He directed her through the streets, and it was all she could do to keep from staring about her as if she were the freshest of country bumpkins, hardly away from the farmyard; Nevarsin was a fine city, and Caer Donn as well, but Hali was wholly different. In place of steep, cobbled streets and stone houses crowded together as if huddling under the great crags of the Hellers or of Castle Aldaran, there were broad streets and low open dwellings – she had never seen a house which was not built like a fortress to be defended, and wondered how the citizens could sleep secure in their beds at night; not even the city was walled.
And the people who walked in these streets seemed a different race than the mountain people – who were strongly built, clad in furs and leather against the bitter chill, and seemed hard and fierce; here in this pleasant lowland city, finely dressed men and women strolled the broad streets, wearing colorful clothing, embroidered tunics and brightly dyed skirts and veils for the women, colorful long coats and trousers for the men, and thin cloaks of brilliant colors, more for adornment than for use.
One or two of the people in the streets paused to stare at the blazing red head of the boy, and the slender, trousered, earringed young woman who rode at his side in the scarlet of the Sisterhood and the old-fashioned mountain-cut cloak of fur and homespun. Caryl said under his breath, “They recognize me. And they think you, too, one of the Hastur-kind because of your red hair. Father may think so too. You must be one of our own, Romilly, with red hair, and laran too.”
“I don’t think so,” Romilly said, “I think redheads are born into families where they have never appeared before, just as sometimes a bleeder, or an albino, will appear marked from the womb, and yet no such history in their family. The MacArans have been redheads as far back as I can remember – I recall my great-grandmother, though she died before I could ride, and her hair, though it had gone sandy in patches, was redder than mine at the roots.”
“Which proves that they must at one time have been kin to the children of Hastur and Cassilda,” the boy argued, but Romilly shook her head.
“I think it proves no such thing. I know little of your Hastur-kind-” tactfully she bit back the very words on her tongue, and what little I know I do not much like. But she knew that the boy heard the unspoken words as he had heard the spoken ones; he looked down at his saddle and said nothing.
And now, as they rode toward a large and centrally situated Great House, Romilly began to be a little frightened.
Now, after all, she was to meet that beast Lyondri Hastur, the man who had followed the usurper Rakhal and exiled Carolin, killed and made homeless so many of his supporters.
“Don’t be frightened,” said Caryl, stretching out his hand between their horses, “My father will be grateful to you because you have brought me back. He is a kind man, really, I promise you, Romy. And I heard that he pledged a reward when the courier from the Sisterhood should bring him to me.”
I want no reward, Romilly thought, except to get safe away with a whole skin. Yet like most young people she could not imagine that within the hour she might be dead.
At the great doors, a guard greeted Caryl with surprise and pleasure.
“Dom Caryl … I had heard you were to be returned today! So you’ve seen the war an’ all! Good to have you home, youngster!”
“Oh, Harryn, I’m glad to see you,” Caryl said with his quick smile. “And this is my friend, Romilly, she brought me back-”
Romilly felt the man’s eyes travel up and down across her, from the feather in her knitted cap to the boots on her trousered legs, but all he said was “Your father is waiting for you, young master; I’ll have you taken to him at once.”
It seemed to Romilly that she sensed a way of escape now. She said, “I shall leave you, then, in the hands of your father’s guardsman-“