Return to Alastair (40 page)

“It would be nice if the Dorn’s sister were giving drinks again,” Toma was saying. “She’s a pretty one. I’d still like to get my hands about her.”

Jonas looked at him in disgust. “Do you think of nothing but girls? Every time we stop a wagon, you have to search to see if there are any girls.”

“And why not? Why shouldn’t I enjoy life? Answer me that.”

“Wouldn’t you rather find a miss someday willing to enjoy you enough to be your bride? Then settle down maybe, and be a normal man for a change?”

Toma shook his head. “I think one woman would bore me.”

“What about you?” Dann asked him. “Do you want to be a peasant and leave us behind?”

Jonas looked to the houses and shops they were approaching. “I’d like to know what it’s like. I’m tired of being a thief and a cutthroat.” He shook his head. “I’d like children someday. And perhaps to learn something useful. Like coppersmithing. It looks so hard.”

Toma laughed. “You’re quite the bandit, Jonas! Why don’t you just go now and ask the coppersmith if he needs an apprentice? And while you’re there, find out for me if he has any daughters!”

“Shut up,” Jonas answered angrily.

“Well, why not?” Toma continued. “Do you think we would miss you?”

“No.” Jonas shook his head. “I would not be fool enough to believe that.”

“Well,” Dann told him, “maybe you’re right that we’ll all want another life someday. When we’re older. But Toma is right too. Why not enjoy a little when we can? While we’re young enough, that’s the time to do just what we’re doing, don’t you think? I wouldn’t want to be tied to the same old chores every day.”

Jonas said no more. There was no use to it. They passed by a couple of shops and then tethered their horses at the wooden rail outside the tavern. It didn’t take long for Jonas to quench his need for a couple of stiff drinks, and then he was ready to leave. “Take Burle a bottle when you go,” he told his companions, plunking several coins down on the table.

“Where are you headed?” Dann asked.

“To talk to the coppersmith.”

“Are you serious?” Toma questioned with a snort.

“Yes. Go on without me.”

Toma laughed, but Dann said nothing at all as Jonas went outside alone.

He did indeed go to the coppersmith, but only so the man could say he’d been there if anyone asked. But the coppersmith needed no apprentice and Jonas turned quickly away toward Alastair’s church. It shouldn’t be hard to find the priest. Or perhaps Benn Trilett’s men. He’d had enough of being party to Samis’s madness first, and now Burle’s. Charmed or not, Tahn deserved to be left alone. And for that to happen, Tahn’s friends would need a warning.

Netta and Tiarra sat with Tahn and told him all the things that Emil Korin had said. It was sad and yet heartening to know that he’d been right about his father. Sanlin Dorn was murdered, as surely as their mother was, by the baron’s obsession.

“Do you think you could eat?” Netta asked him gently.

“Not yet.”

“But how long since you had something solid?”

“It must have been sometime before the whipping, days ago,” Tiarra answered for him.

“Tahn, don’t you think you should try? Or at least a bit more broth?”

He didn’t. And he was just thinking how to tell her so when Lorne came in from outside.

“There’s quite a stir in the streets. The healer woman has been telling her neighbors what happened here.”

Tahn nodded. “Good. Perhaps there’ll be no stones thrown as I leave them.”

Netta put her arm around his shoulders. “Have you always expected such things?”

“Of Alastair, yes. Or any crowd, most times.”

“But now those days are done.” She gave him a careful hug and then rose to get him broth again.

“Help me, Lorne,” he said then. “It’s time I got up.”

“Tahn,” Netta protested, “we needn’t hurry things. You should gain your strength back.”

“I’ll not gain any if I keep lying about.” He smiled kindly in her direction. “Forgive me, my lady. I can’t let you be too good to me, at least not here.”

“You’re sure about this?” Lorne questioned.

“Yes. Help me up.”

It was a struggle. Tahn felt as though his stamina had been poured out on the rocks somewhere, and he couldn’t gather it back in. He had to lean on Lorne, especially at first, just to gain his feet.

“Outside,” Tahn said, trying to shake off the weakness.

“Let me help too,” Tiarra said quickly, moving to his other side.

Netta stood and stared at them. “Tahn, you expect too much of yourself. But God bless you.” She went with them to the door, and they moved slowly, with Lorne and Tiarra supporting Tahn at every step. But at the doorway, he stopped to catch his breath and told them he wanted to walk of his own power outside.

“Stay with me,” he said. “But I need to walk on my own.”

“The healer has a cane,” Netta suggested. “It’s there in the corner where that cloak is hanging.”

“All right,” Tahn told her. “I used a staff already in this town. I can use a cane.”

“Where are you going?” Tiarra asked.

“The church.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to the altar,” he said. “I’m leaving every burden there. No more concerns for this place. Or any place.

I’m in God’s hands.”

Tiarra stared at him, confused. “You must go to the church for that?”

Tahn shook his head. “I want to.”

“And then what?” Netta asked him as she placed the long wooden cane in his hand. “You’ll have to rest.”

“I’ll sit. I’ll rest. And then perhaps we can go home.”

Watching him was not easy for Netta. It was too much like before, when the arrow wounds and horrible bruises had made him have to fight just to get up again. She stood outside the cottage as Tahn took his determined steps with Lorne and Tiarra keeping pace. Lucas ran to meet them. But Netta couldn’t seem to move. Almost she couldn’t see him through the tears. He’d fought all his life just to live, to recover, and then to have to fight again. How many times had he made himself get back up when it would have been easier just to give up trying?

