Days of Air and Darkness

by Katharine Kerr

  “Kneel down,” Taurra called out. “Kneel down and look.”

  Feeling as if she were drunk, Sevinna did as she was bid. The moonlight caught the mirror and turned it silver, a misty color on the pitted surface. The women chanted and sang as they moved in their round dance. Suddenly, Sevinna wanted this thing over with.

  “I see something!” she squealed.

  Taurra stepped up the chant and led the women faster. In the distorted surface, Sevinna could see a pattern of shadow much like a face. She realized that if she’d been in love with someone, it would have been easy to convince herself she saw him there. With one last wail of Aranrhodda’s name, the chant stopped, and Babryan rushed over.

  “Who did you see? Was he handsome?”

  “He looked nice, but not handsome. With dark hair, and big dark eyes, and he seemed youngish and awfully kind. He was smiling at me, but he seemed to have a very lordly air about him.”

  Babryan squealed and caught her hand. The others clustered round, Wbridda and Davylla talking, Taurra standing a bit to one side and smiling in a distant sort of way.

  “Oh, this was so wonderful!” Sevinna said. “My thanks, Lady Taurra. We must do this for Baba and Bry, too.”

  When Davylla slipped her arm through Taurra’s, they began talking about the herbs that they’d used for the rite. Feeling a bit sick, Sevinna walked a few steps away and glanced at their horses, who suddenly stamped and tossed their heads. Something, someone, was moving in the copse. Sevinna stood frozen and wished they’d brought guards as she watched a figure slipping out of the trees and running to the riverbank. Yellow hair, bright in the moonlight, and a flash of silver at the belt—Jill!

  “Sevvi, dearest!” Davylla called out. “Come along. We must get back before the chamberlain worries himself into a snit.”

  “Of course, my lady. I was just watching the moonlight on the water. So lovely.”

  On the ride back, Sevinna decided that she wouldn’t tell anyone about having seen Jill. All of a sudden, she remembered Jill’s warnings about Taurra—so suddenly that she wondered how she could have forgotten them. She would have had little chance to discuss it, anyway, because all the way home Babryan chattered about the rite and begged Taurra to do the same for her.

  “Of course, Baba, sweet, but we’ll have to wait till the moon’s perfectly full again. In the meantime, we’ll have some nice chats and teach you what you need to know.”

  Babryan smiled, as bright as the Moon herself.

  A wedding meant feasts for the noble-born guests and largesse for the poor of the demesne. While Slaecca and Ylaena planned details, Dwaen leaned back in his chair and nursed a tankard of the dun’s darkest ale. Every now and then, when his mother asked his opinion about cost, he would shrug and tell her to spend whatever they had. At length, when the women rose to leave the great hall, Slaecca lingered by his chair.

  “Ah, Dwaen, my only hope is that I’ll have the joy of seeing you married, too, before I die, and that might not be long now, at my age.”

  “Mam, hold your tongue. Ruses don’t suit you.”

  Slaecca snorted and crossed her arms over her chest, but the gods spared Dwaen a tedium. The page burst into the hall and raced over.

  “Your Grace!” Laryn was too excited to kneel. “Rhodry the silver dagger is here, and he knows where Lady Mallona is.”

  “Ye gods!” Dwaen rose, slamming the tankard down in a spray of ale. “Just Rhodry? Where’s his lass?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Dwaen raced outside to find Rhodry sitting on the cobbles in the ward. The silver dagger’s hair was plastered slick with road dirt, and his shirt stuck to him with sweat, old and new. Behind him stood his own bay gelding, head down and weary, and a near-foundered roan. When Rhodry tried to get up, he stumbled into a splayed kneel. Dwaen knelt and steadied him by the shoulders.

  “What have you done? Ridden all night?”

  “Longer than that. Your Grace, we think Mallona’s in Belgwerger, and we’re going to have a cursed rotten time prying her out, too. I’ve come to beg your aid.”

  “Granted, of course. Get up. Let’s go inside and get you some food. And then you’d best sleep.”

  “Can’t. No time, Your Grace. Jill’s there alone, keeping watch on her.”

  Dwaen slipped his arm round Rhodry’s shoulders and helped him stand, then led him inside, yelling at a servant to fetch the silver dagger meat and ale. While he ate, Rhodry told the story of their hunt.

