Wolfsbane: 3 (Rebel Angels)

by Gillian Philip

  ‘The–’ I swallowed. ‘What happened about the–’

  ‘The inconvenient child? Kate charmed it right out of Gealach’s womb.’

  I felt the blood drain out of my face. Across the years I heard Leonie tell me: There aren’t many children, Finn. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Don’t you?’ asked Seth. He put his long fingers against my face and tipped it up so that he could look at my eyes.

  I felt him right inside my mind, but surprisingly I didn’t resent it, and I didn’t fight it. It was like standing back, holding wide the door, letting him look because he’d asked nicely. ~ All right, I told him silently. ~ I’ve got nothing to hide. You?

  Seth was gone from my head, biting his lip as he half-smiled. ‘You do believe it.’

  ‘Yeah. It was only a figure of speech, y’know.’

  But I did know what it was to be in thrall to Kate NicNiven. We each knew that the other knew. And one day, I thought, eyeing Seth, I’ll find out if you still are.

  ~ Thirteen years, woman. He smiled at me sadly. ~ Don’t we trust each other yet?

  I tried to smile back. I disliked Kate slinking into my life and my mind the moment I came home. High sunlight blazed on the dun, bleaching the flagstones; the scent of the machair was in the air and my skin was warm with summer, but her name inside my head felt as if a shard of dirty ice was lodged there.

  Seth was watching me, thoughtful and sad.

  ‘I know,’ was all he said.

  SETH

  ‘You want to maybe give everybody a break?’

  I nearly choked on my water bottle. Orach stood over me, blocking out the blazing sun. She upended her own bottle over her sweat-drenched head, shutting her eyes and opening her mouth in bliss. When she’d caught a whole mouthful, she spat it into the sand of the practice yard, then gave me a Look.

  I exploded. ‘You people don’t like training any more? Would you like a day on the damn beach?’ I glared across at the bodies sprawled in the sand. They did look knackered, now that she mentioned it, and the teenager I’d screamed at was still in silent tears, whetting her sword blade with a grim intensity. Christ, was that Eorna with his comforting arm round her shoulders? Was he getting soft in his old age or what? I stared back at Orach. ‘Would you quit it with the Looks? What have I done?’

  ‘It’s what you haven’t done, you stupid man,’ she muttered.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘It’s what you haven’t done, you stupid man, Captain.’

  I had to make a conscious effort to shut my own jaw. Orach rolled her eyes, blew out a sigh, and sat down against the fence beside me.

  ‘She’s back, isn’t she? I thought that’s what you wanted.’

  ‘Orach, don’t do this now–’

  ‘Oh I could slap you!’

  ‘Go ahead if it gets it over with!’ I gestured angrily at my cheek.

  ‘I wish it was that simple!’

  After that we both glowered into the middle distance for a bit. The recovering fighters, I couldn’t help noticing, were studiously not looking at us. One of them staggered to his feet, limped to the water trough and plunged his head right in.

  ‘You idiot.’ Orach sighed and let her head flop against my shoulder. ‘I understand, y’know.’

  ‘I know you do,’ I muttered. ‘So you know it isn’t... It isn’t. What you said. That simple.’

  ‘Gods’ sake, don’t let that stupid soothsayer ruin everything.’

  ‘Why change the habit of a lifetime?’ I rested my cheek against her head and closed my eyes. I remembered her weeping the night of my sentence; the only one in the hall who was. I remembered her trying to get into my head, and I remembered shoving her away. Better not do that again. It only made her mad.

  ‘You saved my frigging sanity,’ I told her. ‘Not to mention my soul.’

  ‘Oh, shut it. You were never mine, Murlainn, and you never pretended to be, and I never imagined you were.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that,’ I said. ‘You’ve no idea how much. And you know fine I lo–’

  ‘Don’t. Don’t even think of saying it.’

  ‘It’s not a lie, Orach.’

  ‘I know it isn’t. But if you say it out loud I really will slap you.’ Awkwardly she sat up straight, and we stared at the fighters again in silence. They were starting to get to their feet once more. Even the kid whose tears hadn’t dried yet on her face.

  ‘Take the rest of the day off,’ I barked savagely.

