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the
death?”
    “You could have been too clever for your own
good,” Gwen said.
    Hywel scoffed. “I could have been, but I
would have known not to try to get rid of a body in the millpond.
Dead bodies float. Drowned bodies sink. The killer didn’t know
that.”
    “I know. I know.” Gwen was feeling much
better. “Please forgive me.”
    “I most certainly will not,” Hywel said. And
when Gwen blinked at him, he added, “There would have been
something to forgive if you hadn’t spoken to me of it—if you and
Gareth had looked at me sideways for the next few days, wondering
all the while if I’d killed another man in cold blood. I will say
again that I did not. Believe me, the next man I want dead in
secret will be done very, very far from you or Gareth.”
    “That’s comforting. I think.” Then Gwen
glared at Hywel as she caught the amusement in his face. “You’re
mocking me.”
    “Just a little bit,” Hywel said. “And just
so you know, the knife is no longer in my possession.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Before I married Mari, I gave her the knife
and told her the truth of what I’d done,” Hywel said.
    Gwen stared at him. “You did?”
    “She needed to know the whole of the man she
was marrying,” he said. “She understands who I am.”
    “She forgave you?” Gwen said.
    “There was nothing to forgive, Gwen,” Hywel
said. “I did what I believed I had to do. That is who I am, and it
would have been wrong of Mari to marry me in the expectation that I
would change into someone else. I needed to tell her for her sake
as much as she needed to know for mine.”
    Gwen gazed down at her feet, shaking her
head. She hadn’t expected him to tell Mari the truth. And yet, it
eased her heart that he had. Mari and Hywel remained well-matched,
but it had always niggled at the back of Gwen’s mind that she knew
Hywel’s secrets and Mari did not.
    “Is the knife here, in Aberystwyth?” Gwen
said.
    Hywel pursed his lips. “I don’t think so. If
it were, it would be in Mari’s room. But Gwen—” he gestured to the
wound, “—it wouldn’t have had to be my blade that did this. It
could be any old blade.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “At the next meal, take the opportunity to
study the knives of the diners around you. I predict that a handful
of them will have notches in them. People are lazy. They don’t
sharpen their knives like they should, and they use old ones
because they can’t be bothered to buy new ones or repair those they
have. You’ll see.”
    Gwen didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of
that before. She could have made a study of belt knives over the
last three years. She wouldn’t have put it past Hywel to have done
so himself. He had the air of a man who knew what he was talking
about, and Gwen herself knew enough about blades to know that they
became brittle with age, especially ones that had been poorly or
cheaply made. In addition, a knife could be sharpened only so many
times before it failed.
    Hywel’s easy denial also had her
acknowledging that while Hywel knew all about murder, this murder
was too sloppy to have been his handiwork. Certainly, he would have
been foolish to have used the same knife to kill a peasant as he’d
used to murder the king of Deheubarth. Prince Hywel was the Lord of
Ceredigion. He had the reach and the resources to end the life of
any man in his domain if his desire was great enough, and to do it
without murdering him in the dead of night and throwing the body
into his own millpond.
    And Prince Hywel was anything but a
fool.
    “Meanwhile, I’ll ask Mari about the blade.
It may well be safe at home in a trunk at Aber, but if she brought
it, I will have her show it to you,” Hywel said.
    “And if she brought it, and it isn’t to be
found?” Gwen said.
    Hywel raised his eyebrows. “Then we do have
a problem.” A bell sounded from the tower. “That is the signal for
Vespers. I really must go, and you must see to Tangwen. I will ask
Prior