“Well, lad, who are ye’ and whereaway bound?” asked the gaunt man, and his voice was kind. He was, she thought, not quite as old as her father, but older than any of her brothers. She repeated the tale she had thought of.
“I am a hawkmaster’s apprentice – I was brought up in a Great House, but my mother was too proud to claim me a nobleman’s son, and I thought I could better myself in Nevarsin; so I took the road there, but I am lost.”
“But you have horse and cloak, dagger and – if I make no mistake – a hawk too,” said the redhead, his grey eyes lighting on the improvised perch, to which Romilly had tied the cut-away jesses- her whole training had taught her never to throw away a scrap of leather, it could always be used for something. “Did you steal the hawk? Or what is an apprentice doing with a bird – and where is she?”
Romilly raised her arm; Preciosa swooped down and caught her lifted forearm. She said fiercely, “She is mine; no other can claim her, for I trained her with my own hand.”
“I doubt you not,” said the aristocrat, “for in this wild, without even jesses, she could fly away if she would, and in that sense at least, you own her as much as anything human can own a wild thing.”
He understands that! Romilly felt a sudden extreme sense of kinship with this man, as if he were a brother, a kinsman. She smiled up at him, and he returned the smile. Then he looked around at the men ringing the grove, and said, “We too are on our way to Nevarsin, though the route we travel is somewhat circuitous – for reasons of caution. Ride with us, if you will.”
“What Dom Carlo means,” said the gaunt man at his side, “is that if we rode the main roads, there are those who’d have the hangman on us, quick!”
Were they outlaws, bandits? Romilly wondered whether she had not, in escaping Rory and taking up with these rough-looking men, walked from the trap to the cookpot! But the redhead smiled, a look of pure affection and love, at the other man and said, “You make us sound like a crew of murderers, Orain. We are landless men who lost the estates of our fathers, and some of us lost our kin, too, because we supported the rightful king instead of yonder rascal who thinks to claim the throne of the Hasturs. He assured he would have supporters enough by poison, rope or knife for all those who would not support him, and had enough lands to reward his followers, by murdering, or sending into exile, anyone who looked at him cross-eyed and did not bend the knee fast enough. So we are bound for Nevarsin, to raise an army there – Rakhal shall not have the Crystal Palace unchallenged! Him a Hastur?” The man laughed shortly. “I’ll shall his head rest in that crown while any of us are alive! I am Carlo of Blue Lake; and this is my paxman and friend Orain.”
The word he had used for “friend” was one which could also mean cousin or foster-brother; and Romilly saw that the gaunt Orain looked on Dom Carlo with a devotion like that of a good hound for his master.
“But if the lad is a hawk-trainer,” Orain said, “I doubt not he could tell ye what ails our sentry-birds, Dom Carlo.”
Carlo looked sharply at Romilly. “What’s your name, boy?”
“Rumal.”
“And from your accent I can tell you were reared north of the Kadarin,” said he. “Well, Rumal, have you knowledge of hawks?”
Romilly nodded. “I have, sir.”
“Show him the birds, Orain.”
Orain went to his horse, and took the great bird from the saddle. He beckoned to two of the other men, who were carrying similar birds on their saddles; warily, Orain drew the hood from the head of the bird, being careful to stay out of reach; it jerked its head around, making pecking movements, but was too listless to peck. There was a long feathered crest over the eye-sockets, but the head was naked and ugly, the feathers unkempt and unpreened, even the creature’s talons scaly and dirty-looking. She thought she had never seen such ugly fierce-looking birds; but if in good health they might have had the beauty of any wild creature. Now they just looked hunched and miserable. One of them cocked its neck and let out a long scream, then drooped its head between its wings and looked disreputable again.