Darkspell - Katharine Kerr [83]
As the priest sat down, Dryn wept, a silent trickle of tears. Nevyn felt sorry for him; he wasn’t an evil man, merely a greedy one who’d been corrupted by the truly evil. The matter, however, was now out of his hands. Ladoic took the golden sword and held it point upright.
“The laws have spoken. Dryn, as an act of mercy, you will be allowed to pick the least painful poison from your stock. As for you, Edycl, I have been informed that you have four young children and that, indeed, poverty did drive you to this trade. You will be given twenty lashes in the public square.”
Dryn raised his head, then broke, sobbing aloud, throwing himself from side to side as if he already felt the poison gnawing at him. A guard stepped forward, slapped him into silence, then hauled him to his feet. Ladoic rose and knocked the pommel of the sword onto the table.
“The gwerbret has spoken. The malover has ended.”
Although the guards dragged Dryn away, they left Edycl crouched at the gwerbret’s feet. Quickly the hall cleared until only Nevyn and Elaeno remained with the lord and the prisoner. Ladoic looked down on Edycl as if he were contemplating a bit of filth on the streets.
“Twenty lashes can kill a man,” he remarked in a conversational tone of voice. “But if you tell these gentlemen what they want to hear, I’ll reduce your sentence to ten.”
“My thanks, Your Grace, oh, ye gods, my thanks. I’ll tell them anything I can.”
“Last year you wintered in Orystinna,” Elaeno said. “After making a very late crossing. Why?”
“Well, now, that was a cursed strange thing.” Edycl frowned in thought. “It truly was late, and I was thinking about putting the Star in dry dock, when this Bardek man approaches me and says that a friend of his, a very rich man, had to reach Myleton before winter. He offered me a cursed lot of coin to take them over, enough to turn a big profit even with the expense of wintering in Bardek, so I took them on. I wintered in Orystinna because it’s cheaper than Myleton.”
“I see. What were these men like?”
“Well, the one who hired me was your typical Myleton man, on the pale side, and his face paint marked him for a member of House Onodanna. The other fellow was a Deverry man. Called himself Procyr, but I doubt me if that was his real name. There was somewhat about him that creeped my flesh, but cursed if I know why, because he was well-spoken and no trouble. He stayed in his cabin mostly, because it was a rough crossing, and I’ll wager that he was as sick as a pig the whole way across.”
“What did this Procyr look like?” Nevyn broke in.
“Well, good sir, I’m not cursed sure. It’s cold out to sea that time of year, and whenever he was on deck, he was muffled up in a hooded cloak. But he was about fifty, I’d say, a solid sort of man, gray hair, thinnish sort of mouth, blue eyes. But I remember his voice well. It was oily, like, and too soft for a man. It creeped my flesh.”
“No doubt,” Nevyn muttered. “Well, there you are, Your Grace. Elaeno and I are as sure as we can be that this man Edycl described is very important to the drug trade.”
“Then I’ll keep an eye out for him,” Ladoic said. “Or perhaps, considering his voice, keep my ears out.”
The supposed Procyr was, of course, likely to be more than merely a drug courier. Nevyn was fairly sure that he must have been the dark dweomerman who started Loddlaen’s war the summer before and who seemed to be determined to kill Rhodry. As he thought it over, he wondered why for perhaps the thousandth time.
Salamander, or Ebañy Salomonderiel tranDevaberiel, to give him his full Elvish name, was staying in one of the most expensive inns in Cerrmor. His reception chamber was spacious, with Bardek carpets on