The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [137]
“You little slut!” Merodda snarled. “I rue the day I ever birthed you. I wish I’d smothered you with your swaddling bands. You’ve betrayed your own mother and your clan.”
“Oh, have I now? The Boars were never my clan!”
“Just what do you mean by that?”
“You gave me away, didn’t you? Bevva was my real mother, not you. And when you killed her, you gave me away again. What do I owe to you? Just a lot of misery! And if my father had lived, I’d have been part of his clan anyway.”
“Oh, indeed?” All at once Merodda laughed, a cold little mutter under her breath. “You’re sure of that, are you?”
“It doesn’t matter, anyway.” All at once Lilli realized what she had come to learn. “Why did you have Bevva killed? Why?”
“It doesn’t matter? Oh, doesn’t it? You would have inherited Garedd’s lands, but he wasn’t your father. I’ve lied your whole life, my precious little daughter, lied to give you something that wasn’t rightfully yours. You’re a bastard, my fine Lillorigga! You can tell that to your precious prince.”
With a gasp for air Lilli leaned back against the door. Merodda laughed with a toss of her head and stepped closer.
“So how does that sit with you?” Merodda went on. “Your ever-so-dear Bevyan had guessed the truth. So I silenced her before she could shame you and get you stripped of your inheritance.”
“She never would have. Bevva never would have hurt me.”
“Oh, are you so sure? I’m not!”
Lilli forced herself to raise her head and look at her mother, smirking in the candlelight. It can’t be true, she told herself. It’s not true, it’s not! But a flood of memory was rising, threatening to drown her—little remarks overheard, the expression on a face when someone mentioned her inheritance, the gossip about her mother’s tarnished honor. Drop by drop the flood built.
“And who was my father, then?” Her voice shook on a whisper.
“And why should I tell you? Soon I’ll be dead, and you’ll never know.”
“Fair enough. No doubt I owe you that much, a little torment to get some of your own back.”
Rage bloomed on Merodda’s face. So! Lilli thought. I was supposed to wheedle and beg!
“Farewell, Mother,” Lilli said. “I’ll leave you now, since you can’t stand the sight of me.”
Lilli turned and laid one hand on the door.
“Wait!” Merodda snapped.
Lilli turned back.
“Think about your uncle, Lilli. Surely you heard the gossip about him and me.”
“I never listened. I knew they just envied you.”
“Oh, envy me they did, but the gossip was true enough. You’re twice cursed, my bastard daughter. Burcan was your father—your uncle, my brother. His love was the one good thing the gods ever gave me in life, and I would have been a fool to throw it away.”
“You’re lying!”
“I’m not!” Merodda smiled, and the curve of her lips seemed to drip poison in Lilli’s dweomer-touched sight. “It’s the cold truth. And when you were going to marry Braemys, didn’t the old cats in the dun hiss and mutter about that? You must have heard them, wondering if I’d marry you off to your own brother. You were a Boar twice over, Lilli, as much a daughter of your clan as any woman could be.”
With a shriek Lilli spun around and slammed her fists against the door. A guard pulled it open from the other side. As she stepped out she could hear her mother laughing in a long peal of hysteria behind her.
“Well now,” the guard said, “I don’t know what she said to you, lass, but remember that she’s beside herself. In a bit you’ll remember the good things, eh?”
Lilli burst out sobbing and ran down the corridor, flung herself down the stairs so fast that she nearly fell and preceded her mother to the Otherlands. She fled outside and into the middle of the silent ward, stood sobbing for a moment until she could collect herself.
“It’s not true. It can’t be true.”
The flood of memory rose up and broke over her. Burcan defended me from Tibryn. He offered land to keep me safe.
“Bevva!” Lilli howled the name as if her grief could truly wake the dead. “Bevva, Bevva!”
Gasping and stumbling she ran again, ran blindly, careening through the ward. She found the gate out by