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She dropped her hands at last, dragging them across her cheeks as if she were trying to rub some colour back into them. To his relief, her eyes, though wide and slightly wild-looking, were dry. At least she hadn’t been crying.
‘It’s just the thought of it. The thought of you in battle.’
A wave of relief washed through him. ‘You mean you were worried about me?’
‘Of course!’ She sounded angry and offended at the same time. ‘You could have been injured!’
‘I’m a soldier. That’s always a risk.’
Her gaze raked him up and down. ‘You have blood on your armour.’
‘It’s not mine. At worst I might have a few bruises.’
‘Good!’
He lifted an eyebrow, even more confused than before. As much as he wanted to believe that such an extreme reaction had been caused entirely by worry for him, he wasn’t completely convinced.
‘So you’ve been right all along?’ Her voice had a quaver in it this time. ‘There really is a rebellion coming?’
‘It looks likely. We were attacked by a war party who were trying to stop us from seeing something, preparations for an assault on the wall most likely, but one skirmish doesn’t prove anything. Not yet anyway.’
‘Yet?’
‘We have a prisoner.’ He watched her reaction as he spoke. ‘With any luck, he’ll talk.’
‘I saw.’ She dropped her eyes tellingly. ‘He was injured.’
‘Not badly.’
‘He might still need attention.’
‘So do Ario’s men.’
‘Oh...yes.’ A guilty expression crossed her face. ‘Were any of them badly hurt?’
‘A few injuries, but no losses, fortunately.’
‘What about the war party?’
‘You seem very worried about them.’ He narrowed his eyes and folded his arms at the same time. ‘They’re our enemies, Livia.’
This time she didn’t flinch. ‘They’re still people, too, aren’t they?’
‘So they are.’ He felt a shadow of suspicion at the back of his mind, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. ‘We inflicted some damage, but it was just a skirmish. There were no bodies left on the ground if that’s what you’re asking.’
‘Oh.’
‘Livia?’ Briefly he thought about sitting down beside her and then decided against it. The intimacy they’d shared the previous night seemed a distant memory, as if there were another wall between them suddenly, one that he couldn’t cross to reach her. ‘What else is it?’
She hesitated for a moment, drawing in a deep breath before she spoke again.
‘What if your prisoner doesn’t talk?’
‘We’re giving him a few days on his own to think about it.’
‘Is that all?’
There was an accusatory gleam in her eye and he frowned, not sure what she was getting at.
