Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [22]
It was easy for her to use her horse, a beautiful golden gelding of the breed known as Western Hunter, to get a friendly conversation going. While they discussed Sunrise in particular and horses in general, she could ask casual questions about the various important officials in the dun, particularly the chamberlain, the most important of all.
“He’s a decent enough lord, I suppose.” Riderrc sucked his teeth in a meditative way. “Fussy about every blasted detail, but no one bribes him for a favor, I tell you.”
“Amazing! Many a chamberlain’s got rich selling access to his gwerbret.”
“Our Tallyc would choke rather than take lying silver.”
“Interesting. Well, I’d best be getting back upstairs.”
But Jill went to the kitchen hut, which was as big as a small house. In the thick smoke, two cooks were frantically yelling at a squad of kitchen maids, while the chamberlain himself supervised the carving of a whole hog, and serving lasses and pages dashed around filling baskets with bread and bowls with stewed cabbage. In that madhouse, a would-be poisoner could slip all manner of things into the food and drink, but on the other hand, it would be near impossible to ensure that only Dwaen and his retinue ate the tainted servings. Jill hoped, at least, that the murderer would draw the line at poisoning the gwerbret, his entire household, and several hundred riders just to finish off one man. For a few minutes, she hesitated, wondering if she should tell Rhodry where she was going, then realized that she wouldn’t be able to get him alone to tell him privately. With a glance at the lowering sun, she trotted off to the main gates, pausing only to identify herself to the guards so they’d let her back in, and headed out into the town.
It took her some time to find the thieves’ tavern again, curiously uncrowded for the dinner hour. She got herself a tankard of dark ale and stood chatting with the tavernman while she jingled a couple of coppers in one closed hand.
“Do you remember the night that me and my man were in here? We were sitting right over there, and this fellow in a long gray cloak came in.”
“Remember it I do. I thought he was a strange one to be coming into a place like this.”
“Just so. You don’t happen to know who he is, do you?”
“I don’t, but he must have been a master craftsman, all right. There was fine wool in that cloak of his.”
“Or maybe a scribe or suchlike? He had soft hands, and he smelled like temple incense.”
“So he did.” The tavernman spat into the straw to help his concentration. “Never seen him before or since, so he can’t live here in town. I’ve lived in Caenmetyn all my fifty years, I have, and I know everyone in it.”
When Jill returned to the gwerbret’s palace, she snagged a page and sent him up to the women’s hall with a message. Before they’d left Dwaen’s dun, she’d asked Ylaena to write her a note to the gwerbret’s lady, Ganydda, giving Jill a formal introduction. The lad returned quickly enough and escorted her up to the reception chamber, littered with a profusion of heavy furniture and silver oddments. At each long window hung a curtain of Bardek brocade in the gwerbretal colors of green, silver, and yellow. Ganydda, a slender woman with graying hair, startled-looking blue eyes, and prominent teeth, greeted her kindly and had a servant lass bring a cushion so that Jill could sit near her feet.
“The lady Ylaena speaks highly of you, Jill.”
“My thanks, my lady, though doubtless she flatters me unduly.”
“How well spoken you are! You must forgive an old woman’s curiosity, but whatever possessed