been driving the cart came striding over. A widow’s black scarf half-covered her grey hair, and she wore grey dresses, much stained. She pointed a calloused finger at Neb.
‘My name is Nerrobrantos, scribe to Tieryn Cadryc,’ Neb said. ‘And you are?’
‘Her ladyship’s servant.’
‘More like my guardian dragon,’ Branna said, then laughed. Her voice was pleasantly soft. ‘Don’t be so fierce, Midda. A scribe may speak to a poverty-stricken lady like me.’ She turned back to Neb. ‘Do people really call you Nerrobrantos all the time?’
‘They don’t.’ Neb at last remembered how to smile. ‘Do call me Neb, my lady.’
‘Gladly, Goodman Neb. Here comes Aunt Galla, but maybe we’ll meet again?’
‘I don’t see how we can avoid meeting in a dun this size.’
She laughed, and he’d never heard a laugh as beautiful as hers, far more beautiful than golden bells or a bard’s harp. For a long time after Lady Galla had led her inside, Neb stood in the ward and stared out at nothing. He was trying to understand just what had convinced him that his entire view of the world was about to change.
Mirryn brought him out of this strange reverie when the lord hurried over to the men of the lady’s escort, who were waiting patiently beside their horses.
‘What’s this?’ Mirryn said. ‘I see our scribe’s just left you all standing here.’
‘My apologies, my lord,’ Neb said. ‘I don’t have the slightest idea of where to take them. I’ve never lived in a dun before.’
Mirryn’s jaw dropped. Neb had never seen anyone look quite so innocently surprised. The lord covered it over with a quick laugh.
‘Of course not,’ Mirryn said. ‘You’re a townsman, after all, or you were.’
Neb smiled, bowed, and made his escape. He carried the roll of parchment up to his chamber, where he could cut it into sheets with his new penknife, but even as he worked, he was thinking about Lady Branna.
‘Now, here, my ladyship,’ Midda said. ‘I’m sure we can make you a better match than a scribe, and besides, you just met the lad.’
‘What makes you think I want to marry him?’ Branna said.
‘The way the pair of you were looking at each other. All cow-eyed, like.’
Branna shrugged and went to perch on the wide windowsill of her new chamber. Lady Galla had given her a decent situation, especially for a destitute extra daughter, unwelcome in her own father’s dun. The sunny chamber had its own hearth, a comfortable-looking bed, and a window that sported proper wooden shutters against possible rain. Branna had brought along her dower chest, made of plain wood and chipped around the lid – the best that her stepmother would part with. Midda was at the moment inspecting its contents to make sure they’d not suffered any damage during the journey. Branna had spent hundreds of hours working on them: two woad-blue blankets in an overshot weave and an embroidered coverlet for the marriage bed, the unassembled pieces of a heavily embroidered wedding shirt for her eventual husband, and various dresses and underclothes for herself. The little grey gnome sat on the bed and concentrated on picking at his long toenails.
‘Well, I certainly don’t want to marry Neb,’ Branna said. ‘He just reminds me of someone I saw once. I was surprised, is all.’
‘And where would you have seen the lad before?’
‘If I knew, I wouldn’t have been surprised, would I now?’
Midda sighed with a shake of her head, then resumed the unpacking. From a sack she took out two old, threadbare blankets, another grudged gift. When she spread them over the bed, the gnome vanished only to reappear in Branna’s lap. Neb sees the Wildfolk too, Branna thought. I could see his eyes move, following them.
‘I’m off to get some firewood and the like,’ Midda announced. ‘It might be chilly tonight.’
‘Well and good, then. Has that chamberlain given you a decent place to sleep?’
‘He has. A nice little space set off by partitions, private, like, and only one other woman to share it with, and us with a mattress apiece. Much better than I had –’ She paused to gesture at the room. ‘Than we had at your father’s dun.’
With one last snort of remembered disgust, Midda bustled out of the room. The gnome reached up a timid little paw and touched Branna’s cheek.
‘It is nicer,’ Branna said. ‘And I certainly can’t be any more miserable than I was before. Now, if only I really had dweomer, I’d turn my stepmother into a frog, and I’d not turn her back unless she begged me.’
The gnome grinned and nodded his head in agreement.
‘If only I really had dweomer,’ Branna went on. ‘I say that too much, don’t I? But they were such lovely tales I used to tell us. I suppose I should stop. I’m grown now and marriageable and all the rest of it.’
The thought of abandoning her fantasies saddened her, because she’d told herself those tales for as long as she could remember. They had started as dreams, beautifully vivid dreams, so coherent and detailed that at times she wondered if they were actually memories.From those wonderings she had developed a detailed fantasy about another Then and another When, as she called it – another life somewhere that she and her gnome had lived together, when she’d been a mighty sorcerer who had travelled all over Deverry and far away, too, off to Bardek and beyond. Her favourite tale concerned a magical island far across the Southern Sea, where elven sorcerers lived and studied books filled with mighty spells. The gnome had always listened, nodding his head when he agreed with some detail, or frowning when he felt she’d got something wrong.
‘Neb,’ she said aloud. ‘There was a man with a name like that in the tales, do you remember? But he was old. He can’t be the same person.’
The gnome scowled and wagged a long warty finger at her.
‘What? You can’t mean he is the same person.’
The gnome nodded.
‘Oh here, that’s silly. And impossible.’
The gnome flung both hands into the air and disappeared. Branna was about to try calling him back when someone knocked on the door. Lady Galla opened it and hurried in, with a page carrying a folded coverlet right behind her. Branna scrambled down from the windowsill and curtsied.
‘There you are, dear,’ Galla said. ‘Do you like the chamber? I found somewhat to brighten it up a bit. Now that you’re here, we’ll have to start on some bed curtains for you. We should be able to get them done before the winter.’
‘Thank you so much,’ Branna said. ‘I really really appreciate all this, Aunt Galla.’
‘You’re most welcome, dear.’ Galla took the coverlet from the page. ‘You may go, Coryn.’
The page skipped off down the hall. Together the two women spread out the coverlet, linen embroidered with red and blue spiral roundels and thick bands of yellow interlace.
‘It’s
