SWORD OF FIRE
Katharine Kerr

Book 1 of The Justice War

Copyright

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Copyright © Katharine Kerr 2020

Cover design © Micaela Alcaino 2020

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

Katharine Kerr asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008276751

Ebook Edition © February 2020 ISBN: 9780008182489

Version: 2020-01-09

Dedication

For Alis Rasmussen

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One: Eldidd and the Westlands, 1428

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Part Two: Cerrmor

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

A Deverry Tale

The Honor of the Thing: Deverry and Pyrdon, 1423

Acknowledgements

Also by Katharine Kerr

About the Publisher

PART ONE
Eldidd and the Westlands, 1428

Never loose an arrow with your eyes shut.

Westfolk proverb

Chapter 1

Up in a high tower chamber, Alyssa vairc Sirra stood at a lectern and studied a massive book of ancient chronicles. A shaft of sunlight, pale from the encroaching fog, fell through the window onto the page. Now and then she looked away from the passage she was memorizing and glanced out at the view. She could see down to Aberwyn’s fine new harbor and the Southern Sea beyond, dark blue water, just flecked with white caps in the last light of the day. Soon, she realized, it would be too dark to read.

‘Lyss! Lyss!’ Gasping for breath, Mavva flung herself into the chamber. ‘You’ve got to come. Now!’

Alyssa looked up from the book. Mavva’s long dark hair had slipped from its clasp. Tendrils hung in tendrils around her face, normally so pale, now flushed and red

‘Why?’ Alyssa said. ‘What’s so wrong? And you shouldn’t run up the stairs like that. No wonder you’re all out of breath.’

‘You don’t understand. He’s dying. Cradoc the bard.’

Alyssa slammed the chronicle-book shut.

‘Let me just get my surcoat. I’ll come with you!’

With their red students’ surcoats flapping over their skirts and tunics, the two women hurried down the long spiral staircase. They ran out into the main courtyard of the United Scholars’ Collegia in Aberwyn, where they were studying in residence. The news had spread as Mavva had passed by, it seemed, because some thirty other students, men and women both, were milling about on the grassy lawn near the front gates of the scholars’ preserve. A pair of chaperones, older women dressed in black, fluttered at the mob’s edge and called out cautions. A dark-haired lad with the pale orange surcoat of Wmm’s Scribal Collegium over his breeches and shirt hurried to join them.

‘Here’s Alys!’ Rhys, Mavva’s betrothed, called out. ‘What shall we do, go up to the dun?’

‘That’s where I’m bound,’ Alyssa called back. ‘If we want to see him fairly treated, we’d best all go.’

The pack followed her out of the gates into the streets of Aberwyn, dim with the early twilight of a damp spring day. Already the lamplighters were out working, one to steady a ladder while the other climbed up to light the wicks of the oil lanterns from his coil of smoking fuse. Shopkeepers stood yawning at their doors; townsfolk hurried home with baskets of food from the marketplace or trotted out on one last errand. Every now and then a fine coach and four clattered down the narrow streets and made the students jump back against the shopfronts.

As they panted up the last steep hill, other students and the merely curious joined them from taverns or public squares, calling out the news to those still behind them. No one could believe it, that Gwerbret Ladoic would go so far as this, to let a true bard starve himself to death before his gates.

‘Every bard in Eldidd will be singing his shame in a fortnight,’ Mavva said.

‘If it takes that long,’ Alyssa said. ‘The news will go out with the mail coaches, I’ll wager.’

The grand dun of the gwerbrets of Aberwyn stood on the highest hill in town, as befitted the dwelling of one of the most important noblemen in the land. A wall of worked tan stone set it off from the city, but its cluster of towers and brochs stood so tall that you could see them, pointing up like hands, over the wall. Some of the towers bore a conical roof, covered in slate tiles, in the new courtly style, and glass caught the setting sun in every window. A fortune, that dun had cost the Western Fox clan, and townsfolk grumbled that bribes from the gwerbret’s law courts had paid for it all.

Just outside the main gates huddled a crowd of some hundred persons, but they kept a respectful distance from Cradoc, who was sitting cross-legged on the ground and slumped against the wall. Under his dirty gray breeches and a shirt as loose as a shroud, he was so ghastly thin, all bone and skull’s grimace, his skeletal fingers clutched round his harp, that Alyssa wondered how he managed to hold his head upright. Kneeling beside him were his two young apprentices, both in tears, and the grim-faced journeyman who’d sworn to take his place when the end came.

‘Not one sign of the gwerbret and his wretched heir,’ Rhys muttered. ‘May the gods curse them!’

‘Hush!’ Alyssa snapped. ‘You’ll get yourself transported to the Desolation for saying things like that.’

Behind them the crowd swelled steadily. It filled the street, spilled out into the long carriage drive round the dun walls, but everyone kept silent, barely breathing, it seemed. Alyssa felt them as a huge hand pressing at her back, driving her forward. She moved close enough to see Cradoc clearly – the pale gray hair, plastered to the all-too-prominent skull; the eyes, pools of unseeing shadow. One of the apprentices dipped a linen napkin into a jug of water, then held it to his master’s lips. For some days now Cradoc had been too weak to drink from a cup. The bard’s mouth stayed shut. With a wail the ’prentice burst out keening and flung the napkin to the cobbles.

‘He’s gone!’ the journeyman shouted. ‘Look you at Aberwyn’s justice!’

The crowd roared. The keening began, high and musical, sobbing and wailing as everyone began to sway, back and forth, back and forth. Alyssa keened with them; she linked her arms with Mavva on one side and Rhys on the other as they rocked, bound by grief. Their leader was dead, their leader had fallen in a battle as real as any fought with swords and crossbows. In a time of change all over the far-flung kingdom of Deverry, the gwerbret of Aberwyn had held firm for the past and its outmoded ways, even while the most famous bard in the province of Eldidd starved himself at his door in protest.

Cutting over the keening and the sobs came the call of a silver horn. With the grinding of a winch and the grumble of timbers on stone the great gates swung slowly open. Through the widening view Alyssa caught sight of men in red and brown tartan trousers and vests over their loose shirts mounting horses. Cavalry sabres flashed as the horn sounded again. The men were sheathing the sabres and taking some other weapon out of their belts. Alyssa stood on tip-toe to see: horsewhips!

‘Run!’ Alyssa screamed. She let go of Mavva and Rhys’s arms. ‘When the crowd breaks we’ll be trampled!’

But although the crowd swirled as the prudent slipped away, it refused to break. When the cavalrymen edged their horses out, they carried not sabres but horsewhips – after all, it was their own fellow citizens they were facing, there in the darkening streets. For a moment utter silence and utter stalemate held. The troop leader, the gwerbret’s younger son, Lord Gwarl, urged his bay horse forward.

‘Disperse!’ he called out. ‘In the name of Aberwyn I command you! Clear this street immediately!’

The keening continued. The crowd swayed but never moved to leave.

‘Rabble, all of you!’ Gwarl stood high in his stirrups and yelled. ‘Scum! Disperse!’

A rock sailed through the air and smacked Lord Gwarl’s horse in the chest. With a whinny it reared, nearly unseating its rider. The crowd laughed and howled. Gwarl settled his horse down and began screaming at the top of his lungs, but his words died in the screech from the mob, laughter and rage all mingled into one hideous noise. Another rock, another – the troop swung horsewhips up and charged full toward the crowd.

Alyssa heard herself shriek with the others. She tried to run, found herself caught in a press of bodies, looked round frantically but saw no sign of Mavva and Rhys. Apparently they’d taken her good advice even if she’d been too stupid to follow it herself. All round her people were screaming, staggering, flailing out at one another as they tried to get free enough to run. Horses neighed and reared; the cavalrymen were swearing and yelling as the whips snapped and swung. As people scrambled to get away from the whips, the crowd turned porous. The horsemen pressed forward into the gaps. Horses kicked and bit. People screamed and bled. Moving back toward town became impossible.

Alyssa worked her way between two burly young men, then darted forward toward the wall just as a whip cracked the air beside her ear. Her mouth framed a soundless scream as she looked up into the sweaty face of a young cavalryman, leaning from his saddle. He was weeping, cursing a steady stream as duty drove him past her into the helpless crowd. The men behind her saw that she was heading for the clear space at the wall so that she could run round the dun and find safety that way. Yelling to one another they surged forward behind her just as another horseman swung his mount round to their direction. Alyssa nearly fell, steadied herself barely in time, kept moving, half-running, half-carried forward as the men behind her pressed forward toward the wall.

The screams turned horrible as agony and terror lashed the crowd. Cries and shouts told Alyssa that people were falling, being trampled. She bent her will to staying upright, staying on her feet. Someone slammed into her from the side as he tried to evade the oncoming horseman. Someone else screamed, slipped, clutched at her arm. She shook him off before he could take her down with him, then staggered foward only to stumble over something hard – she never did see what it was – and nearly fall. Strong hands grabbed her arm from behind and swung her around, hauled her back onto her feet. She found herself staring up at the dead-pale face of a young man. Nothing else about him registered, but that he was as frightened as she was.

‘Hold on!’ he yelled at her. ‘We’ll get out of this better as two.’

She linked her arm with his and pushed forward again. Buoyed up by his strength she could keep walking, keep her head up, too, and see where they were going. From the screams behind her she knew that she didn’t want to turn and see where she had been. At last they gained the wall, could sidle along it, could ease themselves in position for one last burst of speed and rush forward. They gained an alley at the beginning of the town proper and trotted down it, turned out into the Street of the Silversmiths and into a pool of lamplight.

Safe.

‘Thank every god they hang those street lamps so high,’ her rescuer said. ‘If one of them fell into the thatch …’

Alyssa felt suddenly sick and oddly cold. He caught her elbow and steadied her. For a few minutes they stood listening to the sounds – the screaming, the weeping, the neighing of frightened horses, and over it all the cracking of the whips and the cursing of troopers.

‘This night will light a fire of a different kind,’ Alyssa said at last. ‘His Grace will feel its heat soon enough.’

‘Oho! So you’re one of the rabble-rousers, are you?’

‘Is that how you see us? Rabble?’ She pulled her arm free. ‘My thanks for your aid, but I’ve naught more to say to you.’

Alyssa turned on her heel and stalked off.

‘Wait!’ He was calling out, trotting after her. ‘I meant no insult, fair maid. Just a jest of sorts. Here, look, if anyone’s rabble, it’s me.’

Alyssa stopped in the next pool of lamplight. She could still hear the screaming and the horses, but faintly now, as if the noise had both lessened and moved far away. Was the troop following the mob down to the collegium? If so, she’d best wait to go back, but here she was, a woman alone on a darkening street. And what of Rhys and Mavva? Were they safe? Her rescuer hurried up and made her a bow.

‘Forgive me?’ he said. ‘I’m afeared I know naught of your town’s politics. I’m from Lughcarn.’

For the first time she looked at him with some attention. A tall man, broad in the shoulders and well-built, he had a touseled mane of sandy-brown hair and, as far as she could tell in the flickering light, his eyes were blue. He wore ordinary clothes, a pair of breeches and tall boots, a linen shirt with flowing sleeves and over it a leather waistcoat. At his belt he carried an elven finesword at one side and at the other, a knife with a silver handle. A silver dagger. She recognized the three little spheres on the dagger’s pommel. No wonder he’d called himself rabble.

‘So, you guard the coach roads, do you?’ she said.

‘I do, and I’ve ridden a few barges, too.’

When he flashed her a smile, she realized that he was a handsome man in a rough sort of way.

‘Cavan of Lughcarn’s my name.’ He made her a bow. ‘At your service, my lady. May I escort you to the safety of your home?’

Alyssa hesitated, but he at least seemed gallant enough. Who knew what sort of man might be lurking in the riot-torn streets?

‘My thanks to you, good sir. My name’s Alyssa vairc Sirra, and I’d be grateful for your company. I’m in residence at the collegium. At Lady Rhodda’s Hall.’

‘Ah! One of our new lady scholars, then. And as beautiful as learning itself, from what I can see in this wretched lamplight, anyway.’

‘You, sir, have a tongue as silver as your dagger, but I’m not the sort to be cut to the heart. Shall we go, then, before the gwerbret’s riders come back?’

Together they hurried downhill through the twisting streets of the city. Townsfolk stood, watching the streets, in the doorways of shops and houses, at the gates of an inn here, a tavern there. Some held lanterns, which they raised high to peer at Alyssa and her escort. They called out hopeful names but shrank back disappointed as Alyssa and Cavan passed them by.

‘A fair many people came up to the gates,’ Cavan remarked. ‘I was having a pint in a tavern when I heard the excitement brewing, so I drifted up to take a look. Too much excitement, but meeting you, I had a silver dagger’s luck.’

‘Let’s hope it’s not evil luck. Silver daggers have been thrown out of Aberwyn for far less than consorting with rabble.’

‘Oh, now, here! Don’t keep holding that against me! I’m a stranger, and I knew not what I was saying.’

‘Well, true spoken. You’re forgiven.’

In the next pool of lamplight, he grinned at her, and despite herself, she returned the smile.

‘Lughcarn, is it?’ she said. ‘I hear they call it the City of Black Air.’

‘The smelter smoke is bad, truly, but we prefer to call it the City of Iron Men. But I don’t mean the noble-born by that. The iron trade and the guilds hold the real power there.’

‘Good for them! So, what brings you to Aberwyn?’

‘The trouble up on your northern border. Some of the lesser lords might be wanting to add a man to their warband.’

‘Oh, now, here! Do you truly think that silly feud will turn into a war? From what I understand, it’s over some hundred acres of land and one village.’

‘It’s not the land.’ Cavan shook his head. ‘It’s the honor of the thing. Gwerbret Standyc of the Bears wants land that one of Aberwyn’s allies claims. I don’t know which ally. No one farther east seemed to know. But anyway, the ally has appealed to your gwerbret. I did hear that. So now you’ve got two gwerbretion bellowing at each other like bulls in adjoining pastures. Neither’s going to back down.’

Alyssa felt like screaming in useless rage. The noble-born fought among themselves all the time, here on the western border of the kingdom. The common folk paid for those bloody battles with their taxes and the lives of their young men.

‘If we had true courts of justice,’ she said, ‘mayhap we could do summat about these stupid squabbles. Settle them by laws, not the sword. Bulls, are they? Cocks squawking in the barnyard, more like, over the juiciest worms!’

Cavan laughed. ‘You’d best not say that where Gwerbret Ladoic’s men can hear you.’

‘No doubt you’re right, good sir. Shall we go, then?’

When he offered her his arm, she took it, and they headed downhill.

The Scholars’ Collegia compound stood behind walls down near Aberwyn’s harbor. In the midst of narrow lawns and old oaks rose three separate broch complexes, each a tall tower joined round its edges by smaller towers like the petals of a daisy. Men students occupied the two tallest hives, as the students termed them, while the women’s college sat some distance away, caught between the kitchen garden and the back wall. Lady Rhodda Hall had grown from a small seed. Some three hundred years earlier, Lady Rhodda Maelwaedd had provided a bequest to a tutor charged with teaching women to read and write at Dun Cannobaen. The priests of Wmm at the nearby island shrines had taken up the idea and started a course of study based on Lady Rhodda’s library. Some ten women a year had finished the course and gone out to teach others, lasses and lads both. Slowly the knowledge of letters and learning had spread through Eldidd from the west.

Thanks to a much larger gift from Carramaena of the Westlands, the queen of the kingdom to the west of Deverry, plus endowments from various guilds, this scattered group had turned into a proper collegium some years back. Compared to the men’s collegia, which had noble patronage, it was still small and shabby, but Alyssa loved it all the same. She was always conscious of the great honor afforded her, that she’d been allowed to study the history of Aberwyn and Eldidd, as well as the philosophy of Prince Mael the Seer. Although her father served as master of the Bakers’ Guild for all Eldidd, her clan were commoners through and through.

As she and Cavan turned the last corner, they saw a crowd of men and horses standing around outside the collegium grounds. By the light of the lanterns that hung by the gates, Alyssa could just pick out the red and brown colors of the Fox clan’s livery.

‘Gwerbret’s men,’ Alyssa said. ‘I wonder if they’re waiting to arrest anyone who was part of the mob.’

‘Not a bad guess, alas.’ Cavan glanced around and pointed to the deep doorway of a nearby house. ‘Wait here.’

Alyssa stepped into the doorway and watched him from the shadows. Cavan strolled down the street and made a great show of looking around as if he were lost. Off to one side of the pack at the gates stood a fellow holding the reins of a pair of horses. Cavan stopped beside him with a friendly wave. Although Alyssa could hear nothing of their talk, she did pick up a pleasant burst of laughter. With another wave, Cavan strolled back to her.

‘They’ve come to take the gwerbret’s daughter back to the dun,’ Cavan said. ‘She doesn’t want to go with them. That lad with the horses told me that the vixen’s found a nice deep den.’

‘Vixen?’ Alyssa snorted in disgust. ‘It’s obvious he knows naught about Lady Dovina. Very well, then, I’d best go round the back way.’

Cavan escorted her as she hurried the long way round the collegium wall. At the back, not far from the women’s hive, the settling of the ground had caused a section of the stone wall to sink some few feet lower than the rest and bow inwards a bit as well. Loose stones made a precarious series of steps up and over. Alyssa started to tuck her skirts into her kirtle, but Cavan was watching the display of ankle with entirely too much interest.

‘My thanks for your aid,’ Alyssa said to him. ‘No doubt you’ll be wanting to get back to your inn and a nice tankard of ale.’

In the light from the nearby oil lamps she could see him grin. She had to admit that she found his smile charming – but a silver dagger? Like every lass in Deverry, she’d been warned against the men of that band from the time she could toddle. Mothers pointed them out and made sure their daughters could recognize the dagger they carried. Dishonored men, all of them, who wandered the roads looking for paid employment rather than serving in a proper warband – and they all have the morals of street dogs, Alyssa’s mother had always said, when it comes to lasses. Cavan, Alyssa figured, would be no better than the rest of them, despite his smile and the elegant way he bowed to her.

