Sword of Fire

by Katharine Kerr

  “Ye gods,” Dovina said. “Haen Marn’s over the border. Near the Bear clan.”

  “Right in the middle of the feud,” Alyssa said.

  They shared a sigh and sat down together on the wooden bench. The Bear clan of northern Eldidd had once owed fealty to Aberwyn, but years of intrigue had finally brought them some independence and a gwerbret of their own for their widespread holdings, which included a good stretch of southern Pyrdon. They had thus become hated by the gwerbretion to either side of them. To call them “sensitive” about their delicate position lay beyond mere overstatement. For ancient reasons they had hated the Maelwaedds of Aberwyn for hundreds of years, and when the Electors handed the rhan to the Fox, the spurned Bears transferred their hatred right over.

  “The roads and canals to Haen Marn,” Dovina said, “run right through their territory. I can’t send an Aberwyn courier to fetch the book. He’d be arrested and detained if they saw him.”

  “I know. At least Haen Marn’s a separate rhan, sacred and all that. They wouldn’t dare interfere with it.”

  For some long moments Dovina merely stared, thinking hard, at the opposite wall. Alyssa idly studied the framed map of the ancient Westfolk city of Rinbaladelan that hung on the same wall and waited for her superior in rank to speak. Eventually Dovina sighed again.

  “I meant to ask you,” Dovina said. “How did the speech in the market square go?”

  “I barely got started when the marshals marched in.”

  “What?” Dovina turned on the bench to stare at her.

  While Alyssa gave her report, Dovina continued staring, her mouth slack with surprise and, eventually, fear. “My apologies,” Dovina said when Alyssa had finished. “I never should have asked you to come to the gates with me. Ye gods! Good thing you carried the book for me! Father probably thought you were a servant or suchlike. He never truly looked at you.”

  “Are they going to blame me?” Alyssa could only wonder at herself, that she’d not seen this obvious question before. The sunlight in the room seemed to have become very bright and very cold. She clasped her hands to keep them from shaking. “That heckler—I did try to ignore him.”

  “It was just like Father to put a hound among the hares! And the fellow who hit him—do you know him or suchlike?”

  “I only met him the night past. He was caught in the riot at the dun gates like I was.”

  “I suppose my wretched father will put the blame on him. Silver daggers have that awful reputation, troublemakers and violent and all of that. Father will find some way to charge him with summat bad.”

  “That’s horribly unfair!”

  “Of course it is. That’s why we’re working to change the courts, innit?”

  “Well, true spoken. And ye gods, what about me?”

  “I sincerely think that my father has too much honor to hang a woman, but I’m sure he’d levy a huge fine on your family. Any chance at a guildmaster’s coin, he’ll take it. Worse yet, if he nabs this poor fellow, it’s the gallows for sure, to make an example of him.”

  “Here! I can’t allow—I mean, I don’t want—”

  Dovina leaned forward to peer into Alyssa’s face. “You’re rather sweet on this fellow, aren’t you?”

  Alyssa blushed.

  “Then we simply can’t let him hang.” Dovina heaved a melancholy sigh. “I do wish Father had bothered to develop his rational faculties. I don’t suppose he’s ever read Prince Mael’s book about Ristolyn. But let me see, what can we do about the silver dagger?”

  “Could we hire him to go to Haen Marn and fetch the book?”

  “Now there’s a thought! It would get him safely out of town as well, and the Bears aren’t going to growl at a silver dagger running an errand. But I doubt me if the healers on the island would hand the book over to a silver dagger, even with a letter from me. It’s a very rare book.”

  “Well, I don’t suppose giving it to the Advocates would mean much, anyway. It would be a splendid gesture, but just a gesture. Though, curse it all! I want to honor Cradoc’s memory with more than a speech! A gesture would have been better than naught.”

  “Wait!” Dovina paused to think something through. “Would it really be just a gesture? The Advocates could cite it as yet another legal precedent, and this one has teeth. But if we can’t fetch the book, truly, it matters very little. You heard Father. It’s too easy to claim the new copies as forgeries.”

