Wolfsbane: 3 (Rebel Angels)

by Gillian Philip

  I licked my lips, still trying to say something that mattered, but none of it would come. Instead I grabbed up the bulky extra pack at my feet and lugged it with me as I waded forward onto the beach, dumping it in the sand.

  ‘We don’t ever get to travel light, do we? I hope that’s everything you wanted.’

  He looked at the pack as if he didn’t much care, and he didn’t check the contents. ‘Thanks.’

  Frowning, I slipped my own backpack from my shoulders with a grunt of relief, then sat down in the sand and tilted my face to the watery sun. I heard the dull echo of hooves on wet stones in shallow water, then the soft thud of Seth dismounting. Opening one eye, I watched him sit down beside me, his stare focused on the loch and the low rolling hills beyond it.

  ‘I’m sorry about your mother,’ he said.

  I shrugged. ‘She was brave. You’ve no idea.’

  ‘Yes I do. I knew her a long time. She was always brave.’

  ‘I didn’t know. She was so scared, but she was so brave. Seth.’ I bit my lip. ‘I spent my entire adolescence despising her and when I found out I loved her it was too late.’

  ‘Finn. We all spend our adolescence despising our parents. It’s in the job description.’

  I chucked a stone at the loch. ‘We’re not supposed to get that disease, are we? But once it got its claws into her, it wouldn’t let go. Why?’

  He gave the roan a sharp whistle through his teeth, and it jerked its head round resentfully, striking the water hard with a hoof. It was doing nothing wrong that I could see.

  ‘You look bloody exhausted,’ he told me at last.

  I didn’t want his pity; it made my throat hurt. ‘You try reminding a bunch of full-mortal doctors that they even have a patient.’

  He looked at me at last and what I saw in his eyes wasn’t pity at all. ‘I’m glad it’s over.’

  It should have been cruel but it wasn’t. ‘I am too. Seth. Answer me.’

  He rubbed his hands over his face. ‘I don’t know, Finn. I don’t know why.’

  Round my neck hung a crude claw pendant, a child’s practice piece. The stone from its setting had been removed long ago. I rolled it in my fingers and ran a sharp talon point under my thumbnail.

  I muttered, ‘Was it because she broke her oath?’

  ‘Your fault, you mean?’ He gave me one of his old glares. ‘Course not. You know what I think, Finn. Oaths, curses: put it out of your head. People believe in superstition and shit, they shouldn’t swear oaths. Not if there’s a chance they won’t keep them.’

  ‘She meant to keep it.’ I fumbled for another stone and skimmed it clumsily; it sank as soon as it hit the surface. ‘But she came for me anyway, all those years ago. So how could I leave her?’

  With an edge of resentment he said, ‘If she’d come through, we could have helped her.’

  ‘No, you couldn’t.’

  ‘Not that way, no. To her end, I mean. Eili would have done that for her.’

  ‘She would never have come through. Never. What would have been the point? The greatest surrender of her life, and right at the end of it? She wouldn’t even contemplate going to the Selkyr.’

  ‘No. Your mother was too damn brave and too damn proud. And when you feel guilty, Finn, try and remember that keeping you away from here was what kept her hanging on.’

  ‘You are a bastard.’ He’s the person he always was; get over it. ‘I couldn’t give her my word, so the least I could do was stay till it was over. She had a good death. They don’t let you suffer.’

  Seth said, ‘Nor do we.’

  ‘Seth. Please.’ I didn’t want to cry.

  ‘Sorry. Told you I was selfish.’ Reaching for my hand, he interlinked our fingers. ‘It gets better, Finn. At first you don’t think it will, you don’t even want it to, but it does, like any wound. Then you know you’ve betrayed them, but it happens anyway. It might leave a dirty great scar but it scabs over, it heals. That’s how life works. It’s the way it goes on.’

  ‘I’ve betrayed her just coming here.’ He was right: the guilt was a racking thing, all the more so because it had never crossed my mind to respect Stella’s wishes. I had waited only for my mother’s death before doing what Stella had so desperately wanted me not to do.

  Seth was watching me, I could feel it, but he sounded surprisingly kind. ‘You’ve no obligation to the dead, Finn. Our lives would never be our own.’

