A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [157]
The lad smiled, a flick of narrow lips, and led the gelding away without so much as a glance in her direction. Gwer seemed so glad to go that Carra felt a jealous stab.
“Now come in and eat.” Braema waved Carra in. “You look like you’ve ridden a long way, eh?”
“Long enough, truly. I come from Drwloc.”
“All the way down there? Ye gods! And where are you going, or may I ask?”
“I don’t know.” For a moment Carra nearly wept.
The priest and his daughter sat her down at a long plank table in the sunny kitchen, scattered with drowsy cats, and loaded her up a trencher with ham and greens and fresh-baked bread, the first real meal she’d had in days. After she stuffed herself, she found herself talking, partly because she felt she owed them an explanation, partly because it felt so good to talk to someone sympathetic.
“I’m the youngest of six, you see, three sons and three daughters, and my eldest brother’s head of the clan now, and he’s a miserly rotten beast, too. He gave Maeylla—that’s my oldest sister—a decent dowry, but it wasn’t anything for a bard to remember, I tell you, and then Raeffa got a scraped-together mingy one. And now it’s my turn, and he doesn’t want to spend on a dowry at all, so he found this fat old lord with half his teeth gone who’ll marry me out of lust and ask for naught more, and I’d rather die than marry him, so I ran away.”
“And I should think so,” Braema said with a firm nod of her head. “Do you think he’s still chasing you?”
“I don’t know, but I wager he is. I’ve made him furious, and he hates it so much when anyone crosses him, so he’s probably coming to give me the beating of my life just on the principle of the thing. I’ve got a good lead on him, though. I worked it out with a friend of mine. I went to visit her and her new husband, but I told my brother that I’d stay a fortnight, while she told her husband I’d leave after an eightnight. And in an eightnight leave I did, but I rode north, not home, and my brother wouldn’t even have suspected anything till days and days later. So as long as I keep moving, he can’t possibly catch up to me.”
“Um, well, I see.” Perryn pursed his lips and sucked a thoughtful tooth. “I know how purse-proud noble-born kin can be, truly. Mine always were.”
“Ah, I see. I was thinking of going west.”
“West?” Braema leaned forward sharply. “There’s nothing out there, lass, nothing at all.”
“I’m not so sure of that. You hear things down in Drwloc. From merchants, like.”
The woman was staring at her in such puzzlement that Carra felt her face burning with a blush.
“You could starve out there!” Braema sounded indignant. “Your fat lord would be better than that!”
“You haven’t seen him.”
When Braema opened her mouth to go on, her father silenced her with a wave of one hand.
“You’re hiding somewhat, lass. You’re carrying a child, aren’t you?”
“How did you know? I only just realized myself!”
“I can always tell. Sort of an, um, well… trick of mine.”
“Well, so I am.” She felt her eyes well tears. “And he—my lover, I mean—he’s, well, he’s…”
“One of the Westfolk!” Braema’s voice was all breathy with shock. “And he deserted you, I suppose.”
“Naught of the sort! He said he’d come back for me before the winter rains, but he didn’t know I was… well, you know. And my brother doesn’t know, either, which is why he was trying to marry me off, but I didn’t dare tell him.”
“He’d have beaten you half to death, I suppose.” Braema sighed and shook her head. “Do you truly think you’ve got a chance of finding this man of yours?”
“I don’t know. I hope so. He gave me a token, a pendant.” Lightly she touched the cool metal where it hung on its chain under her shirt. “There’s a rose on it, and some elven words, and he said that any of his people would know it was his.”
“Humph, and I wonder about the truth of that, I do! Easy for the Westfolk to talk, but what they mean by it …”
“That’s enough, Braema.” Perryn cut her off with a small wave of one hand. “Can’t meddle in someone else’s Wyrd, can you? If she wants to go west, west she’ll go. She seems to, er, well, know