The Black Raven - Katharine Kerr [100]
“I am.”
“If the baby was your blood-kin, it would certainly explain your peculiar link to the casket. Or to the evil within it, I should say.”
“How can we find out if it’s true? I suppose some of the older servants in Dun Deverry might remember things, but I don’t know if I could bear to ask them.”
“They wouldn’t tell you anyway, most likely. When we get back, leave this task to me.”
“Gladly. Ah ye gods, if it’s true? It’s just too vile!”
“It is that. I—” Nevyn paused, holding up his hand for silence.
A footstep scraped in the hall outside. Lilli rose, thinking that Degwa might be eavesdropping, but when the door opened, Bellyra stood there. As the princess came in, Nevyn got up to bow, and Lilli curtsied.
“Did you rest well, Your Highness?” Lilli said.
“I did, truly.”
Lilli fetched Bellyra’s favorite chair, and the princess sat down with a murmur of thanks. Lilli was shocked at how thin Bellyra had become. Her pale skin stretched over the bones of her face so tightly that it seemed a smile might crack it and make her bleed.
“We were discussing the casket, Your Highness,” Nevyn said. “It’s time I took it away.”
“I’ll be glad of that.”
The silence hung there, heavy in the room. Lilli desperately searched for something pleasant to say, but the casket, glittering in the sun like a vial of poison, seemed to make any pleasant chatter impossible. Nevyn at last took pity on her.
“Lilli, would you find a page to bring me some ale?” he said. “And perhaps some sweetmeats for Her Highness.”
“And for you,” Bellyra broke in, “if you’d like some, Lilli.”
“My thanks.” Lilli rose. “I’ll go down to the kitchens and see what Cook has on hand.”
Lilli curtsied, then fled the women’s hall. Her mother’s curse—had she been as desperate as all that, to sacrifice her own son to serve the Boar clan’s cause?
“Will we never be free of these wars?” Lilli whispered.
She stepped out of the broch to the pleasant sunshine, bright on the pale slate roofs of Dun Cerrmor, but to her inner sight it seemed that storm clouds gathered, dark and evil, over them all.
With the summer’s fighting past and done, time lay heavy on the silver daggers. Every morning Branoic would groom his horse, sweep out its stall, then go riding for some short while to keep the horse fit and himself as well. He filled part of his day with talking with the new men, like Alwyn. Every now and then the prince wanted to go riding around his new lands; the entire troop of silver daggers went with him on these occasions. But for the most part, life reduced itself to drinking in the great hall and wishing that Lilli would get herself back from Cerrmor.
“Tell me,” Maddyn said one evening, “how’s your suit proceeding? I haven’t forgotten our wager.”
Branoic had. “What suit?”
“Your courtship of Lady Lillorigga. You bet me one silver piece to ten that you could gain her favor.”
“Oh, that suit! It’s going well, truly.”
“Indeed? Words are cheap, my friend. What counts is the horse race.”
“Maddo, lad, cheap or not, you’d best watch how you spend yours. Say one wrong thing about the lady, and I’ll cram the words down your throat.”
Maddyn stared at him for a long moment.
“My apologies,” the bard said at last. “I’d not realized that this was a serious thing to you.”
“It is. I’ve been trying to get up my courage to ask our prince for that boon he promised me.”
“And what do you want to ask for?”
“Enough land to support a wife.”
“Truly serious, then.” Maddyn whistled under his breath. “You’ll never hear a wrong word about the lady from me.”
“My thanks. I figured I could rely on you to see things right, like.”
Maddyn waved down a passing servant and had her refill their tankards. For a while they drank in silence, watching Prince Maryn on the far side of the hall. The prince never allowed himself to sit at the head of the table of honor, a place reserved for the king; instead he sat in the place that would have been at the king’s right. Tonight Councillor Oggyn was kneeling beside him, talking earnestly with much waving of hands.
“I wonder what Slimy