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“Really?” Cara asked, her voice brightening.
“Why?” Nadine asked. “What do you mean?”
Kahlan held up a finger. “Enough. I say this for your own good; Marlin is dangerous and I don’t want you down there. You are a guest. Please respect my wishes while you are a guest in my home.”
Nadine studied the floor at her feet. “Of course. Forgive me.”
“I will tell the guards that you are a guest, and if you would like anything—to have some of your things washed, a bath, anything—just ask and they will see that someone from the staff helps you. I’ll be back after a while and we can have dinner. We’ll talk over dinner.”
Nadine turned to her bag on the bed. “Sure. I didn’t mean to meddle. I don’t want to be in the way.”
Kahlan hesitantly touched a hand to the back of Nadine’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean to sound like I was ordering you around. This business with someone trying to hurt Richard just has me on edge, that’s all. I’m sorry I nearly bit your head off. You’re a guest. Please enjoy our home as your own.”
Nadine smiled over her shoulder. “I understand. Thanks.”
She really was a beautiful young woman: attractive figure and face, and an innocent quality, despite what truths Kahlan feared she danced around. Kahlan could easily see why Richard would have been attracted to her.
She wondered at what random wisp of fate had matched Richard with her, instead of this one. Whatever the reason, she thanked the good spirits that it was so, and prayed fervently that it would remain so.
More than anything, Kahlan wanted this perfidious gift from Shota to vanish. She wanted this tempting, beautiful, dangerous young woman away from Richard, to just send Nadine away. If only she could do so.
After telling the guards that Nadine was a guest, and once Kahlan and Cara had descended the carpeted stairs at the far end of the hall and were alone on the richly appointed landing, Cara seized Kahlan’s arm and spun her around to a halt.
“Are you crazy!”
“What are you talking about?”
Cara gritted her teeth as she leaned closer. “A witch woman sends your man a wedding gift—it’s the bride, and you invite her to stay!”
Kahlan rubbed a thumb against the round, polished sphere of ironwood topping the newel post. “I had to. Isn’t it obvious?”
“What is obvious to me is that you should have done as the little strumpet suggested; you should have shaved her bald and sent her away in the back of a manure wagon.”
“She’s a victim in this, too. She is Shota’s pawn.”
“Her tongue has a distaste for the truth. She still wants your man. If you can’t see that in her eyes, then you aren’t the wise woman I thought you to be.”
“Cara, I trust Richard. I know he loves me. If there’s one thing at the core of Richard’s way of looking at things, it’s trust and loyalty. I know my heart is safe in his hands.
“How would it look if I acted like a jealous woman and sent Nadine away? If I don’t show my trust in him, then I’m not honoring his loyalty to me. I can’t afford to even appear to betray his trust in me.”
Cara’s scowl didn’t so much as soften. “That bucket won’t carry water for me. All that may be true, but that isn’t why you asked Nadine to stay. You want to strangle her as much as I do, I can see it in your green eyes.”
Kahlan smiled, trying to see herself in the dark, polished ironwood. She could only see a blur of a reflection. “Hard to fool a sister of the Agiel. You’re right. I had to ask Nadine to stay because there’s something going on, something dangerous. The danger won’t simply go away if I make Nadine leave.”
With a gloved hand, Cara wiped a strand of blond hair back from her face. “Dangerous? Like what?”
“Therein lies the problem: I don’t know. And don’t you dare even think of hurting her. I have to find out what’s really going on, and in order to do that I may need Nadine. I don’t want to have to go hunting her when I could have kept her at hand and in sight in the beginning.
“Look at it this way. Would it have been the right thing to do to simply send Marlin away when he arrived and announced he wanted to kill Richard? Would that have solved the problem? Why are we keeping him around? To find out what’s going on, that’s why.”
Cara wiped at the unguent on her cheek as if it were a smudge of dirt. “I think you are inviting trouble to your bed.”
