The Aisling Trilogy

by Cummings, Carole

  “…did you end up in the Infantry?” Dallin was saying when they reached him. He was smiling more broadly than Wil would have credited, considering who these men were and what their intentions had been only days ago. Apparently, Dallin didn’t carry grudges.

  “It was made clear to me several years ago that the Cavalry is now considered a young man’s vocation,” the captain said, civilly enough, Wil supposed, but he still couldn’t help the way his eyes narrowed and his mouth tightened. “When I reached my fifteen-year service mark, I was ‘offered’ either retirement or a commission training snipers, and, well…” He paused, shrugged. “The Army is all I know.” He shifted a bit, cleared his throat. “I must say, when I was finally told what our assignment was and who we were meant to arrest…” The man shook his head, looked away quickly, then back up to Dallin again. “It didn’t seem right from the beginning. And ordering us to take along Dominion scum—”

  Corliss loudly cleared her throat, lifted her eyebrow at the captain, and shot a meaningful glance toward Wil. The captain followed her gaze, reddened slightly, but merely closed his mouth. If there were any apologies behind his teeth, Wil would never hear them. The man had apparently spent too many years fighting ‘Dominion scum,’ and it would take more than Wil’s presence to dispel the epithet.

  Dallin, smirking—because he just would—took up the sudden silence. “Captain Wisena, may I present to you my companion, Wil.” He paused for a moment, flicked Wil an asking glance, then went on, “The Aisling. I know Corliss has informed you as to what that name means.”

  The captain nodded once. “Indeed,” he said, eyeing Wil with a critical gaze—not quite disbelieving, but not entirely believing, either.

  Wisena seemed caught between a bow and a salute, and not really wanting to offer either, so Wil decided to cut through both. He put out his hand. “Captain.”

  Eyebrow raised, Wisena took Wil’s offered hand, shook it, his grip almost reluctant. “Aisling,” he replied. Trying not to give anything away, but he wasn’t quite as good at it as Dallin was. Even as he’d said the word, he’d stiffened with clear doubt.

  “I’d prefer Wil, if you don’t mind.” With a smile he hoped was cool and confident, Wil withdrew his hand, peering between Wisena and Dallin. “Do you two know each other?”

  Wisena slid a sideways glance over to Dallin. “I served under Captain Brayden on the northern Border,” he replied—a different sort of awe in his eyes and voice than those here in Lind, but Wil could tell Wisena had admired Dallin back then, and had likely learned a lot from him. Good. This sort of respect Dallin didn’t mind and knew what to do with.

  Wisena looked back at Wil, gaze going slightly tight again, skeptical and trying not to show it. “I was glad and relieved to hear there was a different reason for his… actions than what we’d been told,” he went on.

  Wil supposed he could substitute ‘treachery’ for ‘actions’ and be a little closer to what Wisena couldn’t quite bring himself to say. And clearly, Wisena blamed Wil for the besmirching of his former captain’s character and reputation among those Commonwealth troops who’d been told the same story he’d been told by Siofra. Wisena looked Wil over critically—not quite the way men usually looked him over, but close enough—like Wisena was trying to decide if what Wil apparently had to offer the noble former Captain Brayden could possibly be worth what Dallin had given up to become the little catamite’s Guardian.

  I know what I look like, Wil had told Dallin once. This was how he knew.

  “You’ll understand,” Wisena continued, “why I’ve asked Cap—” He cut himself off. “—why I’ve asked Brayden if it might be possible to provide some sort of… proof of your claims.” He dipped his head, not-quite-apology, and opened a hand. “Between Chester and Constable Stierne, I have seen and heard enough to make me believe it wise to hesitate before following my orders. But only hesitate.” He smiled a little, and not terribly kindly. “Orders, after all, are orders.” Proof. Interesting. Just what exactly was Wisena expecting Wil to do? Wasn’t Chester proof enough?

  Dallin’s mouth had gone tight. “As I’ve already told the captain,” he said, speaking to Wil, but burning holes in Wisena with his sharp gaze, “this is not a matter of performing magic tricks to satisfy his curiosity.” He turned to Wil, gaze gone softer, with no small amount of warning inside it. “It’s too dangerous. You’ve nothing to prove.”

