And the Fiacal knife? Would it save or betray him next time? Until it drank Daoine blood again he had no way to tell. For now it was a knife like any other.
Just as he was Daoine like any other. For now.
Breag stepped over to the Fallen’s remains and grabbed it by the shoulders. "Are you going to help me with this or not?"
* * *
In life, Proinsis had been a tall man. Breag and Tarbhal grunted and sweated as they dragged the remains between them, the guard's cloak thrown over its head as a gesture towards decency.
"Tell me again why we're doing this." The guard stopped to knuckle his back, breathing strained.
“We can’t leave him here. His wounds show clear that he’s this morning’s Fallen. If Glór-hunters--the Brotherhood--saw him like this they’d rip your town apart.” Breag laid his end of the body down and stretched, taking care that his injured arm remained hidden in its sleeve. “It’s strange they haven’t found you yet, but after what happened at market there’s no chance they’ll pass you by. Hunker tight, play stupid and make sure there’s no evidence. You might get lucky.”
The tight look on Tarbhal’s face said that he didn’t count on luck. “What about the ward?”
“What ward?”
“Proinsis’ ward. The girl that lives with him.”
“You didn’t mention a ward.” Breag’s blood beat faster in his ears. “Is she a blood connection to him?”
Tarbhal shook his head, his breathing still heavy. “Granddaughter to his cattle-man. She came to Proinsis when old Pedar passed three summers back. Sionna, her name is.”
A pity. She might know something, though, about kin left in Caislean. Worth the trouble to talk to her at least.
“Seems I remember Proinsis had a handcart.” Tarbhal knuckled his back again. “We could leave him in the brush here, come back with it. His place isn’t far.”
A short side-trip, then, to question the girl. Then dispose of the Fallen and be gone.
Breag pulled his arm further up into his sleeve. He ignored the whisper of raven-wings in the treetops.
* * *
The track Tarbhal followed to Proinsis’ farmhouse was thick with weeds, rutted and pocked with water holes. No handcart had used it in long memory.
The house itself stood well back from view, concealed behind a stand of chestnut trees dense enough even in winter to provide thick cover. From where Breag knelt he could see that the tiny, quarter-paned windows were blacked from the inside and the dark-stained half door was buried to a man’s knee in a red-brown drift of dead leaves.
A whorl of passing breeze brought with it the sweet scent of corruption, and Breag gritted his teeth to keep from choking. How could a Daoine, even a Fallen one, have lived here?
“We take it easy with the girl.” Tarbhal shrugged back into the mantle of command. “No need to scare her.”
“Not too easy. We need answers.”
“I’ll be asking the questions, laddie. You just point me in the right direction.” Tarbhal’s look was hard as twice-baked stone.
Breag nodded. No point in an argument. He would wait to see what needed to be done.
Tarbhal rapped sharply on the top of the door. He waited and knocked again. “Sionna! You in there, girl?”
The farmhouse felt empty. Breag tried to look through the window’s tiny panes but filth on the outside and blacking inside defeated him.
This close the stench was much worse.
“I’ll see if we can get in from behind.” Breag left the guard at the door. He tried not to breathe too deeply.
He forced his way through a snarl of sharpthorns climbed tight against the gable wall, leading with his boots where he could. Rounding the corner provided an explanation for the smell.
A sprawl of rotted food, broken furniture and human waste claimed the rear of the cottage. Flies buzzed and crawled everywhere, and even in the cool autumn morning plump maggots squirmed in tangles. A two-legged chair balanced broken-backed against the back wall, its sagging, basketwoven seat garlanded with mouldering potato skins.
The smell hit Breag with solid force and he retched, saved from vomiting only by the emptiness of his stomach.
No door, and nothing here to explain or to point him right. He pushed back through the thorns, still retching. “This is foul. Did anybody really live here?”
“It must have taken months to get this bad.” Tarbhal hammered again. “Sionna!”