  None of them waited for me to change my mind; they were out of that arena before I’d taken my next breath. Only one of them looked remotely regretful, and that was the green-eyed woman with the choppy brown hair. She slung her knife belt over her shoulder, and trudged off disappointed.

  ‘You’re all heart.’ There was laughter in Orach’s voice, I was glad to hear.

  ‘Taghan’s keen.’

  ‘Taghan’s a strange one.’

  ‘Taghan’s without a brother, thanks to me.’ I’d killed Feorag the day my own brother died. ‘Gods know, she’s the only person Eili talks to, apart from Sionnach, and he doesn’t exactly talk much. What?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She chewed her lip and watched the spot where Taghan had disappeared. ‘She’s loyal, I guess.’

  ‘If she wasn’t, she’d have been out of here and into Kate’s arms long ago. She’s all right. She’s got principles.’ I sighed and stretched, almost too comfortable to move, but I clambered to my feet. ‘I’d better get on with some work.’

  ‘I’ll say, after the way you’ve treated everyone else.’ Grinning, she punched my arm gently. ‘Murlainn? Do something about it. Anything. Yes?’

  ‘Yes, miss.’ I tugged my forelock, and she left me with a deliberately flirtatious wink. Tease.

  Soon as she was gone, my mood blackened all over again. Do something about it. Easier said.

  ‘She’s nothing to do with you,’ I said aloud.

  On the other side of the fence, Branndair raised his head and yawned quizzically.

  ‘Finn’s nothing to do with you,’ I told him, and myself. He did that thing canines do in lieu of raising an eyebrow, stretched languidly, then squirmed under the fence. As my fingers ruffled into his neck fur, he got up on his hind legs and planted his paws on my chest.

  I gazed into his yellow eyes as I scratched his furry throat. ‘You wouldn’t take any shit from soothsayers,’ I said. ‘Why do I?’

  He tilted his head and grinned, licking my nose.

  It hadn’t taken Kate to tell me the whole prophecy, as she’d once promised; Leonora and Stella had been happy to ram it into my ears for years before my queen got the chance. Griogair’s bastard. Leonora’s grandchild.

  And why couldn’t the soothsayer stick to what she was asked? Why did she need to veer so wildly off-message? The Bloodstone prophecy had caused trouble enough for a hundred malevolent old sibyls.

  Splinter-heart, winter-heart, lover-killer. He’ll drink the blood of his mother and he’ll kill the ones dearest to him.

  Well, come on. I’d managed those already, the latter several times over. If that wasn’t enough to satisfy a witch, I don’t know what was.

  Splinter-heart. Lover-killer.

  Like I said. What’s new?

  Griogair’s bastard will be the death of his lover’s grandchild.

  Ah, that part. No wonder Stella had done everything she could to keep us apart. No wonder Leonie used to look at me with death in her eyes. It almost made me want to court the girl in future years just to spite them, except that they were right. And I cooperated, truly. I did my part. I stayed away, not least because we found one another mutually repellent.

  And then she only went and grew up. She grew up and either her nose wasn’t too big for her face any more, or I didn’t care. Either her eyes were no longer fish-pale and eerie, or I didn’t care. She looked something like her mother, but I didn’t even care about that, and besides there were moments and looks and turns of her head when I could see he
r father. The jawline that was softer than Stella’s, the laughter-marks around her eyes. The parts untouched by frost.

  I kissed Branndair’s muzzle and shoved him down; shocked out of his ecstasy of neck-scratching, he shook himself and trotted with me as I headed for the Great Hall.

  I was at the foot of the steps to the hall when I felt it, and hesitated: the feather-touch of something on the back of my hand. Reflexively I flexed my fingers and clasped it tight, then let it go.

  Like water, or fog; I never knew which. And here in the dun it was like thick soupy water, or a fog of cotton wool: dense and tenacious. I caressed it once more with the back of my hand; so familiar, so strange. Sgath. Touching it was the one thing – the only thing – I could do that my brother never could. I felt guilty just for that, just for the frisson of satisfaction it still gave me.

  I wasn’t the one Finn loved anyway. The one she loved was dead and gone. Keeping that in mind would keep me sane. Keeping that in mind would keep my resolve as unyielding as the Veil in my fist.

