by Morgan Smith
“And you think I’ve mellowed,” I said. He grinned.
“We think,” said Guerin, and I could tell that he was measuring his words out carefully, like grain in a lean year, “that someone might have given her something, to make her seem drunk. Maybe they meant it for a joke, but maybe not. Maybe it was for something more.”
“Robbery? Not one of us!” said Lannach, instantly insulted. “No one who serves the House of Machyll would even think it.”
“No, no,” Guerin said, hastily. “We didn’t think that. It’s something - er - local, we think.”
“Yes, but - “
“There’s always those who quarrel, even in a village.” Cowell put this forward with a lot of authority for someone who hadn’t actually done more than ride through a village on his way to somewhere else for at least forty years.
“You know the king is concerned about things here,” Arlais said. “It could be connected with that.”
And somehow, over the next few minutes, with many more similarly confusing and conciliatory words and some fairly blatant flattery, they got Lannach distracted into a happier mood. Finally, they eased him out the door, satisfied that he’d been a bit of a hero, and that everything was fine, under control, nothing to worry about at all.
It was a pretty good performance. I was impressed, although I wasn’t sure why they had wanted him gone. I mean, I could guess why, but I couldn’t be sure. And how these three had become allies in this was a puzzler, too. I lay back on the pillows, and watched them now, waiting to see where this would go.
Arlais perched herself on the edge of the bed, her face grave.
“Caoimhe, what can you remember?”
“Well, I had oatcakes and ale for breakf-” She glared at me. “Oh, all right. I was fine, I guess, until I’d been at the inn for a while. I was watching the dice…no, before that, I was thinking about - something, and I kept not being able to keep it in my head properly. And I was tired.”
No one spoke. I thought about that tiredness, and how the light had glanced off the dice as they fell, little splintery sparks of reflected candle flames that I couldn’t seem to take my eyes away from.
“Arlais? Did someone put something in my drink?” I couldn’t see how that could have been. I’d been taking mine from the same pitcher as everyone else around me.
“It’s possible.” She didn’t sound at all convincing, though.
I looked at her. I thought about what other things might be more “possible”. I didn’t like them very much.
“Caoimhe, you didn’t take anything of Eardith’s away from the cottage, did you?”
I said, with perfect, careful truth, “You saw what I took away. Why?”
“Someone,” she said, “someone has searched this room. Twice, I think.”
“Mine as well,” said Guerin. “And at the cottage, well, it wasn’t just a struggle that disordered things there, I think.”
I thought back. He was right. Almost everything, chests, baskets, the little grain bin, they’d all been messed about.
“Well, what would they be looking for?” It was a risky thing to ask, I knew it, but I was curious about what Arlais might suspect.
She was canny, though. “I can’t know that. It could be any number of things. But whatever it is, it is important to someone. Important enough that they would be willing to -“ but then she broke off.
“Willing to poison me? Bespell me? It would be nice,” I said, “if you would be a little more forthcoming, considering it’s me they seem to be targeting.”
“Forthcoming,” said Cowell, “that’s a bit of cheek, coming from you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, where did you go this afternoon? How did you manage to slip past me? I knew just where you were since you stepped onto the practice ground this morning, and then suddenly you come wandering in from the yard without ever having left this room since you came in to change your shirt. So don’t you,” he finished, “pretend to an innocence you haven’t had since you crawled out of your cradle.”
“I can’t help it if your spying skills are slipping, old man. There’s a way out through the kitchen garden, you know.” There was, too. The garden wasn’t accessible from this room, not without going down through the main hall, but I was hoping Cowell wouldn’t know that, offhand.
“And why would you have taken that way today?” He sounded suspicious, but not in a way that worried me.
“I fancied some of those early strawberries Lady Delwen grows. They aren’t quite ripe yet, though, so I had to go off empty-handed.”
They knew I was lying, of course. And they thought they knew why. I felt a little envious, actually. They didn’t know how truly horrible things really were.
And my lie was working, in a way. They were disappointed in me, and suspicious and frustrated, but I could see that Arlais, at least, had given up on this line of questioning, and was thinking up some other way to deal with whatever it was that she thought was going on, and that Cowell was ready to abandon me to my probable bad end. I had no idea what Guerin thought. His face was blank and a little cold, as if he, too, was ready to wash his hands of me.
The moment passed. It was late, with midnight well behind us, and after an awkward silence, both Guerin and Cowell left, Arlais lay down on the pallet on the floor and I closed my eyes and listened to her as her breathing slowed, and eventually I fell asleep as well.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I was just drifting up from a dreamless, fitful doze when I heard the door closing softly behind Arlais. The sunlight was streaming in and I could hear the cheerful sounds of Rhwyn manor starting its day.
I gave it a grain or two before I pushed back the blankets and swung myself out of the bed. There was a lot to do, and very little time.
They’d have to go it alone. They were safer without me and my guilty secrets, far, far safer. Everyone was. They’d be all right, I thought, once Ilona realized that I was well away, and she’d have to abandon her plans for me, whatever those had been. All I need do was to get free of Rhwyn Vale, and everything would be all right.
