The Aisling Trilogy

by Cummings, Carole

  “Hold onto that,” he muttered. “And get on the other side of me, in case you have to grab for the rifle. Just don’t rip my arm off doing it, if there’s trouble.”

  He didn’t actually think the woman dangerous—Wil had been right: leaf and violence were rather mutually exclusive—but she was showing signs of withdrawal, and addicts deprived of their addictions were predictable only in their unpredictability.

  Dallin turned back to the woman, holding up the coins. He kept silent, and merely lifted his eyebrows, expectant.

  Her playful smile turned joyous as she stared up at the glint of gold, clapping her hands like a little girl. She sauntered closer, eyes fixed to the coins, leaning in like they were conspirators. “The one you seek comes to you,” she murmured, sour breath puffing too close to Dallin’s face, but he kept his mien graciously encouraging. “Wait and Watch,” she whispered, then pulled back and covered her ruined mouth with her hand; the effect was nauseatingly coquettish.

  The words made Dallin’s eyes narrow slightly, and he didn’t know what they were doing to Wil—he daren’t look back yet to find out. This couldn’t be what Dallin thought it was. He must be hearing things through his own skewed expectations. All of the secrecy that seemed to surround this whole business, men killing for it, and this filthy slum leaf-freak knew?

  “This one I seek,” he said, smoothly cordial, “what does he look like?”

  The smile fell, but only a little. “Ah, walks in shadows, he does, poor lad.” Amazingly, the woman managed to pout through the smile that was more and more making Dallin want to smack it off her skull-like face. “He’s the feel of the culled, but I know him when we sleep.” Her head fell back and her arms crossed over her small, flat breasts.

  “Touches my brow with his tattered fingers, plucks at my Thread, and sings me to dancing.” An ungainly bit of a sway, to-and-fro, and her eyes fell shut. “I know it’s him by how he marks me.” A spindly hand came up, swept at her brow. “Blood to blood,” she murmured, hummed, tuneless and ragged.

  Dallin actually looked closer to make sure there wasn’t in fact a bloody fingerprint on the woman’s forehead. He turned to Wil—somewhere between disbelief and confused revelation.

  Wil’s eyes were pinned to the woman, sickened and horrified, but held by macabre fascination. He turned his gaze slowly to Dallin’s, shook his head, mouth working but nothing coming out of it. His eyes were doing that thing they did, going murky and bright at the same time, color twisting inside them.

  Dallin’s stomach dropped a little and he reached out, laid a hand to Wil’s shoulder. “Hey,” he said softly, gentling. “You’re all right, there’s nothing—”

  “—the big one first,” came from almost right behind him, and he spun too late, instinctively shoving Wil back at the same time his vision was blocked by something wide and very hard smashing into the side of his head. Fucking hell, that hurt. Damn it, he’d let himself get distracted, forgot the first rule of both offence and defense, and let someone get behind him, hit him blind.

  Dazed, Dallin staggered, blinked to keep blackness from taking his vision or his perceptions. There was a scream and several shouts, winding their way through the dull ringing in Dallin’s ears. Everything happened at once, almost too fast for it to convey itself into anything like sense. Still, he tracked everything, reacting even before commands moved from his brain to his limbs.

  He felt a tug at the rifle’s strap. Hoping desperately that it was Wil who’d done the tugging, Dallin dropped his shoulder and let it be pulled away. At the same time, his left hand dropped to his hip, drew the gun from its holster. All of this before he’d even completed the turn to face his attackers and put himself between them and Wil.

  His glance flicked down to each end of the narrow lane before settling back on the men in front of them.

  There were five of them. The guard from the gate was standing foremost, even more smug than he’d been before, pig-eyes glittering with petty vengeance. Bloody hell, Dallin must have really pissed him off. Dallin reached up, swiped at his temple, fingers coming back tacky with blood. With a scowl, he noted a broken length of timber at the feet of the gate guard. A big broken length of timber.

  Had that tree-trunk broken over his head? No wonder his ears were ringing. If Dallin was lucky enough to get out of this without much more damage, he was at least going to have a bugger of a headache once the adrenaline wore off.

