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The soldiers were still hassling Hana. Mair berated them for accosting the weaver, and none of them so much as looked at Elwyn. She wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or insulted. Based on the questions they shouted at the villagers, she got the impression the soldiers were looking for someone a lot more elegant than she currently appeared, so they must have thought she was impressive in her days at court, and they didn’t see that woman in her current appearance. They focused their questions on Hana, probably because she looked weak and frail. Little did they know what the woman had survived already. They wouldn’t break her.
In fact, she was standing up to them quite boldly, much to Elwyn’s surprise. “How dare you lay hands on me!” she snapped, wrenching herself out of a soldier’s grasp. “I have nothing to do with the woman you seek.” It seemed adversity truly brought out her inner strength. Elwyn wanted to applaud her.
“Leave her be,” the duke said. “I don’t think she’s here.”
“The peddler said there was a woman selling herbs who fit her description,” the baron said, looking around the market. Elwyn ducked her head so that her hat brim shielded her face.
A peddler? So, it wasn’t Bryn’s spell breaking that told them where she was. It must have been the peddler who’d accosted her who’d reported her. She still would have been able to leave earlier if Bryn had told her what he knew sooner, but it wasn’t entirely his fault that the baron had found the village.
Elwyn passed the baron, holding her breath and hoping he didn’t recognize her until she’d had a chance to talk to Duke Maxen. She got as close as she could to the duke and looked up at him on his horse. He still had a golden glow about him, but from this close she could see the strands of silver at his temples and the lines at the corners of his eyes. Had he aged that much in her absence, or had she been as blind to his physical faults as she had been to the truth about their relationship?
He still hadn’t recognized her, even as she passed right by him. She had probably aged more since she last saw him than he had, given that she’d spent much of that time starving, walking, and sleeping outdoors. When she had Maxen between her and the baron and the baron was looking elsewhere, she took off her hat and called to the duke, “Did you come here looking for me?”
He turned toward her, color draining from his face in shock. “Elwyn?” he said.
“Yes. It’s me. And I have something to say to you. I did not kill Sir Aled, either deliberately or accidentally. If you knew me at all, you would know that to be true, and the fact that you were ever even the least bit willing to consider that tells me that you are not the man I thought you were.”
He looked like she’d just slapped him, but he didn’t get a chance to respond before the baron shouted, “There she is! Seize her!”
Maxen had yet another chance to stand up for her as there was time for him to call off the soldiers while they rushed toward her, but he didn’t say anything, whether because he was still stunned or because he agreed with the order, she couldn’t tell. It was Bryn who drew his sword and blocked the way. “Keep your hands off her,” he snapped, brandishing the sword. She wasn’t sure if he could actually do anything with the sword, but he didn’t look entirely incompetent. The soldiers actually held back.
The baron laughed. “You’re going to do what, foolish wizard? You’re as useless with a sword as you are with a spell.”
“How long did you go without regaining your memory?” Bryn asked. “I’d say that wasn’t useless.”
“I didn’t lose my memory. I only forgot about coming here, and that spell broke as soon as I arrived.”
Elwyn couldn’t see Bryn’s face to see how he reacted to that news, but he did hesitate before replying, “It didn’t matter then, did it?” If he’d wiped his own memory, down to his identity, while his target had merely forgotten where he’d gone and why, then perhaps he wasn’t wrong about being the worst wizard ever. Or she’d been right about him wanting to forget himself, and that had enhanced the spell.
“Take her!” the baron ordered his men, but finally Maxen held up a hand to stop them. They looked between the duke and the baron, uncertain which order to follow.
“There’s no need to grab her,” Maxen said. “She’s not going anywhere.”
By this time, the other villagers had noticed the confrontation and had come over to see what was happening. “Wyn, what is this?” Mair called out from beyond the soldiers who’d circled Elwyn.
“These people are the reason I ended up here,” Elwyn explained.
Mair looked up at the duke, then back at Elwyn with a wry smile. “Ah, so he’s the louse who didn’t stand up for you.” Elwyn had to fight her own smile. Only Mair would be so bold as to insult a duke to his face.
“Elwyn Howell, I arrest you for the murder of Sir Aled,” the baron said, forcing his horse through the circle of soldiers.
“How are you sure that I murdered him?” Elwyn asked him. “I had no contact with him between the time I tended him and the time you announced his death.”
His face red with rage, he shook an accusing finger at her. “You let him die on purpose.”
“He wasn’t injured that badly. That wasn’t a fatal wound. I could have left him totally alone without doing anything to treat his wound, and he would have lived. His death had nothing to do with me.” Knowing she was taking a huge risk, she walked straight to his horse, pausing to give Bryn a look that she hoped signaled to him that she didn’t need him rushing to her defense, and held up her hands, wrists together, as though offering herself to be bound. “If you’re arresting me, do so yourself.”
Anyone with half a brain would have expected a trap, but he swung himself out of the saddle and approached her gleefully. “It would be my honor,” he said with a sneer, reaching out to grab her hands.
In that moment, she made the connection. She couldn’t read his direct thoughts, but when she plunged into his consciousness at the depth she went, she could come close. She almost never went that deep because it wasn’t necessary for her work and it was intrusive, but if there was ever a time to use her gift to its fullest extent, this was it. “Guilt,” she said. “Regret. A good man lost, but it had to be done, the best opportunity. Clear the way of obstacles.”
The baron released her abruptly. “Take her!” he called to his men, who grabbed her. To the duke, he said, “She lies, of course. She always was ambitious. That’s why she wormed her way in so close to you.”
That wasn’t the way it had gone at all, but if Maxen didn’t realize it, she doubted anything she said would matter. The duke did look somewhat torn, though, like he was having second thoughts. “If you didn’t let him die, then how did he die?” he asked Elwyn.
“You should ask the one who feels guilty about his death,” she replied.
“Why would he kill his own man?”
