The rest of that morning in Bree, Rastellion is hopelessly distracted, unable to keep his mind from straying back to Imma's last words: "Go. Just go."
It didn't make sense. None of it made sense -- nothing that Imma had said or done since ... well, ever since they came back from Winterhome to discover that they needed that third signature. She'd seemed so happy then, on that brief vacation. What had changed?
"...It's up to you to make sure someone else doesn't come along and give her more than just promises and words..." Rossi's advice echoes in his head, and he flinches. His hand smears a line of the inventory he's writing up, and he swears under his breath.
Finally, in the mid-afternoon, he gives up, recognizing that he's worse than useless here. He grabs his cloak and strides outside. Immalaine may have told him to go, but she didn't say to stay away. And, this time, he's not leaving until he gets some straight answers.
Goeff Leafwood looks up from his own desk and watches Rastellion leave. He shakes his head sadly. Things obviously hadn't gone the way that young man had hoped. Rast had slouched in several hours ago, his face a mask of anger and pain, and had scarcely had a civil word for anyone since. Scarcely a word at all. Goeff sighs and returns his attention to his own papers, shaking his head, bemused. Young love - everything is a crisis. Give it a week and it'd be replaced by whatever the next great calamity turned out to be. Well, one grew out of that sort of nonsense, eventually.
Half an hour later, Rastellion is striding up the path to Zan's house. Now, as he mounts the stairs, his hasty footsteps falter for the first time, and he hesitates as he lifts his hand to knock. Go, just go. What if she says.... Well, even so, better to have it out, one way or the other. Still, his stomach clenches into a tight, sick knot as he raps on the wood, and he flattens his palm to lean against the door, taking a few deep breaths. Then the latch rasps on the far side of the door, and he straightens.
Merry turns from putting the baby down for a nap and goes to answer the door for what seems like the hundredth time today. Rastellion waits on the stoop looking, for the world, like he's swallowed something foul. She greets him with a sympathetic smile. "Hello Mister Rastellion, wasn't expecting you back today…"
Rastellion puffs out a humorless laugh. "No, I dare say you weren't. May I come in?"
Merithele steps back and waves him in, "Of course," she answers, before turning to tend the hearth. "I .... I hope you had a ... good ..." she pauses, feeling foolish. From the looks of him, he'd hardly had a good day, and she couldn't blame him.
Rastellion glances down at the desk, where Immalaine's new deed to her property still lies, half buried under the books that have slipped over it, untouched since that morning. He looks around. "I need to talk to Immalaine," he says bluntly. "Need to ... to ask ... I need to talk to her. Where is she, Merry?"
Swallowing, Merry turned away quickly, hearing the plea in his voice. "Immalaine .. she left the house earlier," she starts nervously. "She had a visitor, and ..."
Rastellion frowns. "A visitor?" Something in Merry’s tone warns him that this was no ordinary visit. "What sort of visitor? When will she be back?"
Merithele stammers a few incoherent syllables, then blurts, "She was writing a letter earlier, and this man ... he came to call on her.. and he said he was an old friend of hers, that they were once very close, and ...." She trails off at the look on the other’s face.
Rastellion finds he is gripping the back of a chair painfully hard, but he can't bring himself to let go. "Start at the beginning," he says as Merry's voice peters out. "Tell me what happened."
Merry takes another deep breath and does so. As she narrates the morning's events - the stranger whom Imma was so happy to see, whom so was so eager to run off with - the color drains from Rast's face. He sinks into the chair, shaking his head.
"Did Zan... what did Zan say," he asks, then glances over at the shut bedroom door, remembering that Zandrianna had taken Rossi's sleeping draught and wasn't expected to rouse until that evening, at the earliest. He turns his helpless gaze back to Merry. "And she just ... went away with him?" he asks, as if expecting the question will somehow produce a different answer.
Merithele frowns, distressed by the look on Rastellion's face, and reaches out to squeeze his shoulder in an attempt to comfort him. "She did. She didn't even take anything with her, just raced out the door.” She swallows. “He said not to wait up for them."
