The Dark Remains by Mark Anthony Page A

full of questions, aren’t you?
Sister
. Why should you care?”
    Lirith said nothing; she knew he would speak if she waited. It did not take long.
    “I’m being punished for stealing bread from a bread-monger in the bailey.” His voice was defiant, although his shoulders crunched inward.
    “Why did you steal bread? Does not Ivalaine feed you all the bread you wish?”
    Teravian clenched his hands into fists. “You’re just like they are! You’d rather believe some horrid little peasant instead of me. But I don’t care what you think. I didn’t do it—I didn’t steal his grotty bread.”
    “I believe you.”
    Teravian opened his mouth, then snapped it shut again, as if only just hearing what she had said. His eyes narrowed.
    “Why do you believe me?”
    “Did you speak a lie?”
    “No. I told you I didn’t do it.”
    “Then that is why I believe you.”
    Instead of replying, Teravian flopped back down on the heap of pillows. He picked one up, fidgeting with the tasseled fringe, not looking at her.
    “I’m sure you can go now,” Lirith said.
    “No, I can’t. Tressa never dismissed me. She was just getting into it about the breadmonger when she learned about some grotty maiden who was having a roll with a few guardsmen. It sounds to me like the maiden was just trying to have a little fun. But I suppose that’s a crime inthis castle. The news put Tressa all in a spin, and she forgot about me. People always forget about me.”
    Lirith arched an eyebrow. “And why do you suppose that is?”
    Teravian seemed to think about this, then he looked up at her. “Don’t people always forget the things they don’t like?”
    Lirith pressed her lips together. How could she deny the truth of that? She wasn’t certain why—he was without doubt a self-centered, brattish young man—but she felt a desire to comfort him. Maybe it was that, in a small way, he reminded her of Daynen: a slight youth lost in a world of shadow.
    “You’re wrong,” he said before she could speak. “Talking to Ivalaine about it won’t make it any better. She won’t believe me, either.”
    Lirith stiffened. “How did you know what I was going to say?”
    These were the first words she had spoken that truly seemed to affect him. He blinked, his lips going slack. “I don’t know. I suppose … I just know things sometimes.”
    Lirith studied him. Were he female, she would have probed, tested. But he was male—it couldn’t be. Yet she knew, on rare occasions, that there were men with some scant shred of talent.
    His expression sharpened into a frown. “Quit looking at me like that.”
    “Like what?”
    “All hard and wondering. She’s always looking at me that way, like I’m something she’s got in a jar.”
    “Whom do you mean?”
    Teravian stood. “Can I go now? If you say I can go, then I can blame you if Tressa gets angry at me.”
    Lirith took a step back, then nodded. “You may go.”
    He brushed past her, leaving without another look. Lirith started to turn, to at least say good-bye, then froze as something caught her eye.
    It was the pillow Teravian had been idly playing with. Somehow he must have pulled apart one of its seams, for spilling out of it was a mass of yarn. The tangled knot of threads seemed to seethe and expand even as she watched, and a sickness filled her. But it was an accident. He couldn’t have done it on purpose. Could he?
    I just know things sometimes
.…
    Lirith clasped a hand to her mouth and hurried from the chamber.

11.
    “Do you have any sense at all of what they’re up to, Melia?” Falken said, pacing back and forth before the sun-filled window of Ar-tolor’s library.
    “Just a moment, Falken,” the amber-eyed lady murmured, not looking up from the wood-covered book open on the table before her. “I’m just getting to the good part.”
    Durge craned his neck, attempting to peer surreptitiously over Lady Melia’s shoulder. He was curious what a person like Melia—who was so