by Grace Martin
I gasped. It was just as well that he’d shuffled away from me, because I pulled away so fast, I nearly fell off the ledge. He knew about Maldwyn. ‘How do you know about that?’ I cried. My voice echoed a little. My first thought was that the only person who’d known about that was Caradoc. I was sure that he would never have told anyone my secrets and he hadn’t lived long enough anyway.
He reached out and grabbed me to stop me going over the edge. ‘I was trying to save you!’ he snapped.
‘What?’
‘I counted the Solstices. We all did. Aine. Gwydion. Even Aoife was counting Solstices. We all knew that as soon as you came of age, you would make an impact on the world. How could you do anything else? We knew that Maldwyn walked free after his trial in Rheged. He was judged guilty and sentenced to be executed, but that was while the Empress was alive. When Aoife took her place, she freed Maldwyn and gave him a privileged position in her household. That meant he would be free to hurt you.
‘Aine and I counted Solstices, but Aoife was counting them too, and the year you turned thirteen she increased the intensity of her attacks on Camaria so viciously that neither Aine or I could manage to get anyone near Meistria. It wasn’t until the next year that I managed to get into Caillen. I broke into Cairastel and found Umbra. She liked me and she helped me smuggle her out. At last, we had a chance to win the war. Our people were being decimated. It was so important for us that Aoife didn’t have Umbra. But then I saw you in the marketplace.
‘We’d been trying to get to you for years and there you were ‒ and I could see in your face that I was too late. You were frightened. You’d been hurt so badly and it nearly broke my heart. I knew that you were the one who should have Umbra. So, I gave her to you.’
I stared at him. I remembered him now. ‘You were the man in the market,’ I said. ‘You told the guards it was your magic they’d seen. You saved my life and risked your own. You were taken away; I was sure you’d be executed.’
‘You know Aoife,’ he said wryly. ‘She’d never kill someone if she thought she could torture them first.’ She chained me up for a few years like a dog. Eventually she got tired of me and sent me to live among the slaves on Solastel.’
‘Did I ever meet you?’ I asked. ‘Back in the past, I mean? You risked so much to save me. Were you a Camiri? Were you in Rheged or Camaria? You know, I don’t even know your name.
He grinned for a moment then stuck out his hand. ‘Cuchulainn, at your service, Bach Chwaer.’
I shook his hand. ‘I used to have a new name every year, as you apparently know, but it looks like the name I’m sticking with is Emer.’
He shook my hand gravely. ‘I think it suits you. At your service, Emer,’ he said, and just like that I felt calmer. ‘Come on, we’ll fly together back to the catacombs.’
He got to his feet and extended a hand to help me up. I ignored the hand. ‘Catacombs?’ I asked. ‘As in, tombs?’
He nodded. ‘That is where we live, Bach Chwaer, among the dead. Why did you think all these stairs and tunnels were made in the first place?’
I shuddered. ‘So, you’re telling me that Lynnevet and Ronan are currently sleeping in a tomb?’
He leaned forward to grab my hand and pulled so I had no choice but to get my feet. ‘Don’t be so squeamish, Emer. It is thanks to the resting places of the dead that we have shelter and a place of safety. Fear the living, not the dead.’
He changed into a bird and I did the same. We flew back up to the ledge I’d thrown myself off and he kept a close eye on me until we went inside. I couldn’t help but notice that he positioned himself between me and the edge as he ushered me inside.
I went back to the cave – the tomb – I was to share with Ronan and Lynnevet. They were both asleep. I asked Umbra to make a soft light to find my own pile of blankets. I hated sleeping in caves. I was much happier sleeping somewhere I could see outside – even better if I could sleep in moonlight. My Sparrow had always needed to cover her eyes if we were sleeping somewhere where moonlight would fall on our bed. I’d loved it. I suppose it didn’t matter to me because I often had trouble sleeping anyway.
Eventually, I slept. I woke up early and left Ronan and Lynnevet still sleeping and went down to the central area. There was no one around this hour, but there was a coffee pot set close enough to the coals to promise a hot drink.
