Katharine Kerr - Daggerspell

Lovyan felt her cheeks coloring, but Nevyn was far more amused than insulted.

“I assure you,” he went on, “that I’m more aware than most of the years I carry. I’m fond of Jill, but truly, my main interest in her is her raw dweomer talent.”

“Of course! It’s very odd, but it’s so hard to keep in mind that you’re dweomer—that anyone can be dweomer, truly—and here I saw Jill have that vision of hers.”

“Well, the mind shrinks from what it can’t understand. I heard your bard practicing his praise song about the war. He’s reporting very faithfully what happened. Do you think anyone will believe a word of it in, say, fifty years?”

“They won’t. A typical bard song, they’ll say, full of lies and fancies. And you know, maybe it’s just as well.”

Three days later, the message finally came from Rhys. Lovyan had an odd premonition about it and decided to read it privately rather than having it read aloud in the open hall. She’d made the right decision.

“My lady mother,” it ran. “Forgive me for the delay in attending to your important affairs. I have been investigating the matter of this war in order to ascertain whether Lord Rhodry’s report was in the least accurate. I am summoning him and his allies to Aberwyn to give me an account of their conduct. You, of course, are also most welcome to my meat and mead, and we shall settle matters then. Your humble son, Rhys, Gwerbret Aberwyn.”

“You little beast!” Lovyan said aloud. “You’re certainly Tingyr’s son, aren’t you?”

Nevyn was more than pleased when Lovyan asked him to join her entourage for the trip to Aberwyn. He even allowed her to provide him with a new shirt and decent brigga, so that he could pass inconspicuously as one of her councillors. Lovyan was taking Jill, Dannyan, her scribe, several servants, and then Cullyn as the captain of an honor guard of twenty-five men, fifteen for her, ten for Rhodry, as their ranks allowed. As she sourly remarked, Rhys could feed part of her household for a while after letting her vassals feed off her for so long.

“I’m rather surprised you’re taking Jill,” Nevyn remarked. “She’s unused to large courts and their ways.”

“Well, she really does have to start getting used to them. Besides, having her there will keep Rhodry calm.”

Nevyn was about to make some remark about trouble with Cullyn if Jill were blatantly displayed as Rhodry’s mistress, but he stopped himself, simply because the captain seemed to have no objections to his daughter’s position. Ruefully, Nevyn had to admit that he was disappointed. He’d been hoping that her fear of her father’s wrath would keep Jill away from Rhodry and free for the dweomer.

The night before they left for Aberwyn, Nevyn decided to seek Cullyn out and found him in his chamber in the barracks. Dressed in a new shirt blazoned with red lions, Cullyn sat on the side of his bed and polished his sword by lantern light. He greeted Nevyn hospitably and offered him the only chair.

“I just wanted a few words with you. About a somewhat delicate matter.”

“I’ll wager you mean Jill.”

“Just that. I’ll admit to being surprised that you’d let her do what’s she’s doing.”

Cullyn sighted down the sword blade, found some near-invisible fleck of rust, and began working on it with a rag.

“I think you’d be the least surprised of any man,” Cullyn said at last. “You’re the one who knows why I had to let her go.”

When he looked up, straight into Nevyn’s eyes, Nevyn had to admire him for the first time in four hundred years. All the arrogance that Gerraent had flaunted, life after life, was gone, leaving only a certain proud humility that came from facing the bitter realities of his life.

“There’s more kinds of honor than battle glory,” Nevyn said. “You deserve yours.”

With a shrug, Cullyn tossed the sword onto the bed.

“Jill’s going to do cursed well out of this, isn’t she? She’ll have a better life than any that I thought I could ever give her. Even if I had a lord’s ransom for her dowry, what kind of husband could I have found her? A craftsman of some kind, a tavern owner, maybe, and there she’d be, working hard all her life. For a silver dagger’s bastard, she’s risen pretty high.”

“So she has, truly. I’d never thought of things quite in that way.”

“Doubtless you’ve never had to. What’s that old saying? It’s better for a woman to keep her poverty than lose her virtue? I’d have slit Jill’s throat rather than let her turn into a whore, but when you ride the long road, you learn not to be too fussy about fine shades of virtue. Ye gods, I sold my own honor a thousand times over. Who am I to look down my nose at her?”

“Well, true spoken, but most men wouldn’t be so reasonable about their only daughter.”

Cullyn shrugged and picked up the sword again to run callused fingertips down the gutter of the blade.

“I’ll tell you somewhat. I haven’t told a soul this tale in nineteen years, but have you ever wondered why I ended up with the god-scorned silver dagger?”

“Often. I was afraid to ask.”

“As well you might have been.” Cullyn gave him a thin smile. “I was a rider in the Gwerbret of Cerrmor’s warband. There was a lass I fancied there, waiting on table in the great hall, Seryan, Jill’s mother. And another lad fancied her, too. We fought over her like dogs over a bone until she made it clear enough that she favored me. So this other lad—ah, may the gods blast me, but I’ve forgotten the poor bastard’s name—anyway, he wouldn’t take her at her word and kept hanging around her. So, one night I said somewhat to him about it, and he drew on me. So I drew and killed him.” Cullyn’s voice dropped, and he looked down at the sword across his knees. “Right there in the gwerbret’s barracks. His Grace was all for hanging me, but the captain stepped in, saying the other lad drew first. So His Grace kicked me out instead, and my poor Seryan insisted on riding with me when I went.” Cullyn looked up again. “So, you see, I swore then that I’d never kill another man over a woman. It doesn’t do you or her one cursed bit of good.”

Nevyn was speechless for a moment, simply because Cullyn had no idea of just how much of his Wyrd he was laying aside with that simple truth.

“You learn,” Cullyn said. “I was a stubborn young dog, but you learn.”

“Truly. I was as stubborn myself, when I was that young.”

“No doubt. You know, herbman, why we rub each other so raw? We’re too much alike.”

“Ye gods! So we are.”

At that time, Aberwyn was the biggest city in Eldidd, with over seventy thousand people living in its warren of curving streets and closely packed houses. Unwalled, it spread along the Aver Gwyn up from the harbor, where the gwerbret’s fleet of war galleys shared piers with merchantmen from Deverry and Bardek both. Right in the middle of town stood the enormous dun of the gwerbret, a towering symbol of justice. Inside the thirty-foot stone wall spread a ward covering some thirty acres, cluttered with the usual huts, barracks, and sheds. In the middle rose a broch complex, a round central tower of six stories, three secondary towers of three, but the most amazing thing of all was that the broch stood in the middle of a garden: lawns, beds of roses, a fountain, all set off from the ward by a low brick wall.

Everywhere writhed the open-jawed dragon of Aberwyn, carved onto the outer gates, displayed on the blue-and-silver banners hanging from the brochs, sculpted in marble in the center of the fountain, carved again on the doors into the broch, inlaid in blue slate on the floor of the great hall, blazoned on the shirts of every rider and servant, embroidered into the bed hangings and cushions of the luxurious chamber that Jill was going to share with Dannyan. On the mantel over their hearth there was even a small silver statuette of the dragon. Jill picked it up and studied it.