  Perhaps not to you. But to this man…? Yes. Dallin needed Wisena, Lind needed Wisena, and for all his priggish doubt about Wil himself, Wisena really was sincerely caught between faith and duty—more than Dallin had been all those weeks ago, because Dallin hadn’t had much in the way of faith until it had walked up to him and bashed him upside his head. But Captain Wisena stood on the border between risking his country and risking his soul, and he didn’t have the consolation of direct orders from the Mother Herself. Only the word of someone he used to love and respect, but who he’d been told was a traitor under the spell of a mad Dominionite who’d run away from home and caused a schism in delicate negotiations that could mean the difference between peace and war. And if even Corliss, who Dallin had apparently known for quite some time, and who seemed to genuinely love and respect him as well, if even she had believed what they’d told her, enough to put a gun on her friend…

  ‘Too dangerous’ didn’t really seem to be the point.

  Wil said nothing, merely sucked in a long breath, blew it out slowly, and nodded. Peered about himself, at all the faces of those closest, watching and waiting, and all the faces of those farther away, watching but not knowing why…

  He dropped his pack to the ground, unslung the rifle, and shoved it at the captain with a cold little half-smile. “Hold this, please,” was all he said, then squared his shoulders, stepped away and down toward the river.

  “Wil!” Dallin called and started after him. “Wil, you don’t have to do this.”

  Wil smiled a little, looked over his shoulder as Dallin caught him up. “Yes, I do. And you know why.”

  Dallin’s jaw set tight. “All right, then.” He reached out and took hold of Wil’s elbow, brought them both to a halt, and turned Wil to face him. “I don’t want you to this. I’m asking you not to.”

  “You need him.” Wil swept his arm to encompass the camp. “They need him. And this is the only way he’ll do what you need him to do.”

  “Then I’ll find another way,” Dallin argued. “This isn’t—”

  “This is exactly the way, and you know it.”

  Dallin glowered darkly, shook his head. “Wil, you don’t know what could happen. What if—?”

  “What if what I choose to do or not do right this second is the difference between peace for your country or another decade of war? I asked you once what would happen if you were given a choice between me and Cynewísan. This is it, Dallin; we’re standing dead-center in the middle of that choice, and I’ve just decided it was wholly unfair of me to put it to you. It isn’t even your choice.”

  “Strange, because it seems to me I’ve made it several times over already.” Dallin was furious, frightened, Wil had no trouble at all seeing it. “Wil,” Dallin said, clearly trying to wrench calm into his voice and not quite succeeding, “all of what came at you this morning, it’s still here, waiting for you and straining against its traces, and what you’re proposing is tantamount to calling it down on yourself. I watched you bleed from your eyes, Wil. I watched you vomit blood into the dirt until I thought your guts were going to spill out into the mud.”

  Wil stared into the depth of pleading in those dark eyes, looked squarely at what was behind it all, and didn’t allow himself to look away this time. He reached up, slipped his hand to Dallin’s nape, pulled him down, and kissed him, hard, with more meaning inside it than he could ever speak. And then he pulled back, stepped away, reached out, lifted his hand, and opened it, palmup.

  “I have to,” he said quietly.

  He called the lightning.

  Thun
der boomed above their heads, but it didn’t even come close to the thunder in Dallin’s gaze, heavy and filled with wrath as he stared at Wil through the sizzling pop and too-bright flashes that danced over Wil’s palm, reaching down from the sky in jagged teeth of dazzling light, then sputtering harmlessly as it splayed over Wil’s fingers. He could feel it all, what Dallin had warned him about, ramming itself against the boundaries of his Self, looking for cracks in his defenses and trying to squeeze its way through. But by the set of Dallin’s jaw, the tension in his face, and the pain-lines beginning to etch themselves at the corners of his mouth, Wil knew Dallin was… what had Dallin called it?—channeling. Setting himself beneath it. Shoring Wil up, because it was what Dallin did—he couldn’t help himself. Because things like this… this was what you did for people you cared about.

  “This is why you frighten me,” Dallin said through his teeth. “These chances you take…” The spatter of light over his face made him look fierce and dangerous. “This is why I’m afraid to tell you what you want to know.”

  Even though they both knew he would.

