He was only half joking. While Amaethon was practicing with swords and spears, Gwydion had been learning how to listen at keyholes and spread rumors. Magic aside, his voice had always been his best weapon.
The kingdom of Gwynedd had no spymaster—and it did not need one.
It had a trickster instead.
“The rumors,” said Arianrhod with a prim little grimace, “already say that I am a wicked diviner who lives in a magicked fortress and plots King Math’s demise. And that my twins were born on the floor of the great hall. I’ve had enough of your stories.” She sighed, tilting her head back. “Did you truly have to taunt Amaethon? What if I hadn’t come along? All you had to do was sit on a horse and watch him chase a fox. And now, I’ll have to explain to Uncle why I felt it necessary to maim his heir.”
“He’s not the heir,” said Gwydion at once.
Arianrhod gave him a tolerant look. “Not yet.” She blew out a breath. “Whydidyou sabotage the hunt?”
Gwydion shrugged. “The fox was sentenced to death for the crime of being defenseless. I thought it rather unfair.”
It was a light answer but with a ring of truth. What Gwydion did not say, would never say, was that when he saw that fox, he’d felt a prickle of empathy. He knew what it meant to be easy prey.
If Gwydion had been born to any other family, he would have been beloved. With his divining, he could have charmed crops, sung fields to life, whispered harvests into glorious yield.
But the family of Dôn was a family of magic.
Arianrhod and her twin brother, Gofannon, had power over metal. Amaethon had his fire. Only Gilfaethwy had been born without magic, and he had been exiled to a distant friary after his… indiscretions.
The other children of Dôn carved themselves a place in the kingdom of Gwynedd: Arianrhod created elaborate works of armor; Gofannon commanded boats and worked with shipwrights; Amaethon was groomed for war.
When one’s siblings divined metal and fire, being able to grow a fern was not a feat to boast of. But Gwydion knew that power was more than magic or weapons. Power was simply another word foradvantage. If he could not best his enemies in battle, he would do so from the shadows. His voice and sleight of hand were his weapons.
And if everyone overlooked him, they would never see him coming.
CHAPTER 3
BRANWEN BEGAN HUNTING when she was nine.
It began with an unruly flock of sheep. The shepherd complained to Branwen’s mother that his herd was avoiding a large swath of pasture and grazing the rest to the ground. Branwen listened from her place in the corner, where she had been trying to mend a torn shirt. Seeing an opportunity for more excitement, she slipped outside.
She went to the pastures. True to the shepherd’s word, the sheep were avoiding the eastern edge of the fields. Branwen looked for the cause but found nothing. Finally, she unbound her iron-stitched blindfold.
That was when she heard the screaming. It seemed the magic that touched her right eye had changed her other senses, as well. Without the touch of iron, she could sense that which other mortals could not.
Branwen had hastened to a clump of bushes, where she found acoblynau caught in a hunter’s snare. It looked a little like a tiny man with astonishingly ugly features. It was said coblynau haunted quarries and mines, and they could find the richest veins if treated kindly.
The iron had snagged on one of the coblynau’s sleeves, rendering it helpless. The creature was exhausted and near starving. Branwen could have slain it. But the coblynau was no great monster. Carefully, she reached down and freed it. It bit Branwen for her troubles and then scurried into the bushes.
But the next morning, she found an uncut, beautiful red crystal on her doorstep.
After that, Branwen earned a reputation as the girl who could find and deal with magicked troubles. She kept quiet about her eye and simply let the villagers think that she had a knack for finding the unseen. She discovered a stray but friendly pwca—a shape-changing creature—disguised in the form of a goat and brought it to her poorest neighbor, advising them to feed it well. In return, the pwca had blessed their farm with milk and good harvests. One weaver was haunted by an owl and feared that it was an ill omen. Branwen climbed a tree to find an irate and wholly ordinary owl with a nest of eggs. She had returned to the weaver with bleeding arms and reassurances that the owl meant no harm.
When she was thirteen, she began to hunt the true monsters. There had been a llamhigyn y dwr that had nearly drowned her in a murky lake—and Branwen bore the scars across her left shoulder. An iron-mad pwca took the form of a wolf and killed two men before Branwen slew it with an arrow.
Shehadattempted less dangerous means of earning coin: She worked as a messenger, using her sight to navigate the outskirts ofAnnwvyn without falling into traps. But that did not pay enough. Then Branwen tried her hand at being a mercenary—until one of the men said something rather unsavory, and Branwen knocked out three of his teeth with her dagger. There was the month she spent as a ring fighter. Then a single week of serving drinks before the tavernkeeper, Glaw, declared her too restless for indoor work.
Branwen was not a mercenary, nor a messenger, nor a server of drinks.
She was a huntress. And she was tired of pretending to be anything else.
“What do you mean he’s dead?”
Ifor’s house was far more luxurious than Branwen was used to. The rugs were plush and thick, the air sweetened with burning herbs and the smell of fresh bread. As barwn, Ifor collected taxes, defended the village and its surrounding lands, and would be required to raise troops if Gwynedd commanded it. But even with his lavish house and servants, he was merely a vassal to nobles of higher rank.
One of the servants had led Branwen into a sitting room, whispered into the barwn’s ear, and scurried away. In hindsight, that servant had been wiser than Branwen. She should have sent a written note and a request for her fee. But Branwen knew how it felt to lose family, and she had wanted to do him a kindness.
