Dunstany's servants did not go without.
Beside the cook's elbow was a dish of roasted baby potatoes, sprinkled with herbs. Melted butter glistened on their steaming skins. Piro's stomach gave a painful spasm of hunger. Without thinking, she went to take a crisp potato.
The cook slapped her hand. 'You'll eat the scraps when I say!'
Grysha giggled and Piro decided she hated him.
'Here.' The cook indicated a tray with a bottle of fine Rolencian red and a single goblet. 'Take this in. Master likes wine before his meal.'
Piro backed into the apothecary's dining room, holding a tray.
Dunstany sat before the fire, his long legs thrust towards the flames, a pensive expression on his face. Piro set the tray on the side board and poured the wine. She had served her father enough times to be a deft hand at it.
With a murmured word, she presented the goblet to the noble Power-worker. He exuded Affinity in the same way a cat might purr and knead its paws before the fireplace. His Affinity made hers stir.
The glittering black eyes lifted to Piro's face. Hastily she glanced down.
'You serve me as though I was the king himself. So many talents for a healer's assistant.' He smiled. 'Why didn't Sylion's nun have an apprentice healer from the abbey?'
The sudden change of topic startled Piro, but she recovered quickly. 'She did. The silly girl fell in love with one of the stable boys and they sailed for Ostron Isle.'
'Ah, yes. The Rolencian laws on Affinity.'
'The king would often consult my mistress about his old wounds,' Piro added, feeling she had to explain her training. 'She taught me how to serve him, so as not to shame her.'
'Did she? Well, we can be thankful you are a quick learner.' He held Piro's eyes a moment too long, making her uneasy.
There was a thunderous knocking at the apothecary's door and a voice demanded. 'Open up. Open on the overlord's business.'
For an instant Piro saw fear in Dunstany's unguarded face, then the servant masked it swiftly as Soterro hastily went through to answer the door.
After a quick consultation, he hurried back. In the front room they could hear several male voices all speaking Merofynian.
'It's the other Utlander. He's injured,' Soterro explained.
'Send him to the castle to his brother.' Dunstany looked up. Neither of them bothered to speak Rolencian.
Soterro hesitated. 'I think you should see this, m'lord.'
Which was odd, a servant advising his master. Before Piro could ponder this, Dunstany sprang to his feet and hurried through to the front room, snatching the lamp along the way. Piro would have slipped back into the kitchen, but Soterro caught her arm.
'So you're trained to serve royalty. Well, don't think yourself better than us. We're free men. You can make yourself useful, girl. Fetch and carry for the master.' With that he sent her after Dunstany. She heard him send Grysha, the kitchen boy, up to the castle with a message for the little Utland Power-worker.
In the front room half a dozen Merofynian warriors waited with a small bundle slung between them. Piro looked, but could not identify the Utlander's brother amongst them.
'Show me,' Dunstany said.
The men held the bundle open to reveal a shrunken, wizened old man curled into a huddled shape, no bigger than a child of six. Piro shuddered. Surely he was dead?
'On the counter,' Dunsany ordered. As they complied, he turned the lamp up. Seeing Piro, he thrust several starkiss candles into her hands. 'We'll need more light.'
She lit one from the lamp and stood the rest in a candle branch, lighting them in turn. Their flickering light dispelled the gloom, while Dunstany unwound the blankets covering the injured man and tried to straighten his limbs. But the man's body seemed to have constricted so that his limbs would not move. Piro glanced at his face. The skin was like wax parchment, sucked onto the bones. Even the man's eyes were sunken.
Dunstany managed to unwind the material around the man's stomach then pulled back with a sharp intake of breath, an Ostronite curse on his lips.
Why would he curse in Ostronite?
Piro forgot the question as she realised the Power-worker was curled around a sorbt stone. No wonder he looked like this.
She shuddered.
'What were you thinking?' Dunstany demanded of the Utlander's men. 'Why didn't you remove it? Who did this to him?'
'We couldn't get his hands off it,' their leader protested, torn between indignation and fear. 'So we brought him back.'
Dunstany massaged his temples. 'Tell me how it happened.'
'While we were on our way to Halcyon Abbey the Utlander argued with the Mulcibar mystic and we set off on our own. Then we found the seep.' The man frowned. 'Or maybe he sensed the seep, and argued so that he could hoard its power for himself.' He shrugged. 'At any rate, he set the stone in the seep to absorb its power, then we all went to bed. Next morning we found his Affinity-slave had slipped her chain, killed the sentry, placed the stone in his arms and stolen the calandrius.'
'What calandrius?'
'The one we found at the seep.'
Dunstany shook his head, as he walked around the counter, studying the contorted Power-worker from all angles. 'I doubt it was the Utlander's Affinity-slave that did this.'
'She hated him. She could've moved the stone like he did, wrapped in something. She — '
'I doubt she could kill a man. How did the sentry die?'
'Someone snapped his neck,' the man admitted. 'No signs of a fight.'
'Then she didn't do this,' Dunstany decided.
'Aren't you going to remove the stone?' the man asked.
'No point. He's dead. Was probably beyond help when you found him. If the stone was placed in contact with his skin while he was asleep, he had no mental guards in place. It would have plunged straight into where his Affinity power fed his life force and drained him at the source.'
The men shivered and muttered wards under their breath, reminding Piro how Fyn had taught her to protect herself against renegade Affinity. She must be on alert, ready to use the whispered chants and repetitive movements.
Piro glanced from the warriors to the noble Power-worker. She wasn't supposed to understand Merofynian, but anyone could tell from their stance and tone that this was serious.
'No, there was nothing you could have done,' Dunstany said slowly. 'You can go. His brother will be here soon.'
'You'll speak for us, my lord. He won't — '
'I will speak for you. You need not fear his anger.'
The men accepted this and hurried out. Piro recognised the same trust that her father's men had had in their king. While Palatyne's own men feared and fawned over him, the Merofynians respected Dunstany. More revealingly, they expected him to be fair and protect them from the Utland Power-worker.
She stared at Dunstany.
He caught her looking and spoke in Rolencian. 'This is what happens when someone with Affinity comes in contact with an unleashed sorbt stone. Never underestimate their power.'
She nodded. He seemed to expect it of her.
'You can go back to the kitchen now, Seela. Tell Cook to serve wine in the dining room and that we may have at least one more to dinner.'
Dismissed, she returned to the kitchen and delivered the message. Soterro and the cook had been helping themselves to what was left of the dismembered roast chickens and all of them had grease on their fingers and