  Who is submitting to whom? Dallin’s eyes glared at him. Wil only shook his head, stepped in close, and kissed him again, lightning spitting about them, a living column of raw power stretching from the sky to Wil’s hand, running through him and into Dallin. Tethering Warp to Weft, and enclosing them inside itself. Ozone sizzled pungent about them, currents flaring between them and sharpening every touch, every breath, every reaction until the need to have more was nearly unbearable.

  Blatant intimacy for all eyes to see, and Wil truly didn’t care. Let them look—they should see what their Shaman meant to their Aisling.

  Slowly, Wil drew away, said, “I’m pretty sure I love you,” pleased at the way it gained depth with the power that bound them, pleased that it wasn’t at all as difficult to say out loud as he’d imagined, pleased at the way Dallin’s voice wavered and his eyes filled and his jaw clenched to stop it as he said it back. Words Wil had never expected to say, never expected to have said to him, and spoken through the blinding weave of everything that trussed them one to the other.

  “Warp and Weft,” he told Dallin, then smiled at him, said, “I’m sorry,” because Dallin would forgive him. Still holding Dallin’s gaze, Wil took a long breath, braced himself.

  Pulled it back.

  It wasn’t nearly as wrenching as he’d been expecting. A moment of pain and overwhelming heat, and his ears popped, but he didn’t do much more than stagger, blink into the darkness, the ropy shapes of the lightning still spiking his vision. A little dizzy, perhaps, but he hadn’t swooned, as he’d almost been expecting to. His mouth tasted foul, full of copper, and he spat, noting without surprise the streak of red, then brought his arm up, dragged his sleeve under his nose, again not at all surprised when a splotch of white came at him from Dallin’s direction. He allowed Dallin to blot the blood with the handkerchief, allowed wide hands to guide him to sit in the grass, allowed a strong arm to settle about his shoulders and pull him in.

  “You’re a bloody idiot,” Dallin growled at him, but there was no real anger inside it, and what anger there was smothered quickly beneath relief.

  “Oh, I know,” Wil agreed, muffled through the linen. “It’s why you put up with me.” He smirked around the handkerchief when Dallin lifted an eyebrow, questioning. “Because I make you look good,” Wil told him. “What good is a Guardian if he never has to rescue anyone?”

  Dallin shook his head, somewhere between laughter and exasperation. “I only hope I live to see the day when you put me out of a job,” he retorted, squeezing Wil in closer and roughly kissing the crown of his head.

  “Captain Brayden.” Wisena stood before them, holding Wil’s rifle at parade rest, mien somber but more deferential than he’d been before. “Um… Guardian,” he corrected, dipped a low nod to Wil, then turned his glance back on Dallin. He lifted his chin. “I believe you have a strategy you would like to discuss.”

  Dallin’s mouth pinched up tight, and he stared up at the captain. He turned to Wil, met the satisfied smirk beneath the handkerchief, and gave him a glare. “You’re still an idiot.”.

  Wil didn’t participate in the discussion with Wisena. He didn’t need to; Dallin would fill him in later. Though Wil did make sure Hunter was included in the party as they retired into the guardhouse for privacy. Wil solved the problem of a bodyguard—Hunter’s problem more than Dallin’s, though Dallin didn’t insert himself into the exchange when Hunter voiced his objections —by commandeering Corliss. Hunter was clearly torn. Wil had to smirk at the jealous, distrustful glances Hunter spared Corliss, but the Shaman was where Hunter’s real loyalties lay, and he was obedient to a fault, so when Wil insisted, Hunter less than graciously ceded the charge of him.

  Corliss certainly didn’t mind. She seemed to know her way around quite well, and Wil hadn’t forgotten the fact that she knew where all the good food was. Anyway, despite the fact that he couldn’t quite get past the gun she’d put to Dallin’s head, she was very personable and provided a comfortable buffer between him and the people who’d actually stood in line to touch him before, and now gave him more room than necessary. The adoring looks of before had modulated into something quite a bit more chary after Wil’s display, but it didn’t seem like enough to put them off, just enough that they gave him a little distance, which was what he preferred.

  “That was a hell of a show you put on,” Corliss said casually as they sat in the grass, trenchers overflowing with slabs of beef and blackened potatoes, and more green vegetables than Wil had a name for.

