Katharine Kerr - A Time of Justice

‘Better than no trail at all. Well and good, then. Let’s ride.’

In the fine dusting of soot on the windowsill, Sevinna idly printed her name, then flicked the soot away with the side of her hand. No matter how often the servants cleaned, there was always soot on everything in Lughcarn. She looked out the window to the ward of the gwerbretal dun, a small village within the city, with its barracks, stables, round huts, and even some little houses for the privileged servants, all of them topped with dirty grey thatch. The sky beyond glowed hazy and golden from the smoke of the thousands of charcoal fires burning in the iron smelters at the edge of town. Most of the iron ore that came downriver from the northern mines passed to be smelted down into ingots before being traded further, because by the king’s own charter, Lughcarn held a virtual monopoly on rough smelting in the northern kingdom. The monopoly, of course, made the gwerbretrhyn rich, less so only than Cerrmor and the King’s own city of Dun Deverry itself.

‘Sevvi?’ Babryan called out. ‘Is somewhat wrong?’

‘Oh, naught.’ Sevinna turned from the window. ‘Just wondering if Mam and her escort were home by now.’

‘Probably. Are you going to miss your family?’

‘Of course, but it’s splendid getting to stay here, anyway.’

Babryan smiled and gestured at a cushioned chair next to her own. Sevinna dutifully sat down and looked round the richly furnished room, the top floor of a half-broch entirely devoted to the gwerbret’s womenfolk, and the private preserve of Babryan and her sister, Wbridda, Sevinna’s cousins. That unmarried lasses would have a hall of their own was a breathtaking sort of luxury to Sevinna, who had been raised in her father, Tieryn Obyn’s, country dun to the north. Babryan and Wbridda had fine silk dresses, too, and lots of silver jewellery and soft wool cloaks, dyed in any colour they chose. At one side of the room stood four carved chests, packed full of extra clothing. Those chests made Sevinna painfully aware of her own coarse linen dresses, all three of them, which sat neatly folded on a chair beside her bed. Her one consolation was that she was as pretty as they were, in spite of their jewellery. In fact, she looked enough like them to be another sister – blonde lasses, all of them, with wide blue eyes and a heavy but sensually curving mouth that was the mark of the gwerbret’s line.

‘I’m truly glad you’re here,’ Wbridda said. At thirteen, she was the youngest of the girls. ‘I’ll wager we can find you a better husband than you’d ever find up north.’

Sevinna giggled and covered her mouth with her hand.

‘And what makes you think I’m looking for a husband?’

‘Oh huh! Why else are you here?’ Babryan broke in. ‘Mam told us all about it. She doesn’t want you to marry some rough northern fellow, either. Don’t worry. There’s lots of young men hanging around Da. I’ll wager there’s a truly handsome man who’ll be thrilled to marry the gwerbret’s niece.’

‘Baba, you’re so cold!’ Sevinna said.

‘Oh, you’ve got to be when you pick a husband.’ Babryan leaned forward earnestly in her chair. ‘Mam was telling me. She’s hoping to get me a place at court next year, you see, one of the princess’s serving women, maybe. Oooh – who knows who I’ll meet there?’

‘Someone very rich,’ Wbridda said. ‘And old and ugly.’

All three of them giggled, then laughed, the giggles feeding on themselves and turning into a wave of something near hysteria. I don’t want to marry yet, Sevinna thought, but Da says I’ve got to. She laughed with the rest until at last the giggling stopped as suddenly as it had come.

‘I just hope I don’t fall in love with someone who doesn’t favour me,’ Sevinna said. ‘But maybe I’ll never fall in love at all, and that will settle that.’

‘Oh, listen to Sevvi.’ Wbridda rolled her eyes heavenward. ‘Baba used to talk that way, and then last year she met Lord Abryn, and all I heard was men men men. You’re disgusting, Baba.’

‘You just wait,’ Babryan tossed her head. ‘Besides, Lord Abryn was only a passing fancy. I must have been daft. He’s got hair on the backs of his hands.’

‘Hah!’ Wbridda said. ‘You mean he was only a lord. Da was ever so angry, Sevvi. He practically turned Lord Abryn out of the palace, and all he did was give Baba some roses.’

‘Well, I should think that was quite enough,’ Sevinna said. ‘When a young man gives a lass flowers, it means something serious.’

‘He was a rake, too,’ Wbridda pronounced.

‘Now here, Bry,’ Babryan snapped. ‘You’re too young to even know what that means.’

‘I am not. I heard Mam and Da talking.’ She rolled her eyes significantly.

‘I’m not marrying her to a common lord, baby or not, Da said, and then he said, so you’d better be cursed sure he never gives her one. Mam was so mad! Oh, you should have heard her, Sevvi.’

‘You hold your tongue!’ Babryan said with a blush.

‘Shan’t.’ Wbridda simpered at her. ‘And then Da said –’

Babryan rose from her chair and raised her hand to threaten a slap, but the door opened and Lady Caffa swept into the room. Although she was growing stout, Caffa was still a beautiful woman with thick blonde hair and eyes of the deepest violet. Her long green silk dress trailed behind her in a train and was bound in at the waist with a kirtle of her husband’s green and blue plaid. At the sight of her mother, Babryan curtsied and sat down again.

‘Sevinna dearest,’ Caffa said. ‘I’ve summoned one of the clothsellers from the town. We must get you some decent dresses soon, and I’ll need you to pick out the colours you want. Then we shall set the women sewing.’

‘My lady is ever so generous.’ Sevinna rose and curtsied to her. ‘I don’t deserve such honour.’

‘Oh, hush, child.’ Caffa smiled vaguely in her direction. ‘Of course you do. You poor thing! Here you are, eighteen and not even married, and perhaps it’s just as well, of course, considering what your poor dear mother has to pick from, but still! I’m so glad she finally listened to reason and sent you to me. Poor dear Maemigga.’

Sevinna curtsied again, but her heart was aching. She felt like a charity project, some farmer’s widow plucked from poverty and given a decent place in the kitchen. Her mother’s marriage was the big scandal of the gwerbret’s clan; Maemigga had loved her land-poor tieryn so much that she’d ridden off on her own one night and married him before her family could stop her. By the time the gwerbret had caught up with her, she was so obviously no longer a maiden that his grace could do nothing but formally approve the match and make sure that Obyn never forgot what he owed him, either. To the children of this love-match, the gwerbret and his wife had always been kind, very very kind, as Caffa was now, smiling as she studied Sevinna like a bit of cloth on which she planned to embroider.

‘Baba,’ Caffa pronounced. ‘Surely you can lend Sevvi some of your dresses until hers are ready. We have guests tonight at dinner, you see.’

‘Handsome guests?’ Babryan said with a grin. ‘Of course, Sevvi. Mine are yours. We’ll look through and pick one out.’

‘Good child. But truly, you lasses must stop thinking of little things like a man’s looks. Most good-looking men are so horribly vain – well, Sevvi dear, your father’s an exception, truly, but he’s the only one I’ve ever met – and anyway it’s things like steadiness and kindness that matter in a marriage, not curly hair and blue eyes.’

‘Of course,’ the three girls chorused.

‘Oh I know!’ Caffa waggled a playful finger at them. ‘I was your age once, wasn’t I? But it’s time for all of you to think of the things that matter. We shall have lots of nice chats now that Sevvi’s here.’