“And a second voice answered, the voice of those who had not yet found their full growth. ‘How can this be?’ Their cheeks burned at contradicting their elders. ‘Our very breath worships Odharna. Our every movement, every thought thanks our Lady for Her grace. She has made us what we are, how can we question Her creation?’
“This Tiarna Beo was large enough for all, and we are a people not given to conflict, so we continued to speak in two voices, and to differ father from son, and mother from daughter. The Fiach scoffed at us, for they were a people for whom every coin has two sides, and they counselled peace. We lived in harmony, and it was good.
“When man came we welcomed them and made room. Not many at first, trickling through the mountains, fleeing we know not what. More came, and more. The voices of the Eolaí became shrill, claiming that these invaders came as a sign from the Lady, and Daoine ears began to heed them.
“The Dílis, loyal to the old ways, were fewer, and many hid their faith. The face of our people changed, no longer accepting that which was not their view. Not understanding our false direction, angry and sorrowful at how we used the gifts they gave to us, the Fiach left and were lost to us.
“The rest you know, lad.” Anú’s voice lost its storytelling rhythms, and Breag returned to a mind full of questions. “Eolaí no longer accepted Dílis, and as the Purging ravaged us they turned on us from inside our people.
“We hid from them as much as from the Brotherhood. In the end we were driven out by the human newcomers, just like we drove the first people out when we found this place. Irony in that, boy, strong and bitter.”
“What about the promise knot, then? What do we promise, and to who?” Breag clenched the black-iron twist in his fist, the chain leaking free from each side of it. Eithne’s promise and his people’s. Was one as false as the other? Breag felt the certainties of his life burning away like dew in sunlight. If not this, then what?
“Eolaí promised, and made the people promise too. The Dílis have no place for hard-edged symbols. The Lady hears our promise, heart to heart.”
“It’s a very different story, told that way.” And blasphemy. Or truth, but who could know which? Not Breag, although his life was tangled up in the difference.
“A story every child knew, once.” Anú turned her head and spat into the belly of the black stove. “We should be the ones that send our best into the North, to deliver the children from Eolaí lies.”
“You know what I am.” It shouldn’t have surprised him. The humped old witch knew everything else.
“The knife, lad, the knife. Forged from the bones of our people to drink Daoine blood, to force us against their will. When you bring an abomination into my home you can be sure I’ll feel it.”
Abomination. A word Breag had heard much of and one he was heartily fed up of. “A tool, and no more. When the Lost start to hold Bliss then there’s no choice but to act.”
“So your handlers say.” Anú thumped the arm of her chair so loud the raven flew from her shoulder, counterpointing her banging with his dull croak. “Why are they lost, can you tell me? It’s because there’s nobody left to teach them. Who do you think can show them the old ways, now that the Eolaí sentence us to death or captivity if we step forward? You have a Namhaid Collar in that pack of yours to take me back in, I suppose.”
Take Anú in place of Sionna. The thought was new, and seductive for the shadow of a moment it took to think through the possibilities.
Breag couldn’t take this woman to Tearmann. Aside from the fact that Caislean wouldn’t give her up easily, she had views too strong to fit easily with the priesthood’s teachings. He would be freeing her to her death, just as he had so many of the Fallen before her. At least Sionna had a chance to adapt to life in Tearmann.
Somewhere, a small voice laughed at the justification.
“I’ll not try to take you back.” Breag didn’t choose to share his reasoning with her. “I’ll keep my knife, though, and I’ll use it if I have to. Not even you can find promise in a warg.”
Fiacal knife; calling, filthy, hungry. Breag prayed to whichever version of Odharna would listen that there would be no need to use it again.
“So be it. I’m hoping you can learn to live with the consequences.”
“And the Dílis, when did they die out?” Breag was glad to change the subject.
Anú cackled. “Die out, lad? And what makes you think we’ve failed?”
Breag found nothing to say, the enormity of what the old woman suggested cowing him more deeply into his chair. It wasn’t possible.
