Dangerous Waters Read Online Free PDF Page B

he worrying now, lest Master Minelas prove less merciful?
    Zurenne contemplated her embroidery. If she sought to remind Starrid of his guilt, she didn’t spare herself. She bore her own share of blame. She hadn’t thought to question Minelas, on that first appalling day when he’d brought her husband’s body home.
    Racked with weeping, she couldn’t compose a single rational thought. Even after all this time, she couldn’t comprehend the disaster that had befallen them.
    Halferan had ridden out such a short time before with a full troop of his household guards, well armed and armoured. Whenever the manor gates had opened, all that day and the next, she expected to see him ride in, anxious to explain away this foolish misunderstanding.
    But the sun had set and risen again and still he didn’t come. Finally Zurenne had struggled to explain his absence to their daughters. Saying it aloud, that their adored father was dead, it had felt like a lie. She even prepared her apologies for distressing them so, when it proved to be nonsense.
    But it was very far from nonsense, with his body laid on a funeral pyre outside the manor’s wall by the brook. With the widows and orphans of the dead troopers lamenting beside her, even those who had no body to burn. At least Zurenne could hope for the consolation of Saedrin’s mercy, as the greatest of the gods opened the door to the Otherworld to allow her beloved husband rebirth in that unknown realm.
    ‘Show me your work, girls,’ Minelas ordered.
    Zurenne set another precise stitch, her lips pressed together. Though it burned like acid, she must keep her wrath hidden for fear of making their parlous situation worse.
    Looking up, she saw him standing between her daughters, his elegant hands hovering as if about to caress their shoulders. Zurenne stiffened with fear.
    ‘Mama?’ On the far side of the sewing table, Ilysh held up a cambric kerchief, its central design steadily gaining a border of maidenstars. An entirely suitable flower for a girl on the threshold of womanhood.
    ‘That’s lovely, my darling.’ Zurenne forced genuine warmth into her words. Maiden and mother bless them, her girls had little enough to brighten their days.
    ‘And mine?’ Esnina anxiously held up a grubby square adorned with half a yellow butterfly.
    Zurenne hardened her heart. ‘You must be more gentle, my darling. See how you’re pulling the thread so tight that it puckers the cloth?’
    Maiden and mother help them, her daughters had to learn a good wife’s skills, if they were ever to make a marriage to escape this incarceration. If Minelas would ever allow it and risk whatever he sought to hide here somehow coming to light. If he hadn’t already made good on those threats that curdled Zurenne with terror.
    ‘That’s very pretty, Neeny.’ The monster smiled down at the little girl, all solicitude.
    He had been just as kind and attentive, steadying Zurenne’s shaking hand when she carried the burning brand to set Halferan’s oil-drenched pyre alight. Choking on her tears, she had silently blessed this stranger for his generous tributes to her lost beloved, his words carried by the wind to the assembled household. She could not have spoken, incoherent with regret for loving words unsaid, for misunderstandings never to be resolved, for their shared future now lost.
    Zurenne’s only duty, Minelas had declared, was comforting her bereaved daughters and honouring her husband’s memory. He would see to the manor’s continued good governance, to the needs of the demesne and the broad swath of the barony beyond with its tenants and farms. When the barons gathered for the Summer Solstice Parliament, he would speak up for their interests. These were a man’s burdens to shoulder.
    She had been so relieved. How grievously her lifetime’s instincts betrayed her. She’d never dreamed he would claim formal guardianship. But Minelas had done just that. After all, he had the late Baron Halferan’s