She shook. She tried to pray. But she could not take her eyes off him, though her vision was blurred.

She nodded, unable to keep the tears from cascading down her cheeks.

“He’s showing you he’ll be all right,” Tobas told her. “If he can get up, then he can go on from here.”

“Oh, Tobas, do you know he’s felt unworthy of me? Do you realize that? But he’s wrong! I’m the one not worthy of him!”

“Lady Netta—”

“Don’t you think? Look at him. All the struggles. All the trials. But he’s strong. Even when he’s weak, he’s strong!”

“He would tell you it’s God’s strength. Before he had God, he was a desperate man. You know that very well.”

“He was sad, Tobas. Terrified. But he was still strong.”

“He told me he nearly killed himself. Twice.”

“I know. I saw him hopeless. And I’ve never wanted to rescue someone so badly in my life.”

“You did, lady. He credits you for much.”

She wiped at her cheeks. “I don’t deserve that. He was rescuing me before I had a thought to his well-being. And rescuing the children. It was a touch of God already on him, making him hungry to do right.”

“But he was still hopeless until your words touched him with God’s mercy.”

She was quiet for a moment. “Tobas, I think he’s never had the mercy of men.”

“Perhaps that is why God has given him what seems like an imponderable amount.”

Netta turned to look at him.

“He shares it,” Tobas continued. “In large measure.”

She nodded.

“Are you going in the church with him?” he asked.

“I will. I’ll join him. But Tobas, I’ve been thinking about what Mr. Toddin said. He’s right to say that Tahn puts himself in danger to help others. But much as I might wish to, I can’t stop him. Rather, I think it would be pleasing to God if I thought less of my own comforts and were willing to do the same.”

“Lady, you were not meant for perils.”

“Then was he? More than I? We’re all born into a perilous world. If we have privilege and blessing, they must surely be for tools to help us save the perishing.”

Tobas nodded. “You have eight orphans at home in Onath and former dark warriors turned to the light. I am sure that in God’s eyes you are doing well.”

“Not if I rest in that. Tahn grows in sharing large mercies, as you’ve said, and he never seems to realize how amazing that is. He makes me feel selfish and proud and weak.”

“And generous, lady. Selfless. Loving. He draws it out of you as much as you draw it from him.”

She smiled and dried her eyes. “We’re a good match? You really think so?”

“Don’t you?”

“Yes! In God’s grace, yes.”

“Then maybe you’d better stop talking to me and join him. They’re almost to the church doors.”

Tahn stopped at the stairs to lean on the stone rail. Every fiber of his being wanted to sink down on the step beneath, to let the weariness and the soreness win. But he’d seen someone across the churchyard. A woman and a boy watching. And then a man passing near the church also stopped to look. And he couldn’t sink down, he couldn’t, in front of their eyes. He had to make it inside. They had to see him strong, that they would know it was God and not weakness that made his heart harmless to them.

He pushed himself from the rail and stood as straight as he could.

“Tahn, are you sure you’re ready for the stairs?” Lorne asked. “There’s no harm in resting a minute.”

He shook his head.

“Let us help you,” Lucas told him.

But Tahn pulled himself up one step and then another, holding only the stone rail and the slender cane in his hand to steady himself. The gray spots returned, and his legs felt like butter, but he pressed on.

Lord
, he prayed in his mind,
I would expect to be sore. That is a small thing. But you can take the weakness of the fever and the poison, Father. Give me strength.

Netta joined him as he reached the top of the stairs. She said nothing, but he could see in her eyes that she knew his struggle.

“Pray with me,” he told her. “At the altar, my lady. It is a good way . . . to begin a life together.”

“Yes,” she said. And there on the top step, in front of every onlooker, she kissed him full and warm. And then she slipped her arm around him, and he felt her gesture lending strength to him.

The priest stepped out. He bowed to them and held the door. And then it was like a dream stepping into the church with Netta beside him. Light shimmering through stained glass windows filled the sanctuary with otherworldly brightness. Lorne and Tiarra stopped near the back, but Lucas stayed beside Tahn until he reached the altar, and then he left him and Netta alone.

Tahn prayed long, in his heart, because he couldn’t voice all the things he was feeling out loud. Netta held his hand. She prayed too, quietly, for his healing and for peace. And then he took her in his arms. Only later did he think to wonder if he should have asked first, if such a thing were really proper in the house of God.

But the priest bore no complaint. He came toward them and knelt with them when they were finished. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “For favoring this house with your presence. It is a gracious gesture.”

Tahn wasn’t sure what he meant by that. They were strange words, and he didn’t address them.

“Tell me what you want the people of this town to know,” the priest said. “Already, some are heart-pricked over what they have found in themselves. But others still believe that you are a villain, or a chief of bandits.”

“If I ever come back here,” Tahn said slowly, “it will be with the same peace I take with me. The weight of their hearts is before God alone. I will not hold anything against them.”

“God favor you for the gift,” the priest answered solemnly. “And may God’s mercy touch our hearts.”

Tahn nodded. He wanted to get up strong, to be done with the weakness and walk away almost as though nothing had happened. But he stumbled as he tried to rise, and Netta and the priest caught him and helped him to sit.

“It is too much too soon,” Netta told him softly. “Rest a little longer.”

She put her arms around him, and they stayed a long while beside the altar before Tahn was ready to go on. Lucas brought water, and the cool draught seemed to bring strength to him. “I’m blessed with friends,” he said. “You’re all very good to me.”