Silence settled over the room. Maive’s cup moved slightly in her hands. She looked at the window. “No one in the village knows about this,” she said.
“That’s what I told her.”
“Contact should have been made.” Her voice had gone precise and clipped. “Generations ago. By us, by them, by anyone with the information and the ability to act on it.” She shook her head once. “Whoever made that agreement had aresponsibility. This should not have been left to calcify for five centuries.”
“Who knows what happened to those people?” I said, then repeated what I’d told Anlara. “Maybe they tried to go back but got stuck in a storm and died. Maybe they fell off a cliff.That’snot unlikely, you know.”
“Maybe,” she said.
“Clearly a great deal was lost in the years after the split,” I said. “The people who knew what happened are centuries dead and took the story with them.”
Maive looked at me. “Did you tell her that?”
“I told her you had no memory of the agreement. Which she already assumed, and was not impressed by.”
Maive exhaled slowly through her nose. The stove ticked. Outside, I could hear a boat rocking gently against its mooring, the rope straining and releasing.
“Also,” I said. “I told Anlara that if the situation was reversed, the village would help the mountain Runams. That your people would not stand by.”
Her eyes came up.
“It didn’t change her mind, but she went quiet on it.” I shrugged. “I meant it, though. It’s what I’ve seen from you.”
She pressed her lips together and looked back at the window. “I would have helped them,” she said. “We all would have.”
“I know.”
“She won’t evenconsidertaking the children?” Maive asked.
“Not at present.” I leaned back. “But the mountain location wasn’t the only option I had in mind. There’s always my house. That can take about twenty people.”
The room was very warm now, warm enough that I wanted to be out of the armor. I didn’t move, though, mostly because removing armor in someone else’s home was a significantstatement. And then, of course, I’d have to carry the lot of it back to the shuttle. Easier to just wear it until I got home.
“Gilrox,” she said.
I looked at her. “Yes?”
She was watching me with those green-gold eyes and a directness that I still hadn’t fully calibrated to. She held her cup in both hands and her feet were tucked up and her hair hung in those long, gray-tinged ropes.Fleck, she was pretty.
“We’re past the quarrel,” she said. “Aren’t we?”
“Yes.”
She tipped her chin down in a single nod. “Good.” She set the cup on the table. “I don’t like fighting with you. I don’t mindarguingwith you. That’s different, but the other thing.” She looked at me squarely. “It made me feel terrible.”
I stared at the rug for a moment. I had not done a great deal of honest emotional accounting in my life, which may have been why that sentence hit me harder than expected. “It made me feel terrible too,” I said. “For what it’s worth.”
“It’s worth a great deal,” she said quietly.
The lamp on the table threw warm light up across the lower half of her face. The steam had gone off her cup. She looked at me, and I looked back, and neither of us had anything to say.
“I want to cook for you,” she said. “Tomorrow evening. Here.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“A proper meal.” She was entirely matter-of-fact about it, as though she’d planned this ahead and was simply informing me of the schedule. “I’m not as good as Braija, but I’m not awful, either. And you’ve never eaten anything I’ve made. This strikes me as an oversight.”
An oversight.I barely resisted a smirk. “I’m sure you’re an excellent cook,” I said.
