Daggerspell (30 page)

The cluttered reception chamber looked even smaller with Rhys in it. Refusing a chair, he paced back and forth, stopping occasionally to glance out the window. Lovyan took the opportunity to collect her thoughts. This was bound to be a touchy interview, straining the delicate balance of power they’d worked out between them. Since as gwerbret Rhys was her overlord, she was bound by law to follow his orders, but since she was his mother, he was bound by custom to follow her advice and pay her every possible respect. For the past year, they’d done an uneasy dance to this difficult bit of counterpoint.

“Why do I hear rumors of rebellion out here?” Rhys said finally.

“So they’ve reached Aberwyn?”

“Of course.” He trotted out the old proverb with a certain point. “Everything comes under the nose of the gwerbret of Aberwyn sooner or later.”

“And have you heard that Sligyn believes the rumors?”

“Sligyn isn’t given to fancies. Does he have proof? Letters, things he’s personally overheard?”

“Naught—yet. I can send for him if his grace would like to speak with him.”

“Do you want to make a formal deposition to my court? I doubt if the case would stand if all you have is Sligyn’s gossip.”

“Doubtless not, especially if your grace has already decided that the information is gossip.”

“Oh, here, Mother! Corbyn was one of your brother’s most loyal men. He pledged to you willingly when you inherited the rhan, didn’t he? Why should he throw all that over and declare himself in rebellion?”

Talking of dweomer would draw Rhys’s scorn and nothing more. Rhys misinterpreted her hesitation.

“Unless, of course,” Rhys said, “the trouble’s Rhodry.”

“And what makes you think the trouble could be Rhodry?”

“He’s an untried man, and I didn’t hear any rumors until you made him your heir. I don’t think he’s fit to rule, myself.” Rhys held up his hand flat for silence. “Now, I know Rhodry’s a good lad with a sword. But leading men to battle is a blasted sight easier than giving judgments on your vassals. If you disinherited him, I’m sure all this grumbling about rebellion would stop.”

“I have no intention of doing anything of the sort.”

“Indeed? Well, if Sligyn gets real proof, of course I’ll rule that you have every right to your rank and lands.”

“My humble thanks, Your Grace.”

Rhys winced at the sarcasm.

“But if the lords throw Rhodry in my face,” Rhys went on, “that may have to be a point of negotiation.”

Lovyan rose to face him. Although he towered over her, he ducked back out of reach.

“There is no law in the land,” Lovyan said steadily, “that will allow you to force me to disinherit Rhodry.”

“Of course there’s not. I was merely thinking that Her
Grace might have to see reason and do it of her own free will.”

“Her Grace also has the right of appeal to the High King.”

Rhys flushed scarlet with rage. It was his sorest point, knowing that although he ruled like a king in western Eldidd, there was a true king in Deverry with jurisdiction over him.

“Very well, Mother,” he snapped. “Then if Rhodry’s to have your lands, let him fight to keep them.”

“Oho! So you do believe the rumors!”

Rhys spun around and stared out the window. Lovyan laid a maternal hand on his arm.

“Rhys, my sweet, why do you hate Rhodry so much?”

“I don’t hate Rhodry,” he snarled, his face redder than before.

“Indeed?”

“I just happen to think he’s unfit to rule.”

“I happen to disagree.”

Rhys merely shrugged.

“Very well, then, Your Grace,” Lovyan said. “There’s no use in discussing the matter further until it comes to a formal case of either law or sword.”

“Apparently so. At the first overt act of rebellion, you may send for my aid, and my warband will be at your disposal to enforce the laws.”

And yet he’d made it impossible to ask his aid, unless she wanted to let him disinherit his brother in open court.

That afternoon, while Rhys and his men drank in her great hall, Lovyan sent a message to Sligyn to come to her on the morrow. When she rejoined her sons, Rhodry was sitting at his brother’s left and discussing hunting dogs, a fairly safe subject. Lovyan sat down at the gwerbret’s right and stayed on guard for the trouble that soon, predictably, surfaced.

“Well, brother,” Rhys said. “I hear from your men that you’ve been hunting a different kind of game than the gray deer. The soapmaker’s daughter, was she? Well, at least she’d be clean.”

When Rhys laughed at his own jest, Rhodry’s eyes went dangerously blank.

“I can’t lie and say that I didn’t dishonor her,” Rhodry said. “Tell me, brother, has your wife conceived yet?”

