"Hells below! See what you've done?" The shorter man, breathing heavily, glowered at the other.

"Me! It was you, pighead! Come on—run for it!"

"What about her?"

"Leave the stupid slut." Paks heard their feet on the passage floor, heard the crackling flames in the next stall. She could not move, she felt; her body was a mass of pain. She heard more yelling, and more, in the distance, but was hardly aware when someone grabbed her legs and dragged her out of the burning barn. By the time she had realized what had happened, she was already being blamed for it.

"I let you sleep there, out of the kindness of my heart, and what do you do? You not only whore around in the stalls, but you take candles—candles, open flames, Gird blast you!—into the stable and start a fire! If it hadn't been for Arvid coming back in, we'd have lost five horses. We did lose all that hay. He should have left you there."

"It wasn't—I didn't—" Paks could hardly speak, with her bruised throat, but she tried to defend herself. "They—they tried to rape me."

The innkeeper snorted. "I don't believe that! No one would pick you—gods above, I have comely girls in the house they'd likelier try. You've been using my barn—my barn!—for your tricks. Now get out! Where do you think you're going?"

"My pack—" said Paks faintly.

"I ought to take it for the damage you've done. All right, take the damn thing—it's probably full of lice anyway, dirty as you are." He hit her hard as she tried to leave, and drove her out of the gates with another blow and a kick. She fell heavily into the street, but managed to clamber up as he came toward her, and limped away.

It was dark and bitter cold. She followed the street by touching the walls along it, stumbling into them, choking down sobs. She felt as if a great vise were squeezing her body, twisting it to shapes of pain she had never imagined. When she thought of the past—of last winter—it seemed to recede, racing away into a distance she could never span. A last little bright image of herself at Fin Panir, happy and secure, gleamed for a moment in her mind and disappeared. She stopped, confused. She had no wall to touch, and all around was a howling dark, cold and windy. It was one with the void inside.

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-one

Marshal-General Arianya

High Lord's Hall

Fin Panir

To all Marshals of Gird,

Greetings: