The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [58]
It was a long while before Peddyc returned to join Lilli, Anasyn, and Varylla at the wobbly table of honor. By then servants were laying baskets of bread upon the table and pouring ale, which the tieryn’s riders drank steadily and grimly across the hall.
“Very well, my lady,” Peddyc said to Varylla. “You have my humble thanks from the bottom of my heart.”
“I only wish that this wasn’t a favor that needed doing, my lord.”
Peddyc nodded, accepted a tankard, and drank a good bit off. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand while he thought something through.
“My lady Varylla,” Peddyc said at last. “I had a chance for a quick word with your lord as I was leaving Dun Deverry. He sent you a message: I’ll be coming home in a few days. Be ready to join me and have anything you want to take with you packed in a cart. We’ll be heading to my cousin’s down near Yvrodur. He’ll shelter you while I ride on south.”
Varylla went pale, her eyes wide, but she smiled when she nodded her agreement. Torn with grief as she was, it took Lilli some effort to grasp what Peddyc was telling Camlyn’s lady. Bevyan would have the best possible revenge: the fury over her death would lose the Boar allies.
“And what about our gwerbret?” Varylla whispered.
“He won’t be able to come over until the armies leave Dun Deverry. But come over he will.”
Varylla nodded again, trembling a little, but her smile held firm.
“I’ll pray to our Goddess to get my lord home safely,” she said. “My thanks for the news.”
“Keep it as quiet as possible. You don’t want some servant running to the Boar with the news in exchange for a handful of coin.”
“True spoken. I’ll talk up my fears. I’ll have a dreadful bad dream. I’ll be loading the cart because the dream made me as sure as ever I can be that all is lost, and the horrible Usurper will be upon us any day.”
“Excellent!” With a firm nod Peddyc turned away. “Lilli, Sanno—you two get some sleep. We’re burying our dead with the dawn, and then we’re riding out.”
All that evening visitors filed in and out of the queen’s bedchamber, while Abrwnna lay dead-still, fighting to breathe, or so it seemed, and truly, her throat must have burned with a thousand fires. Still, Merodda decided, after some while it began to look as if the queen were enjoying this unusual reception. Her wan expressions, her little moans, were entirely too graceful and even lovely; finally Merodda caught her looking slantwise at a courtier to see the effect of some gesture. At that point Merodda realized that indeed, the queen would live.
After dinner her husband arrived, carrying a wooden horse under one arm. King Olaen climbed up on his queen’s bed and sat cross-legged near the foot, watching Abrwnna solemnly while he cradled the horse. He was, Merodda supposed, fond of the girl, as a boy would be of his sister. With the king in attendance, the men of Abrwnna’s fellowship could be allowed in without offending the proprieties. Each knelt at her bedside and kissed a pale hand, extended to them with great effort. The queen no doubt truly was exhausted, Merodda reminded herself. She had, after all, very nearly died.
“My liege?” Merodda murmured. “May I leave you for a while?”
With her lords in attendance Abrwnna never noticed when her serving woman left the room.
With the problem of Lilli’s whereabouts still on her mind, Merodda returned to her bedchamber. A servant had lit a small fire at the hearth, and from it she lit candles for the table. The silver basin still sat on the floor beside her bed. She fetched it out and set it among the glittering lights. When she turned her mind to her daughter, the image built up fast on the surface of the ink.
Her face drenched and raw with tears, Lilli stood beside a woman’s corpse, laid on a trestle table and heaped with flowers. Of course! Lilli had crept out with