C. Dale Brittain by Voima Page B

pulled back by their friends.   The most exciting part was when the conclave voted to outlaw a king who had not even attended, for killing a man secretly in a fit of jealousy according to the testimony, and then hiding the body.
    Any man could kill an outlaw with no bloodguilt falling on him.   Valmar drummed his fingers on his belt and wondered if it would be hard to kill him, if the outlawed king would fight with desperate, inhuman strength.   But he would not even know him if he met him.
    When Valmar finally slipped away, he noticed that many of the attendants who had accompanied the kings had also left the proceedings, and even two men he was fairly sure were kings themselves stood some distance off, talking to each other.   No one paid him any attention as he went up to the castle.
    It was a castle like none he had ever seen, its smooth walls reaching high above his head, towers on every corner.   Pennants snapped from the towers, and all the stones were whitewashed.   There was a moat where swans glided, seeming to ignore him pointedly.   A guard in livery as elegant as his own best clothing stopped him at the bridge.
    “I would like to see the Princess Karin.   Tell her—   Tell her it’s her little brother.”
    When he was escorted a few minutes later across the bridge and into the courtyard, he was amazed to see that everything here seemed built of stone, and built connecting with everything else.   There was nothing like the cluster of weathered oak buildings that surrounded the stone hall at home.   He was led up a long stair, through a narrow room, back outside, and up another set of stairs before reaching the great hall.
    Karin was sitting in a window seat, reading a book he recognized, a book she had made herself by sewing together sheets of parchment.   In it were written, in a firm though childish hand, the favorite tales she had heard as a little girl.   She had told him once that she had made it before coming to Hadros’s kingdom, not realizing that many of the same old tales would be told there as well—and also not yet realizing, she said, how much different tales, or even different versions of the same tale, might contradict each other.   She read it now with a frown and her full concentration, as though hoping in it to find certainty.
    Valmar had not been sure of his welcome, but at the sound of his step Karin sprang up to meet him and took his hands as though she had last spoken with him much longer ago than yesterday.   She sat him beside her in the window, from which they could look out at the tents spread across the fields between the castle and the river.   He looked at her carefully, expecting to see her somehow different inside the elaborate gold dress.   But she was still his big sister.
    “I’ve wanted to talk to you for days,” he said.   “Everyone heard about the—the man Roric went with, and you know Roric told me it was a Wanderer.   But he said something else too.”
    Karin bent closer, her gray eyes so intense he had to look away.
    Now that it came to it he found it unexpectedly hard to say.   “I should have told you this before, but, I don’t know, I didn’t like to say it before Father and my brothers.   Roric said to tell you he would always love you.”
    Karin sat back slowly, her hands folded and her eyes closed.   “Thank you, Valmar,” she said after a moment.
    He had expected more reaction from her.   “Did you already know he loved you?”
    She opened her eyes and smiled with just the corners of her mouth.   “Yes.   I already knew.”
    “Well, I did not,” said Valmar, then stopped himself when he realized he was sounding petulant.   After a brief pause he went on, “I know he is not really our brother, but I was still very surprised—we’ll probably all marry someone someday, but I think I had assumed it was someone we had not yet even met.   I don’t want to say it’s not right, but …”
    Karin was still smiling, this time