The Gold Falcon - Katharine Kerr [99]
“Oh, of course. I suppose I could pretend to be haughty and all that, but I can’t say I want to bother.”
At that Neb laughed and got up, dusting off the knees of his brigga. “You’re right enough that I shouldn’t be in here,” he said. “I don’t want to stain your honor. We’d best get rid of that light, too, before someone sees it from the ward.”
“True-spoken.” Branna ignored her heart, pounding in fear, and raised one hand. She had to know, she realized, what she might have the power to do. In the glow small sprites were swirling on translucent wings. “My thanks,” she said and snapped her fingers.
The golden ball vanished. The candle she’d put out earlier bloomed into flame. When she picked it up from the floor, her hands were shaking so badly that it very nearly went out again.
“There is real dweomer in the world,” Neb said, “and we both have the talent for it. It’s time, my lady, that we both thought well on what that means.”
“Apparently so.” Branna crossed the room and set the lantern down on her dower chest. “I wish Salamander would come back. He said some truly odd things to me, and the more I think about them, the more important they seem.”
“He did the same to me. I think me he knows cursed well what it means, and I’ll wager he could answer a question or two for us as well.”
“I hope so. Dweomer can’t be just ordering the Wildfolk around. We must be able—I mean, there must be other things.” She let her voice trail miserably away.
“There must, truly. You’ve dreamed of some of them, from what you told me.”
She nodded, barely aware of his words, barely aware when he turned away and left. She heard the chamber door close, but the noise seemed to happen a long distance away. The gnome leaped onto the bed and sat cross-legged on the coverlet.
“Oh, very well,” Branna snapped. “You were right.”
It bobbed its head, grinned, and vanished. Branna shuddered like a wet dog. For a moment, or so she felt, someone else had looked out from her eyes, and that someone had never seen this chamber before. Someone else. But who?
All that evening, as he drank with the warband, Gerran kept an eye out for Neb, but the scribe never came into the great hall. One of the serving lasses told him, finally, that Neb had begged some dinner from the cook out in the kitchen hut. Gerran tried to convince himself that the scribe was afraid of him, but at root he was too honest a man to believe it. Neb had no reason to fear ordinary men, armed or not. Dweomer? Gerran wondered. Certainly he’d heard plenty of tales about dweomer, even though he tended to discount them. Or maybe I’m just going daft. The latter alternative seemed preferable. He solved the problem, finally, by drinking enough mead to wash away the memory of the clash.
On the morrow morning, Neb came whistling into the great hall as brightly as if nothing had happened. Gerran was lingering over a second bowl of porridge; the scribe spotted him and strode over to his table.
“Good morrow, Captain,” Neb said. “It’s a lovely morning.”
“It is,” Gerran said. “Seems like the heat’s finally broken.”
Neb smiled, nodded, and walked on, heading for the table he shared with Lord Veddyn and the head groom’s family. Gerran had a brief thought of heaving the porridge bowl at his retreating head. Instead, he went on eating.
Near the noontide, Gerran saw Branna and Neb walking together toward the garden. He was tempted to rush after them and knock the scribe off his feet with one good punch, but the memory stopped him—an attack, a myriad of little fists, all pummeling him, while he could see not one assailant, not one thing at all. Cursed if I’ll be afraid of a milksop scribe! was his first thought.
But it wasn’t fear that was stopping him, he realized, more a sense that Neb had some sort of prior claim. The thought startled him. It seemed so foreign that he glanced around, half-expecting to find some other person nearby who’d spoken it aloud, but he saw no one. With a toss of his