“What exactly did she say?” Piers asked, trying to keep his voice level.
“She asked if the lady was still here, with you, and when she was leaving.” Tiny glanced around again. “She asked me where the pair of you were going and”—her chest hitched, her eyes welled—“I told her. I had to, else she would have broken me arm.”
Piers’s heart was beating again, now in triple time. “You told this woman that Lady Alys and I were going to London?”
Tiny nodded, as if the motion pained her. “I’m sorry, Piers. Truly. I was so frightened though. Please tell me that you won’t let her harm Lady Alys!”
“I wouldn’t letanyoneharm Lady Alys, Tiny,” Piers said solemnly. “And you did the right thing in coming to me. Did she say anything else?”
Tiny shook her head. “No. But she gave me something, in payment for my answers.” The girl looked around once more before digging her hand into her apron pocket and pulling out her small fist. She held it toward Piers, and he took it without allowing the object to see light while stretched between him and the girl.
Once Piers had the item close to his chest, the girl looked relieved. “You can keep it,” she said, her mouth turned down with distaste. “I don’t want a traitor’s payment. It’s filthy.”
Piers frowned, and then looked down at his hand as he uncurled his fingers.
A gold coin lay in his palm, its likeness he had seen before in Alys’s own embroidered purse. An ornate F curled handsomely on the backside of the coin.
Piers gripped the coin in his hand, closed his eyes, and breathed a sigh. He opened them again after a moment and held the coin back to the girl. She shrank away.
“Don’t fear it,” Piers said easily. “Take it in good conscience, child, and be glad. This coin came from no one who would harm your friend—see this here?” He pinched the coin between his fingers, and a figure of Edward stared at him as he showed Tiny the other side. “It’s an F. For Fallstowe.”
Tiny’s worried face softened and her eyes raised to Piers’s. “Lady Alys’s home?”
Piers nodded. “The woman who visited you was likely Lady Alys’s own sister. Neither you—nor Lady Alys—have anything to fear from her.”
He saw the girl’s flat chest rise and fall. She snatched the coin from Piers’s fingers and it disappeared back into her apron pocket.
“But it should still be our secret,” Piers warned. “LadyAlys would be upset that her sister is following her, even with good intentions.”
Tiny nodded. “And my Papa would still switch me for being down from the tree.”
Piers nodded solemnly and held out his hand. “A bargain?”
Tiny shook his hand. “Indeed.” Then the girl unexpectedly threw her other arm about Piers’s neck and embraced him. “I do hope you return soon, Piers. And Lady Alys with you.”
Piers patted Tiny’s back awkwardly. “Run along now.”
She released him, and Piers rose to stand as the small girl ran on swift feet back to her family’s fire.
Sybilla Foxe was following them.
Piers turned and looked up at the underside of the tree house, where Alys was hidden away with his grandfather. He had heard no shouts, and no body had been tossed to the ground as of yet. ‘Twas just as likely though that the two were simply engaged in the slow process of strangling each other to death simultaneously.
He looked to the woods that led away from the village. Somewhere, Sybilla Foxe was watching them, waiting for them. He stared through the trees for a long time.
Alys had not expected to get away from the village without Piers’s grandfather cornering her, and she had been right. The old man had given her the courtesy of a warning before coming above, and Alys was dressed in her old gown and ready for him when he ducked through the wall. He came no closer to her than the flap that served as a doorway.
“Good morrow, Ira,” Alys said mildly, folding the blue perse gown into her bag.
“Are you going back to your family?” he asked bluntly.
She took her time in answering him, cinching her bag closed carefully.
“After Piers and I gain London and he does what he’s set out to do, yes. For a while, any matter.”
“Set him free.”
“Piers is free. Freer by far than I, and even you.” Alys turned to face the old man. “He is not your daughter, Ira. And I am no Warin Mallory. I love him, and I will stand by him.”
