The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [53]
“Lillorigga!” he said. “What’s this, lass? Can’t you sleep?”
“I can’t,” she whispered. “Please, let me in?”
Puzzled, he stepped back. She slipped inside, then stood listening to her heart pound while he dropped the bar across the door. Anasyn stood by the hearth, his face a mask, but his eyes were red and puffy. Lilli knew that she could wait not a heartbeat more and still keep her nerve.
“It wasn’t Cerrmor men,” she blurted. “It was a trick. It was Boarsmen. My mother sent them with captured shields.”
Peddyc stared, his mouth open. By the hearth Anasyn grunted like a wounded man. Lilli knew she was trembling, and sweat ran down her back.
“I saw them,” she went on. “My uncle and his men. They were riding back into the dun on tired horses, that night I mean, after Bevva was … after she was slain. And they carried Cerrmor shields. There’s a lot of them in the dun, captured from one battle or another.”
Anasyn threw up his head like a stag who smells dogs.
“I saw Boarsmen ride out,” he said. “Do you remember, Da? I mentioned it to you, that some of the Boar’s men were leaving the dun, and a cart followed them.”
Peddyc nodded. On his temple a vein throbbed.
“And this morning, when the news came, I watched my mother, and she smiled.” Lilli’s courage came back with a rush. “She tried not to, but she smiled. And I knew then she was behind it.”
Anasyn had gone an eerie pale in the lantern light.
“By the gods,” Peddyc whispered. “That stinking rat of a man! The regent himself, was it? May every blessing in life be yours, lass, for bringing me this news.”
“Father.” Anasyn stepped forward. “I want vengeance.”
“So do I, and if Merodda weren’t Lilli’s mother we’d go to her chamber and slit her lying throat before we went and did the same for Burcan. But she is Lilli’s mother, and by the gods, cursed if I’ll hang for avenging my wife! Let me think, just let me think for a moment here.”
Lilli sank to her knees, unsure of why she couldn’t stand. Peddyc bent over and grabbed her hands.
“Come sit down,” he barked. “Sanno, pour her a drop of mead. Here, here, lass, you’re all to pieces, and who can blame you?”
In a flurry of murmurs Anasyn and a page sat her down in a carved chair, handed her mead, and brought a cushion for her back. All the while Tieryn Peddyc stood at the hearth and stared at the flames. Lilli took one sip of the drink, then realized her hands were shaking so hard that the pale gold liquor danced within the cup.
“I’ve got to get back.” She set it on the table. “If she finds me gone, she’ll kill me, too.”
“No doubt.” Peddyc turned from the hearth. “And when me and my men don’t come back when we’ve pledged, there’s a good chance she’ll kill you then, if she and her precious regent guess who told me the truth. You’d best ride with us on the morrow.”
“You’d take me away?” Lilli found that she could barely form the words.
“If you’ll go, of course we will! You’re my foster-daughter, aren’t you? And even if you weren’t, what kind of a man would I be, leaving you behind with that murdering bastard?”
Anasyn knelt beside her with a fluid motion and caught her hand in both of his.
“Come away with us, Lilli,” he said. “We’ll dress you in some of my clothes, and cut off your hair, and no one will notice another manservant or suchlike riding with us. And then you’ll be safe, back at Hendyr if you like, or you can come with us to Cerrmor.”
“Cerrmor?” she whispered it like a dweomer spell. “I could go to Cerrmor?”
“Cursed right, and welcome you’ll be,” Peddyc said. “The Boar’s own niece, gone over to …” He hesitated, his eyes filling with tears. “Gone over to the True King.”
For the last few hours of that night no one slept. While Anasyn stood watch at the door, Peddyc’s old manservant cut off Lilli’s hair, which she wrapped in a bit of old cloth, every scrap of it, to take with her lest her mother find it and use it to work dweomer against