"Looks as though I am." For now.
Anú stood in her kitchen with the window's light behind her and watched them leave.
"What now?" Tarbhal still radiated an acrid rage.
"Back to the inn. We need to ask more questions." Breag stood rocklike, the cub leaned heavy against his leg. The Lupe had surely lost heart as much as any of them, but he showed no sign of it. His braid was woven tight and black as ever, the knife at his hip angled just as confidently. Sionna felt stones in her belly each time she caught him with the corner of her eye.
“Back where we came from?” Tarbhal’s question made Sionna’s hopes soar.
He meant the inn, she realised just as quickly. Strange how the adventure of her lifetime had congealed into a procession dour, suspicious Uls and a prayer-string of places she never wanted to see again.
Next time she would travel North. On her own. And she did not intend to journey anywhere near those five villages of Lupes.
Breag answered Tarbhal’s words with a nod and led them back to the morning’s inn. Tarbhal trailed, and Sionna fell into step with Laoighre as she always did. Again, all of her choices were circumscribed by invisible walls.
“Do we choose our own place in the company, I wonder, or is it chosen for us?” The words were for herself, but Laoighre considered her with sharp blue eyes.
“Some people are blessed by the Gods and get to act. The rest of us react.” He studied his fray-toed footwear, cheeks pinking. “Or so I’ve heard it said.”
“You chose to come with us. Your choice left Macha and came here.” Sionna gentled her voice as much as she could, hoping he’d understand the question she left unspoken.
Laoighre laughed, low and mirthless. “I’m less than the beast in this company. Cú knows more about what’s going on than I do.” He shushed Sionna’s interruption. “We’re looking for somebody, for some reason that has to do with you and with Breag, but not together. We carefully talk around the cub being brindle, and that you’d sooner stand in the fire than sit by him.” He jerked his head towards Breag.
“You come from a place called Dealgan, going by what the old witch said, and don’t seem all that surprised the Glór-Hunters arrived just when you left. And not one of you thinks I’m worth even the daftest lie to explain any of it.” Laoighre shoved his hands under his tunic, hooking his thumbs into the waistband of his trousers. The grin that crooked his mouth came nowhere near his eyes.
Sionna set one foot in front of the other, at a loss. She should say something to make it come right again. She should throw her arm around Laoighre’s shoulder like Tarbhal would, make a joke about the morning’s porridge souring his stomach. She should do something apart from watch her feet and wait desperately for somebody else to fix it.
“I’ve had enough of your whispers and the looks you all think I’m too stupid to see.” Laoighre’s taut voice broke an ugly silence. “Thank you kindly for your company on the road, but I think we’ve walked in step for as long as we should.” He tipped an imaginary cap and turned without another word into an alleyway that twisted back the way they had come.
Right into the face of a blue-uniformed patrol.
Laoighre tried to back up, panic clear in the hunch of his shoulders, but a soldier grabbed his arm before he had time for more than half a step.
"What have we here, boys?" He gave Laoighre a shake, and flicked a finger through the boy’s shorn hair. "A sewer rat come to spread its filth."
"A visitor, sir, not intending to stay long." Laoighre tried to bend his voice in Tarbhal's hail-fellow-well-met fashion. On him it sounded more desperate than hearty.
The soldier stood head and shoulders above the boy, fair against Laoighre's red, broad for Laoighre's angles. "My wife has the ugliest cat you ever seen. Death on sewer rats that animal is, breaks their backs like kindling." He turned Laoighre towards the pack of his men, forcing the boy's arm high into his back.
Act, you stupid lump.
Sionna shrugged off immobility, too frightened to shake. The stench of strong against weak, rank and familiar, brought bile to her throat. Something. She would find something.
And Breag was there. She heard a single, deep breath before he stepped into the alley, shielding the scene from her with his body.
Tarbhal. The guard was needed here. Sionna ran, dodging scowling men and indignant women in the dozen steps it took to reach Tarbhal and grab his arm.
"Soldiers got Laoighre. Back there!" A part of Sionna watched from deep inside, amazed that she would find the strength to do more than stand like a turnip.