I poured some coffee into wooden cup. I hadn’t even raised the cup to my lips when I heard an acidic voice say, ‘Oh, and it’s Lady Muck, is it, helping herself to coffee someone else brewed?’
I turned, ready apologies on my lips, but they died when I saw who had spoken. She was twenty years younger than when I’d seen her last, but she was unmistakable. She looked like she was my age, but for all my bitterness, I could never be as sour as she was.
She was slight and slim, but the way she planted her hands on her hips made her look bigger. She wore a simple grey dress that looked like it had been taken from a corpse who’d had already been in the ground for a while. She had long dark hair like mine, threaded through braids and beads in the Camiri style, but it was all drawn back to wind into a coil at the nape of her neck in the Meistri style. Her most distinctive feature were the tattoos on her face.
Both Meistri and Camiri smeared their faces with soot as a sign that they were in mourning. The Meistri just smeared the soot evenly over their cheeks. The Camiri used the soot to paint spirals on their cheeks and foreheads.
I’d never found out how it happened, but Rhiannon had sorrow signs on her face. Instead of being painted, though, the patterns were branded into her skin. It must have happened long ago, because the burns were not new, but they were still clear on her face. Around and in between the sorrow signs, someone had added tattoos, if anything, making the spiral shapes clearer on her skin. The tattoos were finely done, the minuscule work of an artist. Bees and other small animals, tiny dragons and intricate knotwork adorned every spare inch of Rhiannon’s face.
Rhiannon had been one of those who had met me in my own time – which was, at that time, my future! – and then been sent back into the past to meet me there. Rhiannon had been easily forty years old the last time I met her. She had become a midwife and suffice it to say, she thought we were a lot closer than we actually were.
I wasn’t going to apologise, no way, so I took a slow deliberate sip of lukewarm coffee, licked my lips and said, ‘Well, you’re not wrong, I suppose. Did you make this? It’s nice.’
I thought that would make her blow up. To my astonishment, she calmed down. The hands came off her hips and while she didn’t smile, she stopped scowling and came forward to lay huge ball of dough on a board near the embers.
She knelt by the fire, started portioning out the dough into manageable amounts and pushed a board with a hunk of dough towards me. ‘You might as well make yourself useful.’
She accidentally touched my hand when she pushed the board towards me. Both of us gasped and pulled our hands away.
‘You’re not tethered!’ she cried, cradling her hand.
I was busy cradling my own hand. ‘What the hell does that mean?’ I snapped.
Rhiannon stared at me. Her face was uniquely expressive. It was so easy to follow the patterns on her face to read what was going on in her mind.
‘We are slaves,’ she said eventually, after staring at me for long moments, her gaze trying to read my face. ‘We belong to the White Queen. We aren’t shackled, like the Camiri slaves. We are isolated on this spire and sometimes she will allow some of us to work in her citadel to earn our keep. To stop any attempted escape, the White Queen places a magical tether on our wrist. It acts like a leash. We cannot go further than a specified distance from the centre of the citadel.’
‘But why did it burn me?’ I cried. My hand was still sore.
Rhiannon reached towards me and cast a golden glow from her hand to mine, sending healing power almost casually across my skin. She didn’t answer at once, concentrating on healing my hand.
I grabbed the dough she’d passed to me and started kneading it, probably with more vigour than was necessary. I suspected that I was Aoife’s daughter, mostly because Aine was a wise peacemaker who probably needed to learn some hard life lessons to toughen up, and Aoife was a bitter and sarcastic bitch who would probably shatter if she got any tougher. You take a guess which sister I took after. I couldn’t tell that to Rhiannon. I mean, just imagine it…
Oh, no, we can’t be sisters. You’re Aine’s daughter. I know that because she told me. It was before I was born. Yes. Last week. Before I was born? Yes. Your mother told me about you. She was ashamed because she wasn’t married and it would have been a huge scandal that the unmarried princess wasn’t a virgin, if it wasn’t for the fact that there was a dragon at the gates who wanted virgin blood making people more concerned about other things like survival. So, I know you’re Aine’s daughter. I don’t think I’m Aine’s daughter, I think I’m Aoife’s daughter. I met her before I was born and we’re a lot alike. Yes, again, before I was born, last week.
