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Zandru’s hells do you know about it?” Magda snarled. Camilla shrugged.
“I know what all the world knows. I know what the little children in the marketplace know. I know you . Come downstairs; at least you can have some hot milk, after that long walk in the cold. Take your boots off, though, and put on your slippers.”
“Damnation, Camilla, don’t fuss at me.”
Again the indifferent shrug. “If you want to sit in wet clothes all night, please yourself. I suppose one of the young nursing trainees would be delighted at the chance to nurse you through lung-fever. But it is hardly fair to go clumping around through the halls after midnight in heavy boots waking everyone who sleeps on the corridor because you’re too lazy to pull them off. If you’re simply too tired, I’ll help you.”
Wearily, Magda roused herself to pull off her boots and soaked jacket. “I’ll borrow one of your nightgowns; I don’t want to wake Jaelle.” Somehow she took off the wet clothes and got herself into a heavy gown of thick flannel.
“We’d better take these down and dry them; there will be a fire in the kitchen,” Camilla said. Magda was too weary to argue; she put her wet clothes over her arm and followed Camilla.
She was still shivering as they went down the corridors and the silent stairs, but in the Guild-house kitchen, the fire was banked, and near the fireplace it was warm. A kettle of hot water was hissing softly on its crane; Camilla found mugs on a shelf while Magda raked up the fire and spread out her wet garments. Camilla poured Magda some bark-tea, then went into the pantry and cut cold meat and bread, laying them on the kitchen table next to the bowls of rolled grains and dried fruits, soaking for the breakfast porridge.
Magda sipped listlessly at the hot bitter tea, too tired to look for honey on the shelves. She did not touch the food, sitting motionless on the bench before the table. Camilla made herself some tea, but instead of drinking it, she came around behind Magda. Her strong hands kneaded the tight muscles in the younger woman’s shoulders and neck; after a long time Magda reached out and took up a piece of the buttered bread.
“I’m not really hungry, but I suppose I should eat something,” she said wearily, and put it to her lips. After a bite or two, as Camilla had expected, the ravenous hunger of anyone who has been working with laran took over, and she ate and drank almost mechanically. She finished the bread and meat, and got up to ransack the pantry for some leftover cakes with spice and sugar.
When her hunger was satisfied, she leaned back, turning the bench round so that she could put her feet up on the rail that guarded the fireplace. Camilla came and sat beside her, putting up her own feet - long, narrow, somehow aristocratic - on the rail beside Magda’s. They sat together, neither speaking, looking into the bed of coals. After a time, Magda got up restlessly and put more wood on the fire, causing flames to flare up so that flickering shadows played on the walls of the cavernous kitchen.
She said, at last, “I’m not really a psi-tech, not the way they think of it in the Terran Zone. I’m not a therapist. The work I do at Armida is - is different. What I had to do tonight was to go into someone’s mind, someone who’s normally head-blind, and try to - ” She wet her lips with her tongue and said, “It’s not easy to explain. There aren’t words.”
She looked around hesitantly at Camilla. She had known the woman at her side for years, and had long known that Camilla had, or had once had, laran , though Camilla herself denied it. Magda was one of the few people living who knew all of Camilla’s story: born of Comyn blood - no trace of which was visible now except for the faded, sandy hair which had once flamed with the same Comyn red as Jaelle’s - Camilla had been kidnapped when barely out of childhood, and so savagely raped and abused that her mind had broken. Magda did not know