Blood Witch (17 page)

She was torn
between which of the men she should aid. Gael's face was unmarked,
so tall did he tower over Yenic, but no blow could touch it. Even
still, blood leaked from his knuckles. Yenic, on the other hand,
had taken a great deal of massive blows to the face and his cheeks
were swelling red beneath his eyes. She was rooted to her spot by
the sheer beauty of their movement.

Saxa was not. She
took the cooling pot of lamb stew and hurled it just as the two
came together again. Hot, but not scalding, the broth sprayed over
both men, hitting Yenic in the chest and Gael in the waist.

Both of them
pulled at their clothing in instant alarm: Gael struggling to
unlace his breeches and pull the linen away and Yenic working the
tunic over his head.

Saxa passed them
each a washcloth that she dumped into the cold water bucket.

"Why are men so
foolish?" She muttered to no one. She touched Yenic's bare skin
gently, nodding in satisfaction that she'd not done damage. When
she went to Gael, he scowled as he stripped himself bare. He
turned, raising his arms up over his head, slowly revolving,
showing each inch of his flesh so clearly, Alaysha would have been
embarrassed at such nudity. Except most of his skin was
crisscrossed with scars. He stopped, facing Yenic with his hands on
his hips. Unashamed. Still combative.

"I am a katheel,"
he said, and his glance moved to capture Alaysha's. He held it as
though he wasn't speaking to Yenic, but to her and no one else. "I
am a katheel. A killer. I have been since I was old enough to take
a foolish rattle to my favorite pup."

Saxa touched his
arm. "Warrior, my brother, not killer."

Gael looked down
at her as though he was surprised she was there and he shrugged.
Then he reached for his tunic and breeches, his boots and leathers,
and pulled them on. "Same thing," he muttered.

He pulled one last
piece of bread from the remains of his trencher from where it lay,
knocked to the floor. He chewed thoughtfully, then headed out into
the darkness.

It took several
moments before Alaysha dared speak.

"A katheel? Killer
or warrior?" It seemed important.

Saxa made a sad
smile. "They mean the same thing in our old language." She said no
more but set out to clean the mess, Yenic helping her sedately.

Alaysha inched
away from the chaos, feeling guilty about leaving Saxa to her grief
and worry, but knowing if the scouts had gone, so too, might Yuri
and what better chance to seek her vengeance than in the whisper
darkness of the wild outside the city. She scuttled through the
courtyard and moved along the curtain toward the stables. She'd
grab Barruch and find Yuri on the trail where she'd slip into his
camp in the night under guise of seeking the heir and when they'd
found him, she'd face him and if she could, she would kill him.

She was headed to
Barruch's stall when she found Gael, saddling his mount.

"Where are you
going?" she asked him.

"I can't wait for
the scouts to find my nephew dead."

"No one wants
that."

He regarded her
with something like tenderness. "You have your own battle to fight.
Leave me to mine."

She couldn't keep
his eye, and instead chose to focus on his shoulders. "What do you
know of my battles?"

"Am I blind?"

She thought he
must know about the carrion and how Aislin had killed him, how she
planned to assassinate her own father. She avoided his eye until he
spoke again.

"Something isn't
right about that witch, " he said. "And you are too afraid of your
own power to see it."

"I know," she
said. "Both things are true, but you can't leave; your sister needs
you."

She reached to
take his reins from him and found when she did, he grabbed her hand
and put it over his heart. She peered up at him, confused.

"Are you really so
young you don't understand?"

His heart
fluttered beneath her palm. She could feel it racing. "I must have
been."

His eyelids eased
closed and he let his head roll back subtly on his neck, seeming to
enjoy the contact. For several heartbeats he stood that way,
pressing against her palm. Then he bent his head to hers and took
possession of her mouth, giving her such thorough exploration she
thought Yenic's kisses had been but mere play.

When next he
opened his eyes, the tenderness was gone from his face. "A warrior
needs a warrior. You could come with me, but only as my life's
bond. Leave the boy. He'll bring you suffering."