  “Would the Lady of Haen Marn refuse to give it up, do you think?”

  “We have the loan note.” Dovina held up the piece of pabrus. “They have to give it over to someone from the collegium who brings this to them. It’s too bad that we don’t know someone who’s been there, someone they know and would trust.”

  Alyssa’s idea struck her as immensely dangerous, immensely foolish. Had it not been for Cradoc’s death, and her desire to do some grand thing to make that death worthwhile, she would never have spoken it aloud.

  “What’s so wrong?” Dovina said.

  “I’ve been there.” Alyssa breathed deeply and forced her voice under control. “They know me, my lady.”

  “Ye gods! Were you desperately ill, then?”

  “I wasn’t. Before I came to the collegium, my father fell ill. My mother had to stay and run the bakery, and so I traveled with him when he went to consult the healers.” Alyssa paused, remembering. “It’s such an amazing place! And the healers! You really start to believe they can work dwimmer.”

  “Well, if such a thing truly exists. Though you do hear strange stories that make me wonder.”

  “Indeed. I was sitting with my father when one of the healers came in. Perra of Cannobaen’s her name. When she was done helping him, she took a moment to chat with me. Da was sleeping thanks to the anodyne she’d given him. She asked me what I liked to do when I had time to myself. I like to read, I told her.” Alyssa smiled, remembering the shock on the healer’s face. “I asked her if they had books, and she said yes, but they were all about healing and medicinals. I told her about the guildhall’s little bookhoard and how I’d put it all in order and made a list of them and such. Very well, she said, you should be a scholar. She got me my place here at the collegium.”

  “Ai!” Dovina’s eyes widened. “I’ve heard much about her.”

  “She’s in charge of all the healers there, now, from what I’ve heard.”

  “She’s a grand patroness to have, truly! This could work out splendidly if we could get you to Haen Marn. We could hire the silver dagger to accompany—er, wait, not such a good idea. Everyone would think you were eloping with him, and you’d be dishonored.”

  “Better than seeing my family driven into poverty. Or watching him hang.”

  “Well, I shall do my best to keep that from happening.” Yet Dovina sounded doubtful, a rare thing for her.

  “You’ve already got one huge concession out of your father. You shan’t be able to get another.”

  “Most likely that’s true, alas. He’ll bend a bit when I force things, but he doesn’t give in twice over the same matter. Having you go to Haen Marn on your own would be far too dangerous, a woman alone on the roads. And we’ve got to get the silver dagger out of town—what is his name?”

  “Cavan of Lughcarn, my lady.”

  “Ah, my thanks.” Dovina considered this for a few moments. “Hmm. That’s oddly familiar. It makes me wonder, but anyway, we’ve got to get Cavan away quickly. And I certainly don’t want my wretched father’s wrath descending upon your family, either. Would you be safe on the road with your silver dagger, do you think?”

  “I do, especially if we told him he’d not get paid for the job if he gave me any trouble.”

  “Good thought! What I can do is give you a note, a draft, they call them, to my father’s banker up in Haen Marn. Father’s got a fair bit of coin in the treasury there. A lot of lords keep trea
sure there for safety’s sake. Only you can draw out the money, not Cavan, not anyone else. So if you don’t want him to have one copper penny of it, he’ll not get it.”

  “But what will your father say when he finds out the coin’s been taken?”

  “I shall tell him I need new dresses to impress this wretched suitor he’s dug up.” Dovina shrugged the problem away. “My name wouldn’t be on the draft if he didn’t expect me to draw coin out now and then.”

  “Very well, if you think taking the money’s safe.”

  “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t suggest it. That should work splendidly. No matter what they were before, silver daggers always think of the coin.”

  “I suppose they have to, out on the long road like that.”

  “Oh, no doubt. Where is he now, in some tavern in town?”

  “He’s not, but in Wmm’s Scribal. Rhys is hiding him there.”

  “Good for Rhys!” Dovina rubbed her hands together. “Let’s go downstairs and find Mavva. You’d best stay inside out of sight, but no doubt she’ll not mind taking a message to her betrothed.”