  ‘Speaking of which. Eili’s wound? Has that healed?’

  Seth was silent for a long moment. ‘Eili’s grief is all poisoned with rage. That’s my fault. That doesn’t heal so well.’ He shut his eyes, smiling. ‘She’ll kill me, of course.’

  ‘She’ll have to get through me,’ I said.

  He raised his eyebrows, amused. ‘Who’d have thought it?’ Tightening his fingers around my hand, he lifted it to study the puckered white weals on my palm. ‘She’d have mended that properly, if you’d asked.’

  ‘I didn’t want her to. It doesn’t hurt. Does yours?’

  ‘Sometimes. If Eili’s in a very bad mood.’ His laugh was a little forced.

  ‘It hurts all the time, doesn’t it?’ I frowned, suspicion scratching at my gut.

  ‘Well. Why did you keep your scars?’

  ‘That’s different. I told you, they don’t hurt.’

  ‘You kept them to remind you. Eili keeps mine alive to remind me.’ He squeezed my fingers. ‘It’s because of you and Jed it’s only the crossbow scars. I get sick when I think how it would be if she’d had access to the… to…’

  He still found it hard to say it, I realised. ‘The whipping scars,’ I finished for him.

  ‘They healed by themselves. You did right to keep the healers away. Especially her.’ He tried to release me, but I tightened my fingers on his. I was not going to let him withdraw and shrink into himself in that maddening way of his.

  ‘You never explained that one,’ I said lightly, touching a deep crude scar on his palm.

  ‘Jings, Dorsal, this is like Jaws.’ He laughed, and I smiled, pleased I’d pulled him back from his dark place. ‘That’s nothing sinister.’ Mildly embarrassed, he mumbled, ‘Blood brother cut.’

  ‘Murlainn! How teenage!’ I examined it, still not letting him pull away. It was no mere nick. It had once been a savage slash, and it ran from the lowest joint of his little finger to the base of his thumb. ‘Were you after a complete blood transfusion?’ I flicked it disapprovingly with a fingertip. ‘I hope the other guy looks this bad.’

  Seth grinned. ‘Oh, he does.’

  ‘So who? Why didn’t you tell me before?’

  ‘I never told you ’cause you wouldn’t believe it.’ He pulled me to my feet.

  ‘Okay, be mysterious.’ I nodded at the blue roan. ‘What kind of mood is he in?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. You’re not riding him.’ Seth lifted the pack of hardware supplies and tied it onto the garron’s saddle, making it sag to the side and earning a reproving glare from the pony.

  ‘You’re strapping me onto the pack horse or what?’

  He jiggled his eyebrows. ‘Don’t put ideas in my head.’

  ‘Okay, pal, I’ll walk. And the whisky I brought you, I’ll drink it myself.’

  ‘Ha! Still a little madam. I wish your Uncle Conal could hear you. You’re not walking, Dorsal, and I’ll be deprived of the sight of you slung across a pack horse. I’ve got something for you.’ He untied a fabric bundle from the garron’s saddle, then unrolled it with care, and when he turned he was dangling a bridle from his fingers. It was black leather, but the cheekpiece and noseband were chased with delicate silverwork.

  I stared at it, unable to swallow. ‘That was lost.’

  ‘Yes.’ He ran a finger across the inlay. ‘That was my intention, but it washed up in the dunes after a storm last month.’

  I took it, fingertips trembling. ‘What am I supposed to do with it?’

  ‘Call him, that’s all. You know how, if you don’t think about it too hard
.’ Mounting the roan he swung its head towards the north and west, and the garron fell in behind.

  ‘Yeah?’ I shouted. ‘And what if he kills me when he gets here?’

  ‘You have his bridle. He wants you.’ Seth gave me a grin over his shoulder. ‘Call him. I dare you.’

  And so – that being the one challenge I couldn’t resist – I called him.

  I’m sure the clann were happier to see Conal’s horse back than they were to see me, but that was fair enough. We hadn’t exactly parted on good terms all those years ago. They held as much against me as I did against them.

