The Black Raven - Katharine Kerr [102]
Branoic let out a whoop, climbed down the ladder, and ran to his horse, tied nearby in the shade. By the time he mounted, the party was just coming in through the gates. Branoic paused his horse by the side of the road till they reached him, then fell in beside Lilli. She turned in the saddle to laugh at him.
“What are you doing here?” she said.
“What do you think? Waiting for you, of course.” Branoic leaned forward and called to Nevyn. “Good morrow, my lord!”
Nevyn waved. Branoic turned his attention back to Lilli.
“I thought you travelled by galley,” Branoic said.
“We did on the way down,” Lilli said. “But it’s too hard a row back with passengers and suchlike, and barges are too slow.”
“Ah. Well, it gladdens my heart to see you safe. I hope you didn’t meet with any trouble on the road.”
“None. I doubt me if there’d be any bandits around, with all of Maryn’s vassals gone back to patrol their lands.”
“True spoken.” He paused, gathering courage. “Uh, speaking of lands, like—”
Lilli caught her breath. For a long moment they stared at each other, half-smiling, half-afraid. Their horses ambled on, following the others just ahead.
“I asked him.” Branoic could think of no other way than a blurt. “He granted it.”
Lilli laughed, one boyish whoop of delight, cut short when Nevyn turned in the saddle and frowned at her. Branoic concentrated on the road ahead, but he could feel his heart pounding. She’s willing to marry me, he thought. She wouldn’t be so blasted pleased if she weren’t.
Although the previous king’s high-ranking servants as well as his noble-born servitors had left Dun Deverry after Maryn’s victory, the lowest ranks stayed for the simple reason that they had nowhere else to go. Many of them had been born in the royal dun and inherited their work and its meager privileges from their parents. By asking here and there, Nevyn found such an old woman, the swineherd’s widow, Vena, still living in a hut upwind of the pigsties, who had spun wool for the queens of Dun Deverry for many a long year. White-haired and thin as a stick, she was nearly blind, and throwing a drop-spindle for days and years on end had left her hands and wrists swollen and twisted.
While he brewed up herbs to ease her pain, Nevyn chatted with her and decided that her mind was still sharper than many a youngster’s. A low fire crackled in her little hearth under a big cast-iron hook. He hung his iron pot of herbs and water from the hook, then added a few sticks of wood to the fire.
“It’s good of you to leave off physicking the prince to help an old woman,” Vena said.
“The prince is young. He doesn’t need much in the way of herbcraft.”
“As long as there be no battles, eh?”
“True spoken. And as long as no one tries to poison him.”
“Let’s pray that never happens.” For a moment she sat silently. “Well, I heard they were a—hanging of Lady Merodda, so mayhap he’s safe enough.”
“You think she was a poisoner, then? Most people in the dun seem to.”
“I do, and not only from the gossip, neither. Many a long year it was now, but she did give my man a handful of copper coins for a piglet. We found the thing dead out on the dungheap some while later, and when one of the dogs did eat of it, he died too, and slowly, poor beast.”
Nevyn whistled under his breath. She smiled and turned on her wooden chair toward the sound.
“You think the same, eh?” she said, “that she was a—making sure her evil potions would do the job.”
“I do indeed. You know, ever since I’ve been in this dun I’ve heard tales of Lady Merodda’s misdeeds, but that’s a new one.”
“Well, don’t believe everything you hear, good sir. You know how the gossips are. Many a time I’d be attending to my work, and the lasses with me would be spinning more tales than wool. And every time a tale got itself told, the more exciting,