mother, her brother and herself. They had no guests; assembly of any kind was forbidden throughout that year. Her mother had smiled when Dianora gave her a slice of the dark cake, but Dianora had known the smile had nothing to do with any of them.
Her brother had known it too. Preternaturally grave he had kissed his mother on the forehead and then his sister, and had gone out into the night. It was, of course, illegal to be abroad after nightfall, but something kept driving him out to walk the streets, past the random fires that still smoldered on almost every corner. It was as if he was daring the Ygrathen patrols to catch him. To punish him for having been fourteen in the season of war.
Two soldiers were knifed in the dark that fall. Twenty death-wheels were hoisted in swift response. Six women and five children were among those bound aloft to die. Dianora knew most of them; there weren't so very many people left in the city, they all knew each other. The screaming of the children, then their diminishing cries were things she needed shelter from in her nights forever after.
No more soldiers were killed.
Her brother continued to go out at night. She would lie awake until she heard him come in. He always made a sound, deliberately, so she would hear him and be able to fall asleep. Somehow, he knew she would be awake, though she had never said a word.
He would have been handsome, with his dark hair and deep brown eyes if he hadn't been so thin and if the eyes were not shadowed and ringed by sleeplessness and grief. There was not a great deal of food that first winter, most of the harvest had been burned, and the rest confiscated, but Dianora did the best she could to feed the five of them. About the look in his eyes there was nothing she could do. Everyone had that look that year. She could see it in her mirror.
The following spring the Ygrathen soldiers discovered a new form of sport. It had probably been inevitable that they would, one of the evil growths that sprang from the deep-sown seeds of Brandin's vengeance.
Dianora remembered being at an upstairs window the day it began. She was watching her brother and the apprentice, no longer an apprentice, of course, walking through a sun-brightened early morning across the square on their way to the site where they were laboring. White clouds had been drifting by overhead, scudding with the wind. A small cluster of soldiers came from the opposite side and accosted the two boys. Her window was open to air the room and catch the freshness of the breeze; she heard it all.
"Help us!" one of the soldiers bleated with a smirk she could see from her window. "We're lost," he moaned, as the others quickly surrounded the boys. He drew sly chuckles from his fellows. One of them elbowed another in the ribs.
"Where are we?" the soldier begged.
Eyes carefully lowered, her brother named the square and the streets leading from it.
"That's no good!" the soldier complained. "What good are street names to me? I don't even know what cursed town I'm in!" There was laughter; Dianora winced at what she heard in it.
"Lower Corte," the apprentice muttered quickly, as her brother kept silent. They noticed the silence though.
"What town? You tell me," the spokesman said more sharply, prodding her brother in the shoulder.⑧⑧文⑧檔⑧共⑧享⑧與⑧在⑧線⑧閱⑧讀⑧
"I just told you. Lower Corte," the apprentice intervened loudly. One of the soldiers cuffed him on the side of the head. The boy staggered and almost fell; he refused to lift a hand to touch his head.
Her pulse pounding with fright, Dianora saw her brother look up then. His dark hair gleamed in the morning sunlight. She thought he was going to strike the soldier who had dealt that blow. She thought he was going to die. She stood up at her window, her hands clenched on the ledge. There was a terrible silence in the square below. The sun was very bright.
"Lower Corte," her brother said, as though he were choking on the words.
Laughing raucously the soldiers let them go.
F