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It was she who moved first, dropping her arms, reholstering her guns. He merely gazed back at her from under his tousled hair with that same mildly amused look on his face.
"Go," she said to the boy over her shoulder; and, giving her one last fearful glance, he moved from his position by the window, sidled along the walls of the small room, and dashed out the doorway, binocks still trailing from his hand. She ignored him.
"What mean you by that? Ye'd no idea I was seeking you."
Jerent stood up straight, and his face broke into a broad grin. "Oh, but I did, dear girl, I knew exactly when you'd left. The Oracle is a fascinating person, really she is. You'd be amazed the sort of things we learn from her…" He looked at her more closely, and his grin widened. "No, I take that back. You're never amazed at anything."
He took a step towards her, and Lilith resisted the impulse to step back from him. He stopped, though, as if sensing her discomfort, and merely looked at her again, the grin smaller now, more reflective, but still undaunted. After a moment or two like that, he turned and walked from the room. Lilith listened to the sound of his feet on the stairs, and numbly followed. This was not going at all how she had thought it would, and, gunslinger or no, she was finding herself hard-pressed to remember her father's face, when that of he who had been so dear to her was so much closer in space and time.
Outside the hostel waited the boy. Jerent slung an arm around his shoulders, and smiled imperturbably at Lilith as she came down the front steps. "Been a while, hasn't it? Ye've not changed a bit, though - still impulsive, still not cautious enough for a gunslinger."
She glared at him from beneath the brim of her hat. "What would ye know of it? Ye never claimed your guns. Ye're not a gunslinger any more than Tieburl."
His smile finally dropped. "So it is. But I know more of gunslinging than you ever will, Lilith. I was training for me guns - "
"Before I was born. I know. I've heard that too many times for it to matter."
The boy shrank behind Jerent; his pale eyes fixed on Lilith with fearful wonder. She looked back at him thoughtfully for a moment, then spoke to Jerent. "The boy be your spawn, I'm sure." Full of bitter humor, and a species of jealousy she had thought long dead. Nearly maddening was the urge to draw her guns and make sure that smug grin of his would never resurface again. Dammit, if she didn't need him…
Her hands did not so much as twitch, and Jerent did not notice how close he had come to stepping into the clearing that lay at the end of his own meandering path. Instead he was laughing, shaking his head wisely, the same way he always reacted when she said something stupid. "You silly girl, didn't you ever listen to anything I said?"
'Mayhap I didn't, for I certainly don't remember you ever saying goodbye."
Gods, what was she doing? She gritted her teeth, angry at herself. Only the world was at stake here, and what was she doing? Acting like a lovesick teenager. Then one of her hands accidentally brushed the worn butt of her gun, and she relaxed again. Ka.
'True, and ye've to believe I've regretted that these seven years. But the rebels needed me. And if I had stayed - "
'Tieburl would ha' killed you. I know what happened that day." Her stare was angry, unforgiving. "I was the only one that survived when he came after you."
Jerent shrugged. "What can I say? That I'm sorry? It won't bring back the dead. Ye wouldn't believe me if I told you how many nights I've spent awake, wondering whether I was careless - whether I could have stayed hidden from Tieburl longer - but I've learned to accept the past. Mayhap you should do the same."
"Accept it - or forget it?"
He was silent.
"B'ngra is gone, Jerent. Obliterated. Tieburl is not one to be crossed. He came looking for you. You weren't there, so he had to content himself with loosing his army upon the town itself. By the time they were done, there wasn't a cottage left standing."
"You should have heard the screams of those who burned inside their homes."
He nodded heavily. "I have, every night. In my dreams." He then turned and began walking off, heading west along the dead town's main road, the boy at his side. After a moment, she followed.