  He shrugged and pulled apart the still-smoldering potato skin to expose tender, steaming mounds of white pulp inside. “Yow, ow.” Sucking on his fingers, Wil looked at Corliss. “Seemed the best way to dispel all the doubts at once.”

  “I’ve no doubt it did that. Damn, I forgot beer.” Corliss turned her head, scanning. “Ah. Ryne, dear, would you be a love and fetch us two beers? There’s a good girl.”

  Wil lifted his eyebrows as he watched the girl scamper off. “You seem to know a lot of people here.” He took a healthy bite of something that looked like a tiny cabbage, and immediately regretted it; it was bitter and foul, and he leaned to the side and spat it into the grass, wiped his mouth.

  Corliss watched it all with a smirk but didn’t comment. “Try the beets. They’ve got a different way of pickling here, and it’s quite good.” She paused. “That’s the red.”

  “I know what beets are,” Wil told her, miffed.

  She only shrugged. “You didn’t know what the sprouts were, that’s all.”

  “Well, I know what beets are.” He couldn’t help the way it curled defensive. “And I know what meat is, and I know what green beans are, and I know what…” Shit. He slumped, cheeks warming. “All right, I don’t know what this other green thing is.”

  “Mustard greens,” Corliss told him, then pointed a bright smile over his shoulder. “Ah, Ryne, lovie, you’re a wonderful girl.” She held out her hand. “Here we are, then.”

  The girl came forward, lanky and tall, though she couldn’t have been more than twelve or so. She smiled shyly at Corliss as she handed over a wooden flagon, amber beer slopping over the side, then a little more nervously at Wil. Dropping the mustard greens back onto his plate and licking his fingers clean of the buttery juice, Wil smiled as unalarmingly as he could and held out his hand for the other mug.

  “I won’t bite, I promise,” he told the girl, softening his voice and his gaze both. Biting was probably not what she was worried about.

  “He won’t shoot you with lightning, either,” Corliss put in bluntly.

  For all its lack of tact, it seemed the right thing to say, because the girl snorted like the idea had never occurred to her, and she took a step toward Wil. She held the beer out to him and didn’t even flinch when he took it from her. He dipped his head, broadening his smile.

  “Thank you, Ryne.”

  “You’re ver
y welcome…” She faltered, eyes widening in dismay.

  “You may call me Wil if you like,” he told her kindly.

  She had quite a lovely smile. “You’re very welcome, Wil.”

  She blushed prettily, shot a glance at Corliss, then escaped with several backward grins as a small horde of her peers immediately closed around her, apparently wanting every detail. Wil watched them as they bolted off, shook his head, and took a sip from the cup. He raised his eyebrows; the beer was hearty and full-bodied, and so concentrated he could taste the rich, warm flavor of the hops.

  “You can be quite charming when you want to be,” Corliss mused, smirking out the side of her mouth as she gnawed at a hunk of beef.

  Wil lifted an eyebrow, smirked back. “I might say the same of you.”

  She shrugged, washing down her mouthful with a sip of beer. “So, tell me, Wil-the-Aisling—how does a man get to be…” She peered at him closely. “I’m going to guess twenty-five.” She cocked her head to the side. “How does a man get to be your age and not know what a cabbage sprout is?”

  He frowned. “Didn’t Dallin tell you?”

  “We didn’t have time for much but the necessities.” She picked up a beet, looked at it thoughtfully, then turned the gaze on Wil. “The only things I know about you are what I read in his book and what I saw and heard in Chester.” She took a bite of the beet, by all appearances merely making casual small talk. “And how he feels about you.”

  Ah, so that was it—protecting her friend, or trying to.

  That curiosity inherent to all constables, Wil supposed. Somehow it didn’t tweak him like he would’ve thought. He merely took a bite of his own beef—oh, holy fuck, that was good— chewing it slowly, both to savor it and to think about how he wanted to answer. In the end, he decided she’d appreciate bluntness, so he gave it to her.

  “I was kept prisoner by Siofra my whole life until a little over three years ago. Most of that time, I was drugged, and if I’d ever had a cabbage sprout during that time, I wouldn’t remember it.”