‘I know a dismissal when I hear one,’ Cavan said. ‘But may I see you again, on the morrow perhaps?’

‘At noon on the morrow come down to the old marketplace. Not the new one up by the gwerbret’s dun, but the old one near the smaller harbor. If all goes well, you just might find me there.’

‘I’ll pray I do.’ Cavan made her a deep bow, then turned and walked away.

Alyssa finished tucking up her skirts, then climbed the wall with the ease of long practice. Getting down again required grabbing the branch of the old oak that grew near the wall, swinging herself out and over, then slowly lowering herself to the ground. She managed and dropped lightly into safe territory. She hurried around the women’s hive and found the two chaperones standing guard by lantern light. Lady Werra clutched a stout walking stick in both hands, and Lady Graella, an iron poker.

‘Ye gods!’ Alyssa said. ‘Are we under seige?’

‘We might well be. The porters are supposed to be guarding the front gate. If they weaken and let that yapping warband in, we’re ready.’ Werra hefted the stick. ‘No men allowed in here after the last bell sounds. They’ll have to follow the rules like everyone else in Aberwyn.’

‘And speaking of such matters,’ Graella put in, ‘where have you been, young Alyssa?’

‘Oh, come now, my ladies, you saw me leave. Things got a bit more difficult in town than I’d been expecting. I came back the long way round.’

‘Difficult? You might call it that.’ Werra turned grim. ‘All of our lasses are here and safe, now that you’ve turned up, but two of the men from King’s are dead.’

‘Dead?’ Alyssa caught her breath with a gasp.

‘And one of them noble-born, at that,’ Graella said. ‘Young Lord Grif, and him but fifteen summers old. The other was the Dyers’ Guild Own Scholar, Procyr of Abernaudd. Their fathers will have a few harsh words for the gwerbret once they get the news, and the guildmaster will, too.’

‘More than words, my lady. Griffydd of the Bear is Gwerbret Standyc’s son. I doubt me if he’ll settle his feud with our Ladoic all peaceful-like now.’

The two chaperones nodded their agreement. Graella sighed with a shake of her head.

‘Some of the townsfolk were badly hurt,’ Werra said. ‘And there’s another man dead among them. They say one woman lost an eye from being whipped. She’ll be suing in the court for that, I wager!’

‘Huh!’ Alyssa said. ‘As if His Grace will listen! They can take a suit to the law court, but who’s going to be judging it? His cousin by right of birth! He won’t be able to dismiss Standyc’s complaint so easily, though.’

Werra was about to speak when distant noises reached them – angry shouts, a scream of rage, and then the clang of the iron gates slamming shut. Alyssa heard a strange low-pitched throb and finally identified it.

‘Someone’s shaking the gates,’ she said, ‘but those locks are made of dwarven steel. They’ll not break so easily.’

The two older women agreed with small smiles. Alyssa curtsied to them both, then followed them inside to the women’s great hall. In the big round room a scatter of old, scarred tables and benches stood on the floor, covered with woven rush mats for want of money for carpets. Opposite the door stood the stone hearth where a peat fire smouldered against the springtime damp. At intervals around the stone walls hung candle lanterns, flickering in the drafts with the rot-touched smell of tallow. Off to both sides rose spiral iron staircases, splendid examples of dwarven blacksmith work and a gift from the rulers of Dwarveholt, that led to the upper floor and the access doors to the side brochs of the hive.

The head of the collegium, gray-haired Lady Taclynniva, or Lady Tay as she preferred to be known, sat in the chair of honor at the one new table. As always, she sat bolt upright, her head held high, her slender hands at rest together in her lap. The two chaperones took their chairs on either side of her. Both Werra and Graella kept their improvised weapons in their laps, just in case, Alyssa supposed, some enemy rushed in. They were sisters, who years before had fled unsuitable marriages and taken refuge with Lady Tay. Both of them had strong jaws, wide foreheads, and dark hair just beginning to show gray.

All around them the young women, with their loose red scholars’ surcoats over their tunics and long skirts, stood or sat on the floor, some weeping, some narrow-eyed with fury, all of them with their hair down and disheveled as a sign of mourning for Cradoc, their teacher of rhetoric. As Alyssa approached, Mavva hurried over to greet her. She had one hand on her tunic and clutched her silver betrothal brooch as if she feared it might be torn off. In the riot, of course, it might have been.

‘There you are!’ Mavva said. ‘Thanks be to the Goddess! Rhys and I are both safe, but I’ve feared the worst ever since I lost you in the mob.’

‘I was lucky to get out of it, truly. Ah, ye gods, what a horrible day this is for Aberwyn, to lose Cradoc so!’

Mavva nodded, finally let go of the brooch, and wiped tears from her eyes. Alyssa turned to Lady Tay’s chair and curtsied.

‘Good, you’re the last of our strays,’ Lady Tay said.

‘I lingered in town till the streets were clear, my lady.’ Alyssa decided it would be politic to shift the conversation before she was forced to mention Cavan. ‘That mob at our gates? I overheard someone mention Dovina.’

‘No doubt you did, because she’s the prey they’re after. We all suspect that the gwerbret wants her back in his dun so he can marry her off. The riot tonight will be his excuse, or so Dovina thinks.’ She nodded at the woman who sat at the far end of the honor table.

Alyssa turned to Lady Dovina, who gave her a sickly sort of smile. ‘I fear me our lady is right,’ Dovina said. ‘I wonder what starveling courtier he’s found for me this time?’

With a sigh Alyssa sat down on the bench. As usual, Dovina had an open book in front of her and a candle lantern set nearby. A pretty lass, some twenty summers old, the same age as Alyssa, Dovina had thick pale hair that all the scholars envied and large blue eyes, which, however beautiful, tended to water. She held a reading-glass in one hand – a rectangular lens in a silver frame with a handle like a small mirror. Beauty and her high estate hadn’t prevented her from having weak eyesight.

‘Perhaps,’ Lady Tay said, ‘it will be a worthy man this time.’

Dovina made a most unladylike snorting sound. ‘I don’t care, my lady,’ she said. ‘We all know that I was born for the scholar’s life. All I want is what I have already, tending our bookhoard.’

‘Nicely put,’ Lady Tay said. ‘If only you can convince your father.’

‘Indeed.’ Dovina turned to Alyssa. ‘Lyss, it gladdens my heart to see you safe. I was truly worried. And I need to ask you summat. I’ve been hearing reports that my father gave that order, when the riders charged the crowd, I mean. I can’t believe it of him.’

‘He didn’t. It was your brother, the younger one, at the head of his men. Not that he exactly gave an order.’

‘Gwarl?’

‘It was. He called us all rabble and ordered us to disperse. Someone – I couldn’t see who – threw a rock and hit his horse.’ She paused to get the images clear in her mind. ‘He didn’t give any sort of order. The warband broke on their own. I’d guess it’s the honor of the thing, someone attacking their lord.’

‘No doubt it was just that. My thanks. That’s a great relief. My father can be difficult, the gods all know, when he blusters and yells at everyone, but I’ve never known him to do anything vicious. Gwarl, on the other hand, is a dolt. Always swaggering around and sneering. Rabble. Huh!’

Alyssa listened in sincere admiration. Dovina held the highest rank of any scholar in Lady Rhodda Hall. Her father, Ladoic, ruled Aberwyn and the surrounding territory as gwerbret, the highest rank of nobility in the kingdom, just barely below the royal princes. Dovina said exactly what she wanted about her exalted clan and kin, words that none of the rest of them would have dared voice. Her brothers in particular – to Dovina, the ‘lout’ was the gwerbretal heir, and the ‘dolt’ the younger son. Rank or not, however, Dovina recognized Lady Tay as the leader of their collegium. She rose from her chair.

‘My lady.’ Dovina paused to curtsy. ‘Has there been a message from the dun yet? About returning Cradoc’s body to us? Mavva saw some servants carry it inside the dun.’

‘No message yet,’ Lady Tay said. ‘The Bardic Consortium also has a claim. I did send them a message straightaway when I heard that he was gone.’

Dovina curtsied again and sat back down. She turned to Alyssa and smiled, a bitter little twist of her mouth.

‘So, what’s our next move in this game of carnoic?’ Dovina said. ‘Will you still be speaking on the morrow?’

‘I will indeed. There’s more need for it than ever.’ Alyssa felt tears rising behind her eyes. ‘With Cradoc gone.’

The listening women keened, a soft moan, a whispered wail, and swayed. In the candlelight their scarlet surcoats seemed to flicker like the flames.

‘It’s a hard thing to bear,’ Dovina said. ‘But we mustn’t let him die in vain. Our cause is just, and even a stubborn dog like Father will see that sooner or later.’

Alyssa could only hope so. For some years now the people of Eldidd had been begging for a change in the law codes. As things stood, the judges in the law courts all came from the hereditary nobility. Fathers handed the positions down to sons, and some of the sons barely knew one law from another. The best anyone could hope for was a judge who’d listen to the advice of the priests of Bel. Not all priests, however, were more interested in deciding lawsuits fairly and criminal cases justly than in getting land and favors for their temples. More often than not, if a commoner brought a grievance against one of the noble-born, the commoner would get short shrift in court.

