Lighting a second lantern, he set both down near the bed and went back into the lounging chamber to discover his captive gnawing at the bindings around her wrists.
He struggled with dark humor at the realization that he had been concerned she was dying when she had clearly been faking—at least the magnitude of her injuries.
She sent him a wide-eyed look when she saw he had returned and began to babble at him in a tongue he discovered without any surprise that he could not understand at all.
“I do not speak your tongue—whatever it is.”
She went silent instantly, gaping at him as if he had grown another head.
His humor vanished, replaced by angry resentment that arose when the suspicion hit him that she thought he was some kind of dumb animal.
He looked away from her, scanned his surroundings in an attempt to assess it through her eyes.
He had been relieved to find it because he had been sleeping fully exposed—when he was able to sleep at all—for months now.
It was primitive even by his own standards, though, he thought with disgust.
That realization only made him angrier, however.
“You have got your work cut out for you to make this place even minimally comfortable,”he muttered, wondering even as he said it if there would be a future of any appreciable length of time that included the two of them.
He supposed, if she survived and if she stayed, he would need to find something a little less primitive to use as an abode, wondered if it would be worth the time, effort, and danger of trying to find a place in the city.
Those had not held up nearly as well, however, as the ancient city and beyond that they were far too vulnerable to attack in these desperate times.
And then there wasthe disease.
