“Her family’d rather die than hand her over to the likes of you!” The old man said, reaching the ground with both feet in a stomp and then striding toward Octavian. The horse tensed and raised his muzzle slightly.
A soldier stepped to the front of Sybilla’s mount and leveled a crossbow at the old man’s chest. “One step more and you’re a dead man.”
Sybilla heard the click of mechanism as the soldier readied to fire. The old man stopped in his tracks, a tic wrinkling his already weathered cheek. He stared at the deadly, pointed end of the weapon.
“No!” a little voice shouted, and then the tree tops came alive with long tongues of ladders, and leather-clad legs appeared through the growing cloud of hovering smoke.
In moments, no fewer than three score people—men, women, children—haggard and dirtied and clothed in whatappeared to be the forest itself had gathered together at the center of Sybilla’s crackling and smoldering threat. Sybilla recognized the diminutive child, her shoulders clasped by a grown woman, moving to the fore of the crowd.
Sybilla gathered her skirts to one side and shook her boot free from the stirrup, then swung down from Octavian. Her soldiers had left their arsonistic duties to truly surround the destitute people, their attention focused on their lady.
Sybilla approached the crowd and stopped only six feet away from the girl and her glowering mother.
“You lied to me, child.”
The girl shook her head, her eyes wide and bulging, her white face highlighted by the scarlet patches on her cheeks. “I’m not a child! I’m thirteen!” In that instant, Sybilla was reminded of Alys so clearly that it pained her.
“What do you mean, she lied to you?” the girl’s mother accused. “She’s never laid eye upon your cruel self!”
Sybilla raised her eyebrows. “That’s not true, is it, girl? We met the night of the feast.”
The girl’s mother’s eyes went to the top of her daughter’s head. “Tiny?”
“I’m sorry, Mam,” the girl croaked. “Truly, I am! I wouldn’t have told her anything, but she was to break me arm!”
“No,” Sybilla interrupted. “No, I would have never deliberately hurt you, Tiny, and I told you as much. I could not have turned you loose until I had the information I sought, and I could clearly feel your frailty beneath my fingers. Had you struggled, your arm would have given way.” Sybilla looked to Tiny’s mother. “Hmm?”
The woman nodded.
Sybilla looked back to the girl. “I didn’t harm you, and in fact, I paid you a fine piece of gold for your cooperation.”
Tiny’s mother gasped. “You said the coin was from Lady Alys!”
“But you lied to me,” Sybilla continued. “Lady Alys did not go to London. Piers Mallory walked into that city alone.”
The old man’s face fell from the hateful scowl into genuine surprise. “What do you mean he entered the city alone?”
“Just what I said, old one,” Sybilla turned her head fully to him. “Have you any guess as to why that was?”
He frowned and shook his head. “They … they left here together, only yester morn. They knew the route, they had plans to—Alys, she was to send word to you once they gained the city.”
Sybilla was stunned into silence for a moment. She spoke carefully. “I have watched your town the whole of the time my sister was obliged to stay here. The night before she and Piers Mallory left, Tiny confirmed to me where they would go next. We rode ahead to the city to wait for them, so that I could intercept my sister and bring her home before she acted foolishly before the king and found herself imprisoned. But when Piers Mallory arrived, he was quite alone.”
“Did you speak to him?” the old man asked.
“No. He is not my concern. Only my sister.”
“Mayhap you are the one who is lying, and you wish to harm Lady Alys,” Tiny piped up suspiciously. “Ira’s always said that nobles’ favorite sport is spinning falsehoods—and you don’t look a bit like Lady Alys!”
“And you don’t look to be thirteen,” Sybilla countered. “But I can assure you that I am indeed her sister, and that my utmost priority is her safety.” Tiny properly chastised, Sybilla looked once more to the old man. “And asit was you who sent them,Ira,perhaps you had better tell me what you know before your village is naught but a smear of charcoal on the forest floor.” She flicked her eyes upward. “One of your nests is on the verge of catching.”
“I already told you, viper,” Ira snarled. “They left together. And Piers, fool that he is, would never let harm come to your spoiled brat sister. For a reason known only to God, he’s in love with her. He took her to wife at the Foxe Ring.”
Sybilla swallowed, nodded, and then looked to the ground for a moment. When she again met the old man’s eyes, she was heartened by the concern she saw, lurking just beneath the put on disdain.
“If their plan has wandered so far from the course they both intended, then I am inclined to believe that they are both in great danger.”
Ira’s hairy brows drew downward. “Judith Angwedd.”