Tarbhal’s face tightened, then settled into the bland camaraderie of his Ullish look. "Find a guard." He pushed Sionna away from the alleyway and stepped through.
Find a guard. How? Townspeople skirted the sound of trouble, eyes glued to the ground. Sionna was an island, marooned by the stream of people flowing around her. She had never felt so isolated, not even in the dark days when Proinsis made her an outsider to the world.
With gritted-teeth determination Sionna planted herself in front of a headscarfed woman not much older than she was, forcing the other to raise her eyes from the ground.
"I need a guard." Sionna hoped the girl couldn't hear the panic veined through her words. "Can you direct me?"
"They meet every Sunday of Market." The girl scuttled sideways, avoiding Sionna's eyes only through an act of pointed headturning. "You'll have to wait a month."
Sionna shut her mouth with a click. No guard. Nothing to balance the military. Not a wonder this town festered.
Tarbhal would not be pleased. Sionna hurried back to the alley-mouth, bent under the weight of the guard’s coming displeasure. She heard his voice before she saw him.
“That’s a solid argument, lads, and no mistake.” Tarbhal’s voice could have gilded a sewerpipe. “But I’m sure you can see my problem.”
“Your problem old man, and not ours.” The voice was rough, but Sionna’s ear didn’t catch the coppertang of inevitable violence.
“I know that. But I know, too, that Ardrea’ll scrape the skin off my bones with a spoon if I come home without her favourite nephew. Can’t you work with me, boys?”
“That’s a pretty favour to ask of somebody you only just met.”
Keep it up, Tarbhal. All you need to fix now is the price.
Sionna waited by the alley’s mouth, making herself as small as possible under the building’s red-striped awning. Breag did the same, she saw, halfway down, his hand clamped over a struggling Cú’s black muzzle.
“I’d make it up to you, if you could see your way to helping me out.” Tarbhal’s back was broad and assured, palms outstretched to the soldiers who stood with Laoighre at their feet.
The boy lay tight-curled around a cradled left wrist, his bright hair vivid in the dirt. No way to tell how much damage he had taken.
“We’re very serious about our duty here in Caislean.” The blond soldier placed a boot on Laoighre’s back. “We don’t take kindly to interference.”
“I can see that, and I’m grateful for it. Only let me set the boy back where he comes from with a flea in his ear, and there’ll be a full belly and a wet whistle for each of you next time you chance by The Dusty Dam.”
“We know where to find you, then.” The soldier poked his boot into Laoighre’s shoulder and moved past. The others followed, each with a kick for the boy.
“And get rid of that animal, or I will. This isn’t Ciarraig. We don’t allow filth on our streets.”
For a single, chilling, moment Sionna thought he meant Breag. The Lupe had both arms wrapped around the thrashing cub, fighting to keep Cú from following the soldiers. Not such a cub anymore.
Laoighre stirred, moaned. Tarbhal crouched over him, muttering soothing somethings as he mapped the boy’s hurts with gentle hands. A flow of grunts and hissed breaths said he found no shortage of them.
Sionna clenched twitching fingers into fists, hovering a pace or two behind them. She should be
doing something to help, not standing like a turnip.
“At least we know where to find the healer.”
Breag’s growling voice behind Sionna surprised her into a gulp of laughter. Shamed, she stepped towards Laoighre, dropping to a crouch at Tarbhal’s side. “How is he?”
“Why don’t you ask him?” Laoighre’s voice slurred, irritated, through mashed lips. “I feel like I’ve been trampled by a herd of bullocks.”
“Not too bad, considering.” Tarbhal straightened. “But I don’t like the look of that wrist, and he’s taken a good couple kicks to the gut. Best he sees that healer.”
Laoighre moved slowly, supported on either side by Tarbhal and Breag. Sionna trailed them feeling adrift and useless. If their earlier walk had been punctuated by argument and bad feeling then this one had a signature of dull grey.
Anú was all business this time, ushering the white-faced Laoighre along the darkened passageway and through a door off the kitchen. The scent of garlic struck Sionna with an almost physical blow.
Do I worry about garlic now I’m a Lupe? Or iron or silver, or the full moon?