Or at least not as dire as if I stayed.
The first problem, of course, was Eardith’s book. I would have ignored it, I would have forgotten its very existence if I could, but all I could think was that the danger of someone finding it was too great a risk. Anyone coming across something like that, chock full of arcane writing, was sure to give it to the most knowledgeable person there, and right now, that was Ilona. Even if it was found after she left, the idea that someone, anyone, might learn the secret of my birth was enough to get me scrambling into my boots, intent on sneaking down the hallway to the linens cupboard and then on to my well-deserved and long-delayed exile.
I put on my arming tunic and my mail shirt and stuffed my cloak into the saddlebags. I buckled on my sword and lengthened the strap on my shield and slung it over my back.
There was a girl hauling a bucket and mop down to a room at the other end of the corridor when I peeked out, but she was intent on her task. It wasn’t so long before I heard her open a door and then close it behind her, and then I fairly ran to the cupboard.
It took two trips to get everything up into the loft, and then there was a nasty moment or two when I realized that I couldn’t remember which dark corner I had stuffed the thrice-be-damned thing into. I found it, finally, and stuffed it into the saddlebags as well, and then it was another two trips to get myself and my belongings down to the ground.
The stable block was quiet. The entire courtyard was quiet. Most people were still scrounging cakes and ale in the hall, and the few souls about were people who knew me well enough. They wouldn’t remark on my comings and goings unless someone asked. It seemed unlikely that anyone would, at least not for a little while.
I had been wrestling with the question of where to go for a good long while before sleep finally claimed me, but I thought I’d found the answer. The obvious way to a fast exit would be to head sou
th, to Glaice or some other border fort, or, even, after that, west towards Kerris or beyond. The less obvious would be north to the nearest port, because real safety lay in getting as far from Dungarrow and Keraine as I possibly could.
But I had, in the chilly hours before dawn, thought of one other way, one that served every purpose, and seemed so unlikely and so perilous, to boot, that it might, I hoped, be some several glasses, perhaps even a day or two, before anyone thought of it. One that might give me just enough time to get well away from everything, and give them an easy out towards forgetting me.
If I could get as far as Dungarrow town unnoticed, and take ship to Fendrais or some other distant, foreign land, there was just the barest chance that I could limit the damage my existence had bred.
I rode down the lane and through the village at an easy pace, despite my urgency. It wouldn’t do, I thought, to gallop around and cause anyone to wonder what I was about so early in the day. Look ordinary, I thought, look like nothing is important, like nothing is the matter at all. I even waved at Gair’s wife as I passed her by the green, because it would have seemed odd for me not to.
I left the last outbuildings behind, and started along the northward curve of the road, and only then did I urge Balefire to a quicker pace, not because I thought I was free and clear, but because I had no desire at all to linger as I passed the shrine and the little path down to where Eardith’s cottage had been replaced by a collapsed pile of still-smoking ash and charred beams.
We cantered along to the crest of the hill, where the road dropped gently down towards the crossroads.
And I didn’t stop then, because it was too late. It was, in fact, something I might have expected: whatever luck I’d thought I might have had, I should have known it had run out long since.
There were already some riders waiting at the crossroads, and they had already seen me.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
They looked grim, standing there beside their horses at the side of the road. I guessed that my own expression wasn’t much different. I stopped Balefire a few feet away, and just waited. They were bound to say something, eventually.
“And where were you off to, on such a pleasant morning?”
I was mildly surprised that it was Guerin who spoke first. Cowell was mainly the silent type as well, and I’d been expecting Arlais to be the one to break the ice.
There was a lot of ice, though, I guess. She was glaring at me as if I’d insulted her grandmother’s cooking.
“Ah, well, it’s been a long time since I saw Dungarrow in spring,” I said, lightly.
He glanced over at Cowell. “That’s five bits you owe me.” He said it with satisfaction.
Cowell shrugged, saying nothing. He was waiting to see what Arlais would do, I realized with some shock. She was the one who was in charge here.
I thought suddenly just how much I’d underestimated her. She’d used my own preconceptions of her as a young, inexperienced, sheltered child, intelligent and learned, but weak and unschooled in the world, she’d used that impression against me. She’d taken those easy generalizations and acted them out, to keep her own counsel, to keep herself safe, while she watched, and listened, and come to her own conclusions.
I don’t know if she had ever had Guerin hoodwinked, but she had fooled me, she had fooled Eardith, and she had fooled Ilona, too, if that condescending little show of flattery the other day had meant anything.
I really hoped it did. And I really hoped that Arlais could keep it up, because once Ilona knew anything for certain, it seemed likely that all nine hells would break loose at once.
I said, without much hope, “It would be best for everyone if you just let me go on.”
“Really?” They said it, all three together, on an almost identical note of derision.
Guerin said, “That’s your solution? To run away again?”
“Believe me, it’s for the best.”
“Why?” Arlais sounded quite honestly curious, not accusatory at all, and I thought that she knew too much, far, far too much already.
“It’s better if you don’t know. Trust me.”
And that was a mistake. I knew it the moment the words left my mouth.
