‘I should hope not. There would hardly be space.’
‘And all the passengers looking on. Puts a man off his stroke.’
Cassian snorted. ‘Someone would tell you they’d been on a stage wherefourpassengers—’
Daizell’s bruised shoulders hurt with the shaking as he laughed. It felt good, though, lifting the cloud. ‘What I was trying to say was, I’ve had that unlovely experience twice before. The first time, I was no use to man or beast: I sat there stunned, and I wasn’t even injured. I couldn’t seem to take in what had happened. Just useless.’
‘Yes,’ Cassian said in a low voice. ‘That’s how I felt.’
‘But you weren’t. You did what you were told,’ Daizell said. ‘That’s better than the people who stand around andcry, and even they’re better than the ones who get in the way. You did as well as anyone could expect, and next time you can deal with the horses and the swine who thinks he’s a whip,andthe one who wants to drive the coach over the bodies to get to his important engagement.’
‘I’ll look forward to it,’ Cassian said. ‘You – uh, you think people do get used to these things? To dealing with emergencies?’
‘If you have enough of them.’
‘Yes, but what if you don’t? Or haven’t? I mean, if one is used to being held up by a – a scaffolding of other people, and has never encountered emergencies, might one not discover one is helpless without that support?’
Daizell wasn’t entirely sure what he was actually being asked, but it sounded painful. ‘Everyone relies on other people. And eventually most people let you down, one way or another, so I dare say it’s a good thing to practise dealing with difficulties on your own. But I don’t see there’s any great moral virtue in it.’
‘Do you not think independence is a virtue?’
‘Overrated,’ Daizell said. ‘One should be able to do things for oneself, but the world would surely be a better place if we did more for one another.’
‘Yes,’ Cassian said. ‘Yes, that is true. And we can’t all expect to do everything.’
‘Certainly not right, and definitely not the first time we try.’
‘No. Although, even so, nobody wants to be helpless.’
‘No.’ Daizell knew exactly how it felt to be helpless. ‘No, that is an unpleasant sensation.’
‘One feels so pointless,’ Cassian said. ‘Filling a place, rather than being useful.’
That was not how Daizell would have described the sensation of having his entire life torn from his control, ripped up, and thrown away, but doubtless they had different experiences of helplessness. ‘Well, you weren’t that. You did perfectly well, and better than many would have, and if those horses had bolted, things would have been a deal worse. You’ve nothing to rebuke yourself for.’
‘Then we can both flatter ourselves we made the best of a bad situation.’
‘If we weren’t trudging along on an apparently endless road with no place of refreshment in sight and an enraged magistrate likely on our tail, I might agree with you.’
Cassian gave his startled laugh. ‘Well, there is that, but I’m sure we’ll find somewhere. I suppose everyone from the coach is all right?’
‘No idea,’ Daizell said. ‘I imagine someone will have come along by now and we’d reached the limits of what I was able to offer in the way of help.’ That met with a silence. He glanced over and saw Cassian looking rather struck. ‘No?’
‘I was just thinking that I could have done more. Oh, curse it, I know I should.’
‘I don’t see how, unless you’re a bonesetter.’ He remembered again the splintered end of bone, the torn skin and obscenely bared flesh, and shuddered the memory off.
Cassian glanced over. ‘Are you all right?’
Daizell didn’t want to talk about it. ‘Is that a farmhouse there?’
It was a farmhouse, and a friendly one. The mistress of the house tutted and sympathised at their shocking escape from danger, as narrated by Daizell with a bit of flair, agreed that coaches were nasty rattling things that went too fast, brought them tankards of excellent home-brewed, and let them sluiceoff the blood and dirt and dust in the yard with a bucket, while she went to consult someone called Jed Browning as to how they could best carry on their journey.
Daizell thought of nothing but being briefly cool and clean as he stripped to the waist and dumped water over his head. He scrubbed his face, dunked his head in the bucket, and shook it like a dog to get the contamination of the day out of his curls, poured handfuls of water over his torso, and opened his eyes to see Cassian watching. His mouth was slightly slack, his sun-and-rain eyes fascinated, and they weren’t locked on Daizell’s face, either.
Well.
Daizell had no objection to being looked at, especially not in the hungry way Cassian was looking. He did have a strong objection born of experience to people looking and being caught looking and regretting it, and it somehow becoming his fault that they’d given themselves away. So he shut his eyes again before Cassian could realise they were open, made perhaps a slightly excessive performance of rubbing and stretching, and scrubbed at his face before saying, ‘Do you want the bucket?’