Rhys’ hand tightened on his tankard so hard that his knuckles went white.

“Rhodry!” Lovyan snapped.

“Well, Mother, it seemed a reasonable question.” Rhodry shot his brother a sideways smile. “Since we’re talking about siring sons and all.”

With a flick of his wrist, Rhys threw the ale in his tankard full into Rhodry’s face. Shouting insults and the worst oaths they knew, they were on their feet and shoving at each other before Lovyan could intervene. She jumped up and ran round the table to push herself between them, and for all that Rhys had the higher rank, she slapped him, too.

“Stop it!” Lovyan yelled. “What a splendid example you are for your men, brawling like a pair of servants! My lords, kindly remember who you are.” They both had the decency to blush. Rhodry wiped his face off on his sleeve and stared down at the floor. Rhys collected himself with a sigh and held out his hand.

“My apologies.”

“And you have mine from the bottom of my heart.” Rhodry took the offered hand.

But the handshake was as brief as they could make it, and Rhodry stomped out of the hall. Rhys and Lovyan sat down and waited while a servant refilled the gwerbret’s tankard and scuttled away again.

“My apologies to you, Mother. That was an ill way for me to treat your hospitality, but ye gods, the rotten young cub made me furious.”

“What he said was uncalled for and cruel.”

Rhys studied the tabletop and rubbed at a bit of rough wood with his thumb. Finally he looked up with a brittle smile.

“Well? Aren’t you going to tell me that it’s time I put my wife aside?”

“I know she pleases you, and never would I wish that bitter Wyrd on any woman. I take it your councillors have been pressing the issue again.”

“They have. That’s another reason I rode to Cannobaen, to ask your advice. I know Aberwyn needs heirs, but it aches my heart to think of Donilla living shamed on her brother’s charity.”

With a sigh, Lovyan considered. Rhys had been married for ten years; he was now twenty-eight and his wife twenty-six; if Donilla was going to conceive, surely she would have done so by now.

“If you do put her aside,” Lovyn said at last, “I’ll make provision for her. At the very least, she can come to me as part of my retinue, but I might be able to do better than that.”

“My thanks. Truly, Mother, my thanks.” He rose abruptly. “If you’ll excuse me? I need a bit of air.”

Yet Lovyan knew that he was close to tears. For a long while she sat at the table alone and brooded on those women’s matters that lay at the heart of the kingdom.

On the morrow, Rhys and his men rode out early, much to Lovyan’s relief. His stubbornness over the rebellion puzzled her; it was, after all, to the gwerbret’s advantage to intervene before things came to open war, both to assert his authority and to issue a warning that rebellions would not be tolerated in his rhan. Later, while speaking with Rhodry and Sligyn in her reception chamber, she found an answer to the puzzle that nearly broke her heart.

“High-handed of him, eh?” Sligyn said. “Never known His Grace to be so unreasonable.”

“Indeed?” Rhodry favoured them with a cold, tight smile. “All my life, Rhys could always hold one thing over my head, and that was that he’d get the gwerbretrhyn and I’d have naught but his charity. And then Uncle Gwaryc has to go and get himself killed, and lo and behold, I’ve got a rhan after all. Of course it aches the bastard’s heart.”

“Here!” Sligyn snapped. “Don’t call your brother that.
Your lady mother had more honor than to put horns on your father’s head.”

“My apologies to you, Mother. Let me refer to the esteemed gwerbret as a piss-poor drunken excuse for a noble lord then.”

“Rhodry!” Lovyan and Sligyn said together.

“Well, by the gods!” Rhodry got to his feet. “How do you expect me to be courteous to a man who wants me dead?”

Suddenly Lovyan turned cold.

“Can’t you see it?” Rhodry was shaking with rage. “He’s letting the war go on in the hopes of seeing me killed. I’ll wager Corbyn and Nowec see it, too. They kill me off, then sue for peace, and Rhys ever so honorably makes them give restitution to his poor mother. Then when you die, the rebels have what they want, direct fealty to Rhys, and he has what he wants, my lands.” Rhodry leaned over her chair. “Well, Mother? Aren’t I right?”

“Hold your tongue!” Sligyn rose and hauled him back. “You’re right enough, but don’t go throwing it into your lady mother’s face!”

Rhodry strode to the window and looked out, gripping the sill with both hands. Lovyan felt as if Rhys and Rhodry physically had her by the arms and were ripping her apart. Sligyn watched her with concern.

