The Black Raven - Katharine Kerr [70]
“Have you gone daft?” Maryn leaned forward and looked Oggyn square in the face. “Ye gods, after everything Lilli did for me, do you think I’d turn her over to my enemies?”
Oggyn blushed a sunset-red from his beard up and over his bald pate.
“My apologies, my prince. I fear me I’ve overspoke myself.”
“You have. Remember from now on that Lady Lillorigga is my guest, not some sort of hostage.”
“I will, my prince. I most humbly beg your pardon.”
“Granted, of course. But I’d not hear of this again.”
Slowly Oggyn’s color faded to normal. Maryn leaned back in his chair and looked absently away.
“Unless Lilli wants to marry the man, of course,” Nevyn said. “Then Braemys’s loyalty can be the bride-price you exact.”
Maryn turned to face him and looked for a brief moment murderous.
“I’d not thought of that.” The prince buried the rage in a brief smile. “Perhaps the lady should be asked.”
“It would be courteous, my liege.” Nevyn stood with a bow his way. “I’ll just go look for her. I hope you’ll forgive me if it takes some small while?”
“Of course,” Maryn said. “This dun is as cursed confusing as a rabbit warren, I swear it!”
In actuality, Nevyn knew where to find Lilli, up in her chamber in the royal broch, a narrow wedge of a room with bare stone walls. Dressed in green, Lilli herself was sitting cross-legged on her bed and staring at a page of the big leather-bound book lying in front of her. When Nevyn came in she looked up and smiled. Her blonde hair, cropped short at the jawline, hung untidily around her slender face.
“How are you doing with the reading?” Nevyn nodded toward the book. “Do you remember all the letters?”
“I do, but sounding them out one at a time is so tedious.”
“No doubt, but it’s the best we can do for lessons. At the moment, anyway. When winter comes we’ll either be back in Cerrmor, or I’ll send for a scribe’s teaching book.”
“Do you think we’ll go back?”
“I have no idea.” Nevyn sat down on a wooden chest under the single window. “The prince will winter here, certainly.”
Lilli glanced at the book and concentrated on closing it.
“If the princess returns to Cerrmor,” Nevyn went on. “I’ll go, too. As my apprentice, you’ll come with me.”
“Of course, my lord.” Her voice held steady. “We’ll be much more comfortable there.”
“And safer. We’ve heard from Braemys.”
Lilli looked up and laid a hand at her throat.
“He still wants to marry you,” Nevyn said. “He claims you as his betrothed.”
“Oh curse him!”
“I just made a show in council of asking your opinion on the matter, but I’ll wager you don’t want to go through with the marriage.”
She shook her head.
“Don’t let it trouble your heart,” Nevyn said. “If he turns nasty and tries to press the matter, I’ll reveal the truth.”
“That he’s my …” Lilli forced out the word, “brother?”
“Well, you only share a father, but that will be more than sufficient for the priests. They’ll forbid the marriage in an instant.”
“Indeed. You know, sometimes I dream about my mother, and in the dreams I can feel just how much I hate her. She would have let me marry Braemys. She would have let me—well, she saw naught wrong with sleeping in her own brother’s bed, did she?” Lilli’s voice dropped. “Her brother. My father!”
“Try not to hate her.” Nevyn made his voice soft. “It will only bind you to her memory.”
Lilli started to speak, then coughed, a deep rasping noise that made her clap her hand over her mouth. She twisted round on the bed to hide her face, but he could hear her spitting something up. With her other hand she took a scrap of rag out of her kirtle and wiped her mouth and hand both.
“That sounds nasty,” Nevyn said. “How long have you been coughing like this?”
“Just since this morning.” Lilli turned back. “It’s the damp. I always get like this in the summer rains.”
“Indeed? I’ll make you up some herbwater, and you’d best have a poultice for your chest, too.”
“It’s naught.”
“Huh! You’ll drink the herbwater anyway. As hot as you can stand it.”
“Oh very well.