  * * *

  “One thing I don’t understand,” Cavan said. “Why would the noble-born men in King’s join your cause?”

  “They’re all younger sons,” Rhys said. “They’ve got good reason to want to stick it to their first-born brothers.”

  “Makes sense.” Cavan could understand that motive all too well.

  “Besides, they’re at the collegium because they’re going to end up as councillors or even running the law courts in their fathers’ rhannau, and very few of them want to. What complaints come before most small lords out here in the west, anyway? Some farmer claiming a witch cursed his cow or stole his chickens, or neighbors hauling in a townsman who won’t clean up his dungheap in the summer. The truly big cases, a guild bringing action against a lord to make him pay his debts, for instance, always go before the gwerbret himself. And you can guess, I’m sure, how such a case is settled.”

  “Always in the lord’s favor.” Cavan paused for a sip of ale. “The same thing happens to silver daggers, if some miser refuses to pay your hire.”

  Rhys nodded in sympathy. They were sitting at one of the polished oak tables in Wmm’s Scribal’s great hall. These priests-to-be did themselves well, Cavan thought. Bardekian carpets in bright patterns covered the floor, and silver sconces hung between the glazed windows. The long tables and benches shone from polishing. He and Rhys had just shared a trencher of roast meats and fresh bread, washed down with a decent dark ale.

  “Not a bad life you lead,” Cavan said. “Good ale, anyway.”

  “We might as well drink now. Once we take the vows of Wmm’s priesthood, it’s no more ale for us.”

  “What? Bardek wine, then?”

  “None of that, either. Boiled water. On special feast days, spiced milk.”

  Cavan made a sour face, and Rhys laughed at him. “At least we can marry,” Rhys said. “I’d hate to be part of Bel’s priesthood.”

  “So would I.” A pleasantly dark voice spoke behind them.

  Cavan turned on the bench and saw a tall, slender young man, smiling at them. He wore his moonbeam-pale hair long to cover his ears, but his eyes gave him away: purple, and slit vertically like a cat’s. One of the fabled Westfolk, then, even though he wore a shirt and breeches like an ordinary man and the orange surcoat of the collegium.

  “Come join us, Trav,” Rhys said. “Cavan, this is Travaberiel ap Maelaber, an adjunct scholar here.”

  With a brief smile Travaberiel sat down on the bench opposite them. He glanced Cavan’s way, still smiling, still pleasant, but for a moment Cavan felt as if he’d been skewered by that glance. He had the odd but definite sensation that Travaberiel was looking deep into his soul. The moment passed. Dwimmer, he thought. This man has it. To break the moment he picked up his silver dagger and began cleaning the meat juice off the blade with his napkin.

  “How very odd,” Travaberiel said. “Those old tales, the ones about silver daggers glowing when they were close to a man like me—they must not be true.”

  “Old folk tales, I’m sure.” Cavan held the dagger up. No mysterious light shone on it or from it. “I never believed them, but this is the first chance I’ve ever had to test them.”

  “And you’re the first silver dagger I’ve ever met. I’ve not been in Eldidd long.”

  “You’re a, what was that? An adjunct scholar?”

  “I’m here to study the Deverry laws and customs that pertain to heralds. That’s what I am back home, a herald.” Trav signaled a passing servant, who handed him a tankard.

  “Some of us,” Rhys put in, “go on to join the College of Heralds over in Deverry. That’s a bit too much adventure for my taste, going back and forth twixt warring lords.”

  “No doubt you won’t have to,” Cavan said. “You’ll have an important position at one court or another once you’ve finished here.”

  “I can hope, truly. Scribes are always in demand. By the by —” this to Travaberiel “— if any outsiders ask about Cavan, just tell them he’s my cousin, come to visit.”

  “Right. I saw that bit of trouble in the marketplace. I’m tempted to say good for you, dropping that foul-mouthed bastard, but it’s doubtless made things difficult.”