There were so many questions she didn’t want to ask. Although, to judge by Breag’s lack of discomfort as he eased Laoighre onto a pallet, garlic was no concern to them.
“What happened?” Anú cocked her head, birdlike, and fixed each of them in turn with her dark eyes.
“I was stupid.” Even Laoighre’s voice was pale. “I lost my temper and walked into trouble.”
“The lad had a difference of opinion with a handful of soldiers. He was lucky, not stupid.” Tarbhal spoke, and Breag let him.
Anú ran careful hands over Laoighre’s chest and stomach, nodding her head along with each hiss and grunt. Breag helped the boy turn, and the old woman’s withered hands on Laoighre’s back found hurt after hurt.
“The wrist might be broken.” Anú spoke directly to Laoighre. “I’ll poultice it overnight, and in the morning we’ll see. I think you’ve been lucky with your insides, but I’ll physick you to be safe. You won't care for the taste, but it'll do you a power of good.”
“We’ll rent a room and come back for him.” Breag hovered near the door, looking more uncomfortable than Sionna had ever seen him.
If Breag was afraid of Anú then Sionna would stick close by her.
Anú shook her head. “Best he stays here until the morning. I’d like him under my eyes tonight.”
“Breag and I will go make arrangements, then. Sionna-lass, you should stay here with the lad til we’re done.” Tarbhal hadn’t missed the Lupe’s discomfort.
Anú’s head turned sharply. “Breag. That’s your name?”
“Yes. And we should go.” Breag studied the floor with scrupulous care.
“Your birth name?”
Breag’s head came up, his jaw clenching, brown eyes giving nothing away. “My birth name. My mother thought it fitting.”
“We should talk about that sometime.” The old woman held his gaze, both of them seemingly oblivious to the fact that they weren’t alone.
“Sometime.” His voice said never.
“And for now we’d best see about a place to stay before we lose the light.” Tarbhal wore his Ullish face again.
Sionna hunched her shoulders against the thrum of strong feeling that unsettled the room. The feeling that threw her back to those last, ugly months with Proinsis and the heart-thin line between violence and something darker. Even Cú seemed to sense it.
She smiled and mumbled a reply to the guard's repeated instruction that she stay with Laoighre. Agreed it best that she keep Cú with her for now. It lightened her mood to hear the men bid them a last farewell and shut the door at their backs.
The boy was foul-tempered--through pain or otherwise--and greeted any attempted conversation with a grunt and a shoulder. There was nothing to do but sit by the hearth in the cosy kitchen with Cú at her knee and enjoy the old woman's easy presence.
"You keep strange company." Anú didn't phrase it as a question.
"Yes." What else could Sionna say with a spade-shaped brindle head snuggled into her lap.
"That baneling attracts notice, I'm betting." Anú settled into a green-draped rocking chair in an ill-lit corner. Sionna found herself rocking along with the chair's creaking rhythm.
"We could do with less, but he's worth the trouble."
"Trouble." A croak from the shadowed corner. Not Anú's voice.
"Who's there?" Sionna found her feet, her heart beating fit to burst. Cú growled soft and deep, head tilted to catch the scent of whatever had spooked her.
"Easy, girl. It's just Heliod." Anú's creaking stopped.
The old woman's soothing reassurance meant nothing to Sionna. Soft words often came along with hard fists.
Anú shuffled from the corner, arm outstretched. A raven perched on her wrist, its single eye flicking between a fright-tethered Sionna and the bewildered cub. Cú continued to growl, but without assurance.
"This old feather-friend means no harm. Although he should wait for an introduction before he speaks." The old woman shook her wrist, and the bird half-spread its wings in protest before settling again into a straggled heap.
"I'm not the only one to keep strange company." Sionna dropped again onto the hearth, her heartbeat not yet caught up with the relief she felt.
"Many healers keep a raven, so I'm told. Heliod came to me with the sign on my door, and he’s cheered many a lonely night." Anú's voice warned against further questions, and Sionna wasn't inclined to pry.
“He’s not as dangerous as Cú, that’s a certainty.” Sionna saw no point in avoiding the hound’s colour. Anú was old, not blind.