  The horse seemed to know my feelings. It stood very calmly, making no trouble, accepting the stares and the exclamations of the clann, its head hooked fondly over my shoulder. I saw flashes of its memory, still vivid from the calling of it. Dark cold water, drifting green weed. Blood and prey. Careless silent freedom. And from long before that, visions of fighting and running on the moor: blue sky, bird-song and cirrus. Another mind and body in absolute sync with its own; the weight of a human that was no weight at all; the sharp keen awareness of another self. The vicious triumph and the awful pain of battle. And death, and loss, and a corpse; and freedom again, sadder and lonelier this time.

  I touched its muzzle, and knew that it Saw just as much of me. The oddest sensation, but not an unwelcome one.

  ‘It’s unusual,’ Seth had said, unwilling as ever to express any overt shock or awe. ‘Hard enough to get these brutes to submit once.’

  Submission was hardly the issue. But I knew he knew that.

  If the fires of resentment towards me still burned too fiercely in any of the clann, the horse had at least silenced them for now. For that I was outrageously grateful. Only one of them outstared me, eyes frigid and hostile.

  ‘So you’re Finn, are you? I don’t remember you at all.’

  Well, I recognised Rory, even after all these years; I recognised him from his father’s eyes and his cocky beauty. He had got himself an acolyte, a hard-faced redheaded girl with the apparently permanent sneer of a teenager with a grudge. She stood at his side like some kind of bodyguard, her expression mirroring all the contempt in his. Rory’s eyes had transfixed me since I rode into the dun at his father’s side. Or rather, if he’d taken his sullen stare off me it was only to glare at the black horse. There was more to this, I thought, than jealousy of my friendship with Seth.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Hi, Rory.’

  Folding his arms, he nodded at the horse. It eyed him back.

  He said, ‘Do you just whistle, and they come?’

  I didn’t miss the way he raised his voice so Seth would catch the barb in it. Seth didn’t miss it either, but he ignored the boy, and went on brushing the roan’s hindquarters.

  God, but Rory reminded me of his father: Seth the way he used to be, Seth at his worst. Really, who did the little tosser think he was, when I’d wiped his backside and dried his tears, and risked my life to rescue him, and abased myself before Eili to save the hide of his wretched father?

  ‘I suppose you fancied my brother.’

  ‘I suppose I did.’ I was hanging onto my temper by my fingernails. ‘Then.’

  ‘I suppose Jed was too young to know any better.’

  I’d opened my mouth to tear a strip off him when Rory’s head was knocked forward by a casual flick of someone’s hand. ‘Cheeky wee toerag. Hello, Finn.’

  I think my mouth fell open a little with my helpless smile. Thirteen years had made no difference to Seth but for Jed it had been another whole lifetime. He still shaved his hair to soft brown stubble and his eyes were still dark, deep-set and framed by the longest lashes imaginable, but the juvenile delinquent look was gone. Skinniness had turned to hard leanness, furtiveness into watchful ease, and the wary insecurity into confidence. He was a man, I realised. He went and turned into a man when I wasn’t looking. And those years meant so much more to Jed than they did to the rest of us.

  He looked content. He wasn’t happy, not mindlessly happy, but he just reeked of contentment and belonging. For a moment I was even more blindingly envious of him than I’d been all those years ago, leaving him to the life that was rightfully mine. Then the resentment was gone like some half-seen landscape into the past, and I gave him a huge grin.

  ‘Jed.’ I let him grab me and lift me up, squeezing me till I thought my ribcage would rupture. ‘Jed, you look so different!’

  ‘Look who’s talking.’ Jed gave my cheek a smacking kiss and set me back down, and that was when I caught sight of the scar on his palm. It was only a fleeting glimpse, but I couldn’t miss it: so crude and deep, a vicious white wound that ran all the way from his little finger to the base of his thumb.

  Seth was watching my thoughts, so I gave him a small piece of my mind.

  ~ What have you done to each other?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Jed, still determinedly unaware of anything passing between minds. ‘I haven’t been avoiding you. I was asleep. Iolaire refused to wake me up, on the grounds that I won’t let him put me to sleep in the first place.’ He scowled at the dark-haired man behind him.

  ‘Hey Iolaire, meet Finn,’ interrupted Rory. ‘Don’t worry. This is the one who put him off women for life.’

  ‘You.’ Jed took him by the scruff of the neck, then booted him gently in the backside. ‘Get lost. Take your father’s horse and finish the grooming.’

