There was a creak and a bang and a burst of sound as the great oaken door of the keep swung open. The stranger pressed Trehearne flat against the wall. The doorway was just out of sight, but Trehearne could hear the voices clearly. They were speaking their own unfamiliar tongue, so that what they said was lost to him, but he knew they were talking about him. He heard his name, and the voice that spoke it was Shairn's. Then she laughed. She didn't need to laugh. The sound of her voice would have been enough. Trehearne flung off the stranger's restraining arm and stood away from the wall.
"You fool!" whispered the stranger furiously, and caught at him, but Trehearne was remembering things, words, looks, and the anger in him burned away the fear. He walked out into the light that spilled across the courtyard from the open door. Kerrel and a number of others, mostly women, were standing there, but the only one he saw was Shairn, girdled with jewels and wearing a tunic the color of flame, holding in her hand a goblet of wine. A silence fell, and Shairn's gaze was fixed on his. Even so, he could not read it.
She smiled and said, "Thank you, Michael. I've won my bet."
FOUR
A hand fell upon Trehearne's shoulder from behind. It was the man in the yellow tunic, and he had become, in the last few seconds, quite jovially drunk. He gave Trehearne a friendly shove toward the door and called out to the people who stood there, "I found him out here looking for a way in—and I swear the man's a Vardda!" Under his breath he said rapidly in Trehearne's ear, "Keep your mouth shut, or we'll both be in trouble!"
They went together into the keep. The men stared closely at Trehearne, and the women chattered about him in their own tongue. And Kerrel said to Shairn, "Are you satisfied, now you've got him here?"
"I didn't get him here," she said. "He was going to Keregnac anyway, and nothing could have kept him back then." She turned away, toward a table where there were bottles and various foods, and poured wine into a goblet. "Besides, he's a grown man. He knows what he wants to do. Isn't that so, Michael?"
She handed him the goblet. He took it and said, "Oh yes, that's so. You'd better collect your bet."
"I think," she answered, "I'll let it ride." She raised her goblet to sip the wine, doing it in such a way that her sleeve fell back and showed him the dark bruised ring his fingers had left around her wrist.