In Which Ovrean Does Not Speak

November 10, 1170

Celina had retired at the service's end, and Ovrean didn't blame her. She'd already spent two days at the bedside of her five-year-old son--who would never wake--in a room that would no longer be slept in--filled with toys that would no longer be played with--so it seemed to him that it was unreasonable to think that she could bear to sit up in the crypt all night until they buried the boy in the morning. She was never going to forget that her child was dead; it would have made no sense to constantly remind her of the fact.

He and Lorn had seen the last of the mourners on their way, thanking them for their thoughts and prayers and absorbing their sentiments in Celina's stead, while Xeta had ushered Abrich and Rona to bed before turning in herself. Lorn had opted to sit up in his study alone for a while, so Ovrean had hurried to the master bedroom to check on Celina, whom he'd hoped to find asleep by now.

The baby, however, must have had other ideas.

Ovrean closed the nursery door and sighed. "I didn't think either of you would still be awake."

Celina raised the baby to her shoulder, her mouth poised in such a way that she might have been trying to smile; understandably, it seemed beyond her. "He was hungry, I think. He was crying..."

From the looks of it, she'd been crying too--as if he hadn't seen her do so firsthand in the past couple of days. They'd all cried: Celina, Ovrean, the kids, all of them. It had all happened so quickly. Yes, young Farilon had a history of sudden breathing problems, but the local wise women and their salves had always been able to clear his little airways before. Not this time, however; for whatever reason, his lungs had simply ceased.

Celina planted a kiss on Mernolt's forehead before lowering him back into his crib. "I'm sorry I couldn't stay, Ovrean, I just..."

"I know." He took her hands in his and stepped toward her, pulling her into a hug, not speaking. Ovrean was not a man of profound words and pretty phrases, and even if he had been, he doubted there was anything he could say to ease her pain; there were times when words were not enough, and if ever had been such an instance, it was this. No matter what he said--no matter how profound or pretty it might have been--there was still a dead child in the keep's crypt, waiting to be buried alongside his father. It was cruel and unfair and wrong, but nothing he could say or do would ever change the cold, hard facts of life.

So he did not speak.

He simply held her as she cried.

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