  Two guards were watching me, a nervous look on them. I let the Veil slip between my fingers and walked on up the steps and past them. Witchcraft, or at least it came close. I didn’t blame them for being antsy when they noticed me touch the Veil. Funny that Rory didn’t bother them. I’d worried about that – gods, I’d worried, but there had been no need. They loved the little fiend, and they viewed his Veil-antics as no worse than some party trick.

  I couldn’t help grinning to myself, remembering the first time. That three-year-old imp with a giggle I wanted to bottle and keep forever: Eili nagged us till she was hoarse about not turning his bedtime into a game. With me, Jed and Sionnach doing the parenting, she might as well have saved her breath. The boy could crawl under tables as fast as a snake, and he learned his blocking very young, so we lost him in the tumult of the Great Hall more than once. His scowl when the three of us finally cornered him was always a sight to scare a Lammyr, but it was nothing to the looks on our faces the day his scowl turned into a fat smirk, and he rolled over backwards, and vanished.

  That time, when the tables around us fell silent and Eorna stood up and swore, and the hubbub raced around the whole room till every fighter in the place was on their feet shouting and pointing; that time it was easy enough, when the freezing shock faded, to reach through after him: to clutch him from a dark and windswept ruin on a deserted knoll of west coast granite, and bring him back to his own world.

  Trouble was, when Rory saw the reaction he got, he only wanted to do it again. And again. And the wilier he got, the harder bedtimes became, and the more colourful Eili’s language grew.

  Those were the times I missed Conal. Those times and all the others, obviously, but I know he’d have sorted the little toerag. There were a lot of things he’d have sorted, but there was no point thinking that way. I told myself that again when I found Finn in the kitchens chatting up Sulaire.

  And good luck to her on that front, I thought as she laughed her filthy laugh at one of his jokes. But it didn’t stop the sharp stab of annoyance in my gut.

  I laid my sword down on one of the tables with a clatter, which got their attention, but I couldn’t do much other than scowl at their nervously expectant faces.

  You grew up a good few centuries before she did. Physically speaking.

  It isn’t even you she ever liked.

  She’s nothing to do with you, Seth. My daughter is nothing to do with you!

  ‘If you’ve got nothing better to do than eat, Dorsal,’ I heard some bastard of a dun Captain say through my mouth, ‘you can get your backside out there for some training.’

  JED

  ‘This ain’t getting any hunting done.’ Iolaire stood up in the river, water flowing fast around his waist, and grinned. ‘The water’s lovely. Get that fine arse of yours back in here.’

  Jed gave him a lazy smile back, but he stayed where he was, naked on the bank, running a whetstone down his blade. ‘Like you said. It ain’t getting any hunting done.’

  Iolaire made a face, but he grabbed an overhanging alder branch and hauled himself dripping from the water. ‘I hate to say it, but I’m liking this part better.’

  ‘Pacifist.’

  ‘Obsessive.’ Iolaire slumped down in the soft grass and kissed Jed’s knee.

  ‘Flirt. Give it up, it won’t work.’ Jed ran a finger down the honed edge of his sword, examining the reflected light.

  ‘Slave driver.’ Iolaire wriggled into his jeans. ‘Sometimes I’d like to know what really happens in that head of yours.’

  Jed sheathed the blade. ‘You know what goes on in my head. You of all people don’t have to bloody be there.’

  Iolaire knuckled his skull hard enough to make him wince. ‘You sensitive wee thing. I knew what I was letting myself in for, remember? Move, then, I’m way ahead of you. Get your kit on.’

  Yes, he remembered. He’d dreamed it, unexpectedly, not so long ago. It still sent the echo of a chill into his spine: Seth deciding whether to take Iolaire in, or take his head.

  ‘Ah, he made the right decision in the end.’ Iolaire winked.

  ‘You’d better not be–’

  ‘As if. I can read you like a picturebook anyway.’ Iolaire pulled his damp t-shirt down over his torso. His expression was martyred. ‘And you don’t want to laze around any more, so poor me has to trail after you like a lovesick puppy.’

  ‘A lovesick, homicidal puppy.’ Jed laughed as he stood up, yanking on his own jeans. ‘And you say you don’t read my mind. Head for Brokentor? There was a rumour he was–’

  ‘Jed.’ Iolaire’s head came up.

