The Captain's War

Chapter 13: The Changing Wind

The days passed quietly at Healer's House. Clarity imposed a routine on herself, waking with the sun to help Wen in her garden, and spending the afternoons inside to avoid the heat. She sought work to fill her hours. As long as her hands were busy, her mind and memories could give her no trouble. She liked Wen—although the healer was guarded and brisk, there was a gentleness in her eyes that put Clarity at ease. And she liked Roka, too, somewhat grudgingly, since he seemed to spend more time talking than working. He knew a great many strange and interesting things. Willow and Silver had taken to him instantly, and also to Aelize, who easily won them over with stories of Ryak horsemanship and exotic mountain creatures. Unfortunately, the young woman was clearly baffled by young children. Clarity woke on the fourth morning to find Aelize sitting in a stupor at the kitchen table while Willow regaled her with questions.

"Willow," Clarity chided. "Let her be. You've been following her around for days- find something else to do."

Willow stopped mid-query and blinked guiltily at Clarity. Then she turned to Aelize. "We ain't—uh--haven't been a bother, have we?"

Aelize's exhaustion was suddenly tinged with panic. "Ah—" she stammered. "Well—"

"Why not go find Roka?" Wen suggested from her seat by the stove. "I'm sure Aelize has plenty of boring chores to do today, anyhow."

Willow looked dubious, but did as Wen suggested. Everyone, it seemed, tended to do as Wen suggested.

"You can just—tell them to go do something else?" Aelize said incredulously once Willow had gone.

"If you do not, you won't have a moment's peace, I'm afraid," Wen replied.

Clarity found it odd that someone Aelize's age wouldn't have already learned this about children, but things were different with the Ryak, she supposed. Roka, on the other hand, appeared to know exactly how to handle Willow and Silver, and took great delight in chasing one around the yard while carrying the other on his back or telling them wild stories of dubious merit and plausibility. He even managed to snare Brannen in his tale-telling net, although they pretended not to listen if anyone looked their way.

Wen's assistant—Jai, he was called—Clarity saw the least of. He slept in the barn with Aelize and Roka, and unlike them, he rarely came into the house unless Wen was seeing to a patient. Clarity kept away from him as much as she dared without seeming impolite. He frightened her. His eyes were too wide in his narrow face. He flinched from shadows. While he was helping Wen, he seemed almost like some of the Scholars Clarity had known at the temple: serious, quiet, but not overly strange. But as soon as he finished, he would be lost again in whatever it was that occupied his mind. What really unnerved Clarity, though, was the way he'd looked at her and Willow and Silver the first time he'd seen them. There had been so much grief in his gaze that she'd barely suppressed a shudder.

"What's the matter with him?" Willow had asked afterward, when the four of them were alone.

"I bet he saw an evil spirit," Silver said.

Brannen had scoffed at this. "Nothing magical about it. He's just mad."

Clarity kept quiet on the subject. She was ashamed of her wariness of Jai and didn't wish to discuss it. He'd done nothing to warrant such a reaction. And aside from her discomfort with him, she felt comfortable in the house, at least during the day.

She dreaded the coming of the night. When her hands were idle, her mind raced. The rough wooden walls of the bedroom, which during the day were warm and inviting, became stiflingly close in darkness. Odd shadows from the window turned the bedspread into an alien landscape. Brannen, asleep beside her, became a stranger again in the moonlight. She didn't understand how they could fall asleep so easily in an unfamiliar place, especially when they were so sullen and withdrawn during the day. It seemed to take forever for sleep to come for Clarity in this odd house with its new scents and breezes. She would lie awake long after the rest of her housemates had gone silent, long after the last robin had stopped calling outside, skipping back and forth between the night of the festival and the long journey north. When she closed her eyes she saw the faces of those she'd left behind. Wakeful, Crow, Patience, little River, others whose fate she might never know stared at her accusatorily from behind her closed lids. On the road she'd mostly been too exhuasted to keep herself up with fretting. Now, even though she had a comfortable bed to lie in and a roof to protect her from the elements, she couldn't relax.