The Continent (The Continent #1)(43)

“It’s beautiful. Surely you ought to keep it, if it’s an heirloom?”

He grins. “It’s yours. And you’ll be plenty warm when winter comes around again.”

I will be home in the Spire by winter. I feel tired suddenly, though it isn’t even noon. “I’m so grateful for all you and Noro have done. Keiji…would you mind if I had some time to settle in?”

“Of course.” He heads down the hallway, humming to himself. At the front door, he turns back and says, “Come by soon, if you want to see Noro—like I told you, they’ve been sending him out a good deal since you arrived. But he’s home for a few days at least.”

“I will. Thank you for seeing me settled. You can bring Aki in next time, if you like. I don’t mind.”

He gives me a wave and bounds across the road, the dog trotting along close at his heels.

Alone in the house, I feel misplaced, as though I’ve sneaked into a stranger’s home and suddenly decided to live there. I turn and head back down the hall to the bedroom, curl up atop the soft green quilt, and close my eyes. As I drift into a hazy slumber, my thoughts are of Noro.

In my mind, I see his features emerging from shadow as he stood by the fire at the Topi camp. I see the tightness of his jaw as he stared at the council table, offering to convey me to Ivanel. I see his eyes, dark and veiled, as he bid me farewell on the steps at Eno’s, his fingers wrapped around my own.

I felt his absence during my stay in the healing room; I feel it now. I wonder at his distance, when I was so clearly in his thoughts. And then these contemplations wisp into nothingness, and I sleep without dreaming.

The following day, around noon, I decide that it is time to pay Noro a visit.

I head to the bedroom and open the top drawer of the dresser. Inside is a small looking-glass, framed in silver with a long, slender handle. It’s not a true mirror—more like a plate of steel that has been finely polished—but it’s the only reflective surface in the cottage, and it’s better than nothing. I scrutinize my reflection; I look the same as ever, I suppose—thinner, paler perhaps than I was in the Spire, but not entirely different.

I fix my hair into a loose plait, grasp the looking-glass again, and smile experimentally. A shadow of my former self appears—a girl who looks very like the person I once was. Am I yet the same? Or am I someone different now, someone forever changed by tragedy and circumstance?

I tuck the mirror back into the drawer, wondering abstractedly if Noro will recognize me. When I saw him last, I was bedraggled, bleeding, and sick with fever. I wore a mishmash of torn and bloodied clothes, with twigs and pine needles in my matted hair. At least now I am somewhat presentable, dressed in the Aven’ei garments I found in the wardrobe.

Outside, I find the narrow road between the houses to be thick and muddy with the melting snow. I pick my way across, coming to Noro’s cottage with reasonably dry shoes. I knock at the door and wait, my heart pounding, my hands restless at my sides.

Half a minute passes before he answers. When he opens the door, he does not seem surprised to see me; he merely rests his palm against the top of the frame and says, after a moment, “You look well, girl.”

The sight of him, familiar and new all at once, plays havoc with my nerves. He is taller than I remember, looking very lean and elegant in a fitted gray shirt and a pair of black trousers. His hair falls loosely from the center to one side, not spiked upward as it was when I saw him last.

“Yes,” I say. “Eno let me stay far longer than my wounds required.”

“She knows her business.”

“She does.”

There is an awkward pause. Noro straightens his shoulders and takes a step back. “You would like some tea?”

“Please,” I say, and follow him inside. The house is exactly as it was on my first night in Hayato: tidy, comfortable, quiet.

In the kitchen, Noro puts on a kettle and leans against the table. After a moment, he says, “How do you like your new home? Does it suffice?”

“It’s far more than I would ever have asked of your people.”

“We have no shortage of empty dwellings,” he says. “The winter was long, and the fighting regular.”

I had not considered why the house might be vacant. I swallow, feeling uncomfortable. “I…I am told you made all the arrangements for me?”

His gaze shifts over to the window. “I did.”

I stare across at him, my lips trembling. “I am so grateful for all you have done—truly, I am. But…why didn’t you come to see me, Noro?”

His mouth opens and closes, then he frowns. “I thought it best you were left alone.”

“Keiji called on me every day.”

“I know. I sent him.”

“I thought as much. But you just said—”

“I know what I said. I meant to say I thought it best if you were apart from me.”

“But why?”

He sighs, glances down at the kettle, and folds his arms across his chest. “I would have been no comfort to you.”

“I don’t think you know how wrong you are about that.”

His eyes meet mine for a fraction of a second, then he turns to take two small cups from a shelf above the stove. “Keiji has a way with others. It was right to send him.”