The kingdom’s one free city had already forced through changes thanks to obscure legal precedents. In Cerrmor, the heads of the various guilds had equal say with the mayor when it came to picking judges. They’d banded together to found a collegium for the studying of law after the model of the Bardekian law schools across the Southern Sea. Advocates and judges both had to complete the course of study in order to appear in a Cerrmor court. The fairness of the city’s justice system had become known and admired all across Deverry.

The news of these and other doings reached Aberwyn by barge and mail coach, but His Grace Ladoic, Gwerbret Aberwyn, would have none of these new ways. He was prone to announce – or bellow, as Dovina put it – that he stood firm on and for tradition. The old ways, he often said, were good enough for him.

‘And what’s good enough for him,’ Dovina said, ‘is supposedly good enough for all of us.’ She snorted again.

‘There are other precedents,’ Alyssa said. ‘The Justiciars of the Northern Border are the best one. They’ve been handling the courts in Cerrgonney for what? About three hundred years now.’

‘Too recent for my dear father, or so he says.’

‘It’s too bad that there isn’t some older precedent we could refer to. His councillors talk about tradition all the time, but what if things weren’t so traditional? That would take a few of their stones off the game board.’

‘If his councillors have any stones.’ Dovina flashed a wicked smile. ‘Of the other sort.’

Everyone with earshot laughed, even Lady Tay, though she cut her laugh short.

‘Now hush!’ Lady Tay said. ‘Such coarse words are most unbecoming! I’m sure all of you have studies to attend to. I suggest you go do so.’

Whispering together, the scholars rose from where they’d been sitting, grabbed lanterns, and headed for the staircases. Clutching her book and reading-glass, Dovina fell into step beside Alyssa and Mavva.

‘You know, Alyssa,’ Dovina said. ‘Your thought was a fine one, about the older precedent, I mean. I remember summat about such a thing in a book I read. It’s too late now, but tomorrow when the sun’s up, I’ll look for it.’

‘My thanks,’ Alyssa said. ‘It would be splendid to have a citation.’

‘Will you be able to stay here long enough to find it?’ Mavva said to Dovina. ‘Or will your father drag you away?’

‘If he comes and throws a direct order into my face, I shall have to obey him. Unless of course I can work him round.’ Dovina considered briefly. ‘It would be best that I never hear that he’s at the gates. If he does come, tell everyone that I’ve got such a terrible pain in my head that I simply can’t be disturbed.’ She laid a pale hand on her forehead and grinned. ‘My weak eyes, you know. Such a trial!’

‘I’ll spread the word,’ Mavva said. ‘Lyss, you’re not really going to go speak in the marketplace, are you? I know we planned it, but things have gotten so dangerous.’

‘Curse the danger!’ Alyssa said. ‘I said I’d speak, and I will, because now it’ll be a praise piece for Cradoc.’ She forced her voice steady. ‘And for Lord Grif and Procyr, too. Do you know the name of the dead townsman?’

‘I don’t.’ Mavva thought for a moment. ‘But I’ll find it out for you.’

Alyssa spent most of that night in the hive’s bookchamber. With her good eyesight, she could read by candlelight. She had a reading candle as thick as her wrist and a good two feet high. The priests of Wmm had gifted the hive with a wooden crate of these candles when the scholars had visited the Holy Island to view the bookhoard owned by the temples. Alyssa read gwerchanau, the famous death-songs of the past, and stored up fragments of poetry in her mind to add to her speech. All of the scholars depended on memory far more than writing. While Bardekian pabrus had become far more common than parchment, and most certainly much cheaper, wasting even scraps of it upon notes and rough drafts lay beyond the women’s collegium’s finances.

Finally, when the hourglass on her lectern ran dry from the fifth turnover, she closed her books and stumbled off to bed in the sleeping room she shared with six other women. As senior students, each of them had a narrow cot of her own, rather than sharing a mattress as the first-year lasses did. Moving carefully in the dark, Alyssa took off her skirt and tunic, folded them on top of the carved chest that sat at the foot of her cot, then lay down in her underdress and fell straight asleep.

She dreamt of Cradoc, not the skeletal person she’d seen at the end, but as he’d looked in the prime of life, tall and slender, with a mane of silvery hair that he wore combed straight back from his high forehead. They stood together in a landscape of mist and old stone walls, the collegium, perhaps, when the winter fogs rolled thick over Aberwyn.

‘Mourn me,’ Cradoc said, ‘but don’t wallow in grief. You have work to be done. You were my best student, and the work will be yours to do.’

‘Am I truly worthy?’ Alyssa said. ‘I wish you were still here with us.’

‘So do I.’ He smiled with a wry twist of his mouth. ‘I deem you worthy. Take risks, Alyssa, but judge them carefully. Don’t throw yourself away by starving like I did. You have a wyrd to fulfill.’

‘What is that wyrd?’

‘Now that I can’t tell you. No one can know another man’s wyrd, nor a woman’s either. Farewell.’ He took a step away into the mist, then turned back. ‘Oh, and do remember to breathe deeply and evenly while you speak.’

Overhead a raven cried out. She saw three of the carrion birds circling in the misty sky. When she looked for Cradoc, he’d disappeared, but another glance skyward showed her four ravens where three had been before.

Alyssa sat up in bed, awake and shivering in the morning light streaming through the windows near her bed. Had he come from the Otherlands one last time to speak with her? That bit of advice about breathing – it was so like him! She sometimes did run out of breath when she reached the peroration of a speech. She shivered again, but not from cold.

Chapter 2

Silver daggers occupied an odd position in Deverry. They were all proven fighters who’d made one bad mistake, either broken a law or incurred some sort of dishonor that had gotten them kicked out of a warband or exiled by their kinfolk. Although they were outright mercenary soldiers, they had more honor than most men of that sort and a name to protect as well. To become a silver dagger, a man had to find a member of the band, ride with him a while, and prove himself. Only then could they visit one of the rare silversmiths that knew the secrets to forging the alloy in the silver dagger itself. Thus merchants and lords alike trusted them more than your ordinary hired guard. Even so, they had a cold welcome everywhere they went in the kingdom.

Cavan of Lughcarn had found shelter of a sort down near the main harbor. He and his horse shared a smelly shed at the back of the sagging building that housed the tavern, the innkeep, his thin shrew of a wife, and their one servant, a potman of advanced age who moved more slowly than anyone Cavan had ever seen. Just crossing the round room to fetch a tankard of ale took him enough time for a man to die of thirst, as customers often remarked. It was, however, one of the few places in Aberwyn that would take a silver dagger’s coin. Blood money, most people called a mercenary’s hire.

The tavernman himself, Iolan by name, was as fat as his wife was bony. Unlike wife and potman, he enjoyed talking with his customers while he swilled down his own ale. That morning, while Cavan ate a bowl of cold porridge, Iolan sat himself down on the bench opposite.

‘So you had some excitement last night, did you now? I heard the noise of it, and that was enough for me.’

‘Too much for me, almost,’ Cavan said. ‘When the gwerbret’s riders charged into the crowd, I thought we were all done for.’

Iolan sucked his few remaining teeth and nodded.

‘Tell me summat,’ Cavan continued, ‘are the courts here as bad as all that? A cause worth dying for, I mean.’

‘Not to me, but there’s some like Cradoc, a good man he was, too, the voice of the people, just like they say a bard should be. The courts? Well, some are rotten, but not so much in Aberwyn. Abernaudd, now – the things you hear! But Aberwyn’s got its troubles, sure enough. A potter here in town, a man I know, some bastard-born servant of a lord cheated him out of a week’s work. Took the bowls away, never came back to pay. The lord refused to pay. The gwerbret told the lordling, you have the potter’s merchandise, so pay the man. But he never did come across with the coin. Nothing more Ladoic could do about it, either, without starting a war with his vassal. Potter had his day at the hearing. No way to make the noble-born pay after.’ Iolan paused to spit into the straw on the floor beside him. ‘Noble as my fat arse.’

‘Sounds like it, truly.’

‘Other towns, from what I’ve heard, they wouldn’t even have let a poor man into the chamber of justice.’ He spat again. ‘If you have the coin, you can buy off priest and lord both.’

‘And the bards have been speaking out about it?’

‘They have, for all the good it did that poor bastard last night.’

Cavan scraped the last spoonful of oats out of his bowl, laid the spoon down, and got up. He swung himself clear of the bench.

‘Which way is the old harbor?’

‘Just follow the street outside downhill.’

Cavan found his way to the marketplace just as the sun was reaching zenith. A rough square some hundred yards on a side, too small now to handle all the trade of the growing city, it lay close to Aberwyn’s Old Harbor, where the local fishing boats docked. Once that area had been a tribute to the power of new ideas. In the early 1300s, the fashion for square and rectangular houses and shops had arrived from Bardek. The last gwerbret of the Maelwaedd dynasty had given coin to lay the square out among the rows of the then brand-new buildings, which stood in solid rows like walls around the square. Two narrow alleys, one at the northwest corner, one opposite it at the southeast, gave access to the markets and to the houses themselves.