  “It truly might be her, mightn’t it?” Dwaen said. “Huh. It looks like great Bel will bring her to justice, after all, and I’ll do everything in my power to help him. Rhodry, I don’t care what you say. You’ve got to get some sleep. I’ve got to send messengers to Coryc and ready my men. We can’t leave immediately, anyway.”

  Dwaen sent Laryn upstairs with Rhodry to find him a bed, then called Lallyc over for a conference. He had to send messengers off to Coryc first, then get the men and extra horses ready to travel—and fast. It didn’t take dweomer to know that they had no time to waste upon the roads.

  Ever since the moonlight ritual, Sevinna had been aware of Taurra turning her attention to Babryan and flattering her in the same way that she’d formerly flattered Sevinna. With Baba, the treatment seemed more effective. Sevinna could see the younger girl becoming withdrawn and silent, turned in to herself on some private line of thought. She spent more and more time with Taurra, less and less with the other girls.

  The third afternoon, Babryan returned to their chamber after one of these private sessions with her face dead pale. She flopped into a chair by the window, where the sun streamed in, and reached up to rub her cheeks with both hands.

  “I feel so cold,” she announced. “Do you feel cold, Sevvi?”

  “Not at all. Do you want a cloak round you?”

  “Oh, maybe not.” Babryan yawned hugely. “I need a nap. Ye gods, I hope I’m not getting some fever.”

  “Come lie down, then, and get under a coverlet.”

  Sevinna got her settled, hovered round for a moment, then realized that Babryan had fallen straight asleep. Since in those days any illness might be a dangerous thing, she was frightened, wondering if there were fever in the dun, but she remembered her own peculiar experience with Lady Taurra, and the headache she’d got on the day of the mirror rite. She hurried down to the ward and sought out one of the kitchen maids.

  “Gwarra, I have a favor to ask of you, and I’ll give you a copper, too.”

  “Well, gladly, my lady.”

  “There’s a silver dagger down in town, and I badly want to send her a message. If I gave you a note, do you think you could take it to her? It’s got to be kept awfully secret.”

  Gwarra smiled at the sight of coin.

  “That blond lass, is it? Of course, my lady. I swear I won’t say a word to anyone.”

  But as Sevinna was walking back to the great hall, she looked up at the broch to see Lady Taurra standing in the window of the woman’s hall and looking down. Oh, Goddess preserve! Sevinna thought. She saw me! And the Goddess to whom Sevinna was praying was no longer our Lady of the Cauldron, but the Holy Moon Herself.

  There were times when Jill regretted not knowing how to read. She stared at Sevinna’s note, turned it this way and that, and wished that Rhodry was there to interpret these strange marks on the bit of parchment. She looked over the crowded tavern room and wondered if any of the merchants and craftsmen there could read, and even more, if she dared trust any of them. Perhaps she could go to a priest, but a priest would ask awkward questions about her connections with the gwerbret’s womenfolk. Yet, as she thought about it, she could puzzle out one meaning of the note: Sevinna had to be troubled if she’d risk sending it. Tucking it into her pocket, she hurried out of the tavern room and walked up to the dun.

  At the gate, though, she received a rude welcome. The two guards looked her over, then moved, the one stepping round behind her, the other grabbing her arm.

  “This m
ust be her. Are you Jill?”

  “I am. What’s it to you?”

  “You’re coming with us. The gwerbret’s equerry wants a word with you.”

  They marched her along to a small chamber on the bottom floor of one of the half-brochs By a long wooden table stood a tall blond man whom she recognized as Lord Elyc’s equerry—Sevinna had pointed him out during her last visit to the broch.

  “Very well,” Cenwyc snapped. “Her Grace the Lady Davylla informs me that her guest, Lady Taurra, has lost a jeweled brooch. The last time she saw it was when you were in the dun last.”

  “Well, I’ll swear to you that I never took it, and you can search all my gear, too.”

  “No doubt it’s long been sold. Listen lass, I know our noble ladies like to amuse themselves at times with the common-born. Doubtless they found you interesting, just like you’d hoped. I’ve seen clever thieves like you before, getting into some lady’s confidence and then stealing her blind.”

