Chapter 8 Cenric #2
“I wasn’t gone that long.” Cenric tried to jest, but something must be wretchedly wrong.
“Esa, Lena, give us a moment.” Brynn nodded to the girls.
Esa scurried out to wait with Kalen. Another shape stirred from beside her, what looked to be a Valdari thrall. The second girl ducked out, shutting the tent flap after her.
“Who’s that?” Cenric’s gaze followed the thrall.
“Tullia’s translator.” Brynn turned back to Cenric. “She’s a sorceress.”
“What?” He’d never heard of sorceresses on Valdar.
“She has the ability, anyway.” Distress flickered across Brynn’s face. “That’s another thing. One of many things.” She exhaled a sharp breath. “It has been quite a day.”
“What else?” Cenric studied her carefully. He could see the worry lines had deepened on her forehead and her clothes were askew as if she had been plucking at them. “There’s something else, isn’t there? Tell me, love.”
Did she know Ovrek had all but commanded his allegiance? Was she going to ask him not to?
“Ovrek’s concubine was poisoned.”
Cenric blinked, but recovered enough to ask, “How do you know?”
Brynn’s hands knotted and unknotted before her. “The atheling Tolvir asked me to see her, so I did. The damage to her internal organs…I think it was pennyroyal.”
“Pennyroyal?” Cenric was hardly an herbalist, but he recognized the name. “The plant you use to keep fleas off the dogs?”
“It’s used for many things.” Brynn waved her hand in the air. “It can also cause miscarriage.”
Cenric considered that. “I see.” It wasn’t unheard of for a woman a third of her lover’s age to not want to bear his child, especially when that would make it harder for her to marry after his death.
“No, I don’t think she took it on purpose,” Brynn clarified. “She seemed genuinely upset, as did her servants. I think someone else meant to make her miscarry.”
Cenric pinched the bridge of his nose. Things kept getting worse.
“The pregnancy is over, but I think she will survive.”
Cenric straightened. “She was hurt?”
“Pennyroyal can be highly poisonous.”
Cenric exhaled. Ovrek would not be pleased to learn someone was poisoning his women. “Does the girl know?”
“I told her and her servants through the translator. I’m not sure they believed me.” Brynn made a short, frustrated sound. “I don’t know…where to go or who to tell. I feel like I should tell someone, but I don’t want to get her in trouble.”
Cenric was not meant for this kind of intrigue. Brynn was far better versed at such delicate matters, but she didn’t speak the language or know these people well enough. “We must tell Ovrek. If someone is poisoning his consorts, that could be a plot.”
“But what if the girl gets in trouble?” Brynn wrung her hands.
“Her life could be in danger.” Another thought occurred to Cenric. “Ovrek could be in danger.”
Brynn covered her face with her hands. She’d probably been tormented by this all day. “There’s more.”
“What?” Cenric braced himself.
Brynn dropped her hands. “Tullia…”
“What about Tullia?” Cenric shifted, suddenly uncomfortable after Ovrek’s jest today.
“I think she knows who did it. Assuming she didn’t do it herself.”
Cenric paused for a moment. “Why?”
“She said she was no friend of Gistrid. Then that she hadn’t expected pennyroyal to be so devastating, but I hadn’t mentioned anything to her about Gistrid’s illness or pennyroyal.
” Shaking her head, Brynn gestured helplessly.
“Then she offered me friendship, and I accepted, but what else was I supposed to do?”
Cenric cursed. Perhaps Ovrek should sort out his own family before planning an invasion. “I don’t want to be enemies with Tullia, not any more than I’d want to be enemies with Ovrek, but if I have to choose one, I’d prefer the one without an army.”
Brynn’s breath hitched. “An army?”
A stab of guilt pierced Cenric at that. “We will be at war with them. Soon. If nothing changes and I do not swear allegiance to Ovrek.”
Brynn’s eyes widened, but she didn’t look surprised. If anything, there was resignation in her face. Her grip on him tightened. “It is like that?”
“It is.”
“Can we…is there anything we can do to stop it?” Brynn made a soft whimpering sound. “Tullia told me she wishes to stop the invasion of Hylden.”
“Did she say why?” Cenric would have never suspected Tullia of sedition against Ovrek, but he would never have suspected her husband, Sweyn, either.
“She fears Ovrek has angered the ancestors. That his army will be cursed.”
Cenric tried to think how Ovrek could have done that.
The Valdari ancestors and Havnar, the deified First of Fathers, were not exactly lax, but they were difficult to offend.
