The Black Raven - Katharine Kerr [40]
“It’s good to see you, Jahdo,” Carra said. “How do you fare these days?”
“Well enough, Your Highness.”
“The servitors seem to be finding you lots of work to do.”
“Oh, working be no bother to me. It does make the time pass quicker, like.”
“You must be looking forward to going home.”
“That be ever so true.”
For a few moments they walked in silence. Carra kept laying her hand on Gwerlas’s neck, making sure that he wasn’t raising a sweat in the chilly air from lack of exercise. Jahdo barely felt the cold, as if walking next to the princess were in some mysterious way warming his blood. If only he could think of witty, courtly remarks that would impress her! Instead, he found himself searching desperately for conversation.
“Ah well,” Jahdo ventured finally. “I did have a bit of news. I were talking with Rhodry, and he did offer to teach me how to read.”
“How splendid! I wish I could learn.”
“Well, why not ask him, then?”
Carra risked a quick glance over her shoulder. Ocradda and the pages were picking their way through the snow a fair distance behind, but still, Carra lowered her voice. “I fear me that the good women of the dun would scream at the horror of it all.”
“What? Why shouldn’t you learn—”
“Not the reading. It’s Rhodry: he’s a silver dagger. Lady Labanna classes him with the dogs and the pigs, lower even than the men in her husband’s warband.”
Jahdo considered this as they walked past the cook house.
“I did forget about things such as that,” he said at last. “But here, I know! Why not ask our sorceress if you mayn’t learn? If the lady Dallandra does approve, no one will dare say a word about it.”
It was late in the evening before Dallandra went up to the women’s hall. By the light of candles the gwerbret’s wife and her serving woman were leaning close to their embroidery to finish one last patch before their eyes grew too weary to continue. Dallandra joined Carra at the hearth. Elessi was awake, propped up against her mother’s stomach.
“Elessi loves the fire,” Carra remarked. “Not for the heat, I mean, but when she’s awake, she’ll stare into it for hours.”
“Well, it is a pretty thing, fire.”
Carra smiled and stroked her daughter’s thin strands of pale hair. In the fire Dallandra could see salamanders, crawling along the logs, dancing among the embers, or rubbing their backs on the iron grating. No doubt Elessi could see them, too. The Wildfolk would flock to a being such as her, one of Evandar’s kind and born into the world flesh for the first time.
“I can hardly wait to show her the spring,” Carra went on, “the flowers blooming and the trees coming into leaf. Her first spring!”
“That will be lovely.”
“And then we’ll be able to travel. The gwerbret and his lady have been so generous to us, and I shall miss them, but I’m so eager to meet Dar’s people and see the grasslands.”
“It’s not an easy life out on the grass.”
“It’s not an easy life here, is it?”
“Well, that is most certainly true.” Dalla lowered her voice. “I’ll be glad to leave myself.”
“No doubt.” Carra smiled, briefly. “I’m just so glad Elessi got herself born, and we both lived. Whilst I was carrying her? I truly did feel half-mad.”
“It was worrisome to watch. Everything seemed to frighten you.”
“Well, there was that small matter of the Horsekin army. I think me I had good reason to be frightened.”
“The best in the world. No one could blame you.”
“Jill did.”
Old pain shivered in Carra’s voice. Dallandra considered her answer carefully.
“Unfortunately, that’s true,” Dallandra said. “But Jill demanded their absolute best from everyone she met, you know. It wasn’t only you. She was a warrior in her soul, but not all of us can live up to that.”
“I can’t, certainly. I’m a coward.”
“Truly?” Dallandra smiled at her. “You left your brother’s dun behind forever and followed Dar.”
“Oh, but I was frightened the whole time.”
“So? Do you think warriors never feel fear? Ask Rhodry about that, and see what he says.”
Carra paused, thinking.
“Well, I know what you mean,” Carra said at last. “But sometimes