Rastellion’s face seems almost green now. "Eager to go..." he murmurs. "No... No!" He pushes himself to his feet. "You said she was writing a letter?" There's a desperate edge to his voice now, the sound of a man grasping at straws. "Did she post it? Or leave it with you? Or.....?"
Merithele shakes her head, thinking hard. "No, she was at the desk in her room when the man arrived and ..."
Rastellion doesn't wait for her to finish but turns and bolts into Imma's room. Silence stretches for nearly a minute. Then he comes out, shoulders slumped, looking more dead than alive. An ink-smeared piece of paper, pinched at one corner, flutters in his listless hand. "Here," he says tonelessly, putting it on the table. "She spilled some ink on it, but it doesn't matter. It's clear."
Merry looks down at the half-finished missive and reads:
Dear Rastellion,
When we first met, I only told you a little bout my life before I came to Bree. I said I was alone cause my gardian had just died. But that wasn't true. He'd been dead almost a year, though I still feel like he’s there some days.
I left alot out in what I told you cause I thought I’d left it behind. But now it’s caught up with me. So I have to tell you about him while I still can. Even if you hate me for it.
After my gardian died I moved from place to place for awhile. I never stayed anywhere long. I worked in kitchens and stables and anywhere I could, and I slept out in the fields. Sometimes I didn’t make enough to buy food so I foraged and hunted too and some nights I was still hungry and cold. Then winter started coming.
That's when I met this rich man, on the road. He took me…
((Here the letter becomes unintelligible, as the ink Immalaine spilled blotted out the remaining lines. Only a few phrases can be discerned in what remains, the letter obviously unfinished.))
… never thought I’d see him again …
… into him in Bree a few days ago …
… so I have to tell you …
… said he’d talk to you about …
… I never meant to …
As Merry examines the letter, Rast feels everything clicking into place, cold and precise as dwarven clockwork. The man he saw her talking to so intimately in Bree, whom she claimed was just "asking for directions." How she suddenly didn't want to go on their trip: of course not, because it turn out she’d arranged to leave with this stranger, this Sallastin, yesterday. How she insisted on having her own room on their trip: she wasn't sick, just sick of him.
And no wonder she'd been avoiding his embraces ever since ... well, ever since the day after their return from Winterhome. Which was when she must have seen him. Her... old lover. It’s as if Rastellion can hear Rossi’s voice in the next room, murmuring: ..come along and give her more than just promises and words.
"I even saw him once," Rast says quietly, his voice uninflected. "In Bree. Talking to her." His fists are clenching and unclenching at his sides. "She pretended she didn't know him."
Merithele looks down at the letter, then back up at Rastellion helplessly. "I .... don't know ... there must be ..." an explanation, she thought to herself. But Immalaine's behavior had been strange for days, and the letter was such an obvious attempt to say ... what? good-bye? Merry hesitently reaches to comfort the distraught man.
Rastellion flinches away from the girl's outstretched hand. "Just like last time," he whispers to himself. Everytime he offers his heart, every time, he’s used and betrayed. Left for someone better. Back home it was... damn, he can't even remember the other fellow's name, the boy with the farm that wasn’t being sold.. And now it was this Sallastin... this former lover with his rich clothes and fine horse, his servants and his... and... and every damn time.
Rastellion snatches Imma's ink-stained letter from the table. With a snarl, he crumples and hurls it at the far wall. Even the paper mocks him, its brief, unsatisfactory flight dropping it short of its goal, to roll behind a heavy wooden end table.
"I should go," he says, staring at the floor. "I should ... just go." Without looking at the girl, he turns and trudges toward the door, opens it, and steps out into the chill sunshine of the late afternoon.
A moment later, a nearby songbird, perched on a barren branch and basking in the light, trills contemptuously as it watches the dejected man slump away.
(c)2015 by Immalaine and Rastellion