“A colour’s easy fixed, girl. Leave him here tonight, and I’ll have him looking right by morning.” Nor stupid.
“You’ll help us?”
“Girl, turning a brindle black is no work. I’m a healer, I’ve worked on knottier puzzles than this one.”
"My Ma was a healer." Sionna found unexpected pleasure in talking of her mother after so many years of silence, and something about the old woman invited the confidence.
"Strange, that you didn't think to follow her. The healing touch runs in families, though some have it much stronger than others."
"I had no chance. She died when I was six, and I only had the bones of teaching."
"Six is old enough for a good start." Anú had retreated again into shadow, her words punctuated by the chair's rhythmic creak. “I bet you know more than you give yourself credit for.”
"I know that the poultice on Laoighre's wrist had comfrey in it, though Ma used something else. Something green, something prickly. I used to go with her to pick it. I think." The thread of almost-memory teased Sionna, stinging her eyes.
"Holly." Anú shuffled to her feet and out into the passageway, leaving Sionna to poke at sore places she had long ignored. Life with Proinsis had taken all of her energy just to survive. There was no time left over for grief.
The old woman returned with a handful of something and shoved it under Sionna's nose. "That it?"
The dark waxiness and lustrous red berries pricked the hull of buried memory. Cold fingers and steamed breath. Giggles and shared stories. Soft lips on a fingertip pricked by green spikes. Sionna's throat tightened.
"Yes. That's it. Thank you."
"Thank you."
Heliod's croaking echo made Sionna's skin crawl. She burrowed her hand under Cú's heavy jaw, scratching the loose folds of skin there. The cub crooned his approval.
No comparison between the two. None at all.
Whatever Anú had dosed Laoighre with made him drowsy and quiet. Sionna looked in on him a time or two, but could tell nothing but that he didn't seem either better or worse. He curled around his poultice-wrapped left wrist, the blanket bunched at his waist.
He does what he wants, and the Black Hunt take everybody else.
Sionna craved that with a hunger that twisted her gut. Her time was close, she could almost
taste it, the time when she would fix her own course and leave the others behind.
But not yet. Breag and Tarbhal tapped the door just as the first tendrils of dark slithered through the window. Anú shuffled to lift the latch, calling over her shoulder for Sionna to light the kitchen and herb-room lamps. Tarbhal picked her over with sharp eyes and said nothing.
“No word on Proinsis’ people, I asked at the inn and along the road.” Breag didn’t waste time on niceties.
“You don’t believe me, boy. You will.” Anú stood at the kitchen door, her head moving birdlike from one to the other of them.
“I meant no offence.”
“I know what you meant. Someday you’ll know it too, I’m hoping.” The old woman filled the doorway.
“How’s our lad faring?” As usual, Tarbhal was the one to ease the mood.
“He’ll live. You can look in on him, but I don’t want him wakened. Come back in the morning and I’ll answer on the wrist, but I can tell already there’s no great hurt. If you can believe me.” The last was for Breag.
There was nothing else to say. They waited only as long as it took for Tarbhal to poke his head inside the herb-room door and prompt an irritated grunt from Laoighre before leaving for their inn. Cú stayed, unhappy and not shy at letting them know it.
The innkeeper was tall and blond and competent, just as he had been that morning--a lifetime ago--but something in his eyes when he looked at Sionna made her duck her head and shuffle tighter to Tarbhal’s shoulder.
Their room was tiny. The walls were short and grey and bare, the floor matted with rough-woven hessian. It had only two beds. Sionna forced herself to draw long, slow breaths. She couldn’t ask the question.
“Not great, but better than most we’ve had.” Tarbhal’s attention was elsewhere, it was plain. He paid no heed to Sionna’s choked silence.
“Take your pick, and Tarbhal can have the other. I’ve been so long on the road, my bones lie better on the floor.” Breag hovered by the door, scuffing the toe of his boot against the bed’s solid leg.
“No need for that, I’m not stopping.” If Tarbhal’s aim was to drop a thunderbolt, then he matched and overtopped it.
Requiem for the Wolf Page 14
