Daggerspell - Katharine Kerr [189]
“Now, I can’t be sure as sure,” Nesta thought to him. “But I think me the man you’re looking for has just taken ship for Bardek.”
“Indeed?” Nevyn thought back. “I trust you haven’t put yourself in danger by trying to scry him out.”
“Oh, I followed your orders and kept well away from him. Here, see what you think of this tale. Yestermorn, the Wildfolk came to me, quite troubled they were, too, about some dark thing that was scaring them. It made me think that your enemy might be in Cerrmor, and so I did a bit of scrying and picked up some odd traces in the etheric. I drew back, then, as you told me to do.” She paused, and her image pursed wrinkled lips. “But you know that I know half the people in Cerrmor, and my connections with the guilds give me ways of finding things out without using the body of light. I asked around here and there about peculiar strangers in town, and finally I talked with one of the young lads at the Customs House. He’d seen a strange old fellow boarding one of the last Bardek merchantmen in harbor, and here, that ship’s suspected of being involved in the poison trade.”
Nevyn whistled under his breath. Nesta’s image gave him a grim little smile.
“And the ship sailed with the tide not two hours ago,” she went on. “And now the Wildfolk are as calm as you please, and there’s not a trace of anything to be found on the etheric.”
“Then if it wasn’t him, it was another of his foul kind, but I’ll wager it was my enemy. He’d know I couldn’t follow him to Bardek with the winter coming on.”
“He was very lucky to get a ship himself. It was like the boat was waiting for him, wasn’t it, now?”
“It was indeed. I’ll wager you tracked our rat to his hole, sure enough. My humble thanks, Nesta, and my thanks to that sharp-eyed custom officer, too.”
“Oh, he’s a good lad.” She chuckled briefly. “He prenticed with my man and me, and I taught him how to use his two eyes.”
After Nesta said farewell, Nevyn spent some time pacing in his chamber and considering this news. Since neither he nor anyone else had picked up any other traces of dark dweomer, he was quite sure that Nesta had spotted the enemy. It made him curse aloud, because with a winter’s head start, the enemy would be impossible to find in Bardek, a land of many small states and constant political turmoil that made local authorities very lax on matters of civil law. Since not even the greatest dweomermaster in the world could scry or send a projection over a large body of water, Nevyn would even have to wait until spring to send letters to those who studied the true dweomer in Bardek and warn them of this enemy’s coming. As much as it ached his heart, he was going to have to let the enemy escape. For now, he told himself—just for now. Then he put the matter aside forcibly and went to distract himself by dressing for the gwerbret’s inquiry into the rebellion.
The formal hearing was held in the gwerbret’s chamber of justice, an enormous half-round of a room on the second floor of the main broch. In the exact middle of the curve were two windows with the dragon banner of Aberwyn hanging between them. Under it was a long table, where Rhys sat in the center with the golden ceremonial sword of Aberwyn in front of him. To either side of him sat priests of Bel, his councillors in the laws. A scribe had a little table to the right, and the various witnesses stood to the left, Rhodry himself, his various allies, and Loyvan, who as a mark of respect had a chair. The rest of the room was crowded with the merely curious, including Nevyn, who stood by the door and watched sourly as the proceedings dragged on.
One at a time, Rhodry’s allies knelt in front of the table and answered Rhys’s questions about every detail of the war, day by day, until Nevyn wondered if the wretched thing would take longer to discuss than it did to fight. Over and over again, the allies testified that Rhodry had comported himself mercifully and abided by every law of honor. Yet Rhys sent for Cullyn, too, and questioned him while Rhodry turned dangerously sullen and Sligyn’s face