Dangerous Waters (11 page)

Zurenne couldn’t decide which delighted her more: Starrid’s impertinence sagging so utterly in the stocky baron’s presence or realising the steward had no notion where Minelas might be. She’d thought he refused to tell her purely out of malice. Now she saw that he truly didn’t know.

‘Hush!’ Licanin crossed to the window, mud-spattered top-boots noisy on the floorboards. He looked down and exclaimed, affronted. ‘Halferan offers insults instead of welcome, and at festival time? Get your household in order, steward!’

Zurenne heard shouts rising up from the courtyard.

‘My lord—’ Starrid hesitated, threw the cloak to the hall floor and disappeared down the stairs.

‘Stay here,’ Licanin ordered Zurenne. ‘Can you lock that door behind me?’

‘I—’ She wanted to ask him a score of questions. She thrust them aside. ‘No, he took all my keys.’

That was when she had known Minelas was no friend to Halferan. When he’d returned from the Summer Parliament and ripped the chain girdle from her waist, stealing the keys that were every wife’s honour and ornament, from the humblest cottage to the most opulent manor.

The sound of strife below was mounting. Esnina began to grizzle, frightened. Ilysh put an arm round her sister’s shoulders. ‘Mama?’

Zurenne saw a fearless spark in her elder daughter’s eye.

‘Who are these ruffians disgracing Halferan’s livery?’ Licanin demanded. ‘Where are your husband’s men?’

‘Dismissed, disgraced.’ Zurenne fluttered helpless hands. ‘Minelas replaced them with hirelings from the wharves of Attar, Claithe and worse.’

‘None too doughty then, with luck,’ Licanin said grimly. ‘Stay here, all of you, and bar the door with the table.’

As he strode from the room, Zurenne hurried after him. ‘How did you know of our plight?

Halting at the door to the stairs, Licanin shook his greying head. ‘I didn’t until last night. Then some of your tenants sought an audience at the village where we halted on the road. They said no one was allowed to see you!’ He was outraged. ‘Talagrin be thanked, my escort includes the finest warriors of my household troop for fear of Lescari bandits on the road.’

‘Ostrin bless our loyal vassals.’ Zurenne felt a pang of guilt for misjudging them.

‘How—?’ Licanin broke off. ‘Stay here.’

As he hurried down the stairs, Zurenne ran back to the withdrawing room. ‘Neeny, clear the table. Lysha, help me move it.’

Between them they dragged the polished oak to bar the door. Esnina managed to spill the blotting sand over the floorboards and she began to wail loudly.

‘Never mind that.’ Zurenne picked her up and sat her on the table. ‘You must be quiet and listen. Shout if you hear anyone coming up from the hall. Lysha!’ Zurenne nodded to the room’s second doorway, leading to her own bedchamber. ‘Tell me if you hear anyone on the secret stair.’

Had Starrid betrayed that to those louts? The narrow stairway hidden behind the panelling to ensure no lady of Halferan could be trapped up here by fire or malice. Zurenne glanced at Esnina. Both girls had sworn before Saedrin’s statue that they’d tell no one of it but was it fair to ask that of such a little girl?

In the darkness after midnight, Zurenne had wondered more than once about trying to escape that way. But Starrid had her keys and both of those hidden doors were locked. Even if she managed to force them open somehow, she couldn’t imagine they could sneak through the manor’s guarded outer gates unnoticed by Minelas’s brutes. The thought of his retribution once they were recaptured was too terrifying to contemplate.

Ilysh yelped. ‘Mama!’

Zurenne saw she was obeying, in that she had gone into her mother’s bedchamber. Only Ilysh was looking down into the courtyard instead of standing by the secret door.

‘Step back from the window,’ Zurenne ordered. But someone had to know what was going on. She steeled herself and went to see.

The Licanin barony’s men were easily recognised by their livery. Forewarned, they had ridden through the gatehouse, alert, armed and armoured. Starrid’s hirelings were hurrying out of the manor’s guard hall, some still in their shirtsleeves.

Even the mangiest cur barks on his own doorstep, Zurenne recalled her husband saying more than once. One thug ripped his blade into a Licanin man’s leg. The trooper collapsed, writhing in agony.

The thug lunged at the man beside him. The Licanin trooper brought up his sword and the two hilts ground together. So deftly that Zurenne barely saw it, the Licanin swordsman let one hand slip free from his grip and seized the thug’s elbow.

With a move more suited to the dance floor than to combat, he shoved hard enough to spin the unwary thug around. With the startled thug’s back exposed, the Licanin trooper smashed his sword’s pommel on the back of his neck. The thug collapsed.

