Romilly said, “I know no more than you. And King Carolin cannot marry until the Council gives him leave – a noblewoman of Lady Maura’s station cannot marry without parental consent, and how much more if the king comes wooing? But certainly, if they have their will, there will be a marriage made.”
“And if there is not, the king will get him a bastard to make as much trouble in the kingdom as that gre’zuin Rakhal,” said Tina scornfully. “Nice behavior for a leronis – I know from her waiting-woman that she spent two nights in the king’s tent; what sort of chaperon is she for Romy, then?”
Ranald had taught her to shield herself a little; so Romilly managed neither to blush nor turn away her eyes. “Between three ugly birds and my brother, do you truly think I need a chaperone, Tina? As for Maura, I have heard she is kept virgin for the Sight, and I cannot believe she would endanger that, even in a king’s bed, while the war still rages; but I am not the keeper of her conscience; she is a grown woman and a leronis, and need account to no man.”
Clea made a contemptuous sound. “So she might sell her maidenhood for a crown, but not for love? Bravely done, leronis!” she made an applauding gesture. “See that you profit by her example, Romy!”
She had thought that among these women, who were free to follow their own wills, she might have been able to speak of this thing that bad happened to her; even now, she felt, if she could speak with Jandria alone, she would like to tell her … but Jandria was already rising to attend on Carolin’s advisers, and there was no other, not even Clea, whom she had thought her friend, to whom she felt she could talk freely. Not after their scornful words. No, she would not speak of Ranald. They would not understand at all.
She knew that she had not disgraced her earring, nor brought the Sisterhood into contempt. Her oath bound her to nothing more; and at least she had not sold herself to that elderly lecher Dom Garris in return for riches and the prospering of her father’s horse-trade with Scathfell!
So on the third day, when she went out to fly the birds, with Ruyven and Ranald, her spirits were high. The day was grey and drizzly, with little spats and slashes of gusty rain coming across the plains, and even when a rare break came in the clouds, the wind was high. The sentry-birds huddled on their perches, squalling with protest when they were put on their blocks; they did not like this weather, but they needed exercise after two days of full fed rest, and Carolin needed to know where Rakhal’s armies moved in the countryside.
“Somehow we must keep them low enough to spy through the mists,” Ranald said, and Romilly protested, “They will not like that.”
“I am not concerned with their liking or the lack of it,” Ranald said curtly, “We are not flying the birds for our own pleasure nor yet theirs – have you forgotten that, Romy?”
She had, for a moment, so close she felt to the great birds. As she tossed Diligence free of her gloved hand, she went into rapport with the winged creature, flying on strong pinions, high over the ranges, then remembered, forced it into flying lower, hovering, guiding the bird eastward to where they had last seen Rakhal’s armies.
Even so, and with the bird’s extra keen sight, she could not see very far; the drizzle clouded vision, so that she had to fly the bird low enough to see the ground, and the rain, slanting in from the northeast, dimmed sight further. This kind of flight bore no relationship to what she had known last time they flew, soaring in headlong flight, hovering high and letting the picture of the ground be relayed through Ranald to Carolin. Now it was slow, sullen effort, forcing the bird’s will against the stubborn wish to turn tail and fly home to huddle on the perch till fine weather, then forcing it down against the instinct to fly high above the clouds.