  The woman was on the ground, on her knees, crawling about and collecting the gilders that had scattered from Dallin’s hand. She was still smiling, peered up at Dallin as she scrabbled up the last gilder. She gave him a happy grin. Dallin resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

  Wil stood to Dallin’s right, rifle cocked and ready. Face set hard, Wil had already sighted down into the center of the small cluster of men who faced them. Three of them had swords drawn. The other two had standard military pistols aimed alternately at Dallin’s chest and Wil’s head.

  “Back off and we’ll be on our way,” Wil said calmly.

  Dallin was absurdly proud of him. Thirty seconds ago, Wil had been all set to panic; now, with the rifle once again in his hands, he was cool and more deadly than any of these men could imagine with their small minds.

  Two of them snorted; one of them waggled his eyebrows, mimed a kiss. They all had the same look to them. Small, mean men who got their few meager pleasures out of making others their prey. This wasn’t personal. They were just looking for their twisted version of fun, and Dallin had crossed the gate guard’s path on the wrong day. He hated to think what sorts of prison guards they’d make.

  “This is my fault,” he murmured to Wil. “Sorry. I don’t know why, but my instincts have turned to shit.”

  Wil adjusted his grip, tilted his head and shut one eye.

  The barrel of his gun was now pointed directly at the gate guard’s chest. “After we get out of it,” he murmured back, “I get to keep the gun.”

  Dallin didn’t dare twitch a smirk, but he wanted to.

  That rifle looked more at home in Wil’s hands than it had ever felt in Dallin’s, and Dallin wouldn’t dream of taking it back now. He reached down, let his fingers twitch over the new revolver when he saw one of the men follow the movement with his eyes.

  “Don’t shoot unless you have to,” Dallin told Wil.

  “You counted six before, and there are only five now—

  watch for another.” Took a deep breath. “Here goes.”

  He pushed himself away from the wall and took two slow steps forward. “I don’t know what this man has told you,” he said calmly, “but I am a visiting constable from the province of Putnam, and therefore probably a lot more trouble than you bargained for when you agreed to this little… party.” He watched their eyes; three of them showed obvious surprise then doubt. “Walk away now, and it goes no further. We’ll be gone before day’s end.”

  They stared, all of them still and silent. Dallin watched the eyes of every one of them, but mostly kept an eye on the one from the gate. If this went bad, it would be on his signal. If that one made a move, the others would back him up. It was just how these things went. One stupid leader and a handful of followers who were too used to obeying orders and pretending at loyalty to talk sense into him.

  The warning came by way of a flare in the gate guard’s eyes. He rushed, sword swinging, with a deep-chested cry. His lunge at Dallin was somewhat clumsy, but the man was formally trained, so Dallin didn’t underestimate him. Dallin turned himself sideways, flung his arm out and clothes-lined the man. It sent him to his back in the dirt with a breathless snarl. He didn’t stop swinging.

  His blade flashed in the dribs and drabs of sunlight that filtered through the buildings. Dallin had to spin again and dance back to avoid getting his shins sliced up. He glanced over at Wil, still holding three of them off with the aim of the rifle and a look that would have made Dallin stop and think twice. One of the men was helping the gate guard up from the ground. He stared at
Dallin and dragged at the guard’s elbow.

  Dallin was just wondering again where the sixth had got to, went to flick a quick glance over his shoulder, when a sharp pain, searing and incandescent with bright-white agony, sliced into his lower-back. He jerked with a throttled cry. Instinct drove his elbow back first, then he followed it with a blind, spinning right-hook. The butt of the gun against his palm lent more power to the blow. Dallin didn’t even have time to be satisfied with the painful grinding of his knuckles as they mashed into the assailant’s jaw, the gratifying crunch of tooth and bone vibrating up his arm.

  A shot boomed, the heavy whoof of air exploding from a broken chest almost muffled beneath the roar. Dallin heard every mechanism in the rifle click and churn as it was pumped, cocked again. Another shot whizzed past his shoulder. He only noticed vaguely when a warm spray of blood spattered at him—he was otherwise occupied with watching the top of a man’s head split off from the bottom… otherwise occupied with trying to breathe through pain that was almost sublime in its agony.

