“Did you indeed?” said Alk as the cup lit blue again, like a small sheeny moon. “I thought no one knew where that sword really was. Well, well. Now pass the cup to the Singer-lad.” Maewen reached across and handed the cup over. As Moril’s hand closed round it, the blue light went again. Alk nodded. “You say your name,” he said to Moril.
“Osfameron Tanamoril Clennensson,” said Moril. And the cup was alight and blue again. He stared at it wonderingly.
“Untruth,” commanded Alk.
“I—er—I can’t play the cwidder,” Moril said. And he was holding a simple silver cup.
“Now say—Did you kill Noreth of Kredindale?” Alk said.
“No!” said Moril, and again the cup flared blue. Moril screwed his eyes up at it as if he might cry.
“Now pass it to Navis,” Alk ordered. When Navis had stretched out and taken the cup and it was once more a mild silver, Alk said, “And did you kill Noreth Onesdaughter?”
“I most certainly did not,” Navis said, and screwed his eyes up like Moril when the cup shone blue in his hand.
Mitt waited anxiously. Alk was leaving him till last because he thought Mitt was the guilty one. He could see that. It was a wretched thought. But the cup itself was beginning to worry him just as much. If it was behaving as it was supposed to with the others—and from Alk’s look as he tested it, it was—then it had behaved all wrong with Mitt, spitting blue sparks at him both other times he touched it. Mitt suspected the thing disliked him. He did not trust it not to prove him guilty out of sheer malice. He could see the faces of his onetime friends in Aberath behind Alk, shut away from him, sure he was a murderer.
“Now to him,” Alk said to Navis.
Navis held the blue-glowing cup out to Mitt. That, and Mitt’s worry, made his new horse turn round restively, giving him a sight of Luthan and all his people staring. Ammet only knew what they were thinking.
“Take it!” Navis snapped.
Mitt spared a hand for the thing. “Ouch!” It was like nettles, squirting blue rays between his fingers. He had to let go the reins and hang on to the cup with both hands or he would have let it fall. It hurt. It crackled blue streams round his wrists and knuckles. The cup clearly hated him as much as the Countess-horse did. “Ow!” And Luthan’s spare horse did not help, bucking around in fear, until Navis grabbed it and pulled on the bit.
“Can you bring yourself to tell a lie?” Alk said, watching callously.
“You being … sarky is … all I need!” Mitt said with his teeth clenched. “Burn you! I—I—You don’t make steam engines!” The blue rays faded inward between Mitt’s fingers and vanished. The prickling lasted an instant longer, and then that went, too. Mitt shook the plain silver goblet he was now holding, and the other hand as well. The relief! “Burn you, Alk! This thing hates me! I won’t dare tell the truth now, I warn you!”
“I dare you,” said Alk. “Did you kill Noreth of Kredindale?”
“No!” Mitt spat, hunched against another assault from the cup. It spat at him again, with a sharp sizzle, but, to his surprise, it was nothing like so painful. More like a tingling. The blue rays reaching through his fingers were almost glorious. “Ah. Calmed it down,” he said.
“Turn it off, turn it on. I thought that might do it,” Alk said. He looked smug, like someone who had won a bet. As Mitt thankfully passed the cup back to Navis, he said, “Then I declare you all clear of the charge of murder. Now,” he added to Maewen, “let’s have a look at that sword, young lady.”
“But why?” said Navis.
“It might do to swear some more on,” Alk said.
Navis looked harrowed. “Please,” he said. “I have to get to Kernsburgh in case my son, Ynen, is there.”
Maewen hurriedly scrabbled the sword loose, knowing Navis was right.
Alk grinned. “It’s just curiosity, really. I love clever metalwork. Just draw the sword and show it to me, young lady, and then you can all go.”
Maewen tried to draw the sword in the same hurry—too hurriedly. She jammed it sideways somehow, and it refused to emerge. “It’s stuck!” she said, hauling uselessly at it. Mitt and Navis leaned over to help. They both wanted to get going. Both their horses, and Maewen’s with them, got the wrong idea and started to move and were pulled back. All three surged round in a circle, and Moril’s horse joined in. Alk calmly moved his own horse back, where he sat watching the confusion. It was only resolved when Navis seized the leather scabbard Maewen was waving about and planted the hilt end on Mitt’s saddle. Both pulled. The sword came loose with a slithery clang.
“There,” said Mitt. He rode over and pushed the sword under Alk’s nose. “Satisfied?”
“I’ll say!” Alk looked it over admiringly. “It may look plain and a silly old fashion, but it’s better work than any of us could do today. I’d give an eyetooth to meet the man that made it. He’d have taken a year and a day to do it, you know. No one bothers to take that sort of trouble today. All right. Put it away, and let’s all get to Kernsburgh.”
“All?” said Navis. He was more depressed than Mitt had ever seen him. “I’ve no more patience for jokes.”
“No joke,” said Alk. “I said I’d come to Kernsburgh with the rest of you. Keril listens to me.”
“I don’t think you understand,” Navis said wearily. “You have just removed my pretext for dragging the Earl of Dropwater there with me.”
Alk’s eyes went to Maewen. “Is that so? Who heard me do that, apart from you and two lads who knew, anyway? Didn’t you?” he asked Moril.