbly on the compost heap, at its jammiest section.
He woke feeling virtuous and well. Even the cider had not gone sour on him.
He took the instrument, went to the well, drew some water and splashed around in the bucket for a while. When he looked up, the sky was lifting into light, and the red-haired woman stood at the gate. He knew her name by then. He had asked one of the priests. The priest had been shocked. Simply saying a woman’s name had seemed to shock him.
She came across the compound, and gave Myal an apple. The immemorial symbol did not alarm him. It would have, if it had not been her. He ate the apple, enjoying it, though the Gray Duke’s daughter had once insisted he and she simultaneously devour an apple hung by cord from a rafter. It had been a rough enterprise. Their teeth had clashed once or twice and he had been afraid of being bitten. It was a forfeit. Whoever ate least of the apple lost. Myal lost. If he had won, the punishment would actually have been the same.
But he was at ease with Cinnabar. She must admire him very much, but apparently chastely, wanting nothing.
Outside the compound, a roan mare stood docilely. He had not ridden in months, years, but the mare had a tender pretty face. He liked her at once, and shared the last of the apple with her lovingly.
When he was mounted, the instrument on his shoulders, Cinnabar showed him a bag of provisions tied to one side of the saddle.
“You can keep that. But send my horse back to me.”
“Of course I will,” he said very sincerely.