  Jed turned and crouched in one movement. ‘Where?’

  ‘Beyond the weir. Four of them.’ Iolaire worked his blade loose in its scabbard. He indicated the high wooded slope to the right, then slipped soundlessly up through the birks while Jed backed towards the water’s edge.

  He could hear the enemy fighters now; they weren’t making any effort to suppress their racket. Rough voices, the snap and crunch of dead branches, a brief savage laugh. Jed slid down the bank and into the river, and waded upstream in the shade of tangled alders till he saw movement in the glade ahead. He halted, watching, the flow of the water fast and cold against his legs. He curled one hand round a branch, his toes into the soft silt of the riverbed.

  The boy who was shoved hard down the slope could be no more than thirteen. His wrists were bound behind him and he couldn’t avoid the thick rhododendron roots seething out of the ground like serpents; his foot caught and he went rolling and tumbling into the hollow, his captors hard behind him. One jumped lightly down and placed a foot on his spine, then kicked him over so he was lying on his back staring up. The combination of terror and bolshie fury in the boy’s eyes gave Jed a shiver of recognition.

  ‘I said I won’t do it again,’ the boy gritted, spitting blood.

  ‘Damn right you won’t.’ The leader laughed. ‘It’s not that I haven’t got a sense of humour. But jokes are tiresome after the first time. Get him on his feet.’

  The two other fighters grabbed the boy by the arms. ‘In the river?’ asked one.

  ‘In the river. And I don’t want to see him come out of it.’

  ‘No!’ screamed the boy.

  ‘Go on, give us a smile.’ The leader stretched his own lips wide in a grin as he pressed a dirk to the boy’s chest and forced him back towards the bank. ‘You were laughing your pretty head off half an hour ago.’

  They were heading straight towards him. Whoa, shit. Jed took a swift breath and ducked right under the water, finding an alder root with his fingers to anchor himself.

  The water churned as legs plunged into the water close enough for him to touch; then the boy was there too, his scream turning to bubbles of air as powerful hands held his head under. The boy clamped his mouth shut, his eyeballs white and panicked, and very suddenly they were staring straight into Jed’s. If it was possible, they widened.

  Jed gave the b
oy a grin, and dived down under him. The nearest legs were just asking to be seized; he locked an arm round one of them and yanked its owner down.

  The yelp of shock was audible even underwater, and then the man was flailing at him, his open mouth sending up a gush of bubbles. There was no point giving him time to recover, so Jed seized him by the throat and thrust his blade up under his breastbone.

  The water went pink around him as the man’s struggles grew feebler. Jed thrust him away and erupted from the water. The boy was already up and fighting, frantically, as Jed lunged for his second captor, who was staggering back clumsily in the deeper water. There was no way of watching for the leader, but he didn’t have to. Iolaire stood behind the man on the riverbank, an arm round his neck, the tip of a bright blade thrust through his chest.

  ‘Hurry up, eh?’

  The surviving fighter slammed a fist into the side of the boy’s head, knocking him flying into the water with his hands still bound, and drew his blade. Not fast enough, since Jed was already barrelling into him with the head butt that had served him for years before his Sithe life. The man went down with a grunt and a colossal splash, and Jed dropped his sword to concentrate on holding him down. When the fight, and the breath, went out of him, Jed kicked away and lunged for the surface, sucking in air. The boy crawled from the river a few feet downstream.

  Iolaire had dropped the leader’s limp body, and watched Jed patiently as he staggered up the bank. Jed glowered.

  ‘If you wore a watch you’d be tapping it. Don’t help or anything.’

  ‘You were doing fine. I’d only have got in the way.’

  ‘There is that.’

  Iolaire blew him a kiss, then shot out an arm to grab the boy as he made a dash for freedom. ‘And where do you think you’re going?’

  The boy twisted in his grip, his feet skidding and sliding on churned mud. ‘Out of here. Let go!’

  ‘No. Say thank you, you ingrate.’

  ‘Thanks. Now let me go.’

  ‘Go where?’ Iolaire gave him a hard tug that almost sent him sprawling, and nodded at the two floating corpses and the land-bound one. ‘These guys will have mates out looking for you in a couple of hours. And I meant, say thank you to my friend. He’s the one who stopped you getting drowned.’