The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [109]
“Praedd, Amyr, make that weasel stand up properly, will you? He can show some respect to the priest. Now, Your Holiness. This is the man who tried to murder my granddaughter this autumn. Nevyn’s proved the entire thing to my satisfaction, but I need your advice on the laws.”
Nevyn turned to the priest.
“Your Holiness, what’s the usual punishment for such a crime?”
“Hanging, of course. Even though the child is illegitimate, she’s still a blood heir, and thus any attempt against her is an act not merely of attempted murder, but of fullblown treachery.” The priest frowned, rummaging through his vast memory. “The Edicts of King Cynan contain the most recent statement of this principle, but there are earlier precedents, the clearest, perhaps, being found in the ninth-century codification of Maryn the First.”
“Well and good, then, Your Holiness,” Lovyan said. “On the morrow morn I’ll convene a malover. About two hours before noon, I think, would be suitable.”
“Very good, Your Grace. I shall have the proper statement of precedents prepared at that time.” The old man turned his shrewd dark eyes on Merryc, who was standing stiffly between his guards. “Do you wish to talk to me, my son, or some other priest from our temple? It’s time to prepare your soul for Great Bel’s judgment hall.”
Merryc smiled briefly, then spat on the floor. Praedd cuffed him as they dragged him away.
Nevyn and Lovyan went up to the reception room of her suite, where the wind howled and banged at the glass in the windows and blew the occasional puff of smoke from the fire. Shivering in her plaid cloak, Lovyan stood by the hearth and rubbed her hands together.
“That’s better,” she pronounced at last. “The Chamber of Justice is so wretchedly cold this time of year. Ah by the Goddess, Nevyn, I feel so old and weary! I’ve never sentenced a man to hang before, and I’ll have to be there to watch it, too, I suppose.” She shuddered again. “Well, no one has to worry about my stealing the rhan out from under its real heir, the way so many regents have done. I shall be very glad indeed to turn it over when the time comes.” Although she was trying to speak lightly, her eyes were haggard with worry. “If the time comes, I suppose I should say.”
“It will, Your Grace. It will.”
Yet he could hear the weariness and wondering in his own voice.
After the evening meal Nevyn went back to his chambers. With Elaeno to keep him company, he stood at the window and looked out and down to the distant harbor, where the foaming waves rolled in steadily and bobbed the boats around at the piers. There was a storm on the way, he supposed, but even between blows, the seas would stay high all winter long. No matter how badly he longed to be in Bardek, he was going to stay in Eldidd till spring.
“That’s all there is to it, I suppose,” Nevyn remarked. “Or have you ever heard of a ship making the crossing from here to, say, Surtinna in the winter?”
“Not successfully.” Elaeno considered the problem for a moment. “I’ve never heard of anyone even trying it, to tell you the truth.”
“There’s folly and then there’s absolute madness, eh?”
“Just so. Even if you didn’t run head on into a big storm, and that’s an enormous ‘if,’ you could knock your craft to pieces in the swells, or lose sails tacking endlessly into the bluster, or get blown so far off-course your crew could starve before you reached land. We have an old proverb at home: no man nor demon neither can command the wind.”
“And a true one it is.” All at once Nevyn was struck by a thought. “But asking it a favor might be a very different thing indeed.”
Later that night, when the dun was asleep, Nevyn wrapped himself in two cloaks and went out into the formal gardens. As he walked across the lawns, they crackled underfoot; in the moonlight a rimy frost lay glittering on the dark mounds of mulched rosebushes and the frozen water in the dragon fountain. When he found a sheltered corner out of sight of the broch, he made