Stunned or dead? Zurenne found she didn’t care. She heard her elder daughter cheer. ‘Lysha!’

‘Mama, they’re winning!’ Ilysh crowed, unrepentant.

‘I can see that. No, Neeny, stay where you are!’ Zurenne could save one of her daughters from these horrors. Dead and wounded men sprawled on the cobbles. Amid her distress, Zurenne allowed herself a thrill of satisfaction at seeing most were her erstwhile captors.

Half of the Licanin men had dismounted, swiftly cutting down those hirelings caught unawares in the guard hall. Now Zurenne could see some of the rest throwing down their swords in surrender.

Of those Licanins still horsed, one mounted contingent was blocking the gateway so none of the villains could flee. The rest were riding down stragglers trying to find some refuge among the buildings enclosed by the manor’s wall.

Zurenne saw some of them scurrying around the back of the guard hall, behind the stable block standing between that wooden-walled and shingled building and the brick and plaster gatehouse. Others had fled the other way, heading past the steward’s dwelling towards the kitchen and the bake house, to hide in the storehouses that lay beyond.

She couldn’t see who might be cowering beneath the baronial tower’s walls, or by the great hall’s steps. Were any of the scoundrels claiming sanctuary at the manor’s shrine, abutting the other end of the lofty building?

‘Mama! Can you see?’ Ilysh exulted.

Those usurpers not dead or beaten senseless were throwing up their hands. The brief, vicious battle was over.

‘Mama!’ Esnina screamed. ‘Someone’s coming!’

‘Go to your sister!’ Zurenne snatched her up from the table and threw her bodily through the bedchamber door. She braced herself against the table, ready to fight against any intruder. ‘Ilysh—’

‘Zurenne?’

Recognising Lord Licanin’s voice, she almost wept with relief. ‘We’re safe,’ she managed to say.

‘Open the door,’ he ordered.

Zurenne’s legs felt weak as water and her hands were shaking. She could barely shift the heavy table until Ilysh came to her aid. Even Esnina tried to help, plump face wretched with fright.

Two men with gory swords forced their way inside while the door was barely ajar. The table juddered across the floor. Esnina was knocked off her feet.

‘It’s all right, Neeny.’ Zurenne scooped the little girl up. ‘They’re our friends.’

‘Is he here? Lord Licanin demanded while his men went to check Zurenne’s bedchamber. ‘That villain of a steward? Have you seen him?’

‘No,’ Zurenne cried. ‘How could I?’

Glancing at the children, Licanin hastily swallowed an oath. ‘He seems to have given us the slip.’ He was hoarse with emotion and exertion.

‘You two may go. Send someone to the village and summon the headman.’ He sheathed his sword which, for her daughters’ sake, Zurenne was relieved to see was bloodless. ‘Since that villain’s not here to answer for his crimes, you’ll have to tell me what you know.’ He shook his head, exasperated. ‘Who is this Master Minelas? Where is he?’

‘I don’t know.’ Zurenne protested. ‘He left here mid-way through Aft-Autumn. I’ve heard nothing of him since.’

‘Aft-Autumn?’ Licanin looked momentarily surprised, before nodding, more reflective. ‘That would explain it.’

Zurenne could have shrieked like Neeny, she was so frustrated. ‘Explain what?’

‘He was nowhere to be seen at Winter Solstice.’ Licanin scowled. ‘I saw him at the Summer Solstice Parliament, all courtesy and charm, though we barely spoke. Come the Autumn Equinox Lord Karpis and Lord Tallat said that all was well here.’ He looked at Zurenne, reproving.

‘I believe stolen Halferan gold bought our noble neighbours’ lies,’ she hissed.

‘Is that truly how it stands?’ Licanin glanced at Ilysh and Esnina.

Zurenne took the hint. ‘Lysha, take Neeny into my bedchamber and find a quiet game to play.’

For one dreadful moment, she thought Ilysh would refuse. Seeing Lord Licanin’s glowering face, the girl thought better of it and led her sister away.

Licanin barely let the door close before he accused Zurenne. ‘Your own letter confirmed Halferan’s grant of guardianship, when my lords of Karpis and Tallat presented Master Minelas to last summer’s parliament.’

‘I never saw that hateful grant before Minelas returned with my husband’s body.’ Zurenne’s voice cracked with anguish. ‘I wrote that cursed letter at his bidding. Else I—’ She couldn’t go on.

Licanin gestured towards the closed door. ‘He threatened the children?’

