Chapter 13: The Quiet He Chooses

Adrian pushed himself up on one elbow to leave the bed.

Noah caught the blanket where it had slipped off Adrian's shoulder.

He drew it back over him.

Adrian stopped moving.

'I was going to let you sleep,' he said.

The candle on the table had guttered down to a thumb of wax.

The room still held the heat Noah's light had left in it, sunk into the stone.

'You can stay,' Noah said.

Adrian lay back against the pillow.

He kept his hands folded on his own chest.

'I won't ask you for anything tonight,' he said.

Noah looked at the ceiling beams.

They were old and black with smoke.

One of them had split down the middle years before either of them came here.

'I want you,' Noah said. 'That part is true.'

Adrian said nothing.

'It doesn't erase the raid,' Noah said.

'It doesn't erase the priests who died in it.'

Adrian turned his head on the pillow to look at him.

'I'm not going to argue that,' Adrian said.

'Good.'

'And I'm not going to ask you to forgive me.'

Noah let that sit in the room between them.

It was the first honest thing Adrian had said all night.

Noah filed it with the rest.

Every kindness Adrian offered went into the same cold ledger.

On the other side of that ledger stood Idris, tied to a chair with tarred rope.

Someone knocked at the outer door.

Adrian was on his feet before Noah could answer.

The blanket lay in a heap on the mattress.

He pulled the door open a hand's width.

A ward boy stood in the corridor with the torchlight behind him.

The boy was thin and shaking in his coat.

'There's a message from the cellmate,' the boy said.

'The one who shares the wolf's cell.'

'Go on,' Adrian said.

'Brother Cassiel's in the courtyard cells. He was beaten for his prayer beads.'

'The red-cord ones.'

'A soldier took them off him and he wouldn't let it go.'

The boy's voice dropped.

'He's bleeding in there. They won't send for anyone.'

Adrian thanked him and closed the door.

Noah was already sitting up, the blanket across his lap.

'Cassiel,' he said.

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