“Dílis live throughout the Tiarna, side by side with man. Every town you been to, I can promise you bought bread from your own people and supped tarberry tea in their inns. Bless you, child, just because we don’t Change in the town square at noonday don’t mean we aren’t doing fine.”
Every town. Bread. Tea. Inns. Eight years.
“They didn’t let you find them--Eolaí and the Purging made us good at hiding. Why should they, when they know what your business with them is?
“Marbh, they call your kind. The dead. Dílis business is with living, we leave the dead to the Eolaí. We have plans of our own, and we won’t turn our boys into dead men to see them through. Your Eolaí will know about us again in the future, when the time is right.”
“Why are you telling me this?” There were other questions, ones he couldn’t properly fix a shape on. He had strength enough only for this simplest one.
“It wasn’t my intention, lad. My plan was to get that girl away from you and send you on your way quick smart.” There was compassion in Anú’s dark eyes.
“You know about Sionna.”
“I told you boy, you leave it to me to worry about what I know.”
“You changed your mind, though.”
“Breag. A strange name to fix on a babe. A cruel one to stick him with when he’s grown.”
“You changed your mind because of my name?” Breag turned his head to watch through the quarter-paned window as approaching dawn streaked the sky with midnight blue and deep purple. At his feet, Cú’s nose was tucked under his tail-stump and he breathed in snoring sighs.
“Why label a babe deceiver? Who would name a small child a lie?”
“My mother’s life has been difficult.” The justification came easily after thousands of times repeated. “She lost her Ma in the Purging. My Da was taken in the mountains before I was born, their first winter wed. She named me what she did to remind me that nothing is to be trusted. That faith is a fool’s answer.”
You showed me that too, Eithne.
Smiling as she welcomed Odran, record-keeper and a mouse of a man. What did he have to offer her except the favour of his uncle, the Naomh?
Darker suspicions, nursed and fondled on the road, about how Breag had come to be chosen from among all the other men of the five villages of Daoine. A no-name boy who stood in the path of the Naomh’s nephew, named for the Lady. Most worthy of all of them? Breag had never believed it.
“It scourged you more than it warned you, I’m sure.”
“That was a long time ago.”
Anú muttered a non-committal noise into the neckline of her tunic. “Whatever, it made me look at you again. Made me give you a chance.”
“Thank you.” The words were empty. Anú’s truths skinned the pretence from what he was, but they offered no hint of what he might be.
“Remember this, lad, in the dark of the night when you don’t know who you are. Odharna has two faces, and she shows both to her Daoine. One is bright, with a false light that makes things seem what they are not. Her bright face has its purpose, and it serves some to claim that’s all She gives us. But the Lady has a secret face, hidden unless we feel it in our hearts. That’s Her true self and Her true gift. Trust Odharna, and trust yourself, and you’ll find Her.”
“It’s getting late.” Breag screeched to his feet, startling Cú into whuffed wakefulness. “I’d best get back before the others st
ir.”
“Think hard, boy, and make your own choices. Your road’s a long one, and there’s nobody to help you take a single step.”
Breag turned for the door. He clenched the handle of the sick-room door a half moment before following the corridor. No time for that now, he needed air and space.
Sleep tight while you can, Laoighre. Tomorrow we leave this town behind us and good riddance.
14
Sionna made herself as small as possible. Although she needn't have put herself to the trouble, not with Breag and Tarbhal so focused on pretending nothing was going on. Neither had more than a crumb of attention to spare for her.
Who to trust? Both? Or neither?
"Good taybread here, eh lad?" Tarbhal waved a pastry-filled paw under Breag's nose, earning a grunt for his trouble.
"They don't skimp on the currants, that's what marks a good slice."
Breag tucked sinewed forearms around his plate, shoulders hunched and head down. To think him open to chatter about taybread meant that Tarbhal must have fetched a thump on the head, whatever else he did in the night.