She stared at him,
feeling her jaw open almost comically. She was trying to formulate
a response when a rustling of straw sounded behind them, where
Barruch's stall had begun to smell strongly of too much manure.

Aedus stood there,
her hair newly mucked into long dregs against her cheeks. Her blue
eyes blazed bright in the torchlight.

"Thank your
deities, Alaysha," she said. "I have news." She sent a furtive
glance over her shoulder, then a bald scrutiny over Gael's form.
"Can we trust him?" She stepped from the stall.

Alaysha rushed to
the girl. "News of Saxon? Where Aedus. Where?"

Aedus took in the
mountain of man. "Can we trust him?"

"What? Of course.
What news of the heir?"

"Not of the
heir."

Gael huffed his
thoughts on his so-called questionable trustworthiness and launched
himself into the saddle. "Have no worry about trusting me, little
one." He pulled on the reins and nosed his mount from the stable,
disappearing into the dark. Alaysha watched him go, thinking she
should try to stop him but recalled the way he'd stolen that kiss
and her face burned, keeping her from running after him. She found
herself alone with Aedus. She turned to her, hoping the girl
wouldn't notice how badly her whole body trembled.

"What's the
news?"

"News of Edulph,
not Saxon. I've been trying to get you alone…" The girl trailed
off, watching the door with almost fanatical attention.

"Edulph?" Alaysha
had a hard time moving from images of the young heir to the brother
who had cut off his own sister's finger.

"The girl nodded.
"Yes. I know where he is." She lowered her voice and leaned in so
that Alaysha could feel her breath move against her ear. "Or at
least Yenic does."

Chapter 15

Alaysha thought
she felt a bit of lamb she'd eaten turn rancid.

"What are you
saying?"

Aedus closed the
door to the stables and turned back to Alaysha. The look on her
face was significant. It looked like she was telling the truth.

"Explain," she
said.

"We found Edulph,"
she said. "Yenic and I. I knew his habits; I knew he'd return to
our family home with his band. I took Yenic there."

"And?"

"And we captured
him. I mean, Yenic did. Hand-to-hand. We snuck around the flanks. I
used my darts to sleep poison as many as I could until I ran
out."

Alaysha put her
fingers to her temple. She didn't want to hear more, but Aedus kept
on as both knew she needed to.

"By then, Edulph
knew he was under attack. He called a fistful of men to him. And
one woman."

"Greetha," Alaysha
guessed. The woman who had flirted with Yenic on their flight from
Sarum. She remembered her and the swarthy lover Yenic had been
forced by Edulph to fight, as well as the head he'd stuffed Aedus's
severed finger in for delivery to Alaysha.

She looked at
Aedus's hand now, still scabbed and healing. Theron had done
wonders to stitch it and avoid the green poison that so often crept
in and stole a man's spirit. She thought of how hard Yenic had
fought to get Aedus back and to keep Edulph from overrunning
Sarum.

"Why wouldn't
Yenic tell me?" It was a more important question in the moment than
were Edulph actually was.

Aedus lifted her
shoulders. That's what I've been trying to find out."

Alaysha sensed
more to the story. She sent Aedus a sharp look. "Why didn't you
tell me?"

The words came in
a rush. "I tried. I wanted to. Yenic and I brought him to his
mother by the second day. We thought his men would follow us, but
they didn't."

Alaysha's mind was
racing. "No. They came to Sarum instead."

Aedus nodded.
"They must have known Yenic's mother was coming here. They must've
known." She said the second with emphasis and Alaysha gave it
considerable study. Indeed, and they thought to rescue him when
Yenic returned, but Gael had made short work of them. Of most of
them anyway. Gael. A stark of realization struck.

"You did poison
Gael didn't you?"

Aedus hung her
head. "If Yenic knew, he would assume I was trying to tell you his
secret."

"You were trying to tell me his secret."

"Only because I thought you should know it; you
shouldn't be kept unaware when the very person we are fighting
against has been found."

