She rinsed out her soiled clothes, fending off Larla, who insisted that she should do it. After some argument, Larla gave her a wooden tub and heated some water, and had to be content with instructing Selmana on how best to scrub woollens. Selmana listened with half an ear, squeezing the fabric until the water ran clean, and hung her clothes in Larla’s tiny paved courtyard. Larla tutted over her plants, sadly shredded and bruised by the storm, and began to sweep up the litter, a sludge of grey, unmelted hail and torn branches and leaves. Selmana looked up at the clearing sky, feeling the clean wind like a blessing. Alone in the kitchen while Larla busied herself about her garden, Selmana found that she was very content to wait. A deep tiredness, as if she had laboured all day in a forge, had settled in her very bones. She listened for the return of the other Bards, hoping that Larla’s confidence wasn’t misplaced. She realized she trusted that the old woman was right, that the crisis had passed with the storm and that Nelac, Cadvan and Dernhil were unscathed, and she wondered why.