By Cavan’s time, the dwellings had decayed a fair bit. The stonework had turned black from years of cooking fires. The wooden buildings drooped and leaned against one another thanks to the settling of the ground. In back of each row of buildings, privies and chicken coops had replaced the once-elegant gardens. When Cavan walked along, looking for the entrance, he even passed the occasional milk cow, tethered out at her hay behind a house. The pungent atmosphere thickened further when he came into the square and realized without having to look that at least half the market stalls sold fish.

Still, he decided, a chance to see Alyssa again made the smell bearable. She was lovely, true, but also he’d never known a lass given to such clever ways of speaking. The combination intrigued him. The square was so crowded with marketers, servants, and town wives that he searched for some time before he spotted Alyssa standing on the south side of the square. She wore her flame-red surcoat over a plain linen tunic and a pair of brown skirts cut in an outmoded fashion, narrow around her slender hips, flaring at the knees to fall in folds at her ankles. She’d put her thick brown hair back in a silver clasp, her only real ornament. Her face was ornament enough, he decided, with her wide dark eyes and slender features.

A half-dozen of her fellow women students stood with her. Around them stood young men with orange surcoats and, in the outer ring, men wearing woad blue. Since Lughcarn had a King’s Collegium of its own, Cavan knew that the blue surcoats ranged from the dark color of the first years to the honorably faded light blue of those about to finish their course of studies. Over one shoulder the noble-born among them had pinned scarves in the tartan of their clans. Most of their surcoats bunched at the hip over half-hidden swords. Things could become exciting fast, Cavan thought. He took a quick look around and saw four town marshals, conspicuous in their red and brown vests and striped breeches, standing in the entrance to the southeast alley. They carried quarterstaffs, and one had a horsewhip tucked into his belt as well. Cavan glanced over his shoulder, and sure enough, more marshals arrived to stand in the mouth of the northwest entrance.

The men with the orange surcoats dragged over wooden crates from a nearby vegetable stand and stacked them into a rough platform. Two of the men in the blue helped Alyssa climb onto them. The patrons and stall owners paid little attention at first, but when her clear voice rang out, those nearest all turned to listen. Her voice carried a good distance over the buzz and hum of the busy market

‘My fellow townsfolk!’ Alyssa called out. ‘Spare me a moment to share my mourning! Three good men died yesterday under the hooves of the gwerbret’s horses, all because of a bard who starved at his gates.’

She’d been well-trained, Cavan realized, and he was shocked to find a woman who’d been given a bardic education. Not even in Dun Deverry did you find such a thing! Noble-born women sometimes studied other subjects at the collegia there, but never public speaking. He made his way closer and fetched up next to a skinny fellow in a pair of striped breeches and a red and brown vest over a linen shirt. The man had his thumbs hooked into his belt and a sneer on his face.

‘Come to listen to the students?’ Cavan said.

‘Students, hah!’ the fellow said. ‘Bunch of whores, more like, paid to keep the lads out of trouble. What would females want with books and suchlike?’

Cavan crossed his arms over his chest to keep his hands confined. His temper had gotten him into too much trouble already in his young life for him to want to indulge it again. Besides, he barely knew the young woman who spoke so eloquently. Why should he care about what some mangy dog of a stinking townsman thought of her?

‘You all know our cause,’ Alyssa was saying, ‘justice in the law courts! What we want would be such a small concession for the gwerbret to make. After all, is he not a busy man with many a serious undertaking weighing down his mind, many a burden that he alone can lift? Why should he not delegate some of the mundane tasks to others, such as the judgments in Aberwyn’s law courts?’

Here and there her listeners murmured a thoughtful agreement. Very clever of her, Cavan thought, to make the change seem to the gwerbret’s advantage.

‘And to us, it would mean so much, a chance at justice and fair dealing. The laws of the land would still hold. The priests of Bel would still be the true arbiters of what is law and what mere tradition. A small thing, truly, is what we ask, and yet Cradoc was willing to die for it! Where is the justice for the likes of us, if a great man dies in vain?’

Most of the townsfolk were nodding in approval. A few called out, ‘That’s right, lass!’

A pair of town marshals prised themselves off the guildhall wall and made their slow way toward the front of the crowd. Two of the noble-born students twitched their blue surcoats back and laid hands on their sword hilts. They stepped in front of the marshals and smiled.

‘I would mourn Cradoc ap Varyn with tears, but the tears of a woman come too easily to honor a great man.’ Alyssa paused to take a deep breath. ‘A bard deserves the words of a true bard to mark his passing. I would remind you of the words of Gweran Henvardd, that the wild wind of wyrd blows where it wills, cold and bitter at times. A bitter wind has swept away not merely Cradoc, but Lord Grif of the Bear clan, Procyr of Abernaudd, and Scomyr the butcher’s son.’

At the mention of Scomyr, a woman cried out in a high-pitched wail of grief. Cavan glanced around and saw a stout market-wife who’d thrown her apron over her face. Her shoulders shook with sobs. He found the news of Lord Grif’s death more interesting – oil poured on the fire of feud smouldering up in Northern Eldidd.

‘If there was no justice for Cradoc,’ Alyssa continued, ‘if there was no justice for these three good men, what may we expect, should we need the courts for some redress?’ She paused and peered into the crowd as if she looked each and every one of them full in the face. ‘What? Naught! That’s all, nothing at all!’

This time voices in the crowd called out. ‘That’s the truth, she speaks true!’ Almost everyone else murmured in agreement. The sneering fellow cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, ‘Ah, stop your tongue, you cackling hen! You’re naught yourself, you twopenny whore!’

Cavan turned and without one thought swung straight for his face. His right fist collided with the fellow’s chin with a painful but satisfying blow. His left darted forward of its own accord and sank itself in the fellow’s stomach. With a grunt and a spew of vomit the heckler folded over himself and fell forward onto the cobbles.

Yelling for order, the marshals rushed into the crowd, only to be met by a solid block of the blue-coated students. Townsfolk yelled, the crowd swirled, the marshals began swinging their long staves. Up on her pile of wooden crates Alyssa screamed for order, but no one listened. In all the confusion it took Cavan a moment to realize that he was the man the marshals were trying to reach.

‘Here!’ a young voice shouted from behind him. ‘We’ve got to get you and Lyss out of here!’

‘Cursed right!’ Cavan turned and saw a dark-haired lad who wore an orange surcoat but no sword.

‘The men from King’s will handle the marshals,’ the lad went on. ‘Come on!’

They forced their way through the rapidly thinning crowd. Behind them shouts broke out. Cavan glanced back to see the noble-born men from King’s surrounding the marshals, who could do nothing but swear and threaten with their staffs. Whacking some powerful lord’s son in the head would cost them dear in the long run. As the threat of trouble eased, the stall holders stayed to guard their merchandise. Some of the bolder shoppers paused their flight and stood looking back at the square, as if deciding whether or not to return. There’d be no riot after all.

By the time her would-be rescuers reached her, Alyssa had already jumped down from her improvised rostrum. Men in orange surcoats surrounded her.

‘This is the fellow who felled the gwerbret’s spy,’ the dark-haired lad said to her. ‘The marshals saw him do it.’

Cavan’s stomach twisted. Gwerbret’s spy? He’d done it, all right, gotten himself into deep trouble without thinking twice.

‘We’ll hide you in Wmm’s,’ the lad continued. ‘They won’t dare come into our hive.’

Alyssa turned and gave Cavan a glowing smile. ‘You felled him good and proper,’ she said. ‘My thanks! I do wish I’d gotten to finish my speech, though.’

‘And an excellent beginning it was,’ Cavan said. ‘I wish I’d gotten to hear it all.’

Cavan started to bow to her, but she reached up, laid her hands on either side of his face, and kissed him. The students around them whooped aloud and laughed. Cavan felt that kiss run through his body, as hot as a sword thrust. He would have taken another, but she stepped back into the safety of her knot of women friends.

‘There’s your hire, silver dagger,’ the dark-haired lad said, grinning, ‘but ye gods, we’ve got to get out of here!’

Cavan glanced over his shoulder and saw more marshals shoving their way into the square from the southeast alley.

‘They’ve blocked the cursed way out of the square,’ Cavan said. ‘Where can we—’

‘Into the baker’s,’ Alyssa said. ‘There’s a back way out between the ovens.’

In the midst of a mob of students, Cavan followed Alyssa. She yelled orders, gathered her troops like a captain, and led them on the run to the downhill side of the marketplace. Farmers swore and grabbed hens and produce out of their way. Hogs squealed in excitement as they passed, dodging through the rough wooden stalls. Ahead lay a row of proper shops. Alyssa waved and pointed. Her troop poured into the doorway of a bakery.

The smell of fresh bread perfumed the warm, moist air. To one side of the dimly lit room stood a long wooden table, piled with loaves. The young baker, draped in a flour-dusted apron over his shirt and breeches, looked so much like Alyssa that Cavan knew he had to be close kin, a brother, most likely, from the way he spoke to her. She was common-born, he realized to his surprise. Somehow he’d thought that a women of her sharp wits must come from a noble clan.

‘You’ve done it this time!’ the baker snapped. ‘Don’t you ever learn?’

‘Oh, hold your tongue, Alwen! We’re just passing through.’

