Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [58]
Ever since the moonlight ritual, Sevinna had been aware of Taurra turning her attention to Babryan and flattering her in the same way that she’d formerly flattered Sevinna. With Baba, the treatment seemed more effective. Sevinna could see the younger girl becoming withdrawn and silent, turned in to herself on some private line of thought. She spent more and more time with Taurra, less and less with the other girls.
The third afternoon, Babryan returned to their chamber after one of these private sessions with her face dead pale. She flopped into a chair by the window, where the sun streamed in, and reached up to rub her cheeks with both hands.
“I feel so cold,” she announced. “Do you feel cold, Sevvi?”
“Not at all. Do you want a cloak round you?”
“Oh, maybe not.” Babryan yawned hugely. “I need a nap. Ye gods, I hope I’m not getting some fever.”
“Come lie down, then, and get under a coverlet.”
Sevinna got her settled, hovered round for a moment, then realized that Babryan had fallen straight asleep. Since in those days any illness might be a dangerous thing, she was frightened, wondering if there were fever in the dun, but she remembered her own peculiar experience with Lady Taurra, and the headache she’d got on the day of the mirror rite. She hurried down to the ward and sought out one of the kitchen maids.
“Gwarra, I have a favor to ask of you, and I’ll give you a copper, too.”
“Well, gladly, my lady.”
“There’s a silver dagger down in town, and I badly want to send her a message. If I gave you a note, do you think you could take it to her? It’s got to be kept awfully secret.”
Gwarra smiled at the sight of coin.
“That blond lass, is it? Of course, my lady. I swear I won’t say a word to anyone.”
But as Sevinna was walking back to the great hall, she looked up at the broch to see Lady Taurra standing in the window of the woman’s hall and looking down. Oh, Goddess preserve! Sevinna thought. She saw me! And the Goddess to whom Sevinna was praying was no longer our Lady of the Cauldron, but the Holy Moon Herself.
There were times when Jill regretted not knowing how to read. She stared at Sevinna’s note, turned it this way and that, and wished that Rhodry was there to interpret these strange marks on the bit of parchment. She looked over the crowded tavern room and wondered if any of the merchants and craftsmen there could read, and even more, if she dared trust any of them. Perhaps she could go to a priest, but a priest would ask awkward questions about her connections with the gwerbret’s womenfolk. Yet, as she thought about it, she could puzzle out one meaning of the note: Sevinna had to be troubled if she’d risk sending it. Tucking it into her pocket, she hurried out of the tavern room and walked up to the dun.
At the gate, though, she received a rude welcome. The two guards looked her over, then moved, the one stepping round behind her, the other grabbing her arm.
“This must be her. Are you Jill?”
“I am. What’s it to you?”
“You’re coming with us. The gwerbret’s equerry wants a word with you.”
They marched her along to a small chamber on the bottom floor of one of the half-brochs By a long wooden table stood a tall blond man whom she recognized as Lord Elyc’s equerry—Sevinna had pointed him out during her last visit to the broch.
“Very well,” Cenwyc snapped. “Her Grace the Lady Davylla informs me that her guest, Lady Taurra, has lost a jeweled brooch. The last time she saw it was when you were in the dun last.”
“Well, I’ll swear to you that I never took it, and you can search all my gear, too.”
“No doubt it’s long been sold. Listen lass, I know our noble ladies like to amuse themselves at times with the common-born. Doubtless they found you interesting, just like you’d hoped. I’ve seen clever thieves like you before, getting into some lady’s confidence and then stealing her blind.”
“I’m naught of the sort. If I were the kind of woman you think I am, I’d have fled town long before this.”
Cenwyc set his hands on his hips