The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [159]
“It be a frightening thing,” he said one night. “It be the dark of the night, and there be snow all round about. What if you should fall and hurt yourself or suchlike?”
“Then you’d come look for me, wouldn’t you now, before the night was out?” She patted his arm. “Fear you not, my love. When Lord Havoc says you may, you shall go with me and learn what I do know.”
After she left, he paced back and forth by the fire for what seemed to him half the night. Finally he decided that he’d just go to bed. Why should he give her the satisfaction of knowing he’d waited up, half-eaten away by jealousy of the secret lore she learned from her strange teachers?
Yet he’d barely fallen asleep when she returned, slipping into the bedchamber with something in her hands. He lay still, eyes half-open, and watched by the light of the glowing coals and embers in the hearth without letting her know he waked. She set the something down directly on the hearthstone—a basin filled with snow. While it melted she stripped off her dresses and hung them from the wooden peg on the back of the door. Naked and shivering, she knelt by the basin, seemed to be considering something, then began feeding tinder and scraps of wood into the dying fire. It sprang to life as she fed it and sent her shadow dancing round the room.
With a yawn Verrarc pretended to wake. He sat up, stretching.
“You’re back, are you?”
“I am, and sore troubled.” Raena sat back on her heels and looked his way. “Lord Havoc did warn me somewhat. There be someone in this town, he did say, who does have great gifts for the working of dweomer. He fears that she be a foe to him and me.”
“Did he say who this might be?”
“He did not. But I shall scry in the water and mayhap search her out.”
When she leaned over the basin, her long black hair fell forward, framing her face and gleaming in the firelight. One tendril lay snakelike between her naked breasts.
“What do you see?” Verrarc whispered.
“Naught, yet.” She frowned, waiting. “Hah! There! I do see her now but dim, not yet her face, just her carriage. A young girl, from that walk.”
The fire crackled, sending long darts of light round the chamber. Smoke rose in a lazy drift.
“Well,” Raena said at last, “this be a startlement, Verro. The dark young lass, the ratcatcher’s daughter.”
“Niffa?”
“The very one.” Raena looked up from her scrying and sat back, crouching on her heels. “There’s a need on us to dispose of her.”
“We’ll do no such thing. I won’t stand for it, Rae. You mayn’t harm that lass.”
“Oh indeed?” Her eyes narrowed and her voice turned lazy. “And just why, may I ask?”
Raena got up, stretching in the fire warmth, but she kept watching him all the while, narrow-eyed and sulky. It occurred to Verrarc that she must be jealous.
“Because of her mam,” he said. “Not for her own sake. I do owe her mam a debt, a great debt, and I’ll not let anyone harm her kin.”
Raena considered, then shrugged, relaxing.
“And just what might this debt be?” she said.
“She did save me grief, and I’ll not be giving her any. It were my da. Here, you came down from the north country for the Great Market many a time when you were a lass. You did see him then, opening the fair, all smiles and bows as he did welcome merchants and men he did stand to profit by in some way. You never saw him at home. He beat my mam, he beat me, he did kill her, I’m sure of it though to this day I don’t know how.” Verrarc felt his hands crush into fists, heard his voice drop. “I were too young to know, but I do remember her face, all purple and swollen as she wept, and then the herb-woman did come, all in a flutter, and told our servant lass to take me out of the house. And when we did come home, she lay dead.”
“Ai!” Raena whispered. “Never did I hear this tale.”
“I’ve kept it locked up, a poison treasure.” He forced his hands to open,