  “I’m naught of the sort. If I were the kind of woman you think I am, I’d have fled town long before this.”

  Cenwyc set his hands on his hips and looked her over with cold blue eyes.

  “Ask the Lady Sevinna if you don’t believe me,” Jill said. “She’ll speak for me.”

  “She already has. But it’s easy to fool a young lass, and I’m not listening to her, no matter how much she carries on. My lord’s not in the dun. When he returns, you can tell your fine tale to him.”

  With a snap of his fingers, Cenwyc summoned the guards, who marched Jill out of the broch and across the ward. By the wall was a stone structure much like the one at Coryc’s dun: a small prison for town beggars and any riffraff awaiting the gwerbret’s judgment. They shoved her into a cell and barred and bolted the door behind them.

  Restlessly, Jill paced round the space, about eight feet by five, the floor covered with reeking straw, the odor as thick as the flies come to sample it. From the one barred window, she could see the rise of the stone wall and nothing more. You underestimated our dear Mallona, didn’t you? Jill thought, and now you’re going to pay for it. She sat down on the cleanest part of the straw and hoped that Rhodry and Dwaen rode in before Mallona was able to poison her.

  “Now, Sevvi dear, I’m as disappointed as you are,” Davylla said. “But it was foolish of us to trust someone like that, and here we are.”

  “My lady, please! I know it couldn’t be Jill who took that jewelry, I just know it.”

  “So sweet of you to be loyal. But so misplaced. Oh, how awful! Here it’s spoiled your lovely visit. Let’s not talk about it anymore.”

  Since she was a guest, Sevinna allowed the subject to be changed, but guest or not, she was a tieryn’s daughter and used to having her own way in women’s matters. As soon as she could, she slipped away from the other women and went down to the ward, where she bribed a page to show her the prison house. At the door, a beefy guard made her a bow. Sevinna set her hands on her hips and glared at him.

  “I want to speak with Jill, the woman you stupidly think is a thief.”

  “Now here, my lady, you don’t truly want to do that.”

  “If I didn’t want to do it, I wouldn’t be standing here telling you I did. Now listen, my man, I don’t care to be kept waiting.”

  The guard chewed on the edge of his mustache and looked this way and that.

  “If you’re rude to me much longer,” Sevinna snarled, “I shall go straight to Lord Cenwyc.”

  “Not to be rude, my lady, honestlike, but you don’t want to go in there. It stinks, it does.”

  “Then is there a window in the miserable cell where you’ve put her? Take me round so I can speak through that.”

  This compromise won the day. With a melancholy sigh, the guard walked Sevinna round the prison house and pointed to a small window. By standing on tiptoe, Sevinna could just see in.

  “Jill!” Sevinna said. “Oh, by the gods, this is awful.”

  Jill jumped up and ran to the window.

  “I didn’t steal anything.”

  “Of course you didn’t. That’s why I came to see you. What are we going to do? Where’s Rhodry?”

  “Off on an errand, and I blasted well hope he gets here soon. He’ll be bringing a friend of ours with him, but I don’t dare tell you more about that. Here, where’s Lady Taurra? Does she know you’re doing this?”

  “She doesn’t. Why does she want you arrested? I just know she’s behind this. She never mentioned losing the beastly brooch before today.”

  Jill considered, rubbing the side of her face with the back of her hand.

  “I don’t truly know why. Oh, Sevinna, this is so horrible! The only food they gave me was a bit of stale bread with green places on it. I just couldn’t eat it.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll smuggle you somewhat better myself.”

  “Oh, would you?” Jill seemed on the edge of tears. “I’ll be ever so grateful. But please, be careful. I don’t want you to get into any trouble over me.”

  “Not a soul will know, I swear it. It’s easy for us to get food any time we want, after all.”

  “So it is.” Jill turned suddenly grim. “Which reminds me. Are you all well?”

  “All of us but Baba. She’s gone all mopeylike. I don’t understand it.”

  “Mopey?”

  “Tired all the time, but she’s not ill. She’s been spending lots of time with Taurra, though.”

  Jill clutched the bars tight with both hands.

  “Listen carefully. If Baba starts getting ill in any way, for the love of the gods tell me. It’s truly important. And please, the moment you see Rhodry, tell him where I am.”