"A man can put up with a lot when his innkeeper knows how to cook."
"We're leaving today." Breag spoke without turning his head.
Sionna's stomach clenched tight enough to close her throat. There was no point in speaking, her opinion weighed nothing here. If Breag wanted to leave then they would go, and no point in arguing. She didn’t promise, though, that she would stay with him any longer than it took to find an unguarded hole to freedom.
"That's a little hasty, isn't it?" The guard's words flowed mildly, coruscating with good humour.
"I won't listen this time, Tarbhal." Breag hitched himself back in his chair, his eyes liquid enough to drown in. "Stay or come, it changes nothing."
Sionna was to follow along like a duck after a drake, with no choice nor even a pretended apology.
This must be how Laoighre feels.
She found herself on her feet. Her arms jutted rigid against her sides like the arms on a harvest scarecrow, her hands fisted uselessly. "I'm going to see Laoighre now."
"Wait for me; it isn't safe on your own." Something dark, something she didn't understand in Breag's voice, but again his eyes wouldn't meet hers.
"You can watch me close as you're able when we're gone. Here, I’ll still make my own choices." The words came out rage-garbled. Still good, though, to judge by Breag's shock-tight face.
Whispers wafted her to the door, and only the worry of the inn-keeper's too-friendly smoothness pierced her anger bubble. And then she was out, into grey rain and ankle-sucking muck. Freedom mattered more than the weather, and she had nobody to please but herself.
For now.
How long since she had walked through streets on her own? Too long to remember, and the fact stung her eyes with tears she couldn't shed. She wouldn't give this up on somebody else’s whim.
Too many feelings all at once. Fear, anger, despair; new to her, or at least not felt for longer than long. Strange to welcome them back, like waking from a deep sleep into a room that had once been hers.
Her skin itched with wondering where Breag had been the night before. And Tarbhal, of course. They had disagreed, that much was plain, but neither would think to share the thing with her. Little Sionna, tucked safe in bed while other people made her choices for her.
But today the sun shone weakly through a sky thick with raindrops, and a hide-loosening wind meant the streets belonged mostly to the weather. Despite Macha, despite the soldiers, despite Caislean, a girl could live on this island of Ullach.
Even a girl who happened to be a Lupe?
* * *
Anú's door stood open a welcoming hairsbreadth, and Sionna gave it a polite knock before she pushed through to the kitchen.
An empty kitchen, except for Heliod, who grumbled from his ever-dark corner. It could almost have been a greeting if Sionna pressed her fingers into her ears just right.
Thumps and muttered curses from the sick-room explained Anú's absence, and Sionna poked from shelf to basin as she waited to see who would take the victory. Anú most likely, although after her recent taste of Laoighre's tongue, Sionna spared half a copper for him as an outside bet.
Cú burst through first, as gloriously black as his dam and just as gloriously heedless of his newfound legitimacy. Sionna wished he had been birthed with more of a tail. The waggling of what stump he had seemed to give him so much pleasure.
"Easy, spud-face, easy. It's eight hours since I saw you last, not eight years." She kneaded the loose skin behind his ears until he groaned with pleasure.
"Time passes slow when we're parted from friends." Anú followed the beast into the kitchen he made smaller with his long-legged prancing. Her starched apron draped impeccably over a full skirt, and not a fold of her loose-sleeved tunic sat out of place.
I would have lost my copper on you, Laoighre.
"I wouldn't have known Cú this morning. Thank you; you've done a great thing for us." Less trouble for them on their unwanted journey North.
"Bad news, my girl?" Anú missed nothing.
"Breag says we need to leave today."
"And what does Sionna say?"
Nothing was what Sionna said. Not for herself, or Laoighre, or even for the guard. The thought of it made her blood beat through her veins like a small child in a tantrum. "What can I do?"
"Girl, what is it you want to do?" Anú's head cocked to one side, and on her shoulder the raven did the same.
