The Black Raven - Katharine Kerr [14]
“Ask I shall,” Evandar said aloud. “What are you doing to this woman, pretending to be a god and filling her head with portentous words?”
“Doing to her? She’s grateful. She begs me for knowledge.”
“And did she beg you to kill young Demet the weaver’s son?”
Shaetano winced and looked down at the floor.
“I didn’t mean to do that. Truly! He came bursting in here with a sword in his hand and iron cloth all over his chest. It stung me like fire. I was half-mad from it.”
“And you did what?”
“I just wanted to make him go away.” Shaetano’s voice slipped and wavered. “I shoved him, and the iron stung me, and so I threw him back against the wall.” He looked up, and his eyes gleamed green in the silver witch-light. “I didn’t know how hard. His head—it hit the stone.”
“Why wasn’t there a mark on him then, where his skull got smashed?”
Caught in his lie, Shaetano snarled and flung up both hands. Evandar crossed his arms over his chest and merely looked at him. In a moment Shaetano looked down.
“I don’t know how I killed him. I did somewhat, I waved my hands at him because of the stinking iron. And rage flew out, and somehow his life—it spilled away.”
“What did this rage look like?”
“Naught. I mean, it wasn’t a thing you could see. But he screamed and flung himself back and—and died.”
“You truly don’t know what killed him?”
“I don’t.” Shaetano looked up, and suddenly he snarled again. “Oh, and what’s it to you?”
“My heart aches for his young widow. Little Niffa. She mourns him every day still.”
Shaetano stared at him, his mouth half—open. White fangs gleamed.
“What’s this, younger brother?” Evandar said with a grin. “I see the word grief means naught to you. Let me tell you an interesting thing. I now know a great many things that you don’t. I learn more daily, and soon one of them will be how I may dispose of you.”
With one last snarl, Shaetano vanished. Evandar stood in the empty temple and laughed.
Councilman Verrarc was sitting at a table in his great room when Raena came home. As a merchant’s son, Verrarc had learned to read, but books to practice upon, as opposed to merchants’ agreements and city laws, were scarce in Cerr Cawnen. He still read slowly, sounding words out one at a time, pausing often to look terms up in the homemade word list at his elbow. He was glad enough to lay his scroll aside at the distraction when, shivering in her thick green cloak, Raena hurried in. Without a word to him she rushed to the fire burning in the hearth and held her hands out to the warmth.
“What be wrong, my sweet?” he said.
“Naught.” Raena busied herself in taking off the cloak.
“Somewhat did turn you all pale and shivering.”
“It be cold out there, Verro.”
“Not as cold as all that.”
With a toss of her long black hair, Raena turned her back on him. She hung the cloak on a peg on the wall, then walked over to look at his work.
“What be those squiggly things?” she said.
“Words.” He paused, smiling at her. “Here, look! To read these out, you do start here at the top on the right, and you do read straight across. At the end of the row you do drop down and read back the other way.”
“Ah.” She nodded as if in understanding, but he knew that she could read none of it. “What does that scroll be saying, then?”
“I’ll not tell you unless you do tell me where you’ve been this long while.”
“Oh, be not a beast, Verro!”
Verrarc shoved his chair back and stood up.
“Rae, it be time we had a talk. I do be sick to my heart of all your secrets. You do come and go at whim and never will you tell me where you’ve been.”
“Oh here, you don’t think I have another man or suchlike, do you?” Raena laughed, and easily. “I do swear to you, my love, that such be not true.”
“I believe you, but your secrets still vex me. How can I but wonder where you go?”
Raena considered him for a moment, then shrugged.
“To the temple in the ruins,” she said. “I do go there to summon Lord Havoc.”
“Ah. So I thought. The fox spirit.”
“He be more than that. He does ken lore that I would have.”