Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [88]
At the moment, the honor side of the hall stood empty, except for a serving lass wiping down the tables with a rag, but over at the other, riders clustered round the open barrels of ale while the chamberlain’s men rationed out scant servings. Jill could wrap her aura about herself like a cloak, and by moving quietly and sticking to the shadowy half of the room, she passed through, virtually invisible. Yraen certainly never noticed her; he was standing near the back door and keeping a watch on the spiral staircase that led to the upper floors of the main broch.
As Jill was fetching her loaf back again, she saw Yraen suddenly smile and take a few automatic steps toward the stairs. The Princess Carramaena was coming down, wearing a dark blue dress kirtled with a simple sash of cloth of gold, since the Westfolk never marked their clans with plaids as Deverry men did. She wore the kirtle high, too, to allow for her swelling pregnancy. She was a lovely lass, Carra, not quite seventeen that summer, all blond hair and rosy cheeks, with big blue eyes and a ready smile that even Jill could admit to be charming. She looked round, smiling impartially at the great hall below, and waited for her dog, a big wolflike gray creature, to catch up with her. Unseen by the door, Yraen watched her every gesture, his lips half-parted in something close to grief.
Oh, horseshit and a pile of it! Jill thought. The little bastard’s in love with her.
Bread in hand, Jill left by another door and hurried across the ward to the stairs that led up to her tower room. Although she considered asking the gwerbret to find Carra a new bodyguard, she couldn’t do so without telling him the reason, and she refused to shame Yraen. Besides, there was no doubting the cold truth that a bodyguard who loved his charge so hopelessly would throw his own life away to save hers, if things ever came to such an evil pass.
Still, the situation was bound to turn dangerous, with the two of them shut up in the dun and Carra’s husband far away. Even supposing that the siege was lifted, and supposing again that both men lived through that battle, Yraen would be face to face with his beloved’s husband. Prince Daralanteriel was no man to trifle with. No doubt he would see nothing wrong with protecting his wife’s honor by murdering the mercenary soldier who’d dared to love her. There was nothing Jill could do with him. Yraen listened to advice about naught, generally, and now he was bound to be doubly stubborn, not so much for what he was now but for what he’d been, back in another life—Carra’s husband. It had been hundreds of years ago, but seeing her again had brought all the buried memories alive in his soul at least.
What Carra thought of him, Jill didn’t know, though she reminded herself that she’d best find out. She, at least, was malleable. Yraen brought her naught but grief then, she thought, and if things go on this way, he’ll bring her naught but grief now. Carra loved her husband with all her heart, but at the moment, who knew if she would ever see her elven prince again?
Carra had barely seated herself at the table set aside for the dun’s womenfolk when Yraen appeared to take up his usual place on the floor, slightly behind and to the right of her. Lightning wagged his tail with a thump on the braided rushes, as if greeting a peer.
“Yraen, I do wish