‘Very well, but hurry! I don’t want the wretched marshals in here!’

She laughed, blew him a kiss, and led the way round the table to an open door. The door led to a short stairway, which in turn led to a huge room, as hot as a blazing summer day. Four big brick ovens stood like beehives on one side, while firewood lay piled up on the other. Between them stood a wooden door, guarded by a lad of perhaps ten years. He too looked much like Alyssa.

‘Arwy,’ Alyssa snapped, ‘shut the door after us!’

‘I will.’ He scrambled out of the way. ‘But Da’s going to be so mad. He told you last time—’

‘That was last time. This is different.’

Alyssa lifted the bar and shoved the door open to sunlight and the over-ripe stink of Aberwyn’s fishing-boat harbor. The mob of students and one silver dagger rushed out into the sunlight. Cavan could see the stone towers of the Collegium rising over the alleyways and stone houses no more than half a mile away. Distantly from the market square he heard shouts of rage mixed with taunting laughter.

‘No sign of the marshals,’ the dark-haired lad said. ‘No doubt the men from King’s are keeping them busy. My name’s Rhys, by the by.’

‘And mine’s Cavan. My thanks for your aid.’

‘You’d best come back with us. The Collegia have immunity, you see, and they won’t dare follow you inside.’

‘Splendid! But I’ve got a horse stabled at my lodgings.’

‘We’ll fetch him after dark. Now let’s hurry!’

Once they reached the safety of the Collegia grounds, Alyssa had a moment to think. Not only had she gotten into trouble with the town marshals, she’d kissed a silver dagger right out in a public square. Her usual taste for such wild adventures disappeared when she considered what Lady Tay might say about both dangerous missteps. At the door to Wmm’s Scribal’s hive, everyone paused to catch their breath. Rhys ducked inside and came out again with an orange surcoat, which he handed to Cavan.

‘For a day or two you’d best be one of us,’ Rhys said.

‘My thanks!’ Cavan put the surcoat on and pulled it round to cover his silver dagger. ‘I hope the marshals have short memories.’

‘I’ll hope and pray,’ Alyssa said, ‘that the men from King’s will fill their memories with less than pleasant thoughts.’ She dropped Cavan a curtsy. ‘My thanks again!’

He bowed to her. ‘It would gladden my heart to see you again.’

‘If you’re in residence here, no doubt you will.’

With Cavan safely hidden in Rhys’s collegium, Alyssa hurried back to her own hive. She walked into the women’s great hall to find Lady Tay standing by the cold hearth in a state of sheer fury. She was talking with the two chaperones, and she punctuated her words by slapping the tiny roll of pabrus she held in her right hand against her left palm. Alyssa stepped toward the wall to stay out of the lady’s line of sight, but Tay saw her before she could sneak upstairs.

‘Alyssa!’ Lady Tay called out. ‘I have unpleasant news for you.’

Alyssa was so sure that she was about to be sent away that she felt sick to her stomach. In the spirit of a hound who’s stolen meat from the table, she slunk over to the three ladies and curtsied to all of them.

‘We’ve heard about Cradoc’s remains,’ Lady Tay said. ‘The gwerbret’s refusing to give them over to anyone but his kin and clan.’

‘What?’ Outrage mingled with relief, both so profound that Alyssa had to gulp for breath before she could continue. ‘Forgive my discourtesy, my lady! But Cradoc has no living kin or clan.’

‘Precisely! And I’d wager high that our ever-so-noble lord knows that as well as we do.’ Lady Tay shook the pabrus roll vaguely in the direction of the gwerbretal dun. ‘This message came from Malyc Penvardd but a few moments ago. He’s composing a flyting song, he tells me. His journeymen will make sure it goes out with the mail coaches for the entire kingdom to hear.’

‘Will that matter to Gwerbret Ladoic?’ Werra put in.

‘I doubt it, but what else can we do? His Grace says that he’ll have the body “disposed of properly”. Disposed of!’ Lady Tay’s voice shook and snarled. ‘As if he were a dead horse! Here!’ She held out the roll. ‘You’ll find Lady Dovina in our bookchamber. Take this to her! Well, my apologies. Would you please—’

‘Of course, my lady.’ Alyssa curtsied again and took the message.

As she hurried up the staircase, Alyssa reminded herself that far more important matters burdened Lady Tay’s mind than one of her students kissing a silver dagger. With luck, the lady would never hear of the incident at all. The heckler in the market square, of course, was a rather more serious thing. She should have realized, she told herself, that trouble might erupt. A gwerbretal spy – a dropped lantern in a pile of straw. You’ve really done it this time. When she remembered her brother Alwen’s remark, she felt half-sick with fear.

The hive’s bookchamber occupied the very top floor of the main broch. A circular room, some fifty feet across, it had windows all round. Wooden shutters covered in oxhides stood ready to keep out the rain. Every spring, the women moved a lectern under each window to catch the best light, and every winter they moved them back to the center of the room away from the damp. Unlike the men’s collegia, they had no money to pay for glass windows. Bookshelves stood around in profusion, each a few feet away from the stone walls.

On this sunny afternoon all the shutters stood open. Lady Dovina sat at a table near a view of the harbor far below and peered at an open book through her reading-glass. When Alyssa held out the pabrus message, Dovina looked up and took it.

‘Have you heard about Cradoc’s body?’ Alyssa said.

‘I have, and it’s just like Father to be so stubborn.’ Dovina paused to unroll the pabrus and read the message. ‘Good for the penvardd!’

‘Well, a noble lord is supposed to be stubborn.’

‘According to our beloved Mael the Seer, truly, but in other places he does praise moderation in all things. Stubbornness is only one of the noble qualities, after all. And last time I looked, greed in the law courts wasn’t one of them.’

‘True spoken indeed.’ Alyssa looked over her shoulder at the open book. ‘Is this the one you were remembering?’

‘Indeed it is, Dwvoryc’s Annals of the Dawntime.’ Dovina rubbed her hands together and cackled like a witch. ‘It says here, very clearly, that in the olden days, gwerbretion were called vergobretes. They didn’t inherit their position, they were elected.’

‘Elected! Ye gods!’

‘All the free men of a tribe would come together and say yea or nay as each candidate was presented to them. The one with the loudest number of yeas got the job.’

‘That must have changed a thousand years ago.’

‘Mostly, but why do you think there’s a Council of Electors? That’s how my clan got the gwerbretrhyn, isn’t it, when the Maelwaedds died out? The Council met and voted and chose us over the Bears. The Electors are the last remnant of this tradition.’ Dovina gave the book a wicked grin. ‘And how will Father like that ancient folkway, I wonder?’

Dovina got her chance to find out only a few moments later, when Mavva came hurrying up the stairs to join them.

‘My lady!’ Mavva appeared in the doorway. ‘Your father’s at the gates. Lady Werra told him you lay abed with a headache, but he didn’t believe her. He used such coarse language that she’s quite upset. He’s demanding to speak with you.’

‘Does he have armed men with him?’ Dovina said.

‘A few, and a councillor.’

Dovina rolled her eyes. ‘I want to show the stubborn old dog this book, so I suppose I can pretend to surrender. Mavva, if I may trouble you, would you go tell His Grace that I’m rising at his command and will be down once I’m decently dressed? Lyss, will you accompany me?’

‘Gladly,’ Alyssa said. ‘I want to see what happens.’

As a sop to Dovina’s rank, Alyssa insisted on carrying the book. Since it had been written onto Bardek pabrus it weighed far less than one of their old parchment volumes, but it still made a tidy armful. They arrived at the closed and locked iron gates to find the gwerbret pacing irritably outside them while his attendants huddled off to one side.

Gwerbret Ladoic was a tall man, heavily muscled if somewhat bow-legged from all the years he’d spent on horseback. He wore his gray hair cropped close to his skull, though he sported a thick, drooping moustache as if in compensation. Although his brown breeches were as plain as a commoner’s, his waistcoat was made of the Fox tartan and fastened with big silver knots for buttons. His shirt sported the Fox blazon at the yokes and on the sleeves.

‘Ah, there you are,’ he said. ‘So you deigned to come down? I want to talk with you. Call a servant, please, and have him open these gates.’

‘All the servants are busy with the noon meal,’ Dovina said. ‘We can see each other well enough through the bars. What did you want to talk about?’

‘This rebellion of yours. There are men dead over it, and I want it stopped.’

‘It’s a bit late for that, Father. Cradoc’s death, for one thing. How could you have done it, just let him starve like that?’

Ladoic started to speak but said nothing.

‘You thought he’d give in, didn’t you?’ Dovina continued. ‘Break his fast, and you’d win. The honor of the thing, not giving in, lords should be stubborn and all the rest of it. Well, wasn’t it?’

‘What’s done is done.’ But he looked away as he said it.

‘And then Gwarl went and made things worse.’

Ladoic started to snarl an answer, calmed himself, and began again. ‘I’ve spoken to your brother. And that’s all I’m going to say about it.’

‘But—’

‘I said, that’s all! It’s between him and me. Not you.’

Alyssa caught her breath, but Dovina dropped him a curtsy, and he nodded in satisfaction.

