The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [173]
Demet lay in the bottom of the boat, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes still open, staring at nothing. Somewhere a woman was screaming, high and wordlessly, over and over. Why don’t they make her stop? Niffa thought to herself. Only when Gart grabbed her shoulder did she realize that the voice was her own.
“He did see, Verro!” Raena hissed the words out. “It were needful to silence him. He saw, I tell you. He saw Lord Havoc!”
Verrarc wanted to grab and hit her, so badly that the urge burned as strong as lust. When he took a step forward, she shrank back and threw one hand up before her face. What are you? he told himself. Your father’s son indeed! He crossed his arms hard over his chest and tucked his traitorous hands into his armpits.
“What if he’d told his wife?” Raena said, and her voice shook on the edge of fear. “Think, Verro! What if he’d told little Niffa?”
“Well, now.” He forced his voice steady. “That would have been a worse thing, truly. But by all the gods, Rae, yours and mine both, a death in Cerr Cawnen is a grievous thing. No one will be letting this matter lie.”
“Ah, but you be the one looking into it, like, baint? Who but you, a councilman and the powerful man that the ratters do hold as a friend?” She risked taking a few steps toward him and smiled. “You be the man who’ll be saying who did what or that naught did happen but a sudden fever. There be not a mark on him, Verro. You did see that when the sergeant fetched you.”
“So I did.”
Under the bedchamber window stood a wooden chest. He sat on it and let his arms go limp, his hands hanging between his spread knees. The cold draft from the shutters soothed him, like the touch of a hand on a fevered face.
“How did you kill him?” he said.
“What? I did never!” Raena crossed to him in two graceful strides and flung herself down in a kneel. “Verro, Verro! How could you think it of me? It were Lord Havoc!” She caught his hands and pressed them to her chest while she leaned against his knees. “I know not how he did slay the lad. It were dweomer, stronger than any that ever I did see before.”
“Ai! Forgive me, my love. I did think—I know not what to think, truly. Forgive me!”
He pulled her tight against him and held her, shaking against his chest. But even as he murmured soothing words, he wondered at himself, that he’d been so ready to think her a murderess, the moment that the town watch had woken him to tell him of Demet’s death.
As the youngest member of the town council, Verrarc was in charge of the town watch and all matters pertaining to it. How was he going to satisfy his fellow citizens while protecting Raena? The question kept him awake for what was left of the night, even though Raena slept soundly right beside him, not waking even when he gave up the fight for sleep and left their bed.
After a few bites of breakfast he left the house and went down to the lake shore and the boathouse belonging to the Council of Five. He found Admi, the town’s chief speaker, waiting for him. Wrapped in the red cloaks of council members, they walked back and forth on the gravelled shore in the dark grey of a winter’s morning. The lake lapped and steamed beside them.
“There be no use in our going across till proper sunrise,” Admi said.
“Just so,” Verrarc said. “Last night by candlelight I could tell naught. If there had been a wound, though, we would have found such.”
“And what were the lad about, there in the stone ruins?”
“Sergeant Gart does tell me that they saw a light, a strange silver light, he did say.” Verrarc hesitated, thinking of lies, but Gart had doubtless told half the town by now. “It were the strangeness of the light that did make him send a man across. I do think that they were seeing fancies, myself. It be a long and lonely job, holding the winter watch.”
“Gart be a solid man, though. If he does say he saw a light, I believe him.”
“Oh, the light be real enough! What I’m finding hard to believe is this talk of strange silver witch lights.”
“Ah.” Admi nodded, sending his prodigious jowls dancing. “Now I do see your meaning.