The Winter Prince (The Lion Hunters:01)(6)

“Yes.” I said to finish, my voice level, “The seventh was an execution I was asked to perform.”

Lleu’s pale face leached to chalk, not because he was afraid, but because that was how he registered almost any emotion. If, blameless and superior, he had demanded how I could do such a thing, I would have left him to entertain himself for the afternoon. But he said, “Who asked you to do that?”

“The queen of the Orcades.”

“Aunt Morgause? Your foster mother?” Though plainly disapproving, he was not wh, he wa surprised; Artos had not taught his children to look for any gentleness in you. Lleu gazed at me quizzically, and said at last, “But Medraut, you didn’t want to do it.”

For one blank moment I thought he had seen that in my face. Then with less assurance he added, “Did you?” It had only been a question, not insight.

“No,” I answered frankly. “It was a man I had liked and trusted. There was no doubt as to his guilt, but I did not want to be his executioner.”

“Why were you, then?”

“In the end, because he requested it himself.” God, how cold-blooded am I? It chills me that I can speak of such a thing in idleness, without ever betraying what I felt then. I sat still and looked at Lleu directly, daring him to question me further. He said abruptly, “Your name means ‘marksman.’”

“Yes. The Deft One, the Skilled One.”

Lleu suddenly grinned a little, wicked and delightful. “Are you?”

Driven by mingled pride and self-contempt, I said, “I’ll show you.” I went into the little dressing room next door where I found a spool of thread and a light, sharp probe made of bone; then I returned to sit on the floor next to Lleu’s cot. With the thread and a slender twig of kindling from the brazier I strung a makeshift bow scarcely longer than my forearm. The probe served for an arrow. I used to do this to exercise my hand when I lay bored and aching in the long hot days of the previous summer, before I was able to walk. It had been a diversion from illness and fear: so, too, for Lleu.

“Choose a target,” I said.

Lleu glanced about and suggested politely, “The green cushion on the stool.”

“Even you could hit that,” I said. He caught the faint mockery in my voice; indignantly folding his arms, he challenged, “The eye of the middle fox in the tapestry over the door.”

It was so specific and small that I think he expected me to laugh and ask for a reasonable target; or if I did not, to come close but miss, and afterward receive his condescending praise. I was too proud to do either. I never miss.

“Go on,” Lleu said, waiting.

“Watch closely,” I said. “There’s hardly any strength in a bow this small; the probe will probably bounce off the cloth when it strikes.” Lleu’s gaze flickered dubiously from the stiff and scarred fingers of my left hand to the target he had chosen: but what is my hand weighed against my name, my nature? I drew back the almost invisible bowstring, and shot; the sharp little sliver of bone struck straight through the minute black knot of embroidery, and pinned the cloth fast to the door.

“Oh, well done!” Lleu cried. He sat up straight, white and thrilled, and the startled and offended cat stalked away from him. Lleu stared hard at the door, then shivered and turned to stare at me. “I have to trust you utterly, don’t I?”

What made him say that, what made him aware of that? I shrugged as if I neither minded nor understood what he m





eant; but I was making light of what was true.





II


Equinoctial




I DREAMED OF YOU, Godmother. When I was traveling I slept deep and sound; oncer e back in Camlan I found myself stricken with frequent and unsettling dreams, always of you, always hateful. They were the final scars you left on me. I tried to ignore and forget them as I did the marks you left on my body; but like those, I could not always hide them. By chance, one night, when Lleu was terrifying the household with his panicked gasping, someone sent Goewin to wake me. I have no idea what I revealed to her that first night, for when I woke I could not remember the dream. Goewin would not repeat what she had heard me say, not even to me. But after that night if I was needed she came for me without being told. She would wake me carefully, rarely touching me, with a low word in my ear or a light in my eyes. Sometimes I mistook her for you, and then she would speak to me quietly and steadily until I woke and knew otherwise. There were those who thought me treacherous: what blazing fuel to that fire if Goewin had repeated the oaths and protests I made to you in my sleep. But she never told anyone else.