‘Very well, Father. But it’s not a rebellion. We’re basing our requests on our ancient traditions as the People of Bel.’

‘Indeed?’

‘I’ll show you summat.’

Alyssa stepped forward, and Dovina took the book. Ladoic snorted, but before he could speak further, Dovina thrust the book at him through the bars.

‘I’ve marked the spot with that bit of pabrus,’ she said. ‘Do read what he says about the origin of the gwerbretion. You say you’ll stand on old traditions, Father. Well, here’s what the oldest tradition says about the law courts.’

Ladoic took the heavy volume, but he snapped his fingers at an elderly man, dressed in the long black robe that marked him as a councillor. ‘Nallyc! Read this aloud.’

Nallyc took the book, opened it, and glanced at the marked passage. For a moment he read silently. His eyebrows shot up, and Dovina smirked at him.

‘Surprising, innit?’ she said. ‘It makes standing on tradition rather less attractive.’

‘Indeed, my lady.’ His voice quavered more with fear than age. ‘Er, Your Grace, mayhap we should read this in private—’

‘Read it now!’

‘Very well, Your Grace.’ Councillor Nallyc cleared his throat and began. ‘The language is very old and contorted, so I shall summarize. It says here that in the Dawntime, when our ancestors did wish to choose a man to judge them and administer their laws, they held an assembly of all free men. Their rhix—’ Nallyc looked up from the text. ‘That would be their warleader, Your Grace, the man we call the cadvridoc. At any rate, he would put forth several candidates, and the tribal assembly would choose the one they thought fit.’ He swallowed heavily. ‘It goes on to say that the laws expressly prohibited a vergobrex from passing the office on to his son.’

‘Just think!’ Dovina put in. ‘So much for a clan’s position!’

Ladoic’s face went stone-still. When he held out a hand, Nallyc handed him the book, then drew his robe tightly around him, as if for protection. Ladoic stared at the passage, then shut the book with a snap and a puff of dust. He looked at Dovina with cold blue eyes.

‘How do I know you didn’t just write this book, eh?’ the gwerbret snorted. ‘Or put this bit in, like.’

‘Father, be reasonable! It takes months to write out a book this size.’

‘And you’ve had months, haven’t you?’ Ladoic grinned as if he’d just won a game of carnoic. ‘This thing looks cursed new to me. Nice clean pages. Naught faded or worn.’

Dovina reached through the gate and grabbed the book back from his indifferent hands.

‘My dear lady!’ Nallyc sounded so angry he nearly sputtered. ‘How can you be so discourteous? He may be your father, but he’s also your gwerbret and overlord!’

‘And you are common-born no matter how high you’ve risen! Don’t you speak to me like that!’

‘Enough!’ Ladoic threw both hands in the air. ‘Silence, the pair of you!’

Dovina took a pace back. Nallyc took several.

‘That’s better.’ Ladoic lowered his hands. ‘No matter what or why, we know what the outcome’s been. Riots. Fighting in the market square. I intend to put an end to this rebellion any way I can.’

‘It’s not a rebellion!’ Dovina said. ‘We merely stand on the ancient traditions you claim to honor. If you’d but listen to our legal arguments—’

Ladoic’s patience snapped.

‘You listen to me!’ Ladoic set his hands on his hips. ‘You’re coming with me right now, back to the dun.’

‘I’m not.’ Dovina clutched the book to her chest. ‘And you can’t come in to seize me, either, unless I invite you. That’s the terms of our charter.’

‘You stubborn little wench!’

‘I’m stubborn? Huh! Why do you want me so badly? Have you found some new landless suitor who’s desperate for a wife? Some gouty old widower who’s gambled his inheritance away?’

‘I have, but he happens to be a decent young man.’ Ladoic considered her with a small smile. ‘And a man of advanced ideas, or so I hear, the younger son of Lord Tarryc of Daiver. The gwerbret’s nephew. Hah! That made you think!’

Dovina wrinkled her nose in a sneer but said nothing. Alyssa raised an eyebrow. A connection with Daiver? Worth considering, certainly.

The gwerbretion of Daiver occupied an odd position in the nobility. Once, hundreds of years ago, they’d ruled Cerrmor, in the usual manner. Some complicated political intrigue and a brief rebellion back in the 1200s had lost them everything. Since the common people had held for the king, they were rewarded with the charter that made Cerrmor a free city. To prevent further bloodshed, the gwerbretal clan had been fobbed off with scant land and a title derived from an old village near the city itself. In Dovina’s time, their connections to the High King kept them prosperous but dependent upon serving the royalty as court officials.

‘Besides,’ Ladoic continued, ‘the Prince Regent is making a royal progress. We’ll be meeting him in Cerrmor.’

‘So you’d best make a decent appearance.’ Dovina smiled in the simpery way that meant she’d spotted a weapon. ‘There’s bound to be all sorts of ceremonies around his visit.’

‘Indeed. The city itself will be holding a feast in his honor. Convenient all round. This man I’m betrothing you to – Merryc, his name is – will be greeting him. So you’re cursed well coming with me to Cerrmor whether you want to go or not.’

‘Cerrmor, is it?’ Dovina glanced Alyssa’s way. ‘How awfully interesting.’

‘Very, my lady.’ Alyssa curtsied to her and to the gwerbret. Cerrmor, of course, was the home of the new Collegium of Advocates, allies to their cause.

‘Well then, Father,’ Dovina said. ‘I’ll make you a bargain. Give us back Cradoc’s body, and I’ll come with you willingly.’

‘I can’t just go to my law court and order this tower of madwomen to hand you over. Why should I bargain with you?’

‘Because if you don’t, I’ll scream and howl and make such a horrid display of myself in front of the Prince Regent that you’ll be shamed in the eyes of every man in the kingdom. Such as Gwerbret Standyc, for instance. And won’t old Tewdyr love to repeat the tale?’

Gwerbret Ladoic’s face turned so bright a shade of red that Alyssa feared he was about to suffer an elf-stroke. Dovina smirked at him until he cleared his throat and took a deep breath or two. Slowly his color returned to its usual weather-beaten tan.

‘You wouldn’t!’

‘Oh, come now, Father. You know me well enough to know that I would.’

He scowled, she smiled. ‘Oh, very well!’ he said at last. ‘I’ll have the servants bring your cursed bard back with all due ceremony. And you’d best be ready to leave when they do!’

‘After the funeral, of course. To do otherwise would be unseemly.’

‘Oh, very well! After the funeral. Besides, I want you home for another thing. Your lout of a brother, as you call him, is visiting. Adonyc’s brought good news. You can be decent and help us celebrate.’

‘What? Has that moo-cow of a wife of his squeezed out a male heir?’

‘Just that, and don’t call her a cow.’ Yet he was fighting a smile. ‘Placid, that’s the word we want.’

‘Placid and fertile, and I’ll bet she gives lots and lots of milk.’

Ladoic suppressed his smile and turned away with a gesture to Nallyc to follow. He barked out a few orders to the men accompanying him and strode off. Dovina said nothing until they’d all mounted their horses and ridden away.

‘Summat’s upset Father,’ Dovina said. ‘He’s not usually as bad as this.’

‘I’d suppose that the fathers of those dead lads have sent him messages by now.’

‘That’s most likely it. Though he’s fond of saying that a daughter like me would drive most men mad.’ She paused for a grin. ‘I’ll admit the justice of that.’

Alyssa kept a tactful silence.

‘Let’s go back to the bookchamber,’ Dovina said. ‘I have a plan, but we’ve got to find out where the old copy of this book may be. Everything depends on that.’

‘The old copy?’

‘The source manuscript, the crumbling smelly old thing that’s in our bookhoard. I’ve found notes about it from the priests of Wmm. They called it the “no one” book because it had “nevyn” written on the first page. I’ve got no idea what that means, but the notes said some scholars think the book’s hundreds and hundreds of years old. If we can get that one into the hands of the guild, Father shan’t be able to pretend we’ve forged it.’

‘You can smuggle it with you when you go.’

‘Assuming it’s here in the collegium. I have the awful feeling that we’re not going to have that kind of luck.’

As was so often the case when the subject was books, Dovina was right. According to the notes she found in the journal of the bookhoard, the ‘Nevyn Copy’ of Dwvoryc’s Annals of the Dawntime had been given over on loan to Haen Marn so that the Scribal Guild there could produce copies.

‘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 travelled 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 treasure 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 signalled 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.’

‘Splendid idea!’ Rhys put in. ‘If we can get the pair of you out of the town gates safely.’

‘During Cradoc’s funeral.’ Dovina took a folded bit of pabrus out of her kirtle and handed it to Rhys. ‘Father just sent me this message. Tomorrow our teacher’s body comes back to us. The Bardic Guild will be joining Lady Rhodda Hall for a grand procession out to the sacred grove.’ Dovina frowned as she thought something through. ‘We’ll have to get a horse for Alyssa. The pair of them can ride in the procession and then just keep riding when the procession turns aside to go into the grove.’

‘Excellent!’ Rhys said. ‘We can get together provisions and the like from the collegia. And saddlebags. Alyssa can tell anyone who asks that they’re carrying offerings for the grave.’