  “Difficult?” Cavan said. “You’ve got a herald’s tact, sure enough.”

  The three of them laughed, but ruefully.

  “Speaking of difficult things,” Cavan continued, “will the master of your collegium object to my staying here?”

  “I’m a senior student, and we’re allowed occasional guests. Besides—” Rhys paused for a knowing wink. “Master Paedyr will be pleased to have you once he finds out why we had to hide you. We’ve got a hawk flying in this hunt.”

  “Hunt? You’ve got to mean changing the law courts.”

  “Just that. Look, the priests of Bel, they control the laws, don’t they? The old laws, anyway, and that’s well over half of all the laws—the priests are the only ones that know them. They have them in memory, but somewhere there have got to be books. No one else is allowed to read those. No one else is allowed to study them.”

  “And that must gripe the very soul of your god,” Travaberiel put in. “To say naught of all your priestly souls.”

  “Just that. All that ancient lore shut away from us! It also makes the laws very—” Rhys waggled a hand in the air. “Very flexible, let us say. If the priests want a bit of land or some coin for a temple building.”

  “Ye gods!” Cavan said. “Are you saying they take bribes?”

  “We don’t know if they take bribes. How can we if we don’t know the actual laws? They can say anything they like when it comes to most disputes.”

  All three of them had a long thoughtful swallow of ale.

  “I’ve walked into the middle of a holy brawl, you mean,” Cavan said.

  “And taken a side before you even knew it. We’re going to need to smuggle you out of town some way or the other,” Rhys said. “Do you have a hire somewhere?”

  “Naught. I came to Aberwyn because I heard of a feud brewing up on the border twixt your gwerbret and the Bear clan. Work for my blade, I thought.”

  Across the table, Trav set down his tankard and leaned closer. “That situation’s a fair bit nastier than you might think. You might want to look in some other direction.”

  “Indeed?” Cavan said. “I’d be grateful if you’d tell me more.”

  “I don’t know much more, is the difficulty.” Trav frowned at his tankard. “But last I heard, it might involve some of my people as well as the village your two lords are squabbling over. You don’t want to end up spitted like a chicken.”

  “I see. My thanks for the warning. Huh, that explains why the word went out. That the lords involved would want silver daggers. They’ll put us right in
front so the archers can take aim at us, not their sworn men.”

  Travaberiel winced.

  “Just my luck!” Cavan said. “To hear about trouble that turns out to be twice trouble.”

  The silence hung for a moment between them.

  “You’re a lucky man in one way, though.” Rhys apparently had decided to lighten the mood. “Gaining Alyssa’s favor like that. None of the other lads have had so much as a kind look from her.”

  Cavan allowed himself a grin and had a long drink of ale.

  “I—” Rhys paused and turned on the bench. “What is it, lad?”

  A servant trotted over and made him a sketchy bow. “A message from your betrothed. She needs to speak with you and your guest.”

  “Well and good, then. We’ll go out directly.” He glanced Cavan’s way. “The lasses can’t come in here, and we can’t go into their hall, either, except on certain festival days.”

  Mavva was waiting for them on the lawn not far from the door into Wmm’s hall. With her stood a blonde young woman who wore her red surcoat over a brown dress of Bardekian silk. As the two men approached, the blonde lass raised a reading-glass and peered at Cavan through it.

  “That’s Lady Dovina,” Rhys murmured. “The gwerbret’s daughter.”

  “My lady.” Cavan bowed to her.

  When she extended her hand, he caught it and brushed his lips across the back of it in a courtesy kiss.

  “Hah!” Dovina said. “You are noble-born. I wondered about that.”

  Cavan winced and cursed himself. Quite without thinking he’d given himself away. Rhys shot him a startled glance.

  “Don’t worry,” Dovina went on. “Whatever you did to earn that dagger is none of my affair. In fact, your birth eases my mind a fair bit. Alyssa needs an escort to Haen Marn. We’re going to hire you to escort her. But I expect you to treat her as delicately as you’d treat the queen herself. If you do, there’s a good bit of silver in the hire for you.”