Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [93]
“My thanks, my lord, but I’d best be about my business. There’s much to settle and settle down.”
He nodded, smiling wryly, and she hurried upstairs, sweeping her women with her. Servants rushed over with tankards of ale for the men, though Jill waved hers away. The servitors sat down at Cadmar’s right, but Jill chose to stand.
“Your Grace,” she said. “Answer me honestly. Is it a burden upon you to have me, Carra, and all the trouble we’ve brought with us here in your dun?”
“Where else would you go?”
“I don’t know, Your Grace, but—”
“I refuse to send anyone away from the safety of my walls when they might meet with danger on the roads. It would ache my heart as well as shame it if the slightest evil befell the prince and his lady.”
“Not half as much as it would ache mine. Well, I need to give the matter some thought. This whole thing happened so suddenly.”
“So it did, but here, Matyc brought it upon himself. You heard him, there in the malover, insisting on his right to combat.”
“True spoken, but will his kin see it that way?”
Cadmar shrugged to show his ignorance.
“If I may speak boldly, Your Grace,” Jill went on. “You need that alliance, and badly. I would most humbly and with all deference to the gods ask you this. In a war which would be of more use to you in keeping your people safe, the temple or Lord Tren?”
“Your Grace?” the equerry broke in. “The only person whose presence should influence the matter at all is the silver dagger. If he stays in town …”
“Better yet, my lord”—Jill glanced at him—“I’m sending him away. I have a crucial errand that needs running, you see. Once he’s healed, he’ll be leaving Cengarn.”
The equerry bobbed his head in her direction, the best bow he could muster seeing as he was sitting down. Cadmar considered, running the palm of his hand round and round the tankard’s lip.
“Do as you think best about the silver dagger,” he said at last. “But may the gods forgive me for slighting the winner of that combat!”
“I think me they will, Your Grace.”
“As for the other matter, I’ll have to see how things develop. Lord Tren’s warband won’t do us much good if the gods are turned against us by the priests.”
Jill held her tongue with difficulty.
“But it’ll be some days before Tren even answers my message,” Cadmar went on. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen any more raiders coming our way?”
“Not yet, Your Grace. As you say, we’ll have to see how things develop. May I have leave to go? I need to find Yraen and have him take Rhodry’s gear down to him.”
“Of course. As I say, do as you think fit.”
“I will, then, Your Grace. Consider the matter decided.”
As she made that near casual remark Jill felt a peculiar sensation, as if she were suddenly being watched. She felt that from some great distance eyes had turned her way, powerful eyes with strong dweomer behind them. Although she managed to smile pleasantly and take a civil leave of the gwerbret, she hurried up to her tower room to be alone rather than sending a page for Yraen.
Her chamber swarmed with Wildfolk, darting this way and that in the air or on the floor, clustering on the furniture, huddling together in the curve of the wall. When she walked in, her pay gnome leapt into her arms.
“Oho, you felt it, too, did you? Someone’s found Cengarn, I think. The question is, are they looking for Carra or for me?” She thought back, remembered that she’d felt the sensation at the exact moment when a possible course of action had been decided into reality. “Or, come to think of it, is it Rhodry they find so interesting?”
With the gnome riding on her shoulder, she went to the window and looked out. She could see over the dun wall to the town, but the market hill blocked her farther view. Why would some enemy be searching for Rhodry? Unless, of course, they knew that he’d been guarding Carra and thought he still was. She turned her head to catch the gnome’s attention.
“Go fetch Dallandra for me, will you? All you have to do is find her, and she’ll know what it means.”
The gnome pinned, revealing an uneven mouthful of pointed