“Don’t you brood, Your Grace, we’ll keep your young cub alive. He knows how to swing that sword he wears, and he’ll have plenty of loyal men around him.”

Lovyan nodded mutely. Sligyn hesitated, then sighed.

“My lady? We’d best leave you.”

It seemed to take them forever to get out of the chamber and close the door.

“Ah, ye gods,” Lovyan whispered aloud. “I never thought he hated Rhodry as much as all this.”

She dropped her face into her hands and let the blessed tears come.

• • •

Much to Jill’s delight, it took Dregydd some days to finish trading with the Westfolk. One at a time, either a man or a woman would lead a horse over and sit down in the grass to haggle leisurely with the merchant. When that deal was done, an hour or two would pass before the next horse made its appearance. Since most of the Westfolk knew no Deverrian, the man named Jennantar stayed with Dregydd to translate. In her self-appointed role as Dregydd’s assistant, Jill came to know him fairly well. The second afternoon, during a break in the trading Cullyn came over and insisted that Jill take a walk with him down by the river.

“I wish to every god and his wife that you wouldn’t spend so much time hanging around old Dregydd. I know cursed well it’s the stinking Westfolk you want to talk with.”

“Da, I just don’t see what you have against them. They’re not animals. Look at their clothes and their jewelry, and then they built that bridge over the river. Somewhere they must have farms and cities and suchlike.”

“Indeed? And I suppose you’d like to ride off with that Jennantar and take a look at them.”

“What? Da, you’re daft! He’s got a wife and a baby, and he’s never said one wrong word to me.”

“Oh, horseshit! There’s more than one man in the world who’s had a wife and didn’t mind having a pretty lass, too.”

“Da, I don’t even know what to say to you when your temper takes you this way.”

Cullyn stopped walking, turning a little to look out over the endless green of the grasslands, and his mouth went slack and weary. Jill laid a hand on his arm.

“Da, please, what’s so wrong?”

“Oh, may the gods blast me if I even know, my sweet. It aches my heart, being out here. For years I thought it was the edge of nowhere, and now I find out there’s this dismal strange folk riding round out here, and they’ve been here all along, and,” he shrugged in inarticulate frustration, “and, well, you’re going to think me daft, curse
it, but they stink of dweomer and witchcraft. So does that Aderyn fellow.”

Jill couldn’t have been more shocked if a performing bear in the marketplace had suddenly started declaiming a bard song. Her stolid warrior of a father—talking of dweomer?

“Well,” Cullyn snapped. “I said it sounds daft!”

“It doesn’t, truly. I think you’re right.”

He looked at her for a moment, then nodded, as if he’d been waiting for her judgment upon the matter. Jill felt a cold streak down her back. As if to mock her, the gray gnome popped into manifestation nearby, grinned at her, then vanished again.

“Da? I’d never leave you. If you thought I would, then truly, you were daft.”

Cullyn relaxed, smiling at her softly.

“Well and good, then, my sweet,” he said. “My apologies. You can watch our merchant haggle if you want to. We’ll be getting out of here soon enough.”

Jill took him up on his offer and went back to the trading. When she sat down beside Jennantar, he raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“Doesn’t your father think I’m fit company for you?”

Jill merely shrugged. He started to say more, then suddenly jumped to his feet with an oath for trouble brewing. Two of the Westfolk were arguing with a frightened Dregydd, who was clasping the last remaining sword of Lughcorn steel. As Jill followed Jennantar over, she heard them arguing about buying it.

“Now, here!” Dregydd snapped. “I never promised it to either of you.”

The two men looked only at each other in an anger the more frightening because it played over such beautiful faces.

“Jill!” Jennantar hissed. “Go fetch Aderyn. Quick!”

Without thinking, Jill ran to the Westfolk’s camp. At the edge, she stopped, suddenly bewildered by the profusion of bright colors, the gaggle of children and dogs, the unfamiliar language that swirled around her. A few at a
time, Westfolk strolled over and surrounded her. When a dog growled, she stepped back sharply.

“Aderyn,” Jill said. “Jennantar told me to get Aderyn.”

The people merely looked at her.

“Please?” Jill tried again. “Where’s Aderyn?”

They glanced at each other, their cat-slit eyes totally expressionless. Jill felt a little flutter of panic round her heart. All of them, even the women, were wearing long knives at their belts.

“Please, Jennantar told me to come here.”