Katharine Kerr - Sword of Fire

‘Besides,’ Ladoic continued, ‘the Prince Regent is making a royal progress. We’ll be meeting him in Cerrmor.’

‘So you’d best make a decent appearance.’ Dovina smiled in the simpery way that meant she’d spotted a weapon. ‘There’s bound to be all sorts of ceremonies around his visit.’

‘Indeed. The city itself will be holding a feast in his honor. Convenient all round. This man I’m betrothing you to – Merryc, his name is – will be greeting him. So you’re cursed well coming with me to Cerrmor whether you want to go or not.’

‘Cerrmor, is it?’ Dovina glanced Alyssa’s way. ‘How awfully interesting.’

‘Very, my lady.’ Alyssa curtsied to her and to the gwerbret. Cerrmor, of course, was the home of the new Collegium of Advocates, allies to their cause.

‘Well then, Father,’ Dovina said. ‘I’ll make you a bargain. Give us back Cradoc’s body, and I’ll come with you willingly.’

‘I can’t just go to my law court and order this tower of madwomen to hand you over. Why should I bargain with you?’

‘Because if you don’t, I’ll scream and howl and make such a horrid display of myself in front of the Prince Regent that you’ll be shamed in the eyes of every man in the kingdom. Such as Gwerbret Standyc, for instance. And won’t old Tewdyr love to repeat the tale?’

Gwerbret Ladoic’s face turned so bright a shade of red that Alyssa feared he was about to suffer an elf-stroke. Dovina smirked at him until he cleared his throat and took a deep breath or two. Slowly his color returned to its usual weather-beaten tan.

‘You wouldn’t!’

‘Oh, come now, Father. You know me well enough to know that I would.’

He scowled, she smiled. ‘Oh, very well!’ he said at last. ‘I’ll have the servants bring your cursed bard back with all due ceremony. And you’d best be ready to leave when they do!’

‘After the funeral, of course. To do otherwise would be unseemly.’

‘Oh, very well! After the funeral. Besides, I want you home for another thing. Your lout of a brother, as you call him, is visiting. Adonyc’s brought good news. You can be decent and help us celebrate.’

‘What? Has that moo-cow of a wife of his squeezed out a male heir?’

‘Just that, and don’t call her a cow.’ Yet he was fighting a smile. ‘Placid, that’s the word we want.’

‘Placid and fertile, and I’ll bet she gives lots and lots of milk.’

Ladoic suppressed his smile and turned away with a gesture to Nallyc to follow. He barked out a few orders to the men accompanying him and strode off. Dovina said nothing until they’d all mounted their horses and ridden away.

‘Summat’s upset Father,’ Dovina said. ‘He’s not usually as bad as this.’

‘I’d suppose that the fathers of those dead lads have sent him messages by now.’

‘That’s most likely it. Though he’s fond of saying that a daughter like me would drive most men mad.’ She paused for a grin. ‘I’ll admit the justice of that.’

Alyssa kept a tactful silence.

‘Let’s go back to the bookchamber,’ Dovina said. ‘I have a plan, but we’ve got to find out where the old copy of this book may be. Everything depends on that.’

‘The old copy?’

‘The source manuscript, the crumbling smelly old thing that’s in our bookhoard. I’ve found notes about it from the priests of Wmm. They called it the “no one” book because it had “nevyn” written on the first page. I’ve got no idea what that means, but the notes said some scholars think the book’s hundreds and hundreds of years old. If we can get that one into the hands of the guild, Father shan’t be able to pretend we’ve forged it.’

‘You can smuggle it with you when you go.’

‘Assuming it’s here in the collegium. I have the awful feeling that we’re not going to have that kind of luck.’

As was so often the case when the subject was books, Dovina was right. According to the notes she found in the journal of the bookhoard, the ‘Nevyn Copy’ of Dwvoryc’s Annals of the Dawntime had been given over on loan to Haen Marn so that the Scribal Guild there could produce copies.

‘Ye gods,’ Dovina said. ‘Haen Marn’s over the border. Near the Bear clan.’

‘Right in the middle of the feud,’ Alyssa said.

They shared a sigh and sat down together on the wooden bench. The Bear clan of northern Eldidd had once owed fealty to Aberwyn, but years of intrigue had finally brought them some independence and a gwerbret of their own for their widespread holdings, which included a good stretch of southern Pyrdon. They had thus become hated by the gwerbretion to either side of them. To call them ‘sensitive’ about their delicate position lay beyond mere overstatement. For ancient reasons they had hated the Maelwaedds of Aberwyn for hundreds of years, and when the Electors handed the rhan to the Fox, the spurned Bears transferred their hatred right over.

‘The roads and canals to Haen Marn,’ Dovina said, ‘run right through their territory. I can’t send an Aberwyn courier to fetch the book. He’d be arrested and detained if they saw him.’

‘I know. At least Haen Marn’s a separate rhan, sacred and all that. They wouldn’t dare interfere with it.’

For some long moments Dovina merely stared, thinking hard, at the opposite wall. Alyssa idly studied the framed map of the ancient Westfolk city of Rinbaladelan that hung on the same wall and waited for her superior in rank to speak. Eventually Dovina sighed again.

‘I meant to ask you,’ Dovina said. ‘How did the speech in the market square go?’

‘I barely got started when the marshals marched in.’

‘What?’ Dovina turned on the bench to stare at her.

While Alyssa gave her report, Dovina continued staring, her mouth slack with surprise and, eventually, fear. ‘My apologies,’ Dovina said when Alyssa had finished. ‘I never should have asked you to come to the gates with me. Ye gods! Good thing you carried the book for me! Father probably thought you were a servant or suchlike. He never truly looked at you.’

‘Are they going to blame me?’ Alyssa could only wonder at herself, that she’d not seen this obvious question before. The sunlight in the room seemed to have become very bright and very cold. She clasped her hands to keep them from shaking. ‘That heckler – I did try to ignore him.’

‘It was just like Father to put a hound among the hares! And the fellow who hit him – do you know him or suchlike?’

‘I only met him the night past. He was caught in the riot at the dun gates like I was.’

‘I suppose my wretched father will put the blame on him. Silver daggers have that awful reputation, troublemakers and violent and all of that. Father will find some way to charge him with summat bad.’

‘That’s horribly unfair!

‘Of course it is. That’s why we’re working to change the courts, innit?’

‘Well, true spoken. And ye gods, what about me?’

‘I sincerely think that my father has too much honor to hang a woman, but I’m sure he’d levy a huge fine on your family. Any chance at a guildmaster’s coin, he’ll take it. Worse yet, if he nabs this poor fellow, it’s the gallows for sure, to make an example of him.’

‘Here! I can’t allow – I mean, I don’t want—’

Dovina leaned forward to peer into Alyssa’s face. ‘You’re rather sweet on this fellow, aren’t you?’

Alyssa blushed.

‘Then we simply can’t let him hang.’ Dovina heaved a melancholy sigh. ‘I do wish Father had bothered to develop his rational faculties. I don’t suppose he’s ever read Prince Mael’s book about Ristolyn. But let me see, what can we do about the silver dagger?’

‘Could we hire him to go to Haen Marn and fetch the book?’