‘Now, good regent, did you want me for some reason?’
‘Not truly. I was just worried, wondering where you’d got to.’ He paused to glance round at the towering rise of stone. ‘You’re probably safe enough out here.’
‘Unless an assassin comes creeping under the walls.’
‘Oh indeed? Has the bard been amusing you with lurid tales?’
‘He hasn’t. Look, see where the stream comes out from under the wall over there? Well, that water comes from the dairyroom, where they store the cheeses and suchlike. The running water keeps them cool in summer. But it gets into the dairyroom through this underground tunnel that leads all the way outside the dun walls to that big stream that goes through the market district down to the river. The tunnel was built in 769 by Glyn the First when the sorcerer was here, the one who posed as a gardener to gain the king’s confidence and …’
‘Sorcerer? Don’t prattle about some wretched sorcerer!’ He was close to shouting. ‘I never knew about any cursed tunnel. Ye gods, your highness, this is a serious matter!’
‘Well, so I thought. That’s what I meant about assassins.’
‘We’ll have to brick the tunnel up, or, wait, if things come to a siege, we’ll need the water.’
Muttering about portcullises and blacksmiths, Tieryn Elyc rushed off with barely a bow in her direction. Although Bellyra considered climbing back into her tree, her day-dreaming mood was broken. It was also getting late; in a few moments the sun would drop below the circling walls, and the garden turn cold. She crossed the bridge and went inside a tower, climbed up a spiral staircase to a landing, crossed it to another set of stairs, which led down to still another door, which finally got her out to the ward. As she was going to the kitchen hut, she saw two of the scullery boys cleaning a butchered pig. Its liver lay steaming and bleeding on the cobbles.
‘Modd, please, slice me off a bit of that liver, will you?’
‘For that scraggly cat of yours, your highness?’
‘She won’t be scraggly when she’s not half-starved. How’s she going to have her kits if she can’t make milk?’
When she gave him one of her most brilliant smiles, he relented, smiling in return, pushing back his forelock with a blood-crusted wrist and glancing round at the littered ward.
‘Fetch me those cabbage leaves over there for a wrap,’ he said to the younger boy. ‘And we’ll slice the royal puss up a bit of supper.’
‘She is the royal puss now. So there!’
The cat in question lived with her up in her chambers, the old nursery, which took up the floor above the women’s hall. Half the round floor plan was filled by a single big room with a hearth, where she and her brother and younger sister had once had their baths and eaten their meals. Lying by the hearth were a pair of little wooden horses, left there by Caturyc on the night when he’d fallen ill. Somehow no one wanted to pick them up and put them away, even though he’d been dead for years. The other half was divided into small wedge-shaped chambers, one each for the children and one for their old nurse who had accompanied Gwerna, Bellyra’s eight-year-old sister, when she’d been sent off to an aunt’s in a country dun – for her delicate health, everyone said, but Bellyra knew that they were keeping her safe, as the younger heir, in case Cerrmor was besieged at the end of the summer. As Princess of the Blood it was Bellyra’s Wyrd to stay through the siege. She would have to be very brave, she supposed, and keep out of everyone’s way.
Her own chamber held a single bed, a dower chest, one horribly faded tapestry on the wall, and the bottom of a cracked ale-barrel which the carpenter had sawn down for her, ostensibly to make a bed for her dolls, but in reality for Melynna, a very pregnant ginger cat whom Bellyra had found starving in the stables with a paw hurt badly enough to keep her from hunting. By now the paw was healing and she was sleek again from being fed as many times a day as the princess could beg or steal food for her, but Bellyra hated to give her up and Melynna certainly saw no reason to leave. As soon as Bellyra put the liver scraps down on the floor she lumbered out of her bed, lined with a torn-up linen shift that the princess had outgrown, and settled in for a good bloody munch.
‘How’s your basket of sand? Not too dirty? Good. When your kits are born, we’re going to have trouble hiding them, aren’t we? Well, I’ll think of some clever plan then. I don’t want anybody drowning any of them.’
Melynna looked up, licked a whisker, and purred a throaty thanks.
Just outside the bedchamber, right by a window, was Bellyra’s writing table, with her pot of ink, her stylus, and her pens laid out in a neat row. She laid the book down next to them, then sat on her stool and looked out the window at the main ward and the great iron-bound gates (built in 724 by Glyn the First’s father, Gwerbret Ladoic) which were standing open to reveal the city street beyond. The iron hinges and reinforcements were rusty and pitted – iron did pit in Cerrmor’s salt air.
‘It’s all very well for Elyc to talk of putting in a portcullis,’ she said to the cat. ‘But where, pray tell, are the blacksmiths going to get the metal for it?’
At that precise moment, just like an omen sent by the gods, servants began running toward the gates and shouting in welcome. With an enormous rumble and clatter, ox-cart after ox-cart pulled into the ward, and from her high perch Bellyra could see that they were loaded to the brim with rough-smelted iron ingots. All round swarmed mounted riders, some mercenary troop she supposed, hired to guard this precious cargo on its long slow journey down from the north. She felt her heart pounding as she rose.
‘O dear Goddess, do let it be an omen. It would be a splendid one, coming just like that. O dear Goddess, I do want to live to grow up.’
She felt the tears pressing behind her eyes, hot and shameful. With a toss of her head she willed them away and ran for the door and the staircase. She should be in the great hall to welcome the merchants who’d brought her this treasure, she decided, be there and smile upon them and show them her favour, so they’d feel well-rewarded beyond the coin her chamberlain would pay over.
By the time she reached the great hall, Tieryn Elyc, Lord Tammael the chamberlain, the seneschal, and the two stewards were already standing round the table of honour up on the dais with three merchants in checked brigga, two quite young, the other very old indeed, with a mop of thick white hair and a face as lined as an old burlap sack. Since everyone was arguing about paying for the iron no one noticed her make her entrance. Down on the floor of the hall servants rushed frantically round, trying to assemble enough ale-tankards for the mercenary troop as the men strode in, laughing and talking, each with a dagger-hilt made of silver gleaming at his belt. Bellyra hovered uncertainly behind Tieryn Elyc and waited for a chance to deliver her speech of thanks until, at last, the old merchant happened to look her way.
‘Ah, the Princess of the Blood, no doubt,’ he said with an amazingly deep and agile bow. ‘I do have the honour of addressing Bellyra of Cerrmor, do I not?’
‘You do, good sir.’ Bellyra drew herself up to full height and held out her hand for him to kiss. ‘You have our royal thanks for the risk you’ve run to bring us this black iron more precious than shining gold.’
‘Your highness is welcome from the bottom of my heart.’
Bellyra was annoyed to see Elyc smiling again, but the old man didn’t seem to notice.
‘And
