Fire Dragon - Katharine Kerr [79]
“Very well. I—it's just so hateful.”
“It is that.” Nevyn spoke so softly that she could barely hear him. “It is that, truly.”
Lilli managed to return to her chamber without meeting Maryn. The pages all told her that the prince had shut himself up in his apartments and would speak with no one. All morning Lilli lay on her bed, weeping at times, but mostly brooding on the princess's death. Was it truly Maryn's cruelty alone that had driven Bellyra to her death? She found herself remembering her mother, Lady Merodda, and her dark magicks that had caused so many so much harm. Her mother's curse had followed her into the sanctuary of Maryn's domain. Lilli could think of it no other way, that like poison in a well her mother's evil had seeped into all their lives. Could nothing lift it?
“I'm her daughter.”
Lilli got up and walked over to the window. Down below she could see the ward, gilded in the sunlight pouring through the remnants of last night's storm. It was falling to her, Merodda's daughter, to lift the curse. In that morning's meditation it came to her, that since the curse had been sealed with the blood of their clan, only blood-kin could lift it.
“Have you seen Councillor Oggyn?” Nevyn said. “I haven't, my lord,” the page said. “Not all this morning.”
“No doubt he's sulking in his quarters.”
“No doubt.” The page turned his head and spat onto the cobbles. “He can stay there forever, for all I care.”
Nevyn strode into the great hall and paused just inside the doorway. This late in the morning, the hall stood mostly empty, though a few servants sat at a table and gossiped. When Nevyn asked, they too denied seeing Oggyn anywhere. Nevyn couldn't blame the man for hiding. Fairly or not, half the dun blamed him for Bellyra's death. Nevyn went upstairs to Oggyn's apartments and found the door closed. He knocked, waited, knocked again the harder. Still no answer. A thin line of cold dread ran down his back.
When he pushed on the door, it swung open easily. He stepped in, looked around, looked up, and swore aloud. Oggyn's body was hanging from a ceiling beam. His black tongue protruded from his swollen mouth, and he smelled of excrement. Under his dangling feet, a pile of tables, scattered and broken, showed how he'd managed to get up so high. No doubt he'd kicked them away when the noose tightened and his body spasmed. At least he'd given himself plenty of rope. His neck must have broken immediately and spared him the long slow agony of suffocation.
Nevyn shuddered and stepped back out, closing the door behind him. He should, he supposed, go tell Lady Degwa this news himself, but the thought nauseated him. All at once he smiled, a smile as grim and cold and brutal as any a berserker ever felt on his lips. He would tell Maryn, he decided, and let the prince have the joy of dealing with it.
“Hah!” Owaen said. “Slimy Oggo hanged himself. Have you heard?”
“I hadn't,” Maddyn said.
“The prince himself told me. He was pleased as a man can be.”
Maddyn shrugged. They were sitting on their bunks, facing each other, in the silver daggers' barracks. All the other men had left, off readying their horses for Bellyra's funeral procession. Bright sun streamed in and turned the straw on the floor to pale gold.
“I take it you're not pleased,” Owaen said.
“I'm not. He was trying to get at me with his cursed gossip, not at her. If I'd never composed that wretched song, this never would have happened.”
“That's horseshit and a pile of it!”
“Oh, is it now? What do you mean?”
“It's simple. If he hadn't been a grasping greedy swine of a man in the first place, you'd not have made up the song. He deserved every note of it. Ye gods, Maddo! Why in all the hells are you blaming yourself?”
“I don't know, but I am.”
Owaen rolled his eyes heavenward and got up, setting his hands on his hips. “Don't,” he said. “Are you going to ride with us in the procession?”
The prince had planned a magnificent funeral for his wife: his silver daggers, his lords, their riders, all of them on horseback to follow the litter carrying her body, while the