The Black Raven - Katharine Kerr [77]
Like a shadow flitting, something moved at the edge of her vision. She concentrated on breathing. The shadow came a little closer, grew solid, then disappeared. She waited still longer, while the shaft of sunlight crept across the floor. All at once a creature appeared, a strange grey fellow, about two feet high and shaped roughly like a human child, with a big head and a protruding belly. It looked at her out of narrow purple eyes. Lilli gasped aloud, and it vanished. Though she sat a long while more, nothing, or no one, appeared to her.
“Still,” Nevyn said when he returned, “you’ve made a splendid start. I’m very proud of the progress you’re making.”
Lilli felt her face warm with a blush. No praise had ever meant so much to her as his.
“I have a message for you. Your brother wants you to dine with him tonight in his chambers,” Nevyn went on. “I told him that you’d doubtless agree.”
“Of course! What did the priests say?”
“That neither they nor their god had any objections to your adoption by the clan of the Ram. There’s a small matter of a fee for the drawing up of the proclamation, but we’ll take care of that on the morrow, and the matter will be settled.”
“I’m glad it was so easy.”
“Well, the prince proclaimed your new kinship in the ward this morning. That certainly didn’t hurt your cause.”
When the sun hung low in the sky, Lilli went to her foster-brother’s quarters. Since Anasyn was newly married, he’d been given chambers in the royal broch itself—a decent-sized suite with a small wedge-shaped reception chamber as well as a bedroom. When she knocked, his page opened the door and ushered her inside. Some of the chairs she recognized and the table as well—once this furniture had been her mother’s, but it had joined the general booty of the dun, handed out to the victors. A pair of maidservants were laying out a cold meal from a pair of big baskets onto the table. She could remember the bowl of black ink sitting on that same cloth, waiting to swallow her mind. She shuddered, suddenly cold.
“What’s wrong, Lilli?” Abrwnna said.
“Oh naught. Just geese walking on my grave.”
Abrwnna, Anasyn’s wife, was sitting in a high-backed chair by the empty hearth. She was beautiful, Abrwnna, with long red hair and big green eyes, but Lilli found herself thinking of her as a child—odd, since Abrwnna was near her own age and twice—married now, not that her first marriage, to the child-king, had ever been consummated. She smiled and waved Lilli over.
“Come in, sister,” Abrwnna said. “My lord is off somewhere, but no doubt he’ll join us soon. Do have that chair with the cushions.”
“My thanks.” Lilli nearly dropped her a curtsy out of sheer habit. “You’re looking well.”
“Am I? Truly, I count myself the luckiest of women these days. When I think of what might have happened to me after the siege was over—” Abrwnna laid a pale hand on her paler throat. “We should all be thankful that our prince is a merciful man.”
“Just so.”
Abrwnna hesitated, glancing at the servants. Until they’d done setting out the food, she said nothing more, then dismissed them. The page hovered near the door.
“Do go see if you can find our lord, will you?” Abrwnna said. “Tell him his sister is here.”
“I will, my lady.” The page bowed, then hurried off.
Once the door had closed behind him, Abrwnna leaned back in her chair and let out her breath in a long sigh.
“I’ve not seen you to have two private words together, truly,” Abrwnna said, “not since the dun fell. Why, Lilli? Why did you run away like that and go over to the prince?”
Silence hung between them like smoke. Lilli felt like a dolt for being surprised—of course Abrwnna would want to know, of course all the women left behind to suffer in the taking of Dun Deverry would want to know.
“Why did I betray you?” Lilli said at last. “Is that what you mean?”
“It’s not, truly it isn’t. I—well, I just wanted to know—well, was it because of Lady Bevyan?”
“It was. After my mother had her murdered,