Daggerspell - Katharine Kerr [79]
In the shadowed light his eyes were cold, questioning. She sat up, feeling her hands shaking, and twisted a bit of her dress between her fingers.
“Here, my sweet,” he went on. “You’ve been keeping dangerous company these days.”
“Oh, am I now? Who?”
“Tanyc. Who else would I mean?”
She clenched the cloth so hard that her fingers ached.
“My lord, I swear to you that I want nothing to do with him. Do you doubt me?”
“Never. But I don’t want my woman raped out in the stables.”
When Lyssa started to cry, partly in relief, partly from seeing her worst fear shared, Gweran pulled her gently into his arms.
“My poor, sweet little lass,” he said. “Here, here, don’t weep like that.”
“How can I not weep? Ah, ye gods, if you come to doubt me, what will you do? Cast me off? Cut my throat, and all for a thing I’d never do?”
“Hush, hush.” Gweran stroked her hair. “I’d die myself before I’d do you the slightest harm.”
As suddenly as they’d come, her tears vanished before a new fear. She looked up and found his face set and grim.
“If you challenge Tanyc, he’ll win. Please, Gwerro, I beg you. Don’t. Just don’t. What good would it do me, if I had my honor and no husband?”
“I’m not going to do anything of the sort! Do you despise me, think me a coward, and all because I can’t match him in a fight?”
“Don’t be a dolt. I could have married lots of bloodthirsty men, but I never wanted anyone but you.”
Gweran smiled as if he didn’t quite believe her. They were both trapped, she saw, caught by the customs that gave a man no recourse but to defend his wife with a sword. They would have to creep around the edge of Tanyc’s arrogance, the pride of a true-born warrior, which thinks it can win a woman with a sword in a world where other men secretly agree. Lyssa hated Tanyc more than ever: no matter what the end of this, her marriage would never be the same. She could only pray that Gweran would never slip over the edge into hopeless violence.
The fear combined with the heat to give Lyssa a restless night of bad dreams. Finally she woke, deep into the night, and heard a strange sound outside the tower. As she lay awake, trying to place it, the two children came bursting into the chamber.
“Da, Mam, it’s the wind!” Aderyn shrieked. “The wind’s here! It’s going to rain.”
Just as Gweran woke with a muffled oath, Acern clambered onto the bed.
“Clouds, clouds, clouds, Da.”
Aderyn grabbed Lyssa’s hand and dragged her to the window. She could see storm clouds, piling up in the sky, scudding in front of the moon, and smell the cool heady scent of the north wind. The ward was full of noise as the household ran outside to laugh and point and gloat in the feel of the wind. Since there was no hope of getting the children back to sleep, Lyssa got them dressed and took them down to the ward and the blessed coolness. Close to dawn, there was a clap of thunder, and rain came, pouring down cold in great sheets of water. Grown men and women ran round and laughed like the children as it rained and rained and rained.
Laughing, his yellow hair dripping and plastered down, Gweran scooped Aderyn up in his arms and held him up to see the dawn breaking silver through the rain.
“There you go, Addo,” Gweran said. “The horse wasn’t wasted after all.”
“It wasn’t the priests who did it. It was Nevyn.”
At first, Lyssa thought he meant “no one,” but then she remembered the herbman.
“Now, here! What could Nevyn have to do with it?”
“I saw him do it. I dreamt it.”
“Dolt,” Acern said, simpering. “Da, Addo’s a dolt.”
“Hush!” Gweran said. “It doesn’t matter who started the rain. We’ve got it, and that’s what matters.”
Lyssa gave him a grin: Blaeddbyr wouldn’t starve this winter. But as she turned to glance idly around the ward, she saw Tanyc, close at hand, watching her, while the water ran down his face and hair. All at once, she couldn’t breathe. She felt herself choking in what she could only describe as terror. She grabbed Acern’s hand tightly.
“Time to go in. Let’s all get dry.”
Too late. Gweran had seen Tanyc, too, and as he looked at his enemy, Lyssa