Hmm, thought Maewen, dropping back again. I suppose that says volumes about her early life. She has problems. Well, I suppose unpleasant people do have problems, or they wouldn’t be unpleasant, but that doesn’t mean I have to like her—or forgive her! And she went on trailing behind. She ached all through. Some of it seemed to be an ache of the heart about the way Mitt must be feeling.
Been here before, Mitt was thinking. It’s only what I’m used to. Only to be expected, really. Hildy’s back in the life she was bred for and that’s that. But though this stopped his hurting—a little—he was still hurting in other ways he was not used to at all.
He had thought Hildy was his friend. He had not known friendship could be such a fragile thing. Probably Ynen, if they found him, would not want to know Mitt either. And who cares? he said to himself, sauntering behind the mountainous Biffa and the much smaller Moril. The size of Biffa made him grin, hurt as he felt. She was a good few inches taller than he was, and Mitt knew he was around six feet these days.
“My parents keep the mill over in Ansdale,” Biffa was saying to Moril, “and they’re both taller than me. If you think I’m big, you should see my brother.
Size runs in our family.”
“It’s not far to Ansdale,” said Moril.
“Two days,” and Biffa. “That would be four, if one of them came to fetch me. They can’t afford the time. But they sent me the horse hire to come home. I don’t have to stay all through the recess like Hildy does.”
Mitt wondered what kind of mountainous horse Biffa would have to hire to ride home on, but the sick, choked, hurt feeling kept him from joining in the conversation.
They crossed an echoing cloister and came out into a bright, hot courtyard with steps at both ends. “Climbers,” said Biffa. “There she is.”
A number of hearthmen in Hannart livery were sitting on the steps opposite, indulgently watching Kialan Kerilsson walk about the court talking with a dark-haired girl in Lawschool uniform. Mitt checked a bit at the sight. He had not properly attended to where Moril was going. But of course! he thought bitterly. Kialan comes here to see his fancy, and they let him in early because he’s an earl’s son, and he probably doesn’t even notice he’s getting special treatment. There’s earls for you. Mitt thought he might go away. Then his misery said, What the hell—I’ll give him a rude message to his father. And he walked down the steps with Biffa and Moril.
“Brid,” Moril said sternly.
The girl spun round. She was very pretty, even prettier than Fenna, and not as old as Mitt had expected, probably only his own age. “Moril!” she screamed, and unlike the pupils in the sober line, she rushed at Moril and flung her arms around him. The two of them hurtled round and round, both talking at once and laughing, with Kialan throwing remarks at Moril and laughing, too. Mitt stood back, hurting.
“I only came to fetch her back to Hannart,” he heard Kialan say.
Brid’s voice rose in a Singer’s soprano, with a good strong edge to it. “Of course I’m not throwing away Singer heritage, Moril, or law learning! But it’s my life, and I decide it!”
“So she’ll be here for three more years,” Kialan said ruefully. “Satisfied, Moril?” He probably was in love with Brid, Mitt thought. See the way he looked at her. His chest gave a wrench at the thought.
Out of a further babble of talk, Moril asked, “Is your father here?”
Kialan shook his frizzy head. “No, I came over alone. Why?”
Alone except for twenty hearthmen, Mitt thought, and was taken by surprise when Moril said, “Good. Then you can meet my friend Mitt.”
Mitt’s chest gave another wrench, that Moril called him a friend, and then a sort of hop at the eager way Kialan instantly swung round and stared, with his head up so that his nose made him look like a questing eagle. “Mitt?” Kialan said. “From Aberath? Really?” Mitt nodded warily. “What are you doing here?” Kialan asked, no less eagerly.
Mitt intended a laugh. It came out as a hacking sort of caw. “Visiting on Hildy Navissdaughter.”
Kialan’s mouth bunched like a prune. “That white-faced little sow. She’ll be worse than Earl Hadd before she’s through; she’s the image of him already! Her brother Ynen’s worth ten of her.”
Mitt’s chest did odd things again. He was not sure what he felt, but he somehow made no protest when Kialan signaled to Brid to keep talking to Moril and seized Mitt’s arm and walked him out of their hearing. It was a lordly thing to do. Mitt found he hardly cared. The way he was feeling showed him that Kialan was a lordly type who would have acted like this if he’d been born a fisherman’s heir. It was a strange discovery. He faced Kialan, pricking with odd new sensitivity.
“Am I glad to meet you at last!” Kialan said. Mitt knew he meant it. “I was looking for you all over when I was in Aberath. Did you really sail north with the Undying?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Mitt said as they walked up the steps together. “It was Ynen’s boat, but I helped bring Old Ammet aboard.”
“I want to hear you tell it,” Kialan said, “but that’ll have to wait.” He stopped halfway up the steps and again pulled Mitt round to face him. They were near enough of a height to look into one another’s faces, but Kialan was chunkier. Kialan said, slowly and carefully, “It was lucky I didn’t run into you in Aberath. I’d have blurted out all sorts of jolly messages from Ynen—or I would have until that evening. My father spoke to me before supper then and told me you weren’t supposed to know where Ynen is. And of course I couldn’t go against my father.”
Mitt looked into Kialan’s light-colored eyes, a good many shades bluer than his own, and realized that Kialan was telling him all the same. His chest did strange things again. “When did you last speak to Ynen?” he asked, testing the situation.
“This lady—Noreth—is she riding the green roads?” Kialan asked, testing Mitt in return.
“Alive and kicking,” Mitt said. “She’s around the school somewhere if you want to meet her.”
For a second Kialan looked as if he would dearly have loved to meet Noreth. Then he shook his curly head regretfully. “My father would be furious. In answer to your question, I spoke to Ynen this morning before I set off to come here. He wasn’t allowed to send his love to his sister—” He looked questioningly at Mitt.
“All right,” Mitt said. “I’ll tell her.”