Honor the ancestors, respect the ancient landmarks, and do nothing that you would not have known to the world—those were their only true commands.
“I am not sure what she means. And while Tullia is a force to be reckoned with, I doubt she could stop the invasion any more than we could. The king is set on it.”
Brynn seemed to wilt before him. He wished he had a more hopeful answer for her.
Cenric exhaled. “Ovrek offered me a place in his circle. Valdari settlers for the empty farms. We could keep everything we have and gain much more.”
“But?” Brynn asked the word softly, sadness weighing her voice.
“But Ovrek will invade Hylden.”
Brynn flinched as if she had been struck.
“I had a foretelling last night,” Cenric confessed.
Brynn cast him a sharp look. “You mentioned it this morning.”
“Yes.” Cenric was used to visions of his death by now, but he didn’t want to upset Brynn. All the same, she needed to know the outcome, if not the details. “Valdari taking Ombra under Ovrek’s banner. I think it is what will happen if I refuse his offer.”
Brynn’s shoulders slumped. “Even if my uncle did send us thanes from other shires to help fight, it would take time. We would be on our own for weeks or even months before then.”
Cenric braced himself, fear tearing at his chest. Fear of how Brynn would react, fear that she might rage against him. Fear that she might leave him.
“You are the alderman of Ombra.” Brynn’s voice went small, so small that he almost didn’t hear it.
“You know Ovrek best.” She inhaled a deep breath and lifted her face to him.
Tears shone in her eyes, but her voice didn’t tremble.
“If you believe that giving him our allegiance is what is best for our people, then…” Her voice cracked.
Brynn closed her eyes for a moment, and the tears fell, but she seemed to compose herself. “I will abide by your decision.”
Cenric had come here anticipating an argument, perhaps denial. A part of him had hoped that his wife might have some clever scheme to get out of this. Her mournful acceptance was not what he had predicted at all. “And if I decide it is best to give him my allegiance?”
Brynn didn’t falter. “Then he will have mine also.”
“If he calls for me to take my thanes and march south with his army?”
“Then I will go with you.” Brynn’s brow creased, as if she was fighting more tears.
“You would fight against your own people for him?”
“There are sorceresses in the south.” Brynn sounded grieved, as if she could already see her people in opposing battle lines before her. “You will need protection from them.”
“Brynn.” Cenric cradled her face in his hands. “You don’t have to do this.”
Brynn sniffled, still fighting tears, but she smiled. “I love you,” she whispered softly. “I would do this and worse.”
“You would become a traitor to your king?”
“I have been loyal to my king for as long as I could remember,” Brynn whispered.
“And I lost everyone.” She rested her hands over his.
“If betraying my uncle, my whole country, is the price of keeping you, then…Eponine forgive me, but I will do it.” Brynn would be pragmatic enough to know they couldn’t repel an attack from several thousand Valdari.
Not even with his thanes and her significant power.
Cenric wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against his chest. Brynn clung to him, nestling close against his heart.
He had been so certain he should swear to Ovrek just a few minutes ago. Ovrek was stronger than Aelgar. Ovrek was closer. Ovrek was familiar, someone he liked, and a man he trusted to be generous and fair.
It had been obvious that he should pledge himself and his people to Ovrek. There had just been the vague fear in the back of his mind that Brynn might not approve.
Now he knew that Brynn would be with him no matter what he did, that changed things. There was a weight to that. He had the fate of his entire country on his shoulders, but now Brynn’s trust, too. She was deferring to him, letting him decide.
And if he chose wrong, they would all pay for it.
Cenric held his wife and wished it had not come to this. But it had. There was nothing more to be done than to choose which king they would support, and which would be less likely to abandon them to the wrath of the other.
“I could live a thousand years and never earn you.”
Brynn let off a sound that might have been a laugh or a sob.
Cenric tucked her under his chin, breathing in her scent, savoring the feel of her in his arms. Sometimes he was still surprised that she was his. He was never going to have a wife better than her and that was something Ovrek would never understand.
“What are we going to do about the girl who’s been poisoned?” Brynn turned the subject back to the most pressing matter at hand.
Cenric shifted, feeling as if these twisted intrigues were ropes, tightening around him like a spring calf.
Brynn moved away from him to tilt her head up.
“We tell Ovrek. Then he won’t be able to claim you kept it from him if the secret comes out. I don’t know if we can accuse Tullia, though.”
Brynn bit her lip. “I just want to make sure he doesn’t blame the girl for anything.”