The Black Raven - Katharine Kerr [139]
“My apologies.”
For a long while Maryn scowled into the fire that leapt over big logs in the stone hearth. The salamanders lurking in the caves of glowing coals glowered right back, but fortunately of course he couldn’t see them. Lilli folded her hands in her lap and tried to think of something to say.
“Forgive me, my lady,” Maryn said at last. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me these days.”
“It’s all the waiting, isn’t it? Sitting around and talking and waiting for summer. It must be dreadful for a man like you.”
“I suppose it is. But what is this creature, a man like me?”
Lilli was too surprised to answer. Maryn looked up with a peculiar lopsided smile.
“Don’t let me spoil this little span of time we have, my lady.” He stood up, glancing around. “Come lie down with me instead.”
Yet after his lovemaking, when he’d dressed and gone, Lilli lay awake for a long while, wondering what his question meant, and what could have driven him to ask it. Finally, she fell asleep without an answer.
Gwerbret Ammerwdd of Yvrodur stood nearly as tall as Branoic, and he was as broad in the shoulders. Grey streaked his dark hair and stained his moustache. As he talked, he reached up to stroke the moustache repeatedly with one wide hand, as if he feared he’d lost it. Since the prince had given him leave to stand, he leaned against the wall next to the hearth in the prince’s reception room and considered his sworn liege lord with cold dark eyes. Maryn, lounging in a chair, looked steadily back.
“I understand your reasoning,” Ammerwdd said at last. “But there’s going to be a cursed lot of grumbling about your handing Cerrmor over to a lad.”
“He’ll be a man before long,” Maryn said, “and is that truly what the grumbling will be about?”
Ammerwdd smiled, glancing at Nevyn and Oggyn, who sat at a table off to one side, then back to the prince. When Oggyn looked as if he might speak, Nevyn raised a hand and silenced him.
“Cerrmor’s a rich prize,” the gwerbret said. “I’d never deny that.”
Maryn got up, beckoned to Ammerwdd to follow him, and joined his two councillors at the table, where a map of Deverry lay spread out. Maryn pointed to the northeast corner and laid a fingertip on one town.
“This is Cantrae,” Maryn said. “It belongs to the Boars. Follow the river down, Your Grace, and we have Glasloc, also in the Boar’s hands. Then there’s the old Wolf lands. They have a claim on Lughcarn as well, and the gwerbret there is trying to see which way the wind blows before he pledges to me. He doesn’t know it, but he’s waited too long. If the summer’s fighting goes well, all these will be mine by attainder. I intend to be generous to my Cerrmor vassals.”
Ammerwdd nodded, stroking his moustache.
“These lands are all a cursed long ride from the Belaver,” the gwerbret said at last. “Men who have land there aren’t going to want to give it up and move north.”
“Who says they have to give up their old holdings? Well, whoever the Electors appoint as Gwerbret Cantrae will, and then Lughcarn as well. But the lesser lords won’t be under that sort of obligation.”
Ammerwdd started to speak, then laughed, a short bark that sounded as angry as it did merry.
“I like that,” the gwerbret said. “Divide their holdings; let them spend half the year riding back and forth; keep them out of trouble.”
“So I thought.” Maryn turned to Nevyn. “Tell me, Councillor. If Glasloc returns to Gwerbret Daeryc, will he give up Mabyndyr?”
“He will, Your Highness,” Nevyn said. “And Mabyndyr’s worth more than Glasloc.”
“And then, my liege, there are the northern demesnes,” Oggyn put in.
“True spoken.” Ammerwdd swept his hand across northern Gwaentaer. “How many of these lords will hold loyal to you in the spring?”
“I don’t know,” Maryn said. “Probably none of them.”
Both men laughed, a hard grim chuckle. Their cynicism was justified, Nevyn assumed, but not long after something happened that proved him wrong.
On a day when the chill wind hinted of winter coming, one of Maryn’s new vassals rode in with his honor guard of fifteen men, and it was the last one that