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Gandalarans don’t weep tears except to cleanse their eyes of foreign matter; emotional tears would be a waste of water. They do have physical reactions similar to the human expression of grief. For a few seconds, Milda gasped and choked and clung to me. When she seemed to have control again, I held her away from me and was glad to see that the glaze of shock was almost gone from her eyes.
    “Yes, I’m all right, Rikardon,” she said. Her voice was still shaky. “But—oh, look at this! I’m getting oil all over your tunic.” She looked down at the messy rag, and the bowl of oil resting on the ruined table. She laughed a little. “Isn’t that silly? All I could think of was fixing the table before Thanasset came home.” She chuckled again, more loudly. “Isn’t that silly?”
    “Milda,” I said, shaking her to forestall the hysterics that seemed imminent. “Where is Thanasset? What happened?”
    She pulled herself together. “Thanasset left the house after lunch to spend some time at his office,” she said. “He said not to expect him for dinner. I went out to do some shopping and visit Holla—she’s an old friend—and when I came back, I found this awful mess.
    “Rikardon, who would do a thing like this? That dinnerware has been in our family for six generations, and it’s all … it’s all …” She seemed to sense she was on the verge of hysteria again, and she shook herself. “Well, it’s all broken, that’s what. And it needs cleaning up. I’d better get started.”
    She put the rag down on the table and headed for the door into the midhall, but she paused there, reading my expression with characteristic accuracy.
    “What are you thinking about, boy? Do you know who did this?”
    Milda reminded me so much of Ricardo’s grandmother, Maria Constanza. She was sweet and gentle and frail—and heaven help anyone who crossed her. It was built into me, from both Ricardo and Markasset, that I couldn’t lie to Milda.
    “Worfit’s men did it,” I said. Then I told her everything that had happened that day, beginning at Worfit’s office. By the time I had finished, we were sitting down at the table and she was rubbing oil into the scars while I talked.
    “It seems Worfit
has
found a safe way to get back at me. Or so he thinks. But if he believes that just because nobody was hurt …”
    I stood up.
    “Sit down,” Milda said.
    I sat down.
    She put the rag aside, cupped her elbows in her hands, and leaned on the table. “If you’ve got any thought about riding Keeshah right down Worfit’s throat, you forget them. That’s just what he wants you to do. Think about it. Worfit knows he’ll never find an assassin willing to come after you. Everybody knows about Keeshah. So he provokes you into an attack, and surrounds himself with enough men to handle
ten
sha’um. To defend their own lives, they’d kill you and Keeshah both.”
    We sat in silence for a few minutes, while I thought about what she’d said. She was right. If I hadn’t been suffering from my own sort of shock at seeing Thanasset’s beautiful things destroyed, I’d have seen it myself.
    If I don’t do anything, this will happen again. And maybe somebody will get hurt next time. I’ll have to leave Keeshah here all the time, to protect the house. But how will I protect Milda and Thanasset when they’re away from the house?
    I was afraid to leave Raithskar for fear this would happen. But it looks like staying here will only provoke Worfit….
    “I’m going to Thagorn,” I told Milda.
    She nodded. “That seems the right choice to me, Rikardon. Worfit won’t trouble Thanasset and me if you’re not right here to get angry about it. And it does seem unfair of your dad—I mean, Thanasset,” she corrected quickly. I reached over and squeezed her shoulder, and she covered my hand with her own for a moment, “It does seem unfair to put so much pressure on you right away, after everything you’ve already done for