‘Your mother knew it well. But no bargain is struck without the words.’
‘I already owe you my life,’ Meilyr said. ‘Have you come to collect, at last?’
‘There is no debt that binds you, save that which you bind to yourself. Your choices have always been your own.’
Spirit-riddles. He tried to set them aside for now. ‘Someone is here, in this castle, killing people. Killing them with the weaving blood.’
‘A bad business.’
‘You do not approve?’
‘Do you?’ the spirit asked.
Meilyr allowed himself to assess it more honestly than ever before. ‘Some of these people, perhaps they deserve punishment. But not like this.’
‘Are you certain? It was blood that made us, and blood will out.’
The wind crested over the wall, filling his senses with salt, golden henbane and rowan. The subtle tang of fox’s tears.
‘Can you tell me who is behind it? Who is seeking revenge?’
‘I could. If I do, what will you do?’
Tell Osian, he thought.
But could he? How would he explain this?
He had no hope of stopping the gwehydd himself, but – dreigiau help him – he had the beginnings of a vested belief that Osian would know what to do.
The fox turned away.
‘Wait,’ Meilyr started.
‘We will meet again, before this is finished,’ they said. ‘Remember thy past with help from us all. Have your heart open, before it is opened. Keep your eyes to the wild, and squander not the iron, nor the oak.’
They slipped away, and were gone.
‘Meilyr?’
Meilyr jolted upright and spun to face Haydn.
‘Are you all right?’ Haydn went to reach for him, concerned. ‘You look as though you have seen a ghost?’
‘Wait.’ Meilyr raised his hands. ‘We cannot.’
Haydn mirrored the gesture, calming. ‘I know, sorry.’ Worry pooled in his grey eyes. Something else, deeper and sharper. ‘I… heard what happened. To the prince. Meilyr—’
Pedr stepped pointedly around the hedge behind Haydn. ‘Highness, I retrieved the mint, as requested.’
‘Thank you, Pedr.’ Meilyr walked away and did not look back.
Rainclouds hunkered comfortably over Eascild on the day of the summersolstice. The day of the blessing ceremony.
An earlier downpour had slicked the cobbles and walls a dark, bloated grey. Though it had paused, the central courtyard rang with the wet, impatient movement of horses and men. All Eascild’s crownsworn stood at parade rest in rows, armed to their helms, to be appraised and blessed by the Khaimlic clerics. The soon-to-be crowned Prince of Cyngalon.
Meilyr kept his eyes lowered where he stood, two paces behind Osian atop the steps to the castle’s main chapel. There had been an incredibly long, droning service inside – apparently still a shorter, less-droning service than the one to be delivered for the actual coronation, on Osian’s birthday, in one week.
Osian had been anointed and declared worthy to inspect the forces outside. Meilyr had tried not to fret, even as Osian outwardly seemed fine. No one would have known, had it not spread to every inch of the castle, that the prince had been poisoned not so long ago.