The days passed in the tower in a haze of infernal red dust, just as they always had, at least when Soufien had been there. But though little had changed, to all outward appearances, there was something the tower had not had before, something it didn't quite know how to accommodate. Hanna's presence disrupted the usual atmosphere of fatalistic depression as she took its transformation from prison to home in hand. She threw out the weapons, flinging them one by one from the window as Soufien was just returning from a trip to a sea-town somewhere far to the East. She was alerted to his arrival only by an agonised howl as a sword-hilt struck him across the arm.
She looked out, astonished. 'What a place to stand!'
'Let that rope down, and I'll come up,' he said through his teeth. He was clutching his shoulder, his face drained of blood. 'Quickly! Pay it out through your hands, it will lengthen.'
She did as he bid, surprised that she could use the rope the same way he did. He locked a loop of it around his foot, and another around his wrist, tugged, and came up the tower. She still wore the rope around her waist, and though she asked each night if she need wear it any longer, he always said the same thing: that he wouldn't risk it just yet.
She gave him a long look as he hobbled to the kettle and tipped a generous measure of pungent-smelling herbs into it. Bruises were already spreading over his skin, raising the finely-dusted gold hairs on his arms. He looked bejewelled in the sunlight, all amethyst and gold, ruby and emerald. A drop of blood hung from his nostril and he wiped it impatiently.
'Ask, then.'
'Tell me without me asking.'
His back stiffened. 'I don't want your pity.'
'You're not getting it. I just want to know what's up with the constant painkillers.' Every day he took the foul-smelling infusion, throwing it down his throat with a grimace. He did so now, wiping the last drops from his mouth with a shudder of disgust.
'Travelling the way I do thins the marrow,' he said. 'My bones are held together by sheer will, and not mine alone. One day, it will kill me.' He paused, laughed - the first time she'd heard him do so. 'And there is your father, spending his days looking for a way to end mine! I hope I live long enough for him to know he's wasting his time.'
She sucked in her breath, regarded him solemnly, then gently shoved him out of the way and took up the kettle to make a pleasanter brew than the one he'd just drunk. 'Sit down,' she said. 'Before you fall down. I've never known anyone so fragile! It's a wonder you don't fall to pieces everytime you get out of bed in the morn...' She stopped. Where exactly did he sleep? There was no room here but hers, and the room they now stood in, cluttered with books and a handsome oak table marred with the scratches of myriad blades. Unless there was another room, and he kept it hidden, as he'd hidden hers, at first. But why he should do that, she couldn't think. Mages had their quirks, after all.
'I brought you something,' he said then, and reached inside his shirt to bring out an ivory comb and two ivory sticks. 'For your hair.' He seemed to have forgotten his blind panic of a few days before, and since he hadn't mentioned it, neither had she.
Surprised, she took the gift with a smile. 'Thank you.'
'I considered...I have little recollection of what women like,' he said. 'Name what you want when next I go, and I'll bring it.'
His eyes slid towards hers and she caught his gaze, gold-flecked and a little shy.
'Anything?'
'Within reason,' he laughed. 'I must be able to carry it.'
The next time he went, she asked him for linen, and when he brought it, breaking in several places and sinking under the weight of the pain, she tore it into strips and proceeded to wind it about his limbs, tight and firm. He was surprised enough to laugh at her, but there was little humour in his laugh.
'It won't help,' he said.
'You asked me what I wanted. So I told you. Now shut up.' She went back to her winding, tying off the ends in knots that even mage-craft would be challenged to undo. 'There,' she said at last. 'I'd like to see your bones break now! If they dare.'
'What bones could, with you waiting to find them out?'
And then he realised something. It had been three days since she'd last asked him if she could take off the rope of golden hair.
She asked him about it later that night, as they sat opposite each other in the chairs he'd finally brought for them. A mage-light lit the room, and outside, Cartha was bathed in star-light. Neither had spoken for some time, each engrossed in private thoughts. But the memory of his bruised arms dusted with gold had haunted her for several days, and finally she'd realised why.
''The rope...it's yours, isn't it?'
He looked up. 'No.'
Of course not, don't be silly, she thought. His hair is white, the rope is gold. Pale, fine gold, soft as silk. She looked at him, trying to understand what lay under the icy-cold of his exterior. What manner of man had he been? Had he been...handsome? She caught his gaze, and shivered. Almond-eyes, blue as a storm in summer. Delicately chiselled jaw, firm mouth, nose like a knife. His cheekbones stood out sharp under his skin. His limbs were nothing more than white paper over glass, so delicate, so fragile. He hid that well, but not well enough. But despite his fragility, and his bitterness, she could see well enough that there was beauty there too, and she didn't have to look hard. Surely there was a woman somewhere who had lost her heart to him? The owner of the hair?
His eyes turned steely, daring her to ask, watching her like a crow might watch something it knew would be dead soon.
But she had a thicker skin than that. She had a mage for a father, after all! So she asked. 'So what was her name?'
'Whose name, Hanna?'
'You're not going to fob me off with that attitude,' she said severely, leaning forward to glare at him. 'If that hair isn't yours, then it must belong to a woman. Otherwise why would you keep it?'
He laughed. 'Why shouldn't I keep it? No matter whose it is!'
'You have a story to tell me, and your name too,' she said then. 'Tell me. If I'm to stay here with you, I must know you!'
Käithenal grinned humourlessly and pinched the dried mistbane flowers into the copper pan heating gently over a tiny flame. The plant's powers were brought out by heat, but heat it too fast and the effects would be destroyed. He had to be careful. The woman who'd brought him the dried flowers lay now in his bed, thoroughly rumpled and happy, taking his loving as her payment. What she thought he didn't know was that she'd taken another fee, in the form of three golden hairs from his head. She'd tied them around her little toe, where he wouldn't look.
He wasn't that easily robbed. All those who practiced magic knew what could be done with a few strands of hair, or a couple of nail clippings, even a drop of blood or semen. Usually he was careful, but not these days. He was desperate.
And it wouldn't be the first time I've lost my hair to a sorceror!
As he worked, Käithenal uttered a steady stream of curses, gloatings, and oaths through the muslin cloth he wore over his nose and mouth.
'Serthesen, oh, how I wish you could see this, you scurvy little prankster! Aha, yes, I have your name too, always have - what, did you think I'd forget that? And how pathetic of you to hide it! But I promise you, I will have my daughter back, and your life with her! You are welcome to rot where you wish, but rot you will, oh yes! Serthesen, Serthesen...Serth..es...en...'
He whipped the pot from the flame with a sudden yowl of anguish. The mage-bane, he was fast discovering, was not as easy to work with as he'd hoped. Even its smoke was too poisonous for him to tolerate. And he'd burned it, wasting what the witch had brought. He routed her out of bed with a hand made rough with anger, and flung her out of doors.
'Come back for another romp by all means, but you'd better bring me more of that herb!'
'I have no more!' she protested, and spat at his feet. 'If it was that abundant, you'd have your own supply!'
He didn't bother to reply to that, and slammed the door in her face, stamping back up the stairs to his study with footfalls loud enough that he roused the entire castle. He heard Saorse's querulous chittering, and once more he cursed his life-long enemy, the man who had forced him once to hand his daughter's freedom to him. He'd got nothing out of it after all, and he was beginning to miss her company.
Gods, if I go on like this much longer...!
