Tangled webs - Elaine Cunningham [148]
"But my shawl," the nereid pleaded, her hands extended. "Give it to me, and i will do anything you ask!"
Liriel turned away and climbed the bluff, paying no heed to the nymph's piteous entreaties. Fyodor extended a hand to her and helped her up the last few steep feet of the incline.
"is such treatment truly a needed thing?" he asked her. The drow shrugged. She untied the white silk from her waist and stuffed it carelessly into her bag, not caring that this action brought another wail of pain from the evil creature below. But the look on Fyodor's face did trouble her. He was clearly upset by Liriel's casual enslavement of the nereid.
"Would you agree that the information provided by a nereid slave was a 'needed thin~ if i told you that you, in ignorance of this information, might have killed the wrong man?"
Fyodor frowned. "What do you mean?"
"What if ibn did not kill Hrolf?"
"He attacked you. His death is earned thrice over."
"All right, granted, but i do not believe he killed Hrolf or that he has any part in Ruathym's troubles. The first two times ibn attacked me, i think he was driven mostly by his hatred of elves and his superstitions about females aboard ship. He didn't want to endanger the other sailors. But today he attacked me because he thought i was partly responsible for Hrolf's drowning, because of my involvement with the sea elves. Did you see how surprised he looked when i suggested that he drugged the men of Hoigerstead with that wretched mead? i was too angry to see this before," Liriel admitted. "But if this is true, it means
there is yet a traitor on Ruathym. We must find him--0r her-and not regret the means it takes to do so!"
Fyodor nodded somberly as he took this in. He did not quite agree with the drow's ruthless treatment of the nereid, but he recognized the importance of uncovering the traitor. "Do you know who it is?"
"i think so," Liriel said shortly. "Did it not seem strange to you that Dagmar appeared in Holgerstead the very day of the attack? With a wagonload of provisions for her 'bride price,' no less?"
"Not really. This is the custom of the land."
"But where could the mead have come from except Hrolf's warehouse? And who else had a key, besides his first mate and me?"
"There might have been many. Hrolf was a man who trusted easily."
"True, but consider this: just before Dagmar left for Holgerstead, she went alone to the warehouse to pick up a few things, apparently as payment for the poor sod who had to take her. Isn't it possible she added a keg or two of mead to sweeten the deal?"
"Possible," Fyodor admitted, "but it does not seem likely. Even if the mead were tainted, even if it came along with Dagmar's bride price, who is to say this was not an accident, but a deliberate act of treason? Dagmar's devotion to her people is beyond question. Why else would she go to Holgerstead as second wife in Wedigar's household?" Her friend's steadfast defense of the Northwoman was beginning to wear on Liriel's nerves. "Small loss, if she knew the man would be dead long before she was required to bed him," she snapped. "Not that it would be such a hardship. Wedigar is not entirely without appeal, as humans go."
The young man flinched; he could not help but take personally the drow's dubious assessment of human men. "Hardship only in that she does not care for him," Fyodor said stiffiy.
Liriel eyes narrowed and turned hard. "But she does care for you, is that what you are saying?"
"i am saying that Dagmar's willingness to go to the bed of a man she hardly knows-be that Wedigar or me-speaks well of her desire to do her duty to Ruathym," he
explained. "it is not the way of Northwomen to take such things lightly. I do not see how a woman with such devotion to duty could become traitor."
His words cut Liriellike shards of glass, for despite all her early adventures with this or that drow playmate, she herself hardly took "such things" lightly. Had Fyodor truly so little understanding of what she had gone through before she could accept him as a friend,