Breag rattled the door. Latched from the inside. He took a step backwards and rammed it with his boot. As rotted as everything else, the wood split at its hinges and burst inwards.
The inside was a single room, empty except for a ladder that climbed upwards to a sleeping area in the loft. It seemed at first that the stench was less inside, but a glance showed that every corner was piled with mounds of sweet rushes.
The light streaming through the empty doorframe painted the filthy floor with a vivid rectangle of light. All else was bare boards and bare walls swallowed in gloom.
“Nimh would birth kittens if she could see this.” Tarbhal stepped through the empty doorway. “Is there anything left in one piece?”
Breag stilled, ears straining to identify a tiny sound at the edge of his range. Rustling in the sharpthorns outside, maybe, or a bare foot sliding across wooden floorboards.
The sound came again. Definitely inside.
“What do you think he – ” The guard quietened at Breag’s gesture.
Silence now, but Breag had heard enough to know that the noises had come from the loft. He crossed to the ladder nailed into the wall, climbing it two rungs at a time. An open trapdoor led into darkness.
The loft was too low to allow him to stand upright. Enough light seeped around the shingles to see that the space was empty except for a pallet at its opposite end.
The girl crouched beside it, wedged into the corner where the roof’s slope met two walls. She held thin arms crossed in front of her, shielding her face.
“You’re Sionna, then?” Breag was completely out of his depth.
The girl’s head came up no more than a smidgen. Breag heard the scrape of the guard’s boots on the ladder and hissed a long breath of relief. His business was with Lost Seed, not skinny, half-grown girls.
Tarbhal took in the situation in a glance. He moved carefully towards the girl, arms held loosely by his sides. “Good to see you, Sionna. You’ve grown since we last met.” A safe distance from her he stopped and sat. “Do you remember the pony I whittled for you when you were a much littler girl? You promised to keep it forever.”
“Proinsis broke it.” Bald words spilled in a voice rusty from disuse. “He broke everything.” Slowly she lowered her arms to hug her knees, hands still clenched into fists.
The girl was seriously underfed with too-sharp cheekbones and huge eyes. A faded bruise muddied the left side of her face, its shades of green and yellow the only touch of colour on her pale skin. Breag could see smaller, finger-shaped discolourations along her shoulders and throat. The mark on her arm was newer, a map of angry purple.
She noticed Breag looking and reddened, pulling at her overshirt to hide the bruises. She managed only to uncover more.
Breag removed his gaze from her, shame scalding him. Would he even have come here if there hadn’t been a cart?
“We’ve come with bad news, Sionna girl.” The guard spoke gently, but even so the girl pulled herself tight. She didn’t speak.
“It’s Proinsis. He’s dead, lass.”
No answer save a single breath released slowly. Sionna held herself perfectly still, eyes fixed on the boards at her feet. After a long moment she nodded.
“Will you come downstairs? I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
The guard lied to her, or so Breag hoped.
Another long silence. Another shallow nod.
Breag climbed down first, distancing himself as much as possible from what would come. The girl surely knew that Proinsis was a Lupe and a
warg. She likely knew that he was many other things nobody had ever suspected.
He listened with half an ear as Tarbhal coaxed the girl down the ladder. She stood with the guard in the centre of the empty room, one hand clenched around the other. There were no seats to make her comfortable, no fire nor any implements to prepare a hot, sweet drink against the shock.
She was older than she had seemed curled in the corner. Full-grown, though with some filling out to do if she was properly fed. The women of this town would take her in hand, find her a place to make up for their neglect when she’d needed them. She could put the Fallen behind her.
Its shadow would loom always over her shoulder.
Tarbhal’s gently spoken news that her guardian was a Lupe prompted no reaction save a quick glance to his face and away. The question of whether Proinsis or Nimh had family living didn’t even earn him that much.
His offer to take her into town and leave her to the tender mercies of the farmwives prompted a much stronger response. She shook her head, eyes wide, quick steps taking her backwards to the ladder’s base.
