FROST CHILD (Rebel Angels) (4 page)

Niall and I looked at each other, then at him.

Niall had to take two breaths before he could speak. ‘Gods’ sake, boy. This is Griogair you’re insulting.’

Ramasg swallowed and shot me a nervous look. ‘Leonora’s different.’

‘Really?’ I asked silkily. ‘How?’

He’d got his nerve back. ‘Lilith’s evil, that’s how. You can tell from her eyes. And she stares.’

Niall rolled his eyes. ‘I’m going to slap you myself in a minute.’

‘She stares at you because she can’t believe what an arse you are,’ I told Ramasg. ‘And neither can I.’

‘You’ll see,’ he muttered.

‘I’ll see the ditch in the lower field cleared,’ I said. ‘Niall, take him down there.’

Niall took hold of his arm, but he pulled back to give me a sullen glare. ‘She’s trying to summon a kelpie.’

That took me aback. ‘What?’

‘A kelpie. There’s been one off the shoreline for days. She’s trying to bond with it.’

There was a triumph in the twitch of his mouth as Niall yanked him out of the room. He was a vindictive little bastard, but he’d unsettled me and he knew it. I could see no reason for him to lie, because it was such an outlandish accusation, and besides, I remembered shivering as I watched her singing to the ocean.

I rubbed my hands across my face, wishing for a straightforward problem: a caveful of Lammyr, or a full-scale war. Sighing, I slung my sword down on the table and went out of the dun to look for her.

She was in her usual place on the rocks, sitting with her arms wrapped round her knees and humming to herself. Maybe, I thought, she was humming to something else. Her newly-chopped hair blustered in the cold breeze; she’d done nothing to improve the rough mess Ramasg had made of it, but I couldn’t help thinking it suited her in a strange way.

I sat down at her side, nearly unbalancing when she promptly huddled against me. She hadn’t struck me as a girl who was much affected by the cold.

‘He won’t do it again,’ I told her. ‘He’s out clearing the ditches.’

She nodded contentedly.

‘He came up with some excuses.’ I took a breath to broach the subject.

‘Oh. Did he mention the horse?’

The breath stayed stuck in my throat. At last I managed to say, ‘It’s a water horse?’

She threw a pebble idly into the waves. ‘It’ll come to me in the end.’

‘Lilith,’ I said. ‘Lilith, that’s not wise.’

She shrugged. ‘It doesn’t have to be
wise.
They’re lovely.’

‘They’re deadly. And unpredictable.’ I was finding it stupidly difficult to argue with her. ‘You could lose your life.’

She gave a dismissive snort. ‘Or I could gain the best warhorse in your stables.’

‘It’s not worth the risk. For you or anyone else in the dun.’

‘Yes. It is.’

I shook my head in irritation. ‘If you want a familiar, find a cat or a raven or a wolf-pup. Put water horses out of your head. They can’t be trusted.’

‘You’ll see,’ she said simply. ‘It wouldn’t be my familiar anyway. It would be my warhorse.’

‘Lilith!’ I barked. ‘This should not be done! It hasn’t been done in centuries, and it ended badly the last time.’

She tilted her head to give me an endearing smile. ‘All the more reason to do it. For me it’ll end just fine.’

I would have talked sense into her, I’m sure of that. And I should have waited to do it, and spent the time well, but I was unnerved by her candid innocent grin and her closeness. It was clear she held a particular and pointless affection for me, and I wanted to do nothing to encourage it. And besides, at that precise moment, I heard the call in my mind that I couldn’t resist, and would never want to.

I sprang to my feet, and this time it was Lilith who nearly slipped sideways. I steadied her with a hand on her fragile shoulder and said, ‘Sorry—’

‘What is it?’ Her eyes were quizzical and hurt.

I gave her a grin of pure happiness. And that was probably a mistake as well.

If I thought Leonora would have any special sympathy for the lost witch-child, I’d misjudged both her mood and her inclinations. Still, like the diplomat she could always be, she didn’t raise the subject till later that night, till we were both in bed and the coverlet thrown aside in our untidy haste.

She’d caught her first sight of Lilith when the child trailed after me into the courtyard on the afternoon of her return. Leonora had taken no notice of her; but then Leonora had ignored everyone but me. She’d slipped lightly from her horse and walked straight into my arms, laughing with a combination of happiness and anticipation.

She’d studied Lilith in the Great Hall that evening, though. The child had settled herself in a dark corner, eating and drinking quietly, watching rather than participating. There was nothing new in that behaviour. At least she’d wasted no time in following my advice about a familiar: a young crow hopped at her feet, cocking its head for the shreds of meat she offered. Laughing, she stroked its black neck with a fingertip, and it dipped its head as if in a mock-bow.

Crows were smart and crows were watchful. Crows, principally, were not a danger to anyone they met, unless you counted the dead. I was relieved; the bird would take her mind off water horses. I told myself that had been a temporary infatuation, much like her fondness for me. And that would pass, too.

Leonora was not convinced.

