In Which Raia Is Told Who Knows

July 16, 1167

"You!" Raia shouted, leaping from her horse and launching herself toward the young man. She had ridden throughout the forests day and night as her mother lay dying and had seen neither hide nor hair nor any other sign of him--just when she had needed him most. After that, she had wondered about in her grief every once in a while, hoping to stumble across him and give him a piece of her mind, but days and weeks and months had crawled by and he'd been nowhere to be found. She'd given up hope of ever seeing him again about a month ago--but now, as she rode toward Armion, here he was. "Where the hell have you been?"

"Catlona..." he answered slowly, as if unsure why she cared. Stupid boy--he knew what she was talking about.

"Catalonia?" she spat, correcting him and denying him with a single word; as useless as it may have been to chew him out after the fact, she couldn't help herself. She needed to let him know what his absence had done. "Yes, that's what you do, isn't it? You don't come to help my mother, and then in your shame and cowardice, you run off to Catalonia and lay low for a few months! Pathetic!"

Tavrin sighed. "Raia-girl... I been gone March, April, May, June, yes? Queen Dovan fine when I leaves."

Was that so? He hadn't even been here when her mother had died? "Lousy timing for your trip, then!"

A somber haze in his diamond eyes, his head tilted. "Sorry for loss, but... I hear things, yes? I know what made her sick; I could no help her, Raia-girl. Sorry."

"There's nothing you could have done?" sneered Raia, her pulse rising as her anger seethed. "You liar! Everyone said Florian was as good as dead, and you saved him!"

Frowning, Tavrin pressed his thumb to the tip of his index finger--something he did, she had noticed, when he was trying to think of ways to tell her something too complex for his weak grasp of her language. "Different. The Crazy Man had squirms; Queen Dovan had baby. I force squirms out of Crazy Man. Squirms is squirms, and I no squirm. Baby is human, and I half human. Squirms obey when I tell them leave, but baby... no."

"So you're saying that you wouldn't sacrifice a tiny hint of an almost-child, even if it cost my mother her life!" How could he? From what she could tell, it wouldn't have been much different than a miscarriage. Yes, a miscarriage would have been a loss in this case--Lord only knew how much her mother had wanted that baby--but no loss could compare to that of Alina's own life. Raia already had six other siblings, but she would never have another mother. "What kind of sick logic is that? They're both dead now! Why would you say that?"

"I no say that, Raia-girl; I say I has no power over rogue human flesh. If I been here, and I could tell it leave, I do, but..." he trailed off, shaking his head. "Sorry, Raia."

Raia stiffened; so he had some command over parasites and the like, but not over anything even vaguely human? But what if... "But she died after a miscarriage. Wouldn't the baby have been dead anyway? Couldn't you have done something for her then?"

"No miscarge--miscrige--bleed," he told her after settling on a word. "I hears things. I hears pieces and puts them together, yes? Baby not in womb, but tube to womb; it grows, tube 'splodes. Different than mis--bleed. Sorry for loss."

So there really was nothing he could have done. Raia couldn't take it anymore; she let her face fall to her hands and began to cry. "So she... she was d-doomed from the start, then?"

Gravely, Tavrin stepped toward her and placed an arm around her shoulder. He seemed to be trying to comfort her; she didn't think it would work. "Raia-girl..."

"So the minute that--that thing lodged itself in there, my m-mother... and my father..."

The young man raised his hand to her face and wiped away her tears. "Bad things happen. Sad things. No one's fault."

Her lip quivering, Raia let out a particularly fervent wail. "But why? Why her? Why my mother, Tavrin?"

Tavrin paused for a minute as Raia continued to cry, then pulled her into what must have been meant as a reassuring hug. "You dunno. I dunno. No one know. Sorry, Raia-girl... sorry."

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