It was right that her voice was – dull, once again, of the warmth which had animated it. It was right. No undue expectations, he told himself. No holding on to anything one had best let go.
His lips twisted and thinned out when she spoke again. This – hurt – this he expected, and this he knew what to do with, as improper as it was to talk back to an officer of the Seventen. This was natural, or at least as natural as anything in the last week had been.
Some niggling little part of him, some part he wanted nothing more than to snuff out, told him he remembered this. Those unexpected flashes of anger, even when she was a little girl. One summer he remembered telling her haltingly, on the verge of tears, about how Benoit Bellecourt – now there was a name he had not thought in a long time – had torn up one of his proudest drawings. It had always made him feel safe, the way she…
No, he thought; he did not imagine she would do anything to harm the baker, whoever he or she was, inadvertently. And perhaps he had known what threat would hurt the most. He was, after all, a very good interrogator.
His fist was balled very tightly on the table. Slowly, as if he had to order each muscle individually, he forced his fingers to uncurl. “Excellent,” he said sharply.
There was the soft scrabble of claws across the dusty hardwood, then the gentle thud of the pup sitting down. At her feet, he thought. A comfort, perhaps.
He was not that. He would never again be that.
“Indeed.” With a deep breath, he inched his way around the table, fumbling in the empty air. He found another chair much like the first; it was human-sized – which was not too terribly large for him – but light, and he pulled it swiftly over to the open bag and sat.
He realized that he was already achingly, twistingly hungry. The events of the day had stolen his appetite, and now it had come roaring back. She must have been at least that hungry; he wondered, not for the first time, if she had eaten that morning.
“Again, these are no AAF field rations. They are meant to last – a few days, perhaps, for if an officer should be trapped somewhere, in the case of disaster.” He paused with a distinctly sour taste on his tongue. “And only one officer,” he went on, as matter-of-factly as ever. “You are my charge; I shall insist on you taking the greater share, if necessary. Of this, and…”
Damn it, but if only he had his sight! Find a kitchen in this place, which might be half-fallen in, or a snake’s nest? Was she proposing to cook while blinded? To clean a long-abandoned hearth with a twisted ankle, in pitch darkness, with gods knew what in the flue? If there even was one, and the whole thing had not fallen in or crumbled? But if either of them had their sight, they would not be in this position to begin with.
He kept his field indectal this time, though he snorted agitatedly. Then – for one creeping, uncomfortable moment, he realized that it was much more than his sight that he might have lost, back in the coach. That both of them might have lost. He had been so focused that he had not considered it.
He swallowed. “Whatever we find,” he went on. “Here – hold out your… hand. Other than the jerky which pup has claimed, we are issued…”
Slowly, with a rhythm almost akin to marching, he listed out the contents of the box. If she complied, he would place each in her hand, and only move onto the next when and if she had set it aside; he would pause and listen, if she thought aloud.
“… and eight ounces of corned beef,” he finished, setting the can in her hand. He had not included the tobacco ration. A shame, he thought dryly, one could not roll up one’s sorrows and smoke them away as easily.
He swallowed tightly. “As for the wholly unknown variable of time…”
Of a sudden, the dog began whining again, loudly. He heard the wet, slobbery sounds of his tongue again, as if he were licking her hand insistently.