She lay across my body, head close against mine, languid with the aftermath of love as I drew an idle line down her spine with one finger. Appearance, as always with Leonora, was deceptive: her mind was in constant fascinated motion, picking at puzzles, decoding other minds, weaving intricate political schemes. I lifted her hair and kissed the prominent tendon on her neck, and she murmured happily.

‘The queen was well?’ It was a formal question in a strikingly informal situation; I knew Kate was always well.

Leonora gave a low laugh. ‘She’d like to be better. Still playing with that risible idea of hers.’

‘Getting rid of her name?’ I shivered.
Raidseach.
Kate’s true name unnerved me, the very sound of it, but it was better than the alternative.

‘Indeed. She won’t do it. She knows the consequence. The idea’s a plaything, that’s all. Her trouble is, she’s bored.’ Leonora propped herself up on one elbow and kissed my forehead. ‘She was pleased about Crickspleen.’

‘Mm.’ That seemed long ago now.

Leonora traced her finger down my ribs, and I felt her take a light breath. ‘You should send Lilith to her.’

Shadows played on the ceiling as the flames in the fireplace flickered and jumped. I watched them, thinking.

‘Why?’ I asked at last.

Leonora kissed me. ‘Because she’s tremendously strong and tremendously vulnerable. Kate would know how to manage her. She’d be safe there, and so would everyone else.’

‘You don’t like her.’

She smiled. ‘What makes you think that? I barely know the child.’

I grinned up at her. ‘You’ve been home nearly a full day, Rochoill. You know her well enough.’

Leonora made a motion that might have been a shrug. ‘She’s hard to See. But yes, I’ve Seen her well enough to know she ought to be with Kate.’

Absently I stroked her hair. ‘She does flirt with kelpies,’ I said.

Leonora gave a dry laugh. ‘That’s not all she flirts with.’

‘Leonora, she’s eleven years old.’

‘And daily growing, as they say.’

‘Is that why you want her to leave?’

‘Now, now.’ She nipped my ear quite hard. ‘I’m only thinking of what’s best for her.’

‘All the same.’ I rolled over and put my finger between her teeth to stop her biting me again, and she looked amused. ‘I’ll give her a chance. She’s happy here.’

‘As you wish. And on your own head be it.’

*

And so Lilith became an unspoken gamble between me and Leonora, albeit a good-tempered one. Surprisingly, Leonora didn’t seem to mind the kelpie business, and I grew a little suspicious that she was encouraging Lilith’s interest – or perhaps not discouraging it – so that I’d be proved wrong in the end.

‘I’ve seen the creature,’ she told me as we rode along the beach one evening. The water’s surface was beaten silver under a yellow sky, satiny-calm and deceptive. ‘It’s no more than a colt.’

‘Aye, and daily growing.’ I threw her own words back at her, and she laughed.

‘Oh, don’t worry, Griogair. It wouldn’t be the first time a witch has tamed a kelpie.’

‘You’ve never been tempted.’

She shrugged. ‘I’ve no interest in them, but then I don’t need a warhorse. I’m surprised you’ve never fancied taming one. Just because it hasn’t been done in centuries—’

‘They’re trouble,’ I said flatly.

‘So are you, my dear.’ She reached out a hand to take mine, kissed it, then let her horse spring forward into a gallop, sending spray flying from the small shoreline waves. For a moment I reined in my own horse, dazzled to watch them, the low winter sun glittering in the spindrift, Leonora’s tawny hair and the mare’s white mane bannering in the wind of their own speed.

She glanced back over her shoulder.
~ Do keep up, Fitheach, my love.

The crow Lilith had tamed was a clever thing, nimble and cunning, and she’d grown impossibly fond of it. It was a true familiar: she never went anywhere without it, whether perched on her shoulder or hopping at her feet or ducking and diving in the air above her. The pouch she wore at her waist was now exclusively devoted to its favourite treats, so that the girl always smelt faintly of dead pigeon.

All the same, she hadn’t forgotten her first ambition, as I discovered when Niall and I were out on the machair one frosty morning, debating whether to bring the cattle back inside the dun. Despite the crystal blue of the sky, a new onslaught of winter lay heavy on the horizon, and hardy though the beasts were, the wolfpacks had grown more desperate as the months wore on. I hated to imagine having to kill a wolf, and I’d deserve the bad luck such a deed would bring me.

We’d walked up to the top of the dunes to study the dark menacing cloud that lay on the far line between ocean and sky, but the oncoming weather was suddenly secondary.

‘Gods above and gods below,’ said Niall, and drew the sword off his back.

I’d got my breath back, so I murmured, ‘Put it away. You’ll look a bit damn silly if you’re more scared of it than she is.’

Lilith sat on one of her favourite rocks, wrapped in a goatskin cloak, looking utterly contented as she fed scraps of pigeon to the crow and the kelpie. The crow took them greedily straight from her hand; the kelpie seemed more skittish, but it strained its head curiously towards her, flaring its nostrils and pawing the sand, snatching a shred of bloody pigeon-meat from her just as the crow reached for it. The bird’s indignant caw and Lilith’s laughter drifted to us on the breeze.