Throughout the afternoon, Si'Wren continued to suffer from her beating and the fever. L'acoci was kept busy at the simmering stew pot for the sake of the other slaves. They were due to come in from the fields just as dusk dimmed into night, and the old crone did not appear to take especial notice of Si'Wren's physical distress.
But when Si'Wren finally began to moan in pain, at long last L'acoci deigned to hear her cries as the old hag came over to her and took her firmly by the shoulders, whispering urgently to her to be silent and lie still.
She could not. The rejection by Master Rababull, the slaying of Nelatha, the humiliation, and the beating all seemed increasingly overwhelming to her. Such torment and emotional anguish as she had never known filled her being, so real and so indomitable. She could not will it away. She could not face up to it. She could not escape it nor answer it.
Then, suddenly, Habrunt was there, momentarily putting aside his many responsibilities, kneeling beside her with a clay cup of herb tea in his large hand as his other hand gently supported her head.
He spoke to her soft words of comfort, and somehow the unwavering look in his eyes and the warmth of the beverage offered by his very own hand filled her with such a sense of reassurance that it seemed to suffuse her very soul with an awareness that without Habrunt, she should surely have known damnation.
After that, he came daily, sometimes in the morning and again in the late afternoon. That Habrunt grieved for her suffering was no secret, although what he ever thought of anything was purely his own affair. Moreover, he came boldly, openly, letting all see that he was Habrunt the Slavemaster, and the servant of but one man.
If the Master of the House was aware of any of this, yet did Habrunt brave the danger willingly enough, apparently heedless if Master Rababull should experience displeasure.
But Master Rababull, although fully aware of Habrunt's behavior because of the many tattletales he listened to, found it expedient to consider the matter settled, and his Slavemaster too useful to chastise for so light an infringement. Instead, Master Rababull pretended that it was so unimportant as to be beneath either his notice or his dignity. Had he not graciously spared Si'Wren's very life? Was she not then worthy to be restored meekly to a useful, if lower, status in the House, her social ostracism as a total outcast notwithstanding?
Master Rababull's only publicly announced edict, an iron one, was that Si'Wren must never again work in the spice tent. It was an honor she no longer deserved. Habrunt never openly showed the slightest affection to Si'Wren, but ministered to her with stoic mein. Whenever he came, he commanded the ever-present runner boys to wait outside. Then he would enter in and give her tea and broth at his own hand. When Si'Wren tried to whisper secretly to him once, his eyes widened in alarm and he immediately put his hand firmly over her mouth and shook his head and frowned in an urgent but barely perceptible negative.
Then after each visit, he would depart again after speaking scarcely a word, and that only to L'acoci.