Brynn disliked everything about this situation.She couldn’t stop wondering why Tolvir had been the one to ask for help or why Gistrid had been poisoned.“Thank you, lord.I hope you will excuse me.”
Tolvir inclined his head.“Of course.”
Brynn took Guin back from Lena as she and Esa followed silently.Brynn led them back toward the beach and their camp between Hróarr and Cenric’s ships.
“You think she was poisoned on purpose, lady?”Esa asked quietly.
“Yes.”Brynn inhaled a deep breath.“Maybe.I need to talk to Cenric.”He should be able to give her advice.
“And if she was?”Esa asked.“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” Brynn answered honestly.She glanced over at Lena, but the girl followed along quietly.
6
Cenric
CenricfoundOvrekinthe shipyards, as he had said.The sun was relentless in summer, turning the water into a glaring expanse of light.
Ovrek’s men were hard at work building ships.Dozens of them, from the look of it.Ships sat along the beach and inside workshops in all stages of repair and construction.Ovrek was building himself a fleet.
The specter of last night’s foretelling hovered in the back of Cenric’s mind.Were these portents of his own impending death?
Ships were the pride of the Valdari.In a land lacking the fertile farmland and lush jewel mines of the south, their ships were their greatest achievement.Ovrek and his veterans loved to tell tales of how their longships had outrun the Kelethi navy.After decades as mercenaries, their relationship with the Kelethi emperor had soured.Cenric still wasn’t clear on what had happened.There were whispers it had involved the emperor’s mistress, but Ovrek himself had never confirmed that.
Cenric approached Ovrek as the king finished speaking to several of the workmen in the process of layering boards into a ship’s hull.The Valdari king had no attendants or guards in sight, almost as if he dared his enemies to attack him in broad daylight, surrounded by his own men.
“Cenric!”Ovrek barreled toward him.“How did you sleep, my friend?”He addressed Cenric in Valdari now that Brynn wasn’t here.
The king wore no visible weapon, but didn’t mention Cenric’s sword at his hip, either.In the warring days, he’d ordered his men to carry their arms at all times.
“Well enough, lord.”Cenric clasped forearms with the king, coming to stand beside him as he watched the mast of a ship raised and hammered into place.
Friend!Snapper cried, greeting Ovrek with his tongue lolling out one side.
“And you, you mighty beast!”Ovrek rubbed Snapper’s sides, earning happy yips from the dyrehund.
Cenric searched down the beach, looking for Brynn.She’d planned to take Guin and Esa for a walk this morning, but he didn’t see her from this side of the bay.
“It has been too long.”Ovrek took in the work around him.“Two years?”
“Closer to three.”Cenric adjusted his cloak.
“How does lordship suit you?”
“It suits me well enough.”Being a lord had its own set of inconveniences and burdens, but Cenric enjoyed his life.
“At peace with your father’s countrymen?”
“Mostly.”
“Mostly?”Ovrek’s head tilted at that as if to angle his ears to the word.
Cenric decided there was no harm in honesty.“Leofstan, the alderman to the south, seems uninterested in friendship.”
“Why would you say that?”Ovrek seemed just a little too interested from the way his shoulders shifted.
This past spring, Leofstan’s shepherds had begun crossing boundary stones north to graze their sheep on Cenric’s lands.They swore ignorance when confronted by the Ombra shepherds.For now, the incidents were annoyances at worst, but they were the kind of small slights that might swell into feuds over time.Shepherds were as proud as thanes and men had been killed over less.Leofstan had ignored Cenric’s messengers and done nothing to stop the incidents.