“No.” A whisper.
“But Sionna, we can’t leave you here.”
Breag glanced around at the nothing in the room. No place for anyone here, especially not a broken girl with nothing and nobody, not even answers to his questions.
“Please lassie, let us do the right thing.”
“They’ll know.” A whisper.
“They’re your people. We all want to help you.” The guard took a step closer.
Sionna turned and flashed up the ladder, closing the trapdoor with a thump. Tarbhal turned to Breag, helpless.
“What do we do? She can’t stay here.”
“Send the women back for her. Give her time to understand for herself.” Very little time; the Glór-hunters would be here soon.
Tarbhal nodded, his reluctance clear. “Somebody should have seen this. She deserved better from us.”
People seldom got what they deserved, in Breag’s experience, at least not when it was something they wanted.
No answers. No handcart. No time left. Breag was done with Dealgan.
* * *
Proinsis did at least have a shovel, in an outhouse half buried in filth, and Breag made use of it to bury its owner. The work went faster with an extra pair of hands, but even so he was itchy to move on from this town.
Near as itchy as his savaged right arm. Breag knew he should look at it, but his gut twisted at the thought. Later.
Strange to step through the streets of Dealgan and think that only one day had passed since he had first walked into this town. So much had changed. He had held Bliss, had almost Fallen.
He would leave that behind when he left. He would make restitution by finding his Lost One and bringing it home to judgement.
The sun approached its noontime height and the streets hived with people. Many he recognised from the inn’s common room the night before and so long ago. These greeted him with a nod or a murmur, none meeting his eyes.
“They think you’re a Glór-hunter.”
“What?!” Breag stopped at the alley’s mouth, blocking the passageway. “Why? How could they?”
“Do you think men come to our town with Lupe-killing knives every market day? You can see where the thought came from. Won’t do them much good, though, when the real Glór-hunters come.” The guard nudged him to continue walking.
The misunderstanding wouldn’t help Breag either. The Brotherhood had little kindness for those who pretended to their calling. If they suspected it of one of his kind they would rip the Tiarna apart looking for him.
Breag scratched his right arm through its sleeve.
Ahead, the baker’s apprentice who had directed him to market ucked from a doorway to his right. The lad caught sight of him and froze, white-lipped, his adam’s apple bobbing soundlessly. The boy bowed, a singularly ungraceful gesture, and scuttled away before Breag could speak to him. Whispers rippled out from where he had stood.
Word was spreading. Too much time wasted on carts and skinny girls.
“If you’re quick, lad, I’ll walk with you along the coast road a ways.” The guard’s blue eyes were sharp. Likely he wanted to be sure that Breag left swiftly.
No matter. A local, a guard, would smooth his path until he could recover his anonymity.
“A shame Sionna can’t pack up and leave before the Brotherhood gets here. You know what they’ll do to her.”
Breag did know. Connected so closely to a Lupe, her passing would not go easy. Glór-hunters didn’t have the guard’s delicate touch with asking questions.
“Somebody needs to find a way to get her to Proinsis’ people in Caislean.”
No. No broken girls, no extra baggage piled on top of what he already carried. No.
“It would be a shame if the Brotherhood learned where you’re going. Could make getting there and finding anything useful right difficult. Might be a lucky thing if your needs and Sionna’s matched on this.” A hard look, no give in it.
No options. No way out. Just like before.
“Only if she’ll come. There’s no time for softsoap.” She wouldn’t agree. She wouldn’t even leave the loft.
“She’ll agree, lad. The girl’s no fool. Leave it to me to talk to her and we’ll catch you on the road.”
Knowing Breag’s cursed luck they would.
Packing took moments; washing himself and changing his tunic just moments more. Dealgan would soon be at his back, the Glór-hunters almost as quickly at his heels.
Although he tried carefully not to look, it was impossible not to notice the pink of new-healed flesh on his right forearm where the Fallen had left ruin.