"I want to make choices." A whisper Anú couldn't possibly have heard.
The old woman stepped close and wrapped short, bony arms around Sionna's shoulders. This near, her scent was must and green herb; something that should have been familiar but wasn't. Wrapped in the reassurance of a stranger, it seemed to Sionna that there was always a debt unspoken in a promise of comfort.
"I'm sorry." She stepped away, clenching the rocking chair's back with hunted fingers.
"No, missy, I'm the one that's sorrier than I can say. I can't help you."
The words struck Sionna like fists, stealing her certainty with her breath. Oh, she had known. Breag's single-mindedness was too strong to be pushed off course by a white-headed old woman, for all that she fixed sprains and birthed babes.
"Thank you." Sionna would have said anything if she thought it would put things right for her.
"Something will work itself out, you see if it doesn't."
"Can I see Laoighre now?"
"Of course, little one." Anú's voice softened to a thick, fuzzy blanket around Sionna's ears. "That wrist of his isn't broken, so it seems this morning. He'll be glad you’re here for him."
Sionna followed the prompting of the flapped arm. She rapped twice on the sick-room door, the old woman's black eyes tracing her spine with icy fingers.
"What now?"
Laoighre's impatient grumble provided all the invitation Sionna needed. She shoved the door closed behind her, wincing as the solid wood connected with Cú's spade-shaped head.
Just as well you and I aren't the delicate sort, Cú.
First to catch her notice were the opened windows on each side of the room, hung with daisy-printed curtains fluttering in the light breeze. The second was Laoighre, bundled in a mountain of blankets and wearing a don't-trifle-with-me scowl.
"Oh, it's you." His expression eased, but his eyes flicked warily towards the door.
"You were expecting Mother Harvest, maybe?"
"No. I'm glad it's you."
Not what Sionna expected from him. "Are you still in pain? Should I call Anú?"
"No!" He pushed himself upright on the pallet, his face bleached white with pain.
"I'm sorry." Sionna was heart sick of the taste of those words in her mouth.
"Don't be daft, girl." Laoighre's features relaxed into their old, familiar good humour.
"Me daft? Am I the one that took on a unit of the army just because I was in a bad mood?" Sionna judged the
boy just about mellow enough for teasing.
Laoighre giggled, a shrill sound with little laughter in it. He turned his face to the wall, kneading his good hand into Cú's fleshy ruff.
Nicely done, Sionna. "I didn't mean that, you know. You were right to be angry with me."
"No I wasn't. You're as deep in the dark as me, or nearly. I shouldn't have taken it out on you."
"We deserve better, both of us." Settled on a low wooden stool with Cú on her feet and Laoighre silent and companionable by her side, Sionna could have stayed a hundred years.
This was what she wanted. Friends of her own choosing in a place she picked for herself.
No likelihood of that. Not with Breag's fist in a stranglehold at her throat and the journey North to dread.
Tarbhal would save her. He had before.
But Tarbhal felt different this time. Distant; strange. This time he would allow Breag to take her with no more than a safe-journey waved from the crossroads.
"We leave today, Breag says."
"Already? Am I allowed to know if we found what we were looking for?" Laoighre’s voice spoke bitterness, with sand quickly kicked over the mess of it.
"He didn't. So it seems." Not by daylight, at least.
"Best I make myself ready, then." Laoighre threw back the blankets, exposing a narrow chest to the room’s chill.
Sionna could see purple bruises already crawling along his abdomen and over the ribs on his right side. Remembering splashed over her like a wet shiver.
Those aren't new to you either, my friend.
It was a new thing for her to feel more pain at a friend's hurts than at her own. New, too the anger, hot and liquid, that curdled her stomach at the thought of what they did to him. She should have been able to help. Sionna savoured it, relishing the sense that she belonged to something greater than herself. Something she chose.
"Don’t be too hasty now, or Anú might not let you go."
Laoighre's spoiled-milk pout answered more eloquently than any words could have.
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