  ‘Take Finn’s while you’re at it.’ Seth threw the brush to Rory. ‘Don’t look so nervous, Hannah. If my horse bites anyone it’ll be my son, and that’s no bad thing.’

  Despite the girl’s scowl, her fear of the blue roan was almost tangible. It was oh, so tempting to make her trip over her own feet as she turned to follow Rory, but perhaps I’d grown out of those destructive urges at last. I tried a more genuine smile, but Hannah had turned her back already and she didn’t see it.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Seth, shaking his head. ‘Rory’s showing off. It’s the girl. There’s nobody his own age here and he’s far too impressed.’

  ‘She’s not from here?’ I was startled.

  He laughed. ‘Rory picked her up in the otherworld. Mother’s a runaway, the father’s a Sithe. Either he’s dead or he’s back over here and living in blissful ignorance.’

  ‘Or he walked out.’ Jed’s tone had an edge like a blade. ‘It’s not like you have to be full-mortal to walk out on your offspring.’

  ‘Well,’ shrugged Seth after a brief silence. ‘I asked for that.’

  I didn’t know what to say, so I kept my mouth shut. God, but they had years of history between them, years I wasn’t party to. Acutely once more I felt the loss of the time, but there was no point resenting my dead mother, and no point blaming Seth. I’d put myself in exile through my hatred for the clann. It might have taken me years to admit it, but Seth had been right to send me away.

  But oh, I was glad to be back.

  ‘Give it a rest, you two.’ The man called Iolaire rolled his eyes.

  ‘Anyway, shut it. You’re embarrassing Finn.’ Seth nodded at me but he spoke to Jed.

  ‘No you’re not,’ I said.

  They both ignored me. ‘Let’s take her riding. See if she still falls off when she trots.’

  ‘Still wh–? You cheeky bastards, I’ll run you both into the ground.’

  ‘Aye aye, that definitely sounds like her.’ Jed nodded solemnly at Seth. ‘You brought the right one. Grown into her looks, hasn’t she?’

  ‘Told you she had.’ But the laughter had gone out of Seth’s voice a little, and he looked at me oddly.

  Iolaire winked at me. ‘So, Fionnuala. Nice to be back with the grown-ups?’

  I realised I knew him. It was a familiar name, and his face was definitely one I remembered: fine-boned and gypsy-handsome, his eyes warm with laughter, his hair mahogany brown. His earlobe was pierced by a small gold ring that was not removable. I could see the tiny flaw in the gold where it had been soldered into an unbroken ring, and besides, I’d seen it before.
>
  ‘I know you,’ I said, and smiled.

  Jed preened. ‘Yes. That Iolaire. Unsurprisingly, he couldn’t stay away from me.’

  Iolaire dug him in the ribs. ‘What he means is, he was so clearly lost without me, I took pity.’

  ‘You defected from Kate?’ I was nervously impressed. I glanced around for the lover I remembered from Kate’s caverns. ‘And what about Gealach?’

  ‘What about her?’ Iolaire shrugged blithely. ‘Listen, I need to see to my horse; she’s threatening lame. See you later, Finn?’ He turned on his heel.

  ‘Wait. I’ll come.’ Jed shot me a reassuring wink as he went after his lover.

  I knew when Seth dropped a casual arm round my shoulders that my faux pas was a bad one. ‘Oh, no. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ said Seth. ‘He’s not offended, he’s still hurting.’ His fingers tightened on my arm, then hung loose again. ‘Laszlo took Gealach.’

  ‘Oh. Poor Iolaire. But he doesn’t seem, uh–’

  ‘Well, these things happen, and they weren’t bound. Iolaire might still have had her, if his pride could take the sharing. But Laszlo’s couldn’t. He finds it hard enough not being the only one for Kate.’

  ‘Yes.’ And Seth should know. ‘I see.’

  ‘You don’t. Gealach was carrying Iolaire’s child.’

  ‘His child?’ It took my breath away. ‘And she went to Laszlo?’

  ‘I doubt she had a choice. The rumour is, Kate spell-bound her. Kind of a gift. Laszlo was getting over-possessive, and Kate needed a second lover for him.’ His voice was scathing, but I knew that was as much for himself as anyone. ‘For her busy periods, y’know?’