The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [66]
“Good.” Maryn flashed him a smile. “Don’t. Lord Anasyn, your sister shall be treated as my sister here.”
“My humble thanks, my prince.” Anasyn could hardly speak. “We owe her so much.”
“Tieryn Peddyc, no doubt you and your son are weary. Oggyn, summon a page, will you? Have him take the men of the Ram to their new chambers.”
A simmering Oggyn rose and bowed. To make sure the peace got kept, Nevyn did the same. As Peddyc turned to leave, he touched Nevyn’s arm.
“My lord?” Peddyc said. “When will the prince muster his full army?”
“The whole pack never will come to Cerrmor. The lords along the coast will be riding in with their men on the morrow. Once they’ve gathered, we’ll head north, picking up lords and their warbands as we go. It spreads the cost of feeding everyone around.”
“And a good idea, that. But we’ll ride out soon?”
“We will. You must be anxious to avenge your lady.”
“I am, truly.” But Peddyc looked so weary, so dreadfully, impossibly weary, that Nevyn wondered if he were longing not for vengeance but for death.
As the afternoon unrolled, Lilli felt as if she were dancing some complex figure to a tune she’d never heard before. At least in Dun Deverry, as a daughter of the Boar clan, she’d had a place and a rank, neatly defined. Here? She would have only what Princess Bellyra chose to give her. She did, however, have fewer personalities to sort out in Cerrmor than she had in her mother’s circle. Since Maryn held most of southern Deverry loyal to him, and thus his vassals’ lands lay safely behind the disputed border, there were surprisingly few homeless noblewomen living at court, and of those, only two seemed to be much in the princess’s confidence. Blond, merry Elyssa was a widow and the daughter of Tieryn Elyc, regent in the dun when Bellyra was a child. Degwa, twice widowed, belonged to the dispossessed Wolf clan, who formerly had held lands that the Boar held now.
Once Lilli had had her bath and put on a pair of her hand-me-down dresses, she returned to the women’s hall to find Degwa there alone. They chatted, while they waited for the princess’s return, about Degwa’s young sons and daughters, living in fosterage in various safe duns on the coast.
“Someday,” Degwa remarked, “I hope my children will have our lands back and restore my clan’s name. My sons will go to their father’s clan, of course, but my daughter knows her duty.”
“Um, I don’t think I understand—”
“Of course! My apologies.” Degwa’s voice turned cool. “An outsider wouldn’t know. The Wolf lands pass in the female line, you see. It was a ruling of Glyn the First of Cerrmor. My daughter’s husband will be the Wolf.”
“How very interesting! And where are your lands, my lady?”
“Along the river Nerr, some miles south of Muir. Our village is named Blaeddbyr.”
“Ah. I’ve never been there.” Lilli was profoundly relieved—she’d been afraid that close kin of hers held those lands. “But no doubt the prince will grant them back to the Wolf when the time comes.”
Degwa smiled—oddly coldly, oddly thinly. Lilli tried to think of some conciliatory remark, but at that moment the princess herself swept into the women’s hall with maidservants behind her.
“The first peaches!” Bellyra announced. “We can all gorge ourselves.”
A laughing maidservant set a big basket down on the table, and Elyssa pulled up a chair for the princess. Degwa turned her cold stare away from Lilli and let it warm. Although all the other women, even the servants, dug into the basket, Lilli waited until Elyssa shoved it her direction.
“Do have one, Lilli!” Elyssa said.
“Thank you, I will. I wasn’t sure—”
“Oh please!” Bellyra put in. “Do you think I’d be mingy to an exile?”
“It happens, my lady,” Degwa said. “Especially, or so I gather, among those around the false king.”
Lilli forced out a smile, then bit into her peach, wonderfully sweet and juicy. Summer comes earlier here, she thought. It seemed fitting, somehow. She reminded herself to tell Bevyan and Sarra this fancy—then remembered, of