Free Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 1 by beni

farmers from farther out had heard the news that an auction was to be held and had come in for the occasion.
    The inn had set up tables out front. Liath could not bring herself to blame Mistress Birta and Master Hansal for taking advantage of this windfall to increase their custom. She refused the marshal's offer of a seat. Prater Hugh stood to one side, silent, while the marshal sold off each item from the list. However eccentric Da had been, he had been a man willing to help any woman or man who came to his door and no doubt Liath was the poorer now for Da having spent much of his substance trying to help others for no return. But even with the bidding running high, for Da had been well-liked, when all his worldly goods were sold, the debt was not yet covered.
    Liudolf nodded and sighed his great, gusting sigh, and looked at her. The crowd looked at her. By the inn door, Hanna stared, her face caught between anger and grief. But not crying, not Hanna. A sudden commotion stirred at the far edge of the common, and a horseman appeared.
    Hugh flung up his head, starting 'round, his fine profile set off by his angry expression.
    "Ivar!" cried Hanna. She ran to hold the horse's reins while Ivar dismounted.
    They were too far away for Liath to be able to hear what they said, but Hanna spoke quickly, gesticulating wildly. Ivar shook his head. Hanna said something more, impassioned, but Ivar simply shook his head again. He led the horse across the common, Hanna walking and still talking beside him, and halted before the marshal.
    Liudolf raised his eyebrows. "My lord Ivar," he said politely. "Have you come at your father's bidding?"
    Ivar glanced once, swiftly, toward Liath, then away. Where she and Hanna, at sixteen, looked more like women now than the girls they had been two years ago when the three of them had formed their bond of friendship, Ivar still carried much of the coltish boy in his limbs and in the awkward grace that he would soon grow out of.
    "No," he said in so low a voice she barely heard it. Hugh smiled contentedly.
    "I just heard of Master Bernard's death," Ivar went on. He turned to face Hugh. "I came to see that. . . that Liath is treated well." He said it sturdily, but as a threat or promise, thrown up against Hugh's overweening confidence, it had little impact. Hugh had at least eight years on Ivar and the kind of natural grace that comes from a tyrant's soul melded with a handsome man's conceit. And though Hugh's father might be baseborn —or so at least Birta gossiped—-his mother was a margrave, by several degrees Count Harl's superior. Bastard or not, Hugh was destined for greater things, starting with the vast church holdings endowed by his mother and mother's mother. While it was rare for a man to act as an administrator of church property—as the Lord tends the wandering sheep so the Lady tends to the hearth—it was not unknown, especially where monasteries controlled vast estates. Or so Mistress Birta had said when Prater Hugh came as wandering priest to Heart's Rest last year to minister to the folk hereabouts. Mistress Birta was the most reliable source of news, gossip, and lore in all of Heart's Rest.
    "Marshal," said Hugh quietly, looking bored, "may we finish? I haven't the leisure to stand here all day."
    Ivar grimaced, blushing, and made a fist with his right hand, but Hanna grabbed him by the wrist and led him back to the inn. That he went unresistingly was marked by the crowd, which had gotten an extra bit of drama out of the morning. Liudolf sighed again and made a great show of tallying up the coin and barter gained from the sale of Da's possessions.
    "Ho\y much remains?" demanded Hugh.
    "Two gold nomias, or sceattas of equal worth."
    "It's a shame," muttered someone in the crowd. - "The price of the books," whispered Liath.
    Without blinking, Hugh handed two coins to the marshal. She stared, trying to get a look at them, but Liudolf c losed his hand over the coins quickly, a startled