No, thank you. I hadn’t known Rhiannon long, neither in the past nor right now, but I was pretty certain that if I said anything so stupid sounding, I’d be left with a tongue lashing so acidic I’d never lose the scars. Wait a minute. I’d been so busy trying to think of a way to cover myself, to say that I knew we weren’t sisters without revealing that my life was beyond weird, that I hadn’t caught the first thing she’d said.
‘Hang on,’ I said, giving up my half-hearted kneading of the dough. Rhiannon looked pointedly at the breadboard until I started again. ‘Um, you said we’re sisters.’
‘It must be so. I haven’t seen my own face bare since I was a child, but you look so much like the White Queen that you can only be her daughter.’
‘Um, I don’t know how long you’ve been locked up in here, but did you know that the White Queen has a twin sister-?’
‘I’m not an idiot,’ she snapped. She might have thrown the dough at me if it wouldn’t have been a waste. ‘I know, at least, that the Dark Queen exists.’
‘Yeah, um… So, you think you and I are both Aoife’s daughters?’
Her eyebrows went up and even though I’d seen it happen before, it was fascinating the way the sardonic expression wrinkled her tattoos. A bee was cut clean in half when she wrinkled her forehead. ‘First name basis are you then?’ she asked.
I laughed before I thought better of it. Actually, we were. The thought was so ridiculous I couldn’t say it out loud any more than the other things I’d considered not saying. The Empress had chosen me to be her successor, above Aine and, vitally for my well-being, above Aoife. We weren’t even equals. I was her superior. I wasn’t going to tell that to Rhiannon, so I took refuge in that arrogance that I’d copied from Aoife. ‘You mean you didn’t even know her name?’
‘Of course, I know her name!’ Rhiannon snapped. Aoife’s haughty look worked every time. It pissed off everyone, which was kind of the point.
‘Yes, I was saying, do you think you’re Aoife’s daughter?’ ‘Cause you’re not.
‘I know I am.’ That poor loaf of bread. It didn’t have a hope. ‘I came here five years ago, looking for my mother. I knew from my own features ‒ like yours ‒ that one of them had to be my mother since Prince Gwydion never had any children.’
‘Oh, really?’ I asked, taken by surprise. ‘That’s so sad, he was so nice. He would have made a wonderful father.’
‘Know him well, too, did you? First name basis with him as well, I suppose?’ she asked. She probably thought it was rhetorical, but of course I’d known him. He’d been raised by his father, the Dark King, away from Aine and Aoife. When we’d met, he’d proved himself to be one of the kindest, gentlest men I’d ever known.
Rhiannon went on. ‘I went to the Dark Queen. I was sent away from her, told that there was no chance I was her daughter and forcibly removed from her presence before being cast into the dungeons.’ She traced the sorrow sign on her cheek with a floury finger. ‘They gave me these to remember her by.’
‘What? Aine branded you?’ I couldn’t believe it. Aine couldn’t even stand up for herself, much less stand up to anyone else. Even less could she have willingly hurt anyone. I reached out to touch the sorrow sign like I was trying to make sure it was real. ‘I don’t believe it. She wouldn’t do that. She couldn’t hurt a fly.’
Rhiannon pulled away so I didn’t quite make contact with her cheek. I drew my hand back smartly. It was a terribly intrusive thing I’d done. I was embarrassed that I’d ever made a move towards her.
‘She’s managed to kill millions of Meistri in the last twenty years. Your faith in her kindness is misplaced, I’m thinking. I escaped. Knowing that I wasn’t one Queen’s child, I came here, to her sister’s citadel. The White Queen admitted that I was her illegitimate daughter and allowed me to live here. She explained that she could never own me publicly because of the shame of having an illegitimate child but she agreed to keep me here, feed me, clothe me.’
I looked surreptitiously at the grey gown. It had never been worn by a princess or even a noble lady before it came into Rhiannon’s possession. She pointed to her face. ‘She said it was ironic that I was branded with a Camiri sign, since my father was her betrothed, Caradoc of the Camiri.’
