The Witch Queen's Secret by Anna Elliott Page B

her—which she
was, if all the stories about her could be believed.
    Not that
Dera had seen many fine ladies for herself. Or magic, for that
matter. But the queens in bards’ songs wore fur-trimmed clothes and fairly dripped
with jewels. The Lady Isolde’s dress was common blue wool, pinned
at the shoulders with plain bronze pins. And she must have had a
badly wounded man come in today, because the front of her skirt was
all spattered with blood.
    She was pretty, though. More than pretty,
really, with her white skin and big gray eyes and her black hair
braided and pinned like a crown around her head. She was also small
and slight, and Dera knew she couldn’t be more than twenty summers
old. But the look in her eyes still made Dera think of Mam. Who’d
been dead since Dera was sixteen. And still, thinking of her made
stupid tears rise to Dera’s eyes.
    “ No, my
lady. It was Jory I came here for.” She nodded to her son. The dog
had lain back down by the hearth, and Jory was curled up beside
him, scratching him behind the ears. “He’s this cough, you see.
Started just after Samhain, and it’s lingered. Just won’t go away,
and—”
    Lady
Isolde nodded. “I heard it. And I’ll give you some horehound syrup
for him. But if you’re in need of attention, as well—” she had
small hands, slim and graceful and very quick. One of them reached
out and lightly touched a place on Dera’s ribs,
the n moved to a spot on
her cheek, just below her right eye. The bruises must not have
faded yet. And she could still feel the cut on her upper lip.
Though at least it wasn’t so swollen anymore.
    “ I’m all
right. It’s nothing to speak of, my lady. Just—” Dera clenched her
teeth again to stop her voice from trembling, even as she felt her
mouth twist. “You know what men are.”
    Dera
would wager the Lady
Isolde did know what men were, all too well. She’d been forced into
marrying Lord Marche of Cornwall three months back. And Dera had
watched her, while she and Jory had waited for her to get done with
her rounds among the wounded men. Lady Isolde never stopped being
gentle and kind—and she’d a way of speaking to the men that could
get a smile or a laugh out of even the roughest-tempered. But when
one of the sickest of them clutched at her, grabbed her arm or her
hand in some fever-dream, Dera had seen her go very still, like she
was holding her breath and forcing herself not to flinch or pull
away.
    Then Lord Marche had turned traitor, had gone
against Britain and joined his armies to the Saxon devils. The fine
lords and kings on the High King’s council might have been
surprised by that. Not Dera. She’d scars of her own she’d gotten at
Lord Marche’s hands, when she’d been fool enough to take payment
from him for a night’s tumble. Turned out that tumbling hadn’t been
all—or even half—of what he’d wanted. Which she should have known;
you got to recognize the mean ones by the look in their eyes. The
man who’d given her these bruises had had that look about him, as
well. But Jory’d been hungry enough that she hadn’t been able to
tell him no.
    And besides, all the men were in vile tempers
these days, with the fighting going so badly, and battle after
battle lost to Lord Marche and his dirty Saxon allies. Half the
soldiers who asked for it used her like they were punishing her for
the loss of their brothers and friends. As if the bloody war had
been all her idea, or it was her fault Lord Marche had to be not
just a traitor but a master warrior, as well.
    At least
this last man had paid
her; sometimes his kind just laughed and told her she should be
thanking them for a good time. But this one had paid with a
battered bronze finger ring taken off a dead Saxon. And that had
bought her and Jory a ride on a cart here, to Dinas Emrys, the new
High King Madoc’s fortress high in the rocky Gwynedd mountains. A
place as safe from Saxon attacks as anywhere was, these
days.
    Now Lady Isolde
was