‘Good idea!’ Dovina gave him an approving smile. ‘Now listen closely, Cavan. Only Alyssa can draw the coin that will pay your hire. The money will be waiting at Haen Marn itself. If you give her the least bit of trouble, you won’t get paid.’

‘Here!’ Cavan snapped. ‘I’ve not agreed yet.’

‘Do you want to stay in town and hang?’ Dovina smiled brightly at him. ‘Sooner or later, Father will puzzle out where you’re hiding and get the court to force Wmm’s men to hand you over. He is the court, you know. Which means he gets to pass the sentence, too.’

Cavan sighed and rubbed his neck with one hand.

‘Ah, you understand me,’ Dovina went on. ‘Well?’

‘My thanks, my lady. I’ll take your hire gladly.’

And, he reminded himself, the hire offered compensations. Although he had every intention of treating Alyssa as honorably as he’d treat the queen, even queens were known to take a fancy to a man now and then. No doubt a common-born lass would care less for her delicate honor than a high-born woman. Never would he give Alyssa ‘trouble’, as her ladyship had termed it, but it would hardly be trouble if she were willing. The memory of that kiss in the market square made him smile, until he realized that Dovina was watching him with her lips set tight, as if she knew what he was thinking.

‘I’m going to tell Alyssa that you’re noble-born,’ Dovina said. ‘That way she’ll know better than to believe a honeyed word you say.’

With that she turned and marched off back to the women’s hive. Cavan bowed out of habit, but he would rather have snarled. As he walked back to Wmm’s with Rhys, he noticed Travaberiel standing in the doorway, watching them with a polite little smile. Smile or not, Cavan felt his suspicions catch fire. What was this fellow, a spy? People always said you couldn’t trust the Westfolk if their interests crossed yours. They’re not truly human, he reminded himself. Let’s just stay on guard.

Yet what if Travaberiel had dwimmer? The ancient magic – dweomer, they called it in the old days; so many people said it was only an old wives’ tale, a silly superstition, or maybe at most a debased witchery. Cavan, however, had seen and felt things that had convinced him it was real and true, perhaps the only truth that mattered. Or was it just that he so badly wanted the dwimmer to be real? He could never be sure, but one thing he did know. The wanting was real enough.

The first difficulty in making their escape, Alyssa soon realized, lay in hiding the preparations from Lady Tay. Fortunately, Malyc Penvardd, who was allowed into the women’s great hall because of his advanced age, arrived to dine with Lady Tay and plan Cradoc’s funeral. An average-looking fellow, neither tall nor short, with gray hair that barely covered his head, he had a face as wrinkled as the sea. Yet he strode into the collegium grounds as vigorously as a young man. As Alyssa escorted him across the lawn, he told her in his trained and booming voice that he himself, as the chief bard, would deliver the gwerchan in tribute.

‘That will be splendid, honored one,’ Alyssa said.

‘So I’ll hope. I wanted a private word with you. Let’s pause here a moment.’

They found a little bit of privacy in the shelter of a pair of young trees near the women’s hive.

‘I know Cradoc favored you as if you were his daughter,’ Malyc said. ‘Your heart must be heavy.’

‘It is, sir, heavy and near breaking. At moments I remember that I’ll never see him again.’ She paused to wipe her eyes on her sleeve. ‘I’ll honor his memory always.’

‘As I will, myself. It vexes me, that he died for so little. All we asked of the gwerbret was a fair hearing on this matter of the law courts and the nobility. The bard is the voice of his people under the laws, is he not? That voice has the legal right to be heard.’

‘True spoken. But it’s not a small thing, that right. If the bards are silenced, the people have no voice, and the lords may do as they please with no one to shame them.’

Malyc smiled and nodded. ‘Good answer,’ he said. ‘You do understand. Their precious honor tarnishes more easily than silver for all that they value it higher than gold. At any rate, you may rest assured that I shan’t let this matter end here.’

‘That gladdens my heart.’

‘I thought it would. Huh, it’s getting chilly out here. Let’s not keep Lady Tay waiting.’

They walked on in silence. When they entered the hive, Lady Tay was standing near the door to greet the penvardd and escort him to the head table. Alyssa took her place with the other senior students. A servant brought the head table wine, and another brought the students boiled water with a bit of wine in it for flavor.

Up at the front of the hall, Malyc announced, in his ringing voice that carried through half the hive, that he had ordered Cradoc’s apprentice to abandon the starvation siege at the gwerbretal gates.

‘We’ve lost one of our best men already,’ Malyc said. ‘No use in losing two. Ladoic has made it clear that he won’t give in, for all his talk about respecting custom and law. I am both shocked and heartsick over Cradoc’s death, my lady. I should have stopped this deadly ritual. Had I only known how far the gwerbret would go—’ He paused to make one sharp sob. ‘I never dreamt it would end this way.’

Lady Tay made a reply that Alyssa couldn’t quite hear. She did catch the words ‘dreadful shock’.

‘His note about Cradoc’s body was that last drop of water that ruins the ale,’ Malyc continued. ‘I intend to make him pay for that.’

And how can you? Alyssa thought. Apparently Lady Tay asked something similar, because Malyc said, ‘I have a weapon that will make His Grace tremble, were I to use it, but by the gods, I’ll pray it doesn’t come to that! Too many innocent persons would suffer.’

‘Ye gods!’ In her surprise Lady Tay spoke almost as loudly as the chief bard.

Malyc merely smiled and speared a fragment of pork with his table dagger. After that he spoke somewhat more quietly, and only of the funereal details.

Alyssa left the table as soon as she could. She needed to pack supplies for her journey north. Dovina took charge of wheedling provisions out of the hive’s cook. Mavva gathered bits of spare clothing from those women who could afford to give it. One of the other senior students handed over a pair of fine leather saddlebags.

‘You’d best take as much clothing as you can in the saddlebags,’ Dovina said. ‘You’ll have to make a decent appearance in Cerrmor, you see. I’ve scrounged up what coin I can for the first part of your journey. Once you get to Haen Marn and use the draft, you’ll be able to buy what you need.’

‘We’d best travel as fast as possible, anyway,’ Alyssa said. ‘If we can get over the border into the Bear clan’s demesne, we’ll be out of your father’s reach.’

‘True, but you’ll have to get the book to Cerrmor. I wish you could go by ship, but you won’t dare return to Eldidd. Best go overland to Dun Trebyc and down from there, though ye gods, it’ll take so long!’

‘Better a long journey than one that ends too soon. In your father’s gaol.’

Later that night, before the chaperones locked the doors into the women’s hall, Dovina, Mavva, and Alyssa met Cavan and Rhys out on the lawn. Travaberiel joined them at Rhys’s invitation. By the light of candle lanterns they all walked down to the back wall where they were less likely to be overheard.

‘Be cursed careful once you reach the Bear lands,’ Travaberiel said. ‘If this feud turns into a war, Standyc’s likely to arrest anyone from Eldidd. Lie if you have to. He’s a suspicious man, Standyc, sure that he has hidden enemies somewhere.’

‘Is he right about that?’ Alyssa said.

‘Not to my knowledge. He’s got plenty of enemies right out in the open among my folk. You’d think that would be enough for him.’

‘My thanks.’ Cavan made him a half-bow. ‘I’ll remember that.’

Alyssa felt the night air turn cold around her. Dovina held up her punched-tin lantern and cast spangles of gold light over the silver dagger.

‘Will you keep her safe?’ The cold in her voice made Alyssa shiver again. ‘If I find out you haven’t, I’ll turn you in to my father.’

‘On my honor, my lady.’ Cavan made her a full bow. ‘I swear it on my silver dagger, and that’s the truest oath a man like me can swear.’

Rhys glanced at Travaberiel, who murmured, ‘I believe him.’

‘Done, then,’ Rhys said. ‘But you might remember that Wmm’s priesthood is like a net cast over the kingdom. Messages do travel.’

‘I know it well.’ Cavan laid a hand on the pommel of his dagger. ‘Fear not. I swore I’d guard the lady, and I cursed well will! I may be a silver dagger and scum of the road, but I’ve still got some sense of honor.’

Dovina and Rhys nodded in satisfaction.

‘Lyss, I’ve got summat for you.’ Rhys reached into his shirt and brought out some sheets of pabrus, folded into a square in the Bardekian fashion. ‘If you find yourself needing help, show these around at the nearest temple of Wmm.’ He dropped his voice to whisper. ‘Two copies, both signed by a couple of the masters here. Not a word of their names to anyone outside the priesthood, mind. And a third one only for the Advocates’ Guild.’

‘A thousand thanks!’ Alyssa took the packet. ‘Please tell those men who don’t exist that I’m truly grateful, not that they’ve done anything.’

‘Lyss!’ Mavva broke in. ‘Do you really want to do this? It’s horribly dangerous. I don’t think I realized it at first. It was all like a gerthddyn’s tale or suchlike. But—’

Alyssa gathered her breath with a gulp. ‘I will not let Cradoc die in vain. If this book will help bring the gwerbret round, then I’ll do my best to get it to Cerrmor and the advocates there. Our cause is just, and justice we shall have.’

When she glanced at Cavan, she found him smiling at her in honest admiration. She felt, very briefly, brave.

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