LITMIR.BIZ

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don’t suppose you can tell if she’s with child.”

      “She’s not showing the baby if she is. I can understand your concern.”

      “Well, it’s bound to happen, sooner or later. I just hope she has the wit to ride home when it does.”

      “She’s never lacked for wit.”

      Although Cullyn agreed, worry ate at him. Jill was, after all, his only child.

      “I just hope they have enough coin for the winter,” the captain remarked.

      “Well, we gave them plenty between us, if Rhodry doesn’t drink it all away, anyway.”

      “Oh, Jill won’t let him do that. My lass is as tight as an old farmwife with every cursed copper.” He allowed himself a brief smile. “She knows the long road well.”

      Because the mattress was full of bedbugs, Rhodry Maelwaedd, formerly heir to Dun Gwerbyn, sat on the floor of the tiny innchamber. Nearby Jill sat in the light from the one tiny window. She was dressed in a pair of dirty blue brigga and a lad’s plain linen overshirt, and her golden hair was cropped short like a lad’s, too, but she was so beautiful, with her wide blue eyes, delicate features, and soft mouth, that he loved simply looking at her. Frowning in concentration, she was mending a rip in his only shirt.

      “Ah, by the black hairy ass of the Lord of Hell!” she snarled. “This’ll just have to do. I hate sewing.”

      “You have my humble thanks for lowering yourself enough to mend my clothes.”

      With another snarl she threw the shirt into his face. Laughing, he shook it out, once-white linen stained with sweat and rust, as well, from his mail. On the yokes were embroidered the blazons of the red lion, all that he had left of his old life. But a month earlier his brother, Gwerbret Rhys of Aberwyn, had sent him into exile, far away from kin and clan both. He pulled the shirt on, then buckled his sword belt over it. At the left hung his sword, a beautiful blade of the best steel with the hand guard worked in the form of a dragon, and at the right, the silver dagger that branded him as a dishonored man. It was the badge of a band of mercenaries who wandered the roads either singly or in pairs and fought only for coin, not loyalty or honor. In his case it branded him as something even stranger, which was why they’d come to Dun Mannannan.

      “Do you think that silversmith will be in by now?” he said.

      “No doubt. Otho wouldn’t leave his shop for long.”

      Together they went out into the unwalled town, a straggling collection of round thatched houses and shops along a river. On the grassy bank fishing boats lay bleaching, from the look of their cracked keels and gaping planks barely seaworthy.

      “I don’t see how these people make a living from the sea,” Rhodry remarked. “Look at that mast. It’s all held together with wound rope and tar.”

      When he started to walk over for a better look, Jill grabbed his arm and hauled him back. Two local men, hard-eyed and dressed in filthy rags, were watching.

      “It doesn’t pay to go poking your nose into other people’s business, lad,” one of them called out.

      “Especially not scum like you, silver dagger,” said the other.

      They both spat on the ground and laughed. Rhodry tried to shake his arm free of Jill’s grasp, but she hung on grimly.

      “You can’t, Rhoddo,” she whispered. “They’re not but peasants. They’re too far below you to fight with.”

      With a toss of his head he turned away. Arm in arm they walked on down the winding street.

      “About those boats?” Jill said. “They’re not as shabby as they look. They keep them that way on purpose, to hide, like. There’s more than one kind of cargo that comes in under the mackerel.”

      “Ye gods! You mean we’re staying in a den of smugglers?”

      “Keep your voice down! Just that.”

      Otho’s shop stood on the very edge of town, just on the other side of a dirt path from a field of cabbages. Under a droop of smoke-black thatch the plank door stood shut but no longer padlocked. When Jill opened it, silver bells tinkled overhead.

      “Who’s there?” bellowed a deep voice.

      “Jill, Cullyn of Cerrmor’s daughter, and another silver dagger.”

      Rhodry followed her into an empty chamber, a small wedge of the round house set off by dirty wickerwork panels. In one panel hung a frayed green blanket, doing duty for a door, apparently, because Otho shoved it aside and came out. Although he stood only four and a half feet tall, he was perfectly proportioned and muscular at that, with arms like a miniature blacksmith. He had a heavy gray beard, neatly cropped, and shrewd dark eyes.

      “Well, Jill it is,” he said. “And it gladdens my heart to see you again. Where’s your father, and who’s this lad?”

      “Da’s in Eldidd. He won himself a place as captain of a tieryn’s warband.”

      “Did he, now?” Otho smiled in sincere pleasure. “I always thought he was too good a man to carry the silver dagger. But what have you done? Run off with this pretty face here?”

      “Now, here!” Rhodry snarled. “Cullyn gave her leave to go.”

      Otho snorted in profound disbelief.

      “It’s true,” Jill broke in. “Da even pledged him to the silver dagger.”

      “Indeed?” The smith still looked suspicious, but he let the matter drop. “What brings you to me, lad? Have some battle loot to sell?”

      “I don’t. I’ve come about my silver dagger.”

      “What have you done, nicked it or suchlike? I don’t see how any man could bruise that metal.”

      “He wants the dweomer taken off it,” Jill said. “Can you do that, Otho? Remove the spell on the blade?”

      The smith turned, openmouthed in surprise.

      “I know cursed well it’s got one on it,” she went on. “Rhoddo, take it out and show him.

      Reluctantly Rhodry drew the dagger from its worn sheath. It was a lovely thing, that blade, as silky as silver, but harder than steel, some alloy that only a few smiths knew how to blend. On it was graved the device of a striking falcon (Cullyn’s old mark, because the dagger had once belonged to him), but in Rhodry’s hand the device was almost invisible in a blaze and flare of dweomer-light, running like water from the blade.

      “Elven blood in your veins, is there?” Otho snapped. “And a good bit of it, too.”

      “Well, there’s some.” Rhodry made the admission unwillingly. “I hail from the west, you see, and that old proverb about there being elven blood in Eldidd veins is true enough.”

      When Otho grabbed the dagger, the light dimmed to a faint glow.

      “I’m not letting you in my workshop,” he announced. “You people all steal. Can’t even help it, I suppose; it’s probably the way you were raised.”

      “By every god in the Otherlands, I’m not a thief! I was born and raised a Maelwaedd, and it’s not my wretched fault that there’s wild blood somewhere in my clan’s quarterings.”

      “Hah! I’m still not letting you into my workshop.” He turned and pointedly spoke only to Jill. “It’s a hard thing you’re asking, lass. I don’t have true dweomer. The dagger spell is the only one I can weave, and I don’t even understand what I’m doing. It’s just somewhat that we pass down from father to son, those of us who know it at all, that is.”

      “I was afraid of that,” she said with a sigh. “But we’ve got to do somewhat about it. He can’t use it at table when it turns dweomer every time he draws it.”

      Otho

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