‘He said that he would wed Ilysh,’ Zurenne’s hatred spilled like pus from a boil, ‘and bed her too.’

‘Surely not!’ Licanin was appalled.

‘Believe it.’ Zurenne couldn’t repeat what else Minelas had said. The details which had convinced her that despoiling little girls was nothing new to him.

‘If he wed her, the Halferan lands would be his lifelong by right of marriage. If I yielded—’ Self-loathing thickened her voice. ‘If I yielded, he said he would assuredly tire of playing the lord of this manor some day. When that day came, he promised he would draw up a grant of guardianship in favour of whomever I wished.’

Not that Zurenne believed a word on his poisonous tongue. But what else could she do? She’d had no one to help her. Did she now?

‘Did you find it so easy to believe,’ she demanded, ‘that my husband should treat me so shoddily?’

‘We were taken so unawares by Halferan’s death and then by this supposed guardianship.’ Licanin looked sorely troubled as he paced from door to window and back again. ‘But one does not interfere in another man’s affairs without compelling reason. Noble witnesses endorsed Master Minelas along with your own words, supposedly. You wrote regularly to your sisters through summer and For-Autumn,’ he reproached her.

Tears blurred Zurenne’s vision. ‘Every word from my pen was a lie.’

Why hadn’t they seen that? Beresa and Celle and Danlie? But why should they doubt what they read? It wasn’t as if the sisters knew each other’s hearts.

Eight years and five infant brothers’ deaths separated Zurenne from Danlie and they were the closest in age. Licanin had cut Beresa’s wedding plait and laid it on Drianon’s altar nearly twenty-five years ago. That was a full generation by any almanac’s reckoning and Zurenne had been a year younger than Neeny was now.

Licanin cleared his throat. ‘Beresa grew concerned when you replied to none of her winter letters. So I wrote to my lords of Fandail and Brason and we learned that neither Celle nor Danlie had received any letters. Baron Fandail, Baron Brason and I discussed how to proceed and concluded this Master Minelas could hardly object to a festival visit.’

All these letters going back and forth the length and breadth of Caladhria, when winter weather meant an ox-cart struggled to cover four leagues a day. No wonder it had taken her brothers by marriage until now to act.

‘I’ve received no letters since Winter Solstice.’ Zurenne had imagined herself utterly forgotten through those cold, dark days.

‘We can assume that villainous steward withheld them.’ Licanin’s indignation swelled afresh. ‘Raeponin rot the man. Is this how he repays his liege-lord’s memory?’

‘He was given his position for his dead father’s sake, a man of very different character,’ Zurenne said wearily. ‘My husband had already threatened to dismiss him more than once.’

Then Minelas had returned with Halferan’s body and Starrid had wormed his way into the scoundrel’s good graces quicker than a maggot into an apple.

‘We’ll lay this whole vileness before the next parliament with a petition to make me your guardian,’ Licanin said abruptly. ‘Pack what you need for the road and I will take you and your daughters under my own roof. This Master Minelas can try to reclaim you if he dares.’ Grey haired or not, he looked more than ready to make a fight of it.

‘No, please,’ Zurenne begged. ‘That’s to say, I will willingly submit to your guardianship but we have to stay in Halferan. Otherwise my daughters will be left with nothing. Lord Karpis and Lord Tallatt will send troopers from north and south to divide the manor’s lands between them.’

‘No—’ But Licanin broke off.

‘Who will gainsay them with Minelas gone? If Halferan’s hall is abandoned, Lord Karpis and Lord Tallat will claim whatever they wish of our lands.’ Zurenne folded her hands at her waist to stop them trembling. It was hardly seemly for a woman to argue such issues of property but she was desperate. ‘Irrespective of that false grant of guardianship, three-fifths of the parliament’s barons will agree that the populace must be protected, come what may.’

To her relief, Licanin couldn’t deny it. ‘They may even have hoped for such an outcome, when they agreed to support this Minelas. But who is this blackguard?’ he demanded with fresh anger. ‘Why by all that’s holy did Halferan bring him here?’

‘I don’t know!’ Zurenne was nearly screaming with vexation. ‘My husband had long sought some means to defeat the corsairs. You know how long and hard he argued the coastal cause before parliament, to no avail. The inland lords are only ever concerned with unrest spilling across the Rel from Lescar.’

She saw that Licanin was outraged to learn that Halferan had told her about the parliament’s debates. She didn’t care.

‘Then Minelas came and Halferan said they had a plan. They left that same day with nearly all the household’s troopers. Only Minelas came back escorting my husband’s body and my whole life was cast into ruin!’