“Absolutely not! I won’t poison a patron, not even slightly. If you want them dead, do it yourself.” Lilleen Sycahee’s blue eyes were cold and clear as a glacier. She crossed her arms over her chest, stubbornness manifest.
Despite the bluster of the incipient blizzard, their tryst took place outdoors on the frigid back porch. Threewolf was never comfortable under a roof. He’d have had to stoop to stand inside the inn. Heaven’s Hearth Lodge was not built with a man of his size in mind. Neither was she, but that had never stopped them.
As he trekked to the tiny lakeside town of Sunnyside, a thin hope glimmered ahead. Perhaps Lilleen had forgiven him. One look at her face killed all hope of adultery or adulteration. She was still mad at him.
Everyone was.
“Better a bellyache than a burial,” Threewolf reasoned.
“Better for them maybe. Disaster for me. That fat slattern Shelly Osterlee wants to open her own tavern. If people think I’m serving poison, she’ll take my trade away. There’s barely enough coin in Sunnyside to keep this place going. If two inns split the clientele, neither can survive. I won’t take that chance.”
He took a deep breath. Lill could still weave a worst-case scenario like no other.
“Fair enough. The bounty-men are bound to ask after me. The one with the green eyes and gray beard is the brains of the bunch. Get on his good side, then tell him I went west for the winter, through Griefgarden Gorge.”
“I won’t. When those manhunters learn my buzz is bunk, they’ll roll back on me and put my tavern to the torch.”
“You’re reaching, Lill. Who’s to say they’ll ever return at all? They might chase my ghost all the way to Iltran.”
“Easy to say what might happen when it’s not your neck on the line.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
He met her eyes with an imploring look. The glacier would not melt. It only made her madder.
“This is your mess! You’re the one who slew Moraney’s stupid son. Don’t drag me in!”
“Marco Moraney came hunting me, not me him. Three times I refused his duel, then the fool went after my wolves. I didn’t want that fight, and I don’t want this one. Just nudge them west, please. We had something once.” Threewolf’s voice softened.
“Had.”
He was silent for a long time. Words of protest formed in his chest and died unexpressed. It was useless. Lilleen would never understand, however he explained. The mores of men changed, and Rodeff Semalot stayed the same, a jutting stone against the wake of ages.
He marked the deepening lines of distrust on Lilleen’s brow. She thought his ways strange and his accent antiquated, just as her mother had. And her mother. And so on, for as long as their line had lived upon this lake.
The Sycahee men all died young, and the women never got along. They hated to hear how they were alike. Lilleen carried her mother’s temper, her grandmother’s smolder, her great grandmother’s laugh. Still, she wanted to be herself, solely. It was impossible, and so was she.
He tried another tact.
“How many men have you warned against hunting me, Lilleen?”
“Almost all of them. I told Marco the same before this all began.”
“Did any of them listen?”
“No,” she admitted.
“I don’t relish felling these fools. This feud ought to be between me and Moraney. He cowers in his tower and sends this plague of proxies season after season. I have to stop it, somehow.”
“You never asked me for help before, Rodey. Is seven too many? Is that why you’re worried?”
Threewolf looked away, hurt by the hypocorism. Lilleen hadn’t called him that in a long time. He shook his head.
“Seven men came for me this spring, none survived. Seven or seventy, it’s all the same, and it’s a shame. I’m sick of the cycle, sick of feeding greedy men to the vultures. I’m trying something else this time. Help me if you like, scorn me if you want. All I ever wanted was to live free.”
Her lips quivered. Then, her features hardened with resignation. Something he said, or the way he said it, broke through the ice. Lilleen had been burned before, but the coals were not yet cold. She would be burned again.
“I’ll try,” Lilleen promised.