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The next day passed in exactly the same manner, except that Brandon was so tired he managed to sleep heavily for nearly nine hours before emerging from his room. Again, he killed the time before his shift by chatting with Finley and slowly eating dinner. But when he stepped outside to relieve Nadder, the other guard greeted him with a yawn.
“She’s not out here,” Nadder said. “She went in after lunch and hasn’t left her room since. I stayed outside because it was too hot in the house.”
“Oh. All right,” Brandon said blankly. “I guess I’ll do a patrol or two outside but mostly keep to the house.”
“Sounds good,” said Nadder, yawning again. “See you tomorrow.”
It was the second-longest night Brandon could ever remember.
But he slept more reasonably the following day and felt more like himself when he woke up. Not hopeful, not disappointed, just ready to do his job. Which didnotrequire conversation with his charges.
He and Nadder did some training exercises together in one of the unused ground-floor rooms, lifting weights and going through some basic fencing moves. When they emerged, they found Finley eating dinner in the atrium. A large tureen of food and extra plates had been laid out on the table beside her, so they pulled up chairs to join her.
Brandon didn’t recognize the spices or even the meat in the stew that he ladled out, but he had to say he liked it. “This isgood,” he observed. “I don’t think I’ve ever had it before.”
“Comes from southern Marata,” Nadder said. “Cook makes it specially for me.”
“Gotta be as boring here for her as it is for the rest of us,” Finley said. “So she doesn’t mind if you ask her to make you something different once in a while.”
“I’ll remember that. There are a few dishes from the islands that I’ve been missing.”
“Well, if they’re too exotic, she won’t have the ingredients,” Finley warned.
Brandon nodded enthusiastically. “She could get them! In the southeast district there’s a whole Zessin neighborhood. You can get food—clothes—anything.”
“Never been there,” Nadder said.
“I’ll take you sometime, if you want to go.”
“You can’t both be gone at the same time,” Finley pointed out.
Nadder shrugged his muscular shoulders. “We can go once I’m off the assignment. Couple more months.”
“Not like you’re counting every single day.”
“I don’t think it’s so bad here,” Brandon volunteered.
“I didn’t either, my first week,” Nadder agreed. “But day after day after day ofnothing.It wears on you.”
“Well, there’ll besomethingtomorrow,” Finley said.
“What’s that?” Brandon asked.
“Visit from the temple. Someone comes every couple weeks to check on Villette—usually the high divine. He’s supposed to get here sometime in late afternoon.”
“How long does he stay?” Brandon asked.
Finley shrugged. “Around an hour, unless Villette is being uncooperative. Then maybe ten minutes.”
“But it’s not like she has a lot of other visitors, so even though she hates him, she usually lets him stay and talk a while,” Nadder added.
“Why does she hate him?”
Finley looked expressively around the atrium, all mellow gold and restful blue in the softening twilight. “Because he’s the one who keeps her here?”
Brandon took another bite of stew before casually asking, “Does anyone know why?”
Finley shook her head. “And I don’t care. I’m not even curious.”