  “Good shot,” he said, only it came out fuzzy and slurred, his vision pulsing between light and dark in time to the pain radiating up from his back, engulfing the whole left side of his body. He reached back, fingers blundering into the hilt of a knife jutting from low in his back. Exquisite, blinding pain vibrated from his touch, sent hot bile to the back of his throat and sparkled at the edges of his perception. “Shit,” he muttered, swayed a little. “This is… this is bad.” Not fatal—everything important was higher and on the other side—but bad.

  Two more shots rang his ears. Dallin blinked. His right arm shouldn’t feel like it weighed twenty stone, but just raising his gun, pointing it into the blurred mass of moving bodies, made his vision go dark.

  “Brayden!”

  He blinked again, shook his head, but couldn’t clear it. A vague shape that resolved itself into Wil was coming toward him. Face fierce and determined, lit from within and as close to actual feral beauty as Dallin had ever seen. Like some kind of avenging spirit. Wil was saying something, shouting, but Dallin couldn’t hear it. He peered up, wondered why Wil was suddenly so much taller than him, and realized he’d gone down to his knees, oddly disturbed that he couldn’t remember when.

  “Hey!” Wil shouted, fear and real concern all over his hard-set face. “C’mon, we have to go.” He reached out, took hold of Dallin’s shoulder. “We have to go!”

  “Don’t shake me,” Dallin mumbled, or hoped he did. Shaking would be bad. Shaking would bloody hurt.

  “Can’t go,” he told Wil, shook his head, but everything was still too bright about the edges, muddled. “Just… give me a minute.”

  He just needed to catch his breath, that was all. Catch his breath and clear the tangle of pain that was clouding every thought, turning him slow and stupid, sucking him down into that quick-mud everyone kept chastising him about.

  “What’s wrong?” Wil wanted to know, hand gripping tighter now. “Are you shot? Did they get you? I don’t see anything—is it your head?”

  Going a little bit shocky now, Dallin blinked up into Wil’s face. Then up into the face of the man looming behind him. Noted the beaded braids in the gold-gray hair… the rough, notched the scar.

  Just how corrupt does an Old One have to be, he wondered dazedly, before the others slice your Marks from off your face?

  “The Watcher is watched,” Dallin wheezed .

  Vertigo closed him in a hard fist. He dragged his eyes back to Wil’s, reached out, gun dropping from his hand as it latched on to Wil’s sleeve.

  Leaned in, whispered, “Run.”

  Chapter Three

  Wil just barely kept himself from growling anxious impatience. They must have hit Brayden with that chunk of wood a lot harder than Wil had thought. Brayden had seemed fine just a moment ago, but now Wil was going to have a bugger of a time getting him to his feet, let alone out of the alley before the gunfire started attracting a crowd.

  The men had all scattered, except for the two Wil had shot. Wil had no doubt the others would be back in minutes with reinforcements. The scraggy woman was cowering in the doorway of what Wil assumed was the hostel’s kitchen, clutching her gold to her thin chest and singing to herself, that eerie smile still pulling at her mouth. Her sudden appearance, the realization of what she was, had thrown him almost completely before. Now, he dismissed her, blocked her from his consciousness like she didn’t even exist.

  He yanked his arm out Brayden’s grip, leaned in until the dark gaze fixed and focused on Wil’s face. “We have to go,” Wil snarled. “Get up, we don’t have time for this.”

  But Brayden only grabbed hold of Wil again, this time clenching a fist to the collar of Wil’s coat, dragging him in. “Go.” A breathless grunt, urgent and fierce. “Run!”

  “I’m trying to, damn it, would you—”

  Wil stopped short, eyes narrowing. He hadn’t noticed the look in Brayden’s eyes until just this moment. Hadn’t seen the stress, the pain, the urgent command. The way he dragged his oddly hazy gaze away from Wil and pointed it over Wil’s shoulder. Hadn’t noticed that Brayden had dropped both his guns to the dirt…

  Brayden was never without his guns.

  There was a prickle at the back of Wil’s neck, a bulky shadow falling over Brayden’s face and stretching out behind him. Wil turned slowly, pushed his reluctant glance up even while his stomach began a queasy descent to the ground.

  He knew right away why Brayden had told him to run. Knew right away that this was some very serious shit. Tall and wide, and blond and tanned—a Linder, but somehow so unlike Brayden it made Wil want to cringe.