  “I will, I promise. And I’ll do my best to get you out of this, too. I don’t know what I can do. We’re going to be going home in two days, so maybe I can speak to my uncle.”

  “Two days? Well, maybe Rhodry will get here before then. And I can go hungry for a couple of days if I have to.”

  Sevinna was honestly surprised that food would mean so much to her that she’d starve rather than eat prison food, but she’d always heard it was terrible stuff. She left the prison and hurried across the ward to the kitchens, but before she could reach them, she met Babryan and Wbridda, out for a stroll to see the gwerbret’s falcons. In the sunlight, Babryan’s face was still decidedly pale.

  “I thought Baba needed some air,” Wbridda announced.

  “So she does. I’ll join you in a bit.”

  “Why not now?” Babryan said. “Sevvi, what are you doing out here? You haven’t been to see that awful Jill, have you?”

  “Of course not! It aches my heart to think she deceived us all.”

  Sevinna saw no way out of walking with them, but in the end, she was glad of it. As they came to the gates, they saw one of the guards coming in, leading Jill’s distinctive golden horse, laden with a pair of saddlebags and a bedroll.

  “Those are Jill’s things, aren’t they?” Wbridda said. “I hope none of the men steal them or suchlike.”

  “Oh, hold your tongue,” Babryan snapped. “She’s awful, and she deserves whatever she gets.”

  “Baba, I don’t see why you’re being so nasty. For all we know, there’s some mistake. After all, why would a noble-born man like Rhodry fall in love with a thief?”

  “He’s done awful things, too. Da should never have let him stay at our dun, never!”

  Wbridda started to reply, then merely shrugged. Sevinna marched over to the guard.

  “What are you doing with those? Where did you get them?”

  “Fetched them from the inn at Lord Cenwyc’s orders, my lady. As to what, his lordship hasn’t told me yet.”

  “Then let’s go find out, shall we?”

  The man turned the horse over to a waiting page, but took down the gear. Sevinna followed him inside to Cenwyc’s usual reception chamber. The lord rose and bowed to her, but she could see how irritated he was with the sight of her. The guard dumped Jill’s gear onto the table and ma
de a hasty retreat.

  “Cenwyc,” Sevinna snapped, “I want to watch while you search for the brooch.”

  “Oh, those clever thieves sell things as soon as they get their hands on them, my lady. No use in looking.”

  “And where would she sell it in town without you knowing?”

  Cenwyc started to answer, then hesitated, looking oddly troubled. All at once, Sevinna recognized his expression, so much like Babryan’s after one of her special lessons.

  “Think, my lord!” Sevinna crossed her arms over her chest and glared. “Who told you that? About thieves selling things, I mean.”

  “Told me? What do you mean, told me? Don’t be silly!” But he hesitated and thought. “Well, that’s odd, now that you mention it. Must have been Lady Taurra, when she was telling me about the brooch in the first place. I do remember, now that I come to think of it.”

  “Indeed?” Sevinna summoned up all her courage. “Well, I think we should have a look into this, my man. I can’t believe his lordship would be so slipshod about an important matter.”

  Nowhere in the saddlebags or bedroll did they find any piece of jewelry, not so much as a copper pin.

  “Huh,” said Cenwyc. “Well, I’ll send men to ask round town and see if she sold it anywhere. I’ve been told she never left when that man of hers did, so if she sold it, it would have to be here. Odd, very odd. Well, you’ve made your point, lass. If it does turn out that she was never seen selling anything, or if they don’t find it buried round that inn where she was staying, then I’ll have a word with my Lord Elyc when he comes home. Lady Taurra might have mislaid the thing.”

  “Perhaps so. How silly of her!” Sevinna arranged a bright and winsome smile. “Oh, I do thank you so, my lord, for letting me watch you. I’d best go join my cousins.”

  Cenwyc bowed rather absentmindedly, then picked up the gear and slung it into the curve of the chamber wall, where it could lie out of the way.

  Sevinna found her cousins down by the falcon house, and they resumed their walk. It was some time later when they passed by the broch again to find Lady Taurra coming out of it.

  “There you all are,” the lady announced. “I was just looking for you. Shall we all go to the garden for a nice talk?”