Bernard’s smile faded, without giving the impression that he had become any less amused. It simply turned inward, as though what he was smiling at existed only within. Bernard never spoke of his dead wife, or their children, also gone. “Yes. Every bruise and every scrape.”
Tavi sobered. “Do you think Bittan’s guilty?”
“Likely,” Bernard said. “But I could be wrong. Until we’ve had the chance to hear everyone speak, we have to keep an open mind. He won’t be able to lie to your aunt.”
“I can.”
Bernard laughed. “You’re quite a bit smarter than Bittan. And you’ve had a lifetime of practice.”
Tavi smiled at his uncle. Then he said, “Sir, I really can find the flock. I can do it.”
Bernard regarded Tavi for a moment. Then he nodded toward the causeway. “Prove it then, lad. Show me.”
CHAPTER 4
Isana looked up from her scrying bowl with a faintly irritated frown. “That boy is going to get himself into more trouble than he can explain his way out of, one day.” Wan autumn sunlight streamed through the windows of Bernardholt’s main kitchen. The smell of bread baking in the wide ovens filled the room, along with the tang of the sauce sizzling on the roast turning over the coals. Isana’s back hurt from a morning’s work that had begun well before the sun rose, and there wasn’t going to be a chance to rest any time in the immediate future.
Whenever she had a moment to spare from her preparations, she spent it focused on her scrying bowl, using Rill to keep a cautious eye upon the Kordholters and Warner’s folk. Warner and his sons had added their efforts to that of Elder Frederic, master of the steadholt’s gargants, as he and his brawny son, Younger Frederic, cleaned out the half-buried stables of the vast beasts of labor.
Kord and his youngest son lazed in the courtyard. The elder boy, Aric, had taken up an axe and had been splitting logs for the duration of the morning, burning off nervous energy with physical effort. The tension in the air throughout the morning was cloying, even to those without an ounce of watercraft in their bodies.
The hold women had fled the kitchen’s heat to take their midday meal, a quick round of vegetable soup and yesterday’s bread, together with a selection of cheeses they had thrown together then taken out into the steadholt’s courtyard to eat. The weary autumn sun shone pleasantly down on the courtyard, the warmth of its flagstones sheltered from the cold north wind by Bernardholt’s high stone walls. Isana did not join them. The tension building in the courtyard would have sickened her, and she wanted to save back her strength and self-discipline for as long as she could, in the event that she had to intervene.
So Isana ignored the rumble in her own belly and focused on her work, a portion of her thought reserved for her fury’s perceptions.
“Aren’t you going to eat, mistress Isana?” Beritte looked up from where she was carelessly slicing the skins from a mound of tubers, dropping the peeled roots into a basin of water. The girl’s pretty face had been lightly touched with rouge, and her already alluring eyes with kohl. Isana had warned her mother that Beritte was entirely too young for such nonsense, but there she was, hollybells in her hair and her bodice laced with deliberate wickedness beneath her breasts — more eager to admire herself in every shiny surface she could find than to help prepare the evening’s banquet. Isana had gone out of her way to find chores to occupy the girl’s day. Beritte often enjoyed seeing young men compete with one another for her attention, and between her bodice and the sweet scent of the hollybells in her hair, she’d have them killing one another—and Isana had far too much on her mind to be bothered with any more mischief.
Isana glanced at the girl, eyeing her up and down, before she reached for the poker and thrust it back into the oven, into the coals where one of two tiny fire furies that regulated the oven wasn’t doing its job. She raked the poker through them, stirring them, and saw the flames dance and quiver a bit more as the sleepy fury within stirred to greater life. “As soon as I have a moment to spare,” she told the girl.
“Oh,” Beritte said, somewhat wistfully. “I’m sure we’ll be finished soon.”
“Just peel, Beritte.” Isana turned back to the counter and her bowl. The water within stirred and then quivered upward, resolving itself into a face—her own, but much younger. Isana smiled warmly down at the fury. Rill always remembered what Isana had looked like, the day they’d found one another, and always appeared in the same way as when Isana, then a gawky girl not quite Beritte’s age, had gazed down into a quiet, lovely pool.
“Rill,” Isana said, and touched the surface of the water. The liquid in the bowl curled over her finger and then swirled around quietly in response to her. “Rill,” Isana said again. “Find Bernard.” She pressed an image from her mind, down to the fury through the contact of her finger: her brother’s sure, silent steps, his rumbling, quiet voice, and his broad hands. “Find Bernard,” she said again.
The fury quivered and swirled the water about — then departed the bowl, passing through the air in a quiet wave Isana felt prickling along her skin, and then vanished, down through the earth.
Isana lifted her head and focused on Beritte more sharply. “Now then,” she said. “What’s going on, Beritte?”
“I’m sorry?” the girl asked. She flushed bright red and turned back to her peeling, knife flashing over the tuber, stripping dark skin from pale flesh. “I don’t know what you mean, mistress.”
Isana placed her hands on her hips. “I think you do,” she said her tone crisp and severe. “Beritte, you can either tell me where you got the flowers now, or you can wait until I find out, later.”
Isana felt Beritte’s fluttering panic, dancing around on the edges of the girl’s voice as she spoke. “Honestly, Mistress, I found them waiting for me at my door. I don’t know who —”
“Yes you do,” Isana said. “Hollybells don’t just miracuously appear, and you know the law about harvesting them. If you make me find out on my own, by the great furies, I’ll see to it that you suffer whatever is appropriate anyway.”
Beritte shook her head, and one of the hollybells fell from her hair. “No, no, mistress.” Isana could taste the way the lie made the girl inwardly cringe. “I never harvested any of them. Honestly, I —”
Isana’s temper flared, and she snapped, “Oh, Beritte. You aren’t old enough to be able to lie to me. I’ve a banquet to cook and a truthfind to prepare for, and I’ve not time to waste on a spoiled child who thinks that because she’s grown breasts and hips that she knows better than her elders.”
Beritte looked up at Isana, flushing darker with awkward humiliation and then snapped back with her own anger. “Jealous, mistress?”