5
Breag sat cross-legged on the meeting rock, its stored heat pleasant against the palms of his hands. The day had brought an unseasonal heat to balance the morning’s rain, although the breeze that frisked through fallen leaves tickled his face with wisps of black hair loosed from the braid heavy along his spine.
He could see the guard in the distance, gait uneven, pack thrown over one shoulder. The girl trotted beside him, struggling to keep up.
Alone with the guard, she held her back straight and her face open. Breag recognised the point where she noticed him from the way her body closed in on herself, shoulders hunched. Tarbhal spotted him less than a beat later and raised an arm in greeting.
By the time they reached the meeting rock, both were panting for breath.
“Rest awhile.” Breag unfolded himself and climbed down from the rock.
“Could we not go on?” The girl spoke through broken breath.
“No. Rest, I said.” Breag regretted his brusque tone as soon as the words left his mouth.
The girl cringed and allowed a hank of hair to fall over her fist-marked face. She slipped sideways, behind the guard, protecting herself from Breag’s sharp tongue.
What kind of man am I, reduced to bullying young girls?
The years had made him less of a man, he could see, now that he spent time in the company of other people again. He had always despised those who used stories of a difficult past to excuse bad behaviour. When had he become one of them?
Tarbhal’s mouth opened, his wide-bodied stance telegraphing disapproval.
To their left the undergrowth rustled, a stirring of harvest-damp leaves. Breag raised a hand and shushed the guard.
The bushes rustled again and Breag had the Fiacal knife in his hand quick as thought. Tarbhal moved more slowly, following Breag.
The noise came rhythmically, human definitely and not Lost. Not holding Bliss, at least. Breag’s blood pumped in his ears, tingling through the fist clenched around his knife’s old-bone hilt. Life surged in him.
Prey to hunt. Quarry to track.
The visceral need sparked memories of his almost Change – of his disgrace – but he pushed them away.
The brush stirred visibly now. Breag felt Tarbhal move to his flank.
A shoulder push
ed through the blackthorn scrub. A soldier; the one from market and the inn. Boulder.
Breag’s tension reduced a notch. The guard at his back didn’t relax.
The soldier startled, and tried to cover his embarrassment with a scowl. Face to face, Breag could see that Boulder likely hadn’t yet reached twenty years. He slid the knife back into its sheath.
The blotchy colour spread from Boulder’s face onto his neck. “Leaving already?” His sneer revealed flat, blunt teeth. “I thought you’d want to wait for your brothers.”
The Glór-hunter rumour. Breag had known it would cause trouble. “We have a place to be.”
Stupid to have antagonised the lad even more by dismissing him so quickly. Not such a lad, now Breag came to think about it properly. At the same age he himself had passed through his manhood hunt and was planning to wed.
How many lifetimes ago?
“And what place is that? I’ll pass word to your brothers for you. I’m sure they’ll want to know where you are.” Boulder’s smile was vicious.
“Well met, Aod.” Tarbhal intervened. “I hadn’t thought to see you here, and by so unexpected a route.” A glance from the road to the bushes at Boulder’s back underlined his meaning.
The red blotches crawled further along Boulder’s skin.
“You’re far from home, Tarbhal.” Aod didn’t return the greeting. “And keeping . . . unusual company.”
The girl’s shoulders hunched and her head ducked even further behind her hair. Unaccountably, this irritated Breag even more than it had when he’d caused it himself.
“A guard moves in many circles, lad.”
Breag caught the hint of undercurrents in Tarbhal’s words, and in what wasn’t said. A story there.
The blotches climbed higher but this time Aod held his tongue.
“Are you here by chance, Aod, or do you have business with us?” Tarbhal’s tone hinted that the conversation had reached its end.
“I have business of my own at the meeting rock. Not everything concerns you or your Guard, old man.” Aod turned at his hip and pushed back into the scrub.
Requiem for the Wolf Page 6
