Spindle and Dagger - J. Anderson Coats Page 0,42
has no skill at it.
“I heard them too, chattering away like birds with four tongues,” Owain replies, “but you understood them.”
I see it in her face. Nest is wishing she’d let them rob us, stab us, and slide our bodies into the harbor. She didn’t think. She just acted. Now Owain ap Cadwgan knows something she didn’t want him to know.
“I did,” Nest finally replies.
“How?” Owain asks, and his voice is mellow now, easy and coaxing.
She’s deciding. Her sister’s knife is buried to the hilt in his flesh and she’s deciding whether to twist it or tend the wound. Whether she hates him more than she wants to live.
“My father bought the swords of the Norse-Irish many times to help his army.” Nest says it low and fast. “My mother had a Dublin girl as a maid. I was often in her care. I understand much more than I can speak, though. It was many years ago.”
Owain grins like a milk-fed cat. “And Einion here didn’t want to bring you along. Saint Elen comes through for me yet again, though.” He crosses himself and I smile, miracle-calm, even as things I can’t say line up within me like masses for the dead.
Einion penteulu stands by the hedge nursing an eye that’ll be purple before sundown and a slice across one cheek that could almost use irons. He snorts when I offer, shaking his head slow and insulted, like I’m the one who dealt him the cut.
AT LEAST ONE OF MY WORRIES IS FOR NOTHING. Finding the high king is as easy as asking the crofters and drovers we meet as we walk, and soon we’re approaching the fort of Rathmore. I’m taken with how familiar it is. Had I not known better, I’d swear I was nearing Llyssun or Aberaeron. Same bristly rain-grayed palisades and well-guarded boundaries.
The Rathmore sentries approach, hands on weapons, and ask something in a hash of syllables. Owain mutters in Nest’s ear, then guides her forward. She speaks to them, halting, like she’s feeling along in a dark room. One of the sentries disappears, then returns with a woman who has silvery plaits and high freckled cheekbones. She’s dressed in a fur-trimmed cloak and wears a horseshoe made of gold around her neck, and her tone is friendly and confident.
Owain looks at Nest expectantly, and she says, “The lady of this house is bidding us health in her lord’s name, that we should come in and be welcome. She is called Sadb, and she is Muirchertach’s wife.”
Another of my worries, gone in a breath. After Owain’s foot-dragging, I’d braced for a show of force from the Irish or at least a cold shoulder, Cadwgan’s onetime allies or not.
“You must thank her,” Owain replies. Nest says something to him, and he repeats it to Sadb sound for sound: “Uh vwar vwugh.”
Sadb smiles and gestures for us to follow her through the gate and across a muddy courtyard toward a structure that must be the hall. Nest tries to drop back, away from Owain, but he puts her hand on his elbow and turns on her that feral warband smile that gives me the shudders. So I take her other hand as we slog through Rathmore’s yard, and she presses so close that we bump shoulders every other step.
The hall is dim and smoky. There’s a hearth and benches and trestle boards leaning against the wall. A cat hunches over a mouse near the door and two graybeards play flinches near the fire. I know this place is not Llyssun and the steward won’t be speaking a tongue I can follow, much less have any stories of tiny Owain, but I still run my thumb along the door frame out of simple, wishful habit.
Sadb asks something of Owain, but he smiles graciously and motions to Nest. Nest’s face reddens as she stumbles out some syllables to our hostess. Sadb nods, touches Nest’s cheek in a kind and motherly way, then addresses servants who have gathered around her. A girl of about ten summers skips forward, and my first thought is to hug her because she and Margred could be sisters. She’s sun-browned, like me, which makes her wheat-white hair stand out like a halo. Sadb puts a hand on the girl’s head and says something like orla.
“Órlaith,” Nest repeats, and the wheat-haired girl beams and pokes both thumbs into her chest.
Then Sadb says something to Órlaith, and Nest winces so hard I bite my tongue to keep from