Here the stony hills opened up to cup a valley, bottomed with scabby grain fields. She did not know this road at all. She usually traveled by the north trail, but Father's letter had said to come the south way, without saying why.
"Bitterfeld?" she said. "Father owns this land!" She had heard the name on the tribute list. "They are late planting." She should stop and talk with the headman. It never hurt to let them know that Horth Wigson was watching.
"The rains are late," Verk said.
She did not know Verk well. As chief household guard, he spent most of his time close to Father, but he was a pleasant companion, well-spoken and good-looking. Father had hired the twins not long before she left for Kyrn, to spend the summer in the hills as all sensible rich folk did.
The chariot was a tight fit for two people and necessarily intimate. Verk's long braids hung below his bronze helmet, jiggling and dancing as the car bounced, and the wind rippled the golden fuzz on his arms. His armor was a knee-length leather smock coated with bronze scales, the hot sun making it reek of the dozens of house guards who had worn it before him. That was not his fault, but it was another reminder of proximity. His free hand was supposedly steadying his scabbard against his thigh, but every few bounces Frena would be thrown against that arm, like it or not, and her wrap was sleeveless also—skin against skin.
Fortunately Frena always kept her emotions under tight control. She had no romantic interest in a mere swordsman, a slab of a man who would risk his life for the chance to live and eat in a mansion. Verk was intelligent enough to share a little mild flirting without getting illusions.
He glanced down at her with a gleam in his unusually dark blue eyes. "If you do lose a wheel or snap the axle, mistress, please make sure you break my neck as well as your own."
"You are feeling suicidal? Angry husbands after you?"
"Husbands never frighten me, but an angry employer would."
"My father is a gentle, loving person, and extremely generous to his staff."
"Aee! That's true, mistress, but they do say he's mean when his servants skimp their duty."
"That's not true. Give me one example! Just one!"
"Quera."
"Who?" Frena said uncertainly.
"Quera. He had her impaled, they do say."
"No! You've been listening to slander. Who says that? That horrible Master Pukar, I'll bet!"
Verk shrugged his bronze-clad shoulders, not looking at her. Not smiling.
"You weren't there and I was!" Frena said icily. "I was only thirteen, but I saw! That awful woman was brought in to be Mother's night nurse when she was injured. When Mother died, Father could have beaten her and then dismissed her, or he could have had her charged with negligence. He didn't do either. He threw her out in the street with his own hands. I saw it! She deserved much worse than that, but even a court would not have impaled her. Impaling is only for really terrible crimes."
"Aee! Gold clinks louder than thunder, they do say."
"That is treason! And blasphemy! Judges in Skjar are all Speakers of Demern. Witnesses of Mayn give testimony. You accuse initiates of those holy cults of accepting my father's bribes? Of being intimidated by him?"
"Who won't march to the beat of the golden drum?"
This was subversive talk, going beyond informal chat. No servant should speak of his employer like that. "If my father wins a judgment it is because he is in the right."
"Ah, I meant no affront to the master, dear lady! Forgive a poor swordsman's folly. Any man who wears a sword in Werist country is born stupid."
"Tell her to slow down!" Uls yelled again. He was falling farther behind, still enveloped in the red clouds raised by Frena's wild passage. Uls was stupid.
Verk was not.
Horth Wigson enjoyed owning things in sets—strings of pearls, fleets of ships, streets of houses, and now a pair of identical house guards. Not to be outdone, his daughter had treated herself to a matched pair of black onagers, very rare and very costly. After all, onagers were useful, while swordsmen were only decorative—life-sized animated bronze ornaments. Verk and Uls attended Horth when he expected important visitors. They escorted him on the rare occasions when he went calling on someone. The rest of the time they did little except harass maidservants.
Yesterday he had sent them to Kyrn to fetch Frena back to the city. The tablet they brought had been cracked, but quite legible. The seal impressed on it had certainly been his, and the Kyrn house scribe had read the message as being what the swordsmen said it was, that Frena was to go home to Skjar as soon as possible and they were to escort her. It had not said why Father needed her, which was annoying.
She hoped her visit would be short. The city was a steam bath in summer. Kyrn, on the far side of the hills, was blissful. All her friends were there now—boating, swimming, hunting birds in the marshes, driving chariots. In groups, of course. Women must watch their reputations, and very rich youngsters must be well guarded. All her friends were rich, although no old family fortune could compare with Father's. Not that life was all play at Kyrn. Far from it! She supervised the lambing and planting. Today she should be directing the planned extensions to the threshing floor and oast house.
"What did you mean, if not what you said?"
Verk pummeled himself, as if trying to scratch an itch under the bronze smock. "If Quera had been bribed to harm your mother, would you just throw her out in the street?"
The chariot was slowing down as the ground flattened and the onagers tired. Frena was able to spare her companion a hard stare.
"Are you suggesting my mother was murdered in her own house?"
"Someone tried to murder her outside of it, mistress. They might have paid her to finish the job."
Frena had never thought of that. But she had seen Father throw the stupid woman out. What was Verk trying to tell her? He shielded his eyes from the sun as he studied the village ahead.
The track was barely visible, and Bitterfeld was only a scatter of mud hovels around a spring. No doubt one of those thatch roofs covered a shrine to the Bright Ones and some others cattle sheds. What a revolting prospect! How could anyone stand the lethal dullness of life in such a burrow, where the principal occupation would be keeping the livestock out of the crops? But Father owned these lands, as he owned so much around Skjar, and the residents would certainly make Frena welcome, offer confections of berry juice, honey, and cream; have the children sing and dance for her. She would inspect the village and tell Father's tallymen what was needed, if anything.
Except that there was nobody home. Some sort of ceremony was already in progress a couple of bowshots away from the village, at the base of a rocky knoll bedecked with a few straggly fruit trees. The crowd looked surprisingly big to have come from so few houses.
"What's happening? A midsummer festival?"
"Something," Verk muttered, frowning.
"Praying for rain, perhaps. Let us go and see." Frena worked the reins, easing Night back, flicking Dark's haunches. The chariot curved off across the fields, heading for the assembly.
The center of attention was a man standing under a tree with his arms raised, as if appealing to the Bright Ones. The crowd had gathered in an arc before him, children closest, adults on the outside. Voices surged like waves of Ocean beating on shingle, but in no song or chorus she knew.
"What in the world are they doing?"
Verk did not answer, his craggy features oddly tense as he studied the scene.
"Which god do farmers pray to?" Even a city girl ought to know that much. "Holy Weru, perhaps? He's god of storms."