  “Is this how your Guardian guards you?” the man wanted to know. His voice was gruff and graveled, harsh, and the smile in his eyes made something inside Wil go loose and cold.

  Brayden was trying to get up, stand between Wil and the man, and not quite making it. It took a moment for the hilt of the knife jutting from Brayden’s lower back, the growing stain of blood on his coat, to jumble itself into sense in Wil’s head.

  Oh. So that’s what he’s doing down there.

  “Exile,” Brayden said through his teeth.

  “Watcher,” the man returned and dipped his head, mouth turning up at one corner in a smirk that sent a shiver down Wil’s spine. The hard blue eyes dismissed Brayden, turned to Wil. The man turned his hands palms-up. “You see I am not armed. I am no threat to you.”

  Wil ignored him and bent to pull the dagger from where it jutted out Brayden’s back—

  “Don’t do that,” the man said calmly. Wil hesitated and peered up. The man shrugged. “Do it and he’ll bleed out before you can get him help.”

  Uncertain, Wil turned to Brayden. “Is that true?”

  “Yeah,” Brayden wheezed, moved his mouth like he meant to say more, then only nodded somewhat drunkenly.

  Wil set his teeth and turned back on the man. “What do you want?” he asked, relieved that his voice was steady and not as reedy as he’d feared.

  “Ah, we all want so badly,” the woman sang, giggled a little and smoothed her torn, ragged skirts about her ankles. “Give them what they think they want to keep them from taking what they don’t know you have.” Her bird-like hands fluttered in the air in front of her face, and she laughed again.

  A small shock went through Wil, and he frowned at the filthy woman, a grimy little oracle, leaking portents like pus from a wound. How many times had he told himself that same thing? How many times had he used it as an excuse for deeds he didn’t want to remember?

  “We never give ’em anything that matters,” she murmured to her fingers, grinned her ruined grin at the man Brayden had called Exile. “Keep it so well, it hides even from our own.” She giggled.

  The man ignored the woman entirely, just let his smile spread a little wider, asked, “Does he take you to the Cradle, lad?”

  Wil jolted a little—he couldn’t help it.

  “Ah, but you’re no lad, are you then?” the
man went on. He nodded sagely, tilted his head. “Did you think they’d just let you walk right in?” His voice had dipped down, conspiratory and filled with mock-concern. “Did it never occur to you that there were others who Seek?”

  He took a step forward, but Brayden let loose a rumbling growl and drew his short sword from its sheath; it shook as he held it up, not much of a threat, but the man stopped, eyes narrowed. There was something wrong about him, something… off. He gave off threat like it breathed from his pores—he knew what they were, both of them—and yet there was circumspection in his mien, like he was looking for more. And he’d kept Wil from pulling out that knife and letting Brayden bleed to death.

  The woman staggered to her feet, threw herself at the big man, took him in a bony embrace. “Exile,” she breathed, burying her face in the sleeve of his coat. “Ye’ve waited so very long to take Her Children in-hand.” She looked up at him, pleading. “Will She take my hand, then?”

  The man’s smile turned shrewd. He slipped his arm about the woman, peering down at Wil, cunning. “D’you want what she has, then?” he asked smoothly. “I see the look in your eye. I see the need.”

  Wil shook his head, sucked in a heavy breath. Bloody hell, was it carved into his forehead?

  He wanted to shoot the woman so he didn’t have to look at her anymore. Didn’t have to wonder how close the resemblance might have been. Didn’t have to know that he still wanted it so badly he’d consider killing for it and then killing himself if he managed to get it.

  “Wil,” Brayden wheezed, “if you don’t move right now, I swear, I’ll shoot you myself.”

  Wil could only frown and wonder why he wasn’t doing exactly as Brayden had said. He should be running. Except he wasn’t going to. Couldn’t. “I’m going,” Wil told Brayden, low and even, “but you’re coming with me.”

  Grunting a little, Wil stooped and wrangled Brayden’s thick arm over his shoulder as carefully as he could. He kept a steady eye on both the man and the woman as he did it, and his finger on the trigger. It was very telling that Brayden couldn’t seem to shrug Wil off.