The Gold Falcon - Katharine Kerr [90]
When, at the end of the evening, Neb went to bed, he was hoping that he’d have another dream about Branna or the most beautiful lass in all Deverry. Perhaps his expectations made his dreams tease him, because he dreamed nothing he could remember in the morning but a few scraps of images, revolving around tallying up the dun’s taxes, and a voice saying, “now they’ve all been paid.” And yet, as he went down to breakfast, he found himself remembering the things Salamander had said in Cengarn, about gratitude and wyrd, and realized that they and the dream were—somehow—all of a piece.
Lady Branna was sitting near a window inside the great hall. Gerran, standing just outside in the bright morning light, could see her in silhouette as she leaned onto the table on one elbow to study the game board lying between her and Mirryn. Carnoic, probably, Gerran thought. She plays well for a lass.
“And just what are you staring at, Captain?” A woman’s voice, and it came from behind him.
Gerran spun around to find a stout woman—a widow, judging by her black headscarf—standing nearby, glaring at him with her hands set on her hips.
“And just who are you?” Gerran said.
“Lady Branna’s maidservant.” Her dark eyes narrowed as she looked him over. “I’ve tended her from the time she was a tiny baby, and I shan’t be letting any harm come to her, not from the likes of you, my fine lad, or anyone else in the wretched warband either.”
“I’ll not be doing her the least bit of harm, you old scold!”
The woman snorted. “I know how much honor you lads have around women. I warn you, I won’t have my lady harmed even if I have to go to the tieryn himself to stop it.”
With that she pushed past him and strode off. Gerran mouthed a few curses after her. It seemed that everyone was warning him off Branna these days. The little talk that Cadryc had given him, telling him in no uncertain terms not to cause trouble in the dun, still rankled Gerran’s soul. I’ll wager Lady Galla put him up to it—that thought wasn’t much comfort. With a few more curses Gerran turned back to the window.
Much to his annoyance, he saw Neb, sitting down next to Branna as easily as if he had the right to be there. Gerran was hoping that Mirryn would send the presumptuous scribe away, but instead, Mirryn stood up, smiling, chatted for a moment or two, then walked away, leaving the game and Branna to Neb. Gerran jogged round the broch. He was planning on going inside to join them, but Mirryn met him in the doorway.
“We’d better exercise the warband’s horses,” Mirryn said. “Round up the lads, will you?”
Once the warband had left the dun, Mirryn decided that they should take a good long ride out in the open air, and Gerran could think of no reason that they shouldn’t. By the time they returned, noon had come and gone, and Branna was keeping her aunt company in the women’s hall.
Over the next few days, every time that Gerran saw Branna, Neb was right beside her, except of course at meals, when she sat at the honor table and Neb sat with the other servitors. Gerran began to regret his own stubborn insistence on eating with the warband rather than taking a place with the family. He took to hanging around the broch in hopes of catching her alone, but if he saw her walking out to the garden and followed, there would be Neb, waiting for her. If he came into the great hall of an afternoon, she would be sitting with Neb and watching him write letters. At times in the evening she would disappear, and he could find her nowhere, not even the women’s hall. At those times his suspicion that she and Neb had gone off somewhere together would turn him surly.
How could she prefer that milksop scribe to him? The question vexed Gerran more and more as it became more and more obvious that she did. He pinned his hopes on the tourney. Despite his attempts at modesty, he knew that he was the best swordsman in the western provinces. Other lasses had found his skill and flair impressive. No doubt Branna would, too.
Soon enough the answers to Tieryn Cadryc’s invitations came back in