I jumped to my feet. ‘Oh, now, that is bullshit. I’m telling you that now, and for free. That never happened. No, no, no, no, no. Caradoc would sooner have kissed a snake than that… that… that viper!’
‘A viper is a snake. And whether or not kissing was involved, here I am.’ God, I hated her calm voice! I wanted to shake her until she rattled.
‘Believe me, you look nothing like him! There’s no way you could be his child!’
‘How would you know what he looked like? Were you on a first name basis with him as well?’
Here it was. I couldn’t avoid it anymore. ‘Because I was there, all right? Because I was in the Empress’s court twenty years ago ‒ I was the Bach Chwaer. I was there. And believe you me, Caradoc never laid a finger on Aoife. Whoever’s daughter you are, it isn’t his. Anyway-’ I realised I was pacing wildly around the chamber and practically shouting.
I lowered my voice. ‘Anyway, you couldn’t be Caradoc’s daughter. He wasn’t betrothed to Aoife until a few months before he died. Before that, he was leading the Camiri revolution and you were already two or three! I forget how old you were. I wasn’t much interested at the time. And your mother wasn’t Aoife. Your mother was Aine, the Dark Queen. I know. She loved you. She sacrificed-’ I bit my tongue. I had no right to tell what Aine had sacrificed for Rhiannon’s sake. ‘She would have done anything for you, anything. I refuse to believe she branded you, even that she imprisoned you. No. That’s not like her. She wouldn’t.’
‘But she did.’ Rhiannon still knelt by the bread board. ‘And why would the White Queen lie about being my mother?’
‘To hurt Aine!’ I shouted. Again, I lowered my voice and sighed. ‘She would have walked a mile or more over broken glass if she thought she could hurt Aine ‒ or me. She hated us both.’
‘And did you hate her?’ Rhiannon’s expression was calculating. It struck me that she was answering all the wrong parts of what I was saying. I knelt back down beside her.
‘Rhiannon, listen carefully,’ I said.
She sat there and smiled politely. As much as that smile aggravated me all the way down to my bones, I let her do it.
‘Rhiannon, you’re the daughter of the Dark Queen Aine, not the White Queen Aoife, do you understand that?’
‘Yes, I understand you think that.’
‘You’re not Caradoc’s daughter.’
&nb
sp; She shrugged. ‘That part never mattered to me very much anyway. Out of curiosity, what did Caradoc look like? By all accounts he was very wild.’
I deliberately slowed myself down and sighed to release the tension. ‘He did look wild. He was larger than life. He was tall and strong. He’d spent his whole life training to be a Camiri warrior, so of course he was strong. He had red hair that reached his shoulders and skin as pale as a pearl.’ I blushed a little because Rhiannon would never understand what it had been like to see Caradoc’s skin gleam in the moonlight. ‘He was full of life,’ I went on. ‘He laughed with his whole body. He tried so much to help other people. He cared about everyone around him. Actually, if you wanted to know what he looked like, he looked so similar to Ronan, the man I arrived with yesterday, that when I first saw Ronan, I thought it was Caradoc with short hair.’
‘Very handsome. It sounds like the pair of you were close?’
I started kneading dough again to avoid looking at her. ‘Close? Yes.’ He was all my heart and soul. Yes, we were close.
‘The White Queen killed him, you know.’
‘I know. I was there.’ And I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it.
‘She never loved me, I knew that.’
‘She isn’t capable of love.’
‘I was useful to her.’ We were both back to kneading like it was important, like it was our daily bread or something.
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. Once a month, she places me out in the light of the full moon then she takes me into her sanctuary and harvests my magic. I am a useful, renewable resource for her. In between moons, she doesn’t care where I go, so long as I remain tethered.’
‘My God, Rhiannon, I’m so sorry.’
Pity was the wrong choice. She flushed in the space between tattoos. ‘I hate her.’ She said it quietly but there was as much bitterness in Rhiannon as there was in me and now I knew why. ‘I hate her. I will never forgive her for these five years she has kept me hostage in this place.’ She turned to me. ‘But she trusts me. She thinks I am quiet. She thinks I am a faithful daughter. She would never suspect…’