Kahlan had to blink at the burning sensation in her eye. “I know. Me, too. The obvious thing to do, the thing I ache to do, is to send Nadine away on the fastest horse I can find. But no problem is that easily solved, especially one sent by Shota.”
“You mean what Shota told Nadine, about the wind hunting Lord Rahl?”
“That’s part of it. I don’t know what it means, but it doesn’t sound to me like it’s something Shota dreamed up.
“Worse, though, is Shota’s prayer: ‘May the spirits have mercy on his soul.’ I don’t know what she meant by that, but it terrifies me. That, and that I might be making the biggest mistake of my life.
“But what choice do I have? Two people show up on the same day, one sent to kill him and the other sent to marry him. I don’t know which is more dangerous, but I do know that neither can be simply dismissed. If someone is trying to stick a knife in your back, closing your eyes doesn’t make you safe.”
Cara’s face eased from that of a Mord-Sith to the softer features of a woman who understood another woman’s fears. “I will watch your back. If she crawls into Lord Rahl’s bed, I will throw her out before he ever finds her there.”
Kahlan squeezed Cara’s arm. “Thanks. Now, let’s get down to the pit.”
Cara didn’t budge. “Lord Rahl said he does not want you down there.”
“And since when have you started following orders?”
“I always follow his orders. Especially the ones I know he means. He means this one.”
“Fine. You can watch over Nadine while I go down there.”
Cara snatched Kahlan’s elbow as she started to turn away. “Lord Rahl does not want you in danger.”
“And I don’t want him in danger. Cara, I felt a fool when Richard asked me all those questions that we failed to ask Marlin. I want the answers to those questions.”
“Lord Rahl said he would ask them.”
“And he’s not going to be back until tomorrow night. What happens in the meantime? What if something is going on and it’s too late to stop it by then? What if Richard is killed because we sat on our hands following his orders?
“Richard is afraid for me, and that’s keeping him from thinking clearly. Marlin has information about what’s going on, and it’s foolhardy to let time pass while the danger grows.
“What was it that you said to me, before? Something about hesitation being the end of you? Or the end of those you care about?”
Cara’s face went slack, but she didn’t answer.
“I care about Richard, and I’m not going to risk
his life by hesitating. I’m going to get the answers to those questions.”
Cara smiled at last. “I like your thinking, Mother Confessor. But then, you are a sister of the Agiel. The orders were ill-advised, if not foolish. Mord-Sith only follow Lord Rahl’s foolish orders when his male pride is at stake, not his life.
“We will go have a little discussion with Marlin, and get the answer to every one of those questions, and more. When Lord Rahl comes back, we will be able to give him the information he needs—if we haven’t already ended the threat.”
Kahlan popped the palm of her hand against the round newel post. “That’s the Cara I know.”
As they went lower in the palace, below the levels with carpets and paneling, down to the narrow, low-ceilinged halls where light came only from lamps, and even lower, where only torches lit the way, the air went from light and spring-fresh to stale, and then to rank with the heavy smell of damp, moldy stone.
Kahlan had walked those confining halls more times than she wished to recall. The pit was where they took confessions of the condemned. She had taken her first there, from a man who had killed his neighbor’s daughters after committing unspeakable acts on them. Of course, each of those times she had been accompanied by a wizard. Now, she was going to see a wizard being held there.
When they had passed out of earshot of a squad of soldiers guarding an intersection with two stairwells, and before they reached the turn that would take them to the pit hall that would be crowded with all the soldiers she had stationed there, Kahlan glanced over. Cara was an attractive woman, but a woman with an air of menace about her as she swept the empty hall with vigilant gazes.
“Cara, can I ask you a personal question?”
Cara clasped her hands behind her back as she strode along. “You are a sister of the Agiel. Ask.”
“Before, you told me that hesitation can be the end of you, or those you care about. You were talking about yourself, weren’t you?”
Cara slowed to a stop. Even in the hissing torchlight, Kahlan could see that her face had paled.
“Now that is truly a personal question.”