They pounced immediately, as if they’d just been waiting for it, all three of them, in a stream of outraged, determined, angry flow of confusion. I missed about half of it, but the gist was simple. That I was the one who had no faith, that there wasn’t a single thing I’d done in days to gain their trust and that if I wanted their aid or even their silence in any way, I would have to come clean.
“All right,” I said.
In the midst of the tirade, it had come to me how very weary of it all I was, how much I wanted to give up these burdens, how much I resented having to carry this load as if I actually had done something of my own will that had led me here. If they were so eager for knowledge, they could have it. I was done.
“All right.” I slid out of the saddle and began to fumble with the buckle on my sword-side bag. I pulled out the book and handed it to Arlais.
“All right. But never say I haven’t warned you.”
She looked down at the little leather-bound thing.
“Asarlaíoche.” It came out on the softest of breaths, and then, at Guerin’s sudden query, “A book you keep, for the harder knowledge. And… other things.”
She had been standing on the verge, reins looped over her arm. Now she handed them off to Cowell without even a glance at him and took the book, almost reverently, and sat down on the marker stone at the side of the road. She opened the cover and began to read.
I said, “I don’t suppose any of you brought any food? I didn’t stop for breakfast.”
Cowell grunted something ungracious and rather profane, but after a moment, he rummaged around in his scrip and produced a piece of hard biscuit and some dried meat. I’d been counting on his long experience as a soldier to have come prepared for every eventuality, and I said so. He looked angry still, for a moment or two, and then he bared his teeth in a sort of a smile and punched my arm.
“Idiot.”
“So people keep saying.” I was watching Arlais, deeply engrossed in her reading. She made a worried sound in her throat, and flipped a few pages back. Then she turned the book sideways and peered at something, frowning.
I took the biscuit and meat and led Balefire over to the far side of the road to let him browse among the early thistles. It wouldn’t take her too much longer, I thought, gloomily. I wondered how much she would decide to share with the others. I tried not to think about their probable reaction to it, if she told them everything.
Guerin was leading Shadow over to join us. I tried to think of something to say, something that might not touch on anything too serious. Things would get serious enough, soon enough.
“Tell me. How did you know I would head for Dungarrow?”
“What? “
“How did you know I’d go back to Dungarrow?”
“Oh, that.” He smiled. I tried to remember how much I hated that smile. “It wasn’t so hard.”
“Am I that predictable?”
“In a way.” His smile grew. “I just thought of the most unlikely, boneheaded, obstinate thing anyone would choose if they were in your boots, the thing that could cause you the most pain and still gain your ends, and then laid odds that that was what you’d do.”
His earlier annoyance had dropped away. He was relaxed and friendly, and tolerantly teasing, just as he’d always been with me.
Arlais was more than halfway through, now. It would only be a little while longer, I thought, before she came to the things I dreaded. A few grains of the glass before, perhaps, she would tell him what was written there, and that easy comradeship would be gone forever.
I tried not to think about how much that bothered me. Or why.
Be a rock. Be a stone. Be no living thing.
Arlais reached the last pages without moving, without her expression changing from the one she’d
had throughout her reading: a puzzled frown of concentration, mixed with a growing excitement. I reckoned there were things in there that she thought she could use, explanations of rituals, or ancient lore, or new magics that she found enlightening, as well as the revelations about my birth and recent events. What she didn’t have, when she closed the book and looked across at me, was any sign of revulsion or horror or fear.
I said, “You see? It would be better if I was gone from here long since.”
“Caoimhe,” she said, calmly. “You’re wrong.”
She stood. “Here,” she said to the two men. “You both should read this, too. You need to know.” She leafed through the pages to the ones I had learned to loathe. “Starting here. The other things, they won’t mean anything to either of you, but these, yes, you’ll need to read them.”
She handed the thing to Cowell as Guerin crossed back over the road, and then she walked over to me.
“You cannot be serious,” I said.
“I am perfectly serious,” Arlais said, “Caoimhe. Listen to me.”
“Why? You know what I am, now. What can you say? I should be gone, long since. I should be as far away from this place as I can possibly be. Or you should.”
“Caoimhe, will you just listen for a moment? I think Eardith was wrong, at least in part.”
“No, she wasn’t,” I said. “Hells, all my life, I’ve known it. From the moment I drew breath, I’ve been a curse for everyone around me. They die, or they come to grief or to evil some other way and then they die. I am misfortune for everything I come near.”
“Caoimhe,” Arlais said again. “Listen to me. You aren’t evil. You aren’t, not at all.”
I could sympathize, I thought. Who would want to think they’d spent these last days shoulder to shoulder with a daughter of the Dark Incarnate?
“We need to face facts,” I said, coldly. “I am that thing’s disgusting utterance. Let’s not spend our energy pretending I am not an abomination.”
“You’re wrong,” she said, again. “Trust me in this, if nothing else. This is what I am good at, why they sent me here. It’s one of my Talents. Eardith herself saw no evil in you, she says so. She tried to find it, to sense it in you, she expected to and she couldn’t, and I cannot either. You might be the spawn of evil, but it isn’t in you.
