"She's probably wearing them for him. But she asked me to get them for her and... well it seemed a lot more important at the time."
Bernard nodded. "There's no shame in making a mistake, Tavi-provided you learn from it. I think you'd be smart to think of this as a lesson in priorities. So?"
Tavi frowned. "So what?"
Bernard kept smiling. "What have you learned this morning?"
Tavi glowered at the ground. "That women are trouble, sir."
Bernard's mouth opened in a sudden, merry roar of laughter. Tavi looked up at his uncle, and cast him a hopeful grin. Bernard's eyes shone with merriment. "Oh, lad. That's about half of the truth."
"What's the other half?"
"You want them, anyway," Bernard said. He shook his head, the smile lingering in his eyes, his mouth. "I did one or two stupid things to impress a girl in my day."
"Was it worth it?"
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 Bernard-holt'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