Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [71]
“A sneak! I do like that.”
“Well, look at the clever way you plotted your escape from your brother. And I still don’t know how you worked on Rhodry, after you met us on the road, I mean, to get him to guard you for the journey here.”
“I still don’t know, either. He was so odd, that night in that miserable little tavern where I met you both. He kept talking about his lady Death, and how I was carrying his death with me. It made me feel awful, actually.”
“Don’t take it to heart. He’s talked that way for all the years I’ve known him.” Yraen sounded deeply aggrieved. “I don’t know why I keep riding with Rhodry, I truly don’t, but I always stay even when I get a chance to ride some other road.”
“Well, I suppose that two silver daggers are safer than one. On the roads and suchlike, I mean.”
“That’s true, of course.”
They had reached the top of the market hill, the second highest in Cengarn, and a vast open space, partly grass, partly cobbled, where on each full moon of spring and summer the town held a fair, although its real purpose was providing pasture for cattle during a siege. From its crest they could look across to the dun, rising dark and grim, towering over everything round it.
“Oh, I hate to go back!” Carra said with a dramatic sigh. “Couldn’t I run away with you, Yraen, and be a silver dagger?”
She started to laugh at her own jest, but the look on his face stopped her. For one brief moment his heart lay open like a night sky, so that she could pick out every constellation of desire and grief and frustration. Then he turned away with a snort.
“As if a skinny lass like you could ever learn to handle a sword!” he snapped. “Besides, there’s this small matter of your baby to consider.”
“Oh, I know.” She could barely speak, desperately searched for some jest to cover her unconscious cruelty of the moment before. There was none, “And I have my place and all that. Yraen, I’m sorry.”
He merely shrugged, staring across the little valley at the dun. For a few moments they stood together, wrapped in the misery of a revealed truth. Although Carra knew she was pretty, in her world beauty meant so much less than position and a good dowry that she had never thought of herself as desirable to men of her own kind. That Yraen would love her was completely unexpected, and more frightening than pleasing.
“I’m tired,” she said at last. “Could you please lead Gwer and let me ride? You were right, back at the gate.”
He smiled, briefly, and held the bridle while she mounted. During the rest of the trip back to the dun, neither of them said a word.
Although Carra had been hoping that she would some-how manage to slip past the women waiting for her in the great hall, her luck had left her for the day. As they walked through the gates, the guards shouted, calling out her name and cheering. Labanna, with the serving women and Jill right behind them, came racing out into the ward. Carra dismounted, bracing herself for the scolding of her life.
“My dear child! What could you have been thinking of?” Labanna started right in. “Of all the stupid, heart-less—”
“Hush.” Jill stepped in between them. “Your Grace, my lady, please. Will you leave her to me?”
Labanna scowled, but she made the dweomermaster a small curtsy and retreated to the company of her ladies. When Jill laid a firm hand on her arm, Carra wished that she could faint or perhaps even die. She was never going to be able to work Jill round by being contrite and winsome the way she’d planned to do with Labanna.
“Come up to your chamber with me, Carra,” Jill said. “It’s time we had a little chat.” She glanced at Yraen, still standing nearby. “Are you going to fetch the others?”
“I am. Just going to get a fresh horse and find a hunting horn.”
“Good. Tell Dar to come talk with me when you find him. Now. Carra, come along.”
Feeling like a dog about to be whipped, Carra trailed along behind as Jill led the way up the spiral staircase. Once they were safely shut up in the chamber, Jill perched