rag back, then sat slumped, his hands hanging limply between his knees.
‘Ah ye gods,’ Oggyn moaned. ‘My life is over.’
‘Oh come now!’ Nevyn said. ‘It’s not as bad as all that.’
‘But I’ll have to leave court. How can I possibly stay in the prince’s service now?’
‘The prince will consider you amply punished and forget the matter.’
‘But the shame! Ye gods, everyone will talk of this for years.’
‘They won’t. You forget their vanity.’
Oggyn looked up, startled.
‘The noble born in particular,’ Nevyn went on, ‘think of very little but their own doings. The servants will remember for a few days, truly, but with the wars starting, soon everyone will have plenty of gossip, fears, and bereavements to occupy them. Besides, you’ll be riding with the army, and you won’t even be here to snicker at.’
‘You’re right, truly. My thanks, Nevyn! A thousand thanks and more!’ Oggyn sat up, squaring his shoulders like a warrior. ‘If I can just get through the next few days …’
‘You’ll have plenty to keep you busy, with all the provisions to tally.’
‘Right again. But I don’t think I’ll go straight back to the great hall.’
‘I wouldn’t either if I were you.’ Nevyn stood up. ‘Shall we go?’
As they were leaving the chamber, they saw Lady Degwa, trotting towards them. Her widow’s black headscarf had slipped back, and locks of her curly dark hair dangled free around her face.
‘There you are!’ she burst out. ‘My poor Oggo! I simply had to see you. That awful bard, that awful song!’
When Oggyn held out his hands, she took them in hers and stared up at him. From her puffy eyes and trembling lower lip Nevyn could tell she’d been weeping. Nevyn made them both an unobserved bow.
‘My pardons,’ Nevyn said. ‘I’ll just be getting back to the great hall.’
He strode off, but at the staircase he paused and turned to look back. Oggyn and Degwa stood just as he’d left them, hands clasped. Oggyn had bent his head to speak to her in what seemed to be an anguished flood of words, while Degwa stared up adoringly, nodding her agreement now and again. For the first time it occurred to Nevyn that his fellow councillor actually cared for the lady as much as he did for her title. The insight made him end his eavesdropping and hurry downstairs.
In the great hall Grodyn was waiting for him, leaning on his stick over by the hearth of honour. The winter had not been kind to the man who had formerly been the head chirurgeon in Dun Deverry. When Maryn’s forces had taken the dun the summer past, Grodyn had fled with the other servitors of the Boar clan, only to find that Lord Braemys distrusted him.
‘It’s been a long walk you’ve had,’ Nevyn said. ‘All the way here from Cantrae.’
‘I’m surprised I lived through it, good councillor,’ Grodyn said. ‘Especially after I ruined my knee in that fall. It gladdens my heart that you’d take an interest in my plight.’
‘Ah, I take it you don’t remember me.’
Grodyn blinked, stared at him, then swore under his breath. ‘The herbman,’ he said, ‘that old herbman who came to the dun – ye gods, how many years ago was it?’
‘I don’t remember either, but a good long while.’
‘I take it you were a spy?’
‘I wasn’t, oddly enough. I merely decided that I’d find no place in Dun Deverry, so I moved on to Pyrdon, where the prince’s father took me into his service. Here, let’s sit down.’
At Nevyn’s order, a page placed two chairs in the curve of the wall, where they could talk without being easily overheard. Grodyn sat down with a long sigh and propped his stick against the wall near at hand.
‘Did you ever get to plead your cause to the prince?’ Nevyn said.
‘I did, and a well-spoken man he is,’ Grodyn said. ‘But alas, he couldn’t help me. When I fled the dun, you see, I was forced to leave some books behind, and I was hoping to reclaim them. He knew naught about them.’
‘I may well have them. Any books came to me as my share of the looting – not that anyone else wanted them. Did yours discuss Bardekian physic and medicinals?’
‘They did. With those in hand, I might be able to find a place in some great lord’s dun. Without them, well, why should they believe a shabby beggar like me when I tell them I’m a chirurgeon?’
‘True spoken. You shall have them back.’ Nevyn hesitated, considering. ‘Or even – what would you think about staying here and taking the prince’s service?’
‘Would he have me?’
‘If I recommended you.’
Grodyn leaned back and looked out over the great hall. ‘I served the Boar clan for years,’ he said at length.
‘Not as I remember it. You served the king’s clan when I first met you, and I’m willing to wager high that you hated the Boars then and hated them even more later.’
‘You have sharp eyes.’ Grodyn smiled thinly. ‘Very well. If the prince can forgive me my former service, I’ll be glad to have done with all this cursed travelling.’
‘I’ll speak to him in the morning. There’s someone else here, by the by, who might well remember you: Caudyr, your young apprentice who got himself run out by the Boars.’
‘Ye gods! Did he end up in the prince’s service too?’
‘He did. He’s the chirurgeon for the prince’s bodyguard, the silver daggers.’
‘Ai.’ Grodyn shook his head. ‘How the world changes, eh?’
‘It does, it does.’ Nevyn rose and held out a hand. ‘The stairs to my chambers are a bit steep, but come with me. You can wait down at the foot.’
‘My thanks.’
As they were making their slow way across the ward, Nevyn saw Lilli walking alone and hailed her. ‘There’s my apprentice,’ he said to Grodyn. ‘We’ll just send her up instead.’
Grodyn clasped his stick with both hands and leaned on it while he stared open-mouthed at Lilli. ‘Your apprentice?’ he whispered. ‘Ye gods! That’s Lady Lillorigga of the Boar! Apprenticed to a chirurgeon?’
‘She’s a daughter of the Rams of Hendyr now, and I’m not exactly a chirurgeon.’
Smiling, Lilli trotted over, dropped them a curtsey, then suddenly stared at Grodyn in turn.
‘It is me,’ the chirurgeon said. ‘I fear me your cousin Braemys refused me shelter in Dun Cantrae last autumn, and wintering on the roads has left me
