A Time of Justice. Katharine Kerr
He wasn’t a pretty sight.’
‘He wasn’t, but well, we’ve both seen worse.’
‘Just so, but this was a particularly vile sort of death. I mean, there he was, poisoned by a woman.’
‘Is that what makes it so vile, that his killer was a woman?’
‘Of course. Ye gods, she must be a fiend from hell!’
‘I don’t know. I mean, truly, she broke every law of the gods and the king both, but I almost feel sorry for her.’
‘Have you gone daft?’
‘Well, here she was, trapped in this dun with a man like Beryn.’ Jill sat up, shoving the blankets back. ‘Everything I’ve heard about her said she’s got more wits than most people, and a strong will, too, and some of the women said that when she was young she was so merry, always laughing and singing. She would have been a perfect wife for a great lord, running his big household and angling to get him favours at court and suchlike. But she ends up mouldering here, and all because she defended her brother from their father’s wrath.’
‘A lot of women end up in country duns. They make the best of it without taking lovers and studying poisons.’
‘True enough. I suppose you’re right.’
Yet she sounded doubtful still. He would have said more, but she slipped her arms around his neck and kissed him. He could forget all his worries in the feel of her body, pressed close to his.
Yet in the morning, the worries about the bounty hunt ahead of them came back with the rising sun. After they dressed, they opened the door against the reek of onions. Jill pulled on her boots, then merely sat on the floor, looking out at nothing in particular.
‘Somewhat’s troubling you,’ Rhodry said.
‘It is. Where did she get that poison?’
Rhodry had to admit that it was an interesting point. When he’d been growing up in Aberwyn’s court, he’d been taught a bit about poisons in sheer self-defence – highly-placed men were always in danger of intrigues – but he’d never seen or heard of anything like the drug that had killed Bavydd.
‘Well, they say you can buy some cursed strange things on the Cerrmor docks,’ Rhodry said. ‘Imports from Bardek. Bavydd probably brought it to her.’
‘If he brought it, how come he was stupid enough to drink it?’
‘Good point. Unless it was tasteless. The best poisons always are.’
‘Maybe. I mean, it must have been that. But I’d like to make sure, and for that, we’ll need its name.’
‘Well, I can tell you the one Bavydd used in the gwerbret’s palace – just a raw dose of belladonna.’
‘Bavydd? Oh, of course, it must have been him who gave that serving-lass the mead. So if he had the belladonna, he must have brought her the other poison, too.’
‘He just never dreamt she’d use it on him.’
It made perfect sense, yet they exchanged an uneasy glance. With a toss of his head Rhodry rose, catching the door jamb in one hand and staring out across the ward, where the gwerbret’s men were beginning to ready their horses.
‘Jill? Do you think there’s sorcery mixed up in this somehow?’
‘I do, but I couldn’t tell you why.’
A cold stripe of fear ran down his back. Just the summer before, dweomer had swept into his life like a storm wave, bringing Jill with it and leaving her behind like some long-buried treasure brought up from the sea. Yet he was always aware that sorcery threatened to sweep her away again. He kept remembering a man named Aderyn, who had magical powers beyond what Rhodry had ever believed possible, telling him that Jill was marked for the dweomer herself. He refused to believe it. She loved him, she belonged to him, and that’s all there was to that. But when he turned to look at her, sitting on their dirty blankets amid sacks of mouldy flour, he found her staring off into one of those private spaces that only she could see.
‘Let’s ride,’ he snapped. ‘Mallona has, I’ll wager, and she’s getting farther away all the time.’
‘No doubt.’ Jill scrambled up. ‘Which way shall we go?’
‘I was hoping you could tell me that.’
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them. There it was again: dweomer. As if she knew what he was thinking, she smiled in a wry sort of way.
‘Well, let’s go south for a little ways. That’s what I would do if I were her. Lay a false trail toward Cerrmor, and then go somewhere else.’
‘Sounds reasonable. Oh. Ye gods, I nearly forgot.’ He reached into his brigga pocket and pulled the by now ill-used feather on its chain. ‘What do you think about this? I found it in Beryn’s lodge.’
Jill took the chain and considered it with the same look she’d give maggoty meat.
‘I’ve seen one of these before, when I was still travelling with my Da,’ she said at last. ‘They’d hanged the woman who was wearing it. I don’t know why. Da wouldn’t let me look at the corpse for more than a moment, and he wouldn’t let me ask the townfolk, either.’
She started to toss it away, then reconsidered, kneeling down to put it in a saddlebag.
‘You should give that to the gwerbret,’ Rhodry said.
‘Well, sooner or later. But I want to show it to someone else first. I’m starting to get another idea. You know, I heard some rather strange things about Lady Mallona when I was up in the women’s hall of Coryc’s dun.’
‘Obviously. Ye gods, I’ll never forget the look on poor old Cadlew’s face.’
‘Not just that, dolt. There were rumours that Mallona studied the Old Lore. Lady Ganydda swore she didn’t believe it, but she was awfully eager to repeat it. She was supposed to have been fond of a strange old woman near her brother’s dun when she was a child –’
‘And of course the poor old woman was a witch,’ Rhodry finished this all-too-familiar bit of gossip for her. ‘Any old woman who lives alone is always supposed to be a witch.’
‘True spoken, but consider this. Mallona had that lover for a couple of years, and she only had the one child by Beryn. Now, whether that was Beryn’s trouble, who knows, but if that lover was a cold stick, she wouldn’t have bothered with him, and she wasn’t interested in Cadlew for fine conversation. Why doesn’t she have a couple of bastard children to palm off as her husband’s?’
‘They always say the Old Lore can remove that kind of nuisance from a woman’s life, don’t they?’
‘Just that.’ Jill thought for a moment. ‘Lord Beryn’s cook told me that every now and then, the Lady had weak spells, when she’d take to her bed for days and look terrible-ill.’
‘Ye gods! I never realized that the servants in a dun know about every blasted thing their masters do.’
‘Oh, doubtless the cooks and suchlike in Aberwyn could tell plenty of fine tales about you, Rhodry Maelwaedd.’
Rhodry had the unpleasant feeling that he was blushing.
The hunt should have been easy. A woman travelling alone was such an unusual thing in those days that anyone she passed should have noticed and remembered her. A woman who’d spent most of her life shut up in a dun should have had every possible trouble on the road, too. Although Lady Mallona’s life had hardly been pampered and courtly, still she’d doubtless never had to build a camp-fire, haggle for food, find water for her horse, or do any of those hundred other tasks that fell to travellers on the Deverry roads.
An easy task to find her, stuck somewhere with a lame horse or trying to bargain with suspicious innkeeps – except that after a full day