She sighed, tired. ‘Fine, enjoy that. And expect Gelens to have beaten you to it.’ She looked at Meilyr, and his heart did not quail the way it would have a moment before. ‘I do not suppose you want to confess to killing our nobles? I’d rather you weren’t guilty, even if it would make things cleaner… Gods, it was a joke – all right, a poor one, but a joke nonetheless.’
She was good at concealing herself with humour. But there were fractures in her opinion of him: breaks in the ice, starting to show.
‘Tell Father I side with you,’ she told Osian. ‘But show me this will work, quickly.’
She left. Osian ordered Pedr to escort Meilyr downstairs to his own rooms.
It grew dark. Meilyr mustered enough strength to pace his parlour asthe wind groaned against the windows. Whoever had killed both nobles,they were fiercely strong. Far, far stronger than him.
They had also decided two men should die, publicly, in ways that revealed the survival of gwehydd blood. Somehow, he was not yet in a cell – but was certainly a breath away from outright accusation.
Captain Radnor would be after his head, and who could blame him. His son had been murdered before his eyes, and Meilyr was the newest member of court, the timing of his arrival and his interactions with the victims making him the most obvious suspect. How long until even Osian’s words were not enough – until he too doubted hisconsort?
Meilyr had to do something, but what?
Celyn’s words resurfaced:They wouldn’t be able to stop you.But he flinched at even the thought. If he did have to escape, he would find another way.
He had once sworn an oath to the memory of his parents that he would never again use his weaving. He had bent that oath for Idwal, his foster-father, on his deathbed – had refashioned it a dozen times for others seeking aid. For Wade Bevan – even for Faina, pushing the ingredients in her tonic to work just a little harder.
It had always come naturally, even when he had tried to suppress it. Weaving was like breathing: even in momentary lapse, the body resorted to survival. The flesh remembered, even if the mind shied away. He felt it every time his fingertips traced the roots and herbs and petals of his work, every time he ran a leaf or stem through his hands and knew what it needed, easier than he could tell the needs of his own body.
He had felt it the instant Osian’s blood had touched his own.
His nature was just that: natural, a part of him. But whilst using his blood to heal was one thing, to hurt was another – and there he would still draw the line, unless it was truly the only way to ensure Celyn’s safety.
There were other ways he could prepare. He would need to make a full inventory of the gardens, start with the most likely plants, then…
The realisation took the last of the heat from his body.
Thegardens.
Oh, gods, how had he not thought of that before?
It was very late, and the rain had returned, when Aldreda found Osian overseeing the armoury. She raised her eyebrows: an invitation to speak about anything he wanted.
He began with the matter before them. ‘Most crownsblood still carry an iron-infused knife, ceremonially. The rest of the crownsworn are being armed with the reserves we have, and the forges ordered to make more, alongside other weaponry.’
The Heir Apparent looked across the fairly sensible filing of their guard, each sharp glint of dark metal checked before being handed off.
‘Blood-steel,’ she said, low and dark.
They had learned from their grandfather’s stories, on his knee or at his feet before the hearth in his solar, in the castle they had been born into. Iron bled magic faster than blood. Or so those stories said. Their great-grandfather had certainly believed it, going so far as to drain the last of the Cyngaleg mines dry of the ore used to make blood-steel. Putting the sorcerers he hunted to the iron knife. The iron sword. The sharpness of an iron arrow or bolt.
Once, every crownsblood knight had been fitted with iron-infused bracers, iron-infused gloves, to defend against the wickedness of Cyngaleg sorcery. Osian would never forget the horrid weight of his grandfather’s glove, which he had been made to hold. Told to imagine how it might bite into a sorcerer’s skin. Their blood.
Even before he had come to Cyngalon, the thought had haunted him.
The fashion had faded after thehunts. That glove sat preserved in some hall. Thankfully Eascild had none spare, so knives and a handful of swords and several cases of crossbolts would have to do.
‘Was this Father’s request, or Gelens’?’ Aldreda asked.
‘It is a logical step.’
She knew him well enough not to press. Knew how uncomfortable this made him, even without understanding why.
He had never been able to cry to her about what he had seen. She had been excited to hold the glove, had stuffed her hand inside, though her fingers had been too stubby to reach the end of the thumb. For her, their grandfather’s tales had been excitingly chilling bedtime stories of brave knights and kings saving their people from monstrous magics.
It had only been much later that she had comprehended what their forebears had done.