"All the little tricks you played on him –"

Aedus nodded. "I wanted to be sure the sleeping
potion worked, and I needed him asleep while I dug around in his
pack."

"You dug in his pack?"

"I needed to hide a few quills." Aedus shrugged
innocently and Alaysha realized how duped they'd all been at her
protested innocence at the pillory.

She couldn't' t keep the irritation from her
voice at remembering she was the one who made Gael release her.
"The hanging by his feet?"

She shrugged. "That one was meant for Edulph, I
admit. It was before we found him."

"What was the mud pie?"

"Laced with brimstone. To bind his magic."

"I thought you didn't believe in magic."

"My people don't believe. Edulph doesn't
believe. At least he didn't." She looked deep in thought as she
said this last.

"But now you do?"

"After what I've seen…"

Not so much, really. At least not from her.
Alaysha had been careful to keep her power dormant when Aedus was
around. But Yenic. Well, he might have pulled a few egotistical
tricks himself.

"So why wouldn't you trust him, Aedus? What has
Yenic done to make you doubt him so?"

"Just that he keeps the secret from you."

"That's all, and you treat him so
suspiciously?"

Aedus's eyes seemed to shift color in the
lamplight, like a shadow moving across earth. "Isn't that
enough?"

Alaysha thought it through. It should be enough.
It would have been before; a few moons ago, it would have been more
than enough. Had she grown in those turns or had she merely become
just another simpering woman ready to abandon logic because she
loved a man.

"It was you in the dark tonight, wasn't it? You
followed me."

Again, Aedus hung her head. "I wanted to talk to
you alone, but you seemed so upset."

She had been. It wasn't easy realizing your
father ordered such brutal training as had been done her by Corrin.
Or that he'd killed your mother. "This doesn't help."

Aedus eased herself onto the straw and crossed
her legs, pulling the heels in. "Imagine how I feel. This is all
too much. I don't know who to trust anymore."

She sounded genuinely miserable, and Alaysha
found she couldn't be angry at the girl. She was so young, so
abused and used in her few short seasons, it was understandable
that she'd think Yenic too good to be true.

Alaysha leaned to sit next to her, wrapping her
arm about the girl's shoulders. She had grown, it seemed, in the
few weeks since they first met. What had first been an
undernourished, furtive and feral girl had plumped out in the
moon's phase to become a better nourished, but more distrustful
young woman. Or had the mistrust always been there? It reminded
Alaysha again of how little she knew about Aedus and her people.
Still. This girl becoming a woman meant something to her now. She'd
been willing to kill the entire city to save Aedus from her
brother. She squeezed and was rewarded by Aedus's head leaning
against her chest.

"You can trust me, Aedus."

The murmur was almost sullen. "I know."

"You don't sound happy about it."

"I'm not. Something is going on that neither one
of us understands."

"And you think I'm being foolish over
Yenic."

Aedus sighed. "Why won't he tell you about
Edulph? Why hasn't he told you that boy he shot was Edulph's
man?"

Indeed. Why hadn't he? A niggle moved through
Alaysha's spine, but so too did the memory of Yuri planting the
same mistrust as well. Two very opposing sides of interest from
Alaysha's standpoint, but both managing to do the same thing. She'd
swore she'd rely on her own intuition, not the mistrust of others;
back there on Saxa's bed, just after Drahl's attack when Yuri swept
the Yenic-trusting legs right from underneath her, she'd told
herself she'd not make hasty decisions based on someone else's
words.

"I don't know why he hasn't told me, but he
nearly died to save you, have you forgotten that?"

"No. I wish I could."

Alaysha guessed that having to question the
motives of someone she loved was eating the girl up inside.

"I'll tell you what. We'll watch him. Just to be
on the safe side."

The girl gave a feeble nod and Alaysha got up,
pulling the girl along with her. "If something is going on that we
don't understand, we'll just have to open our eyes so we can see
better."

"And look in the right spots."

"And look in the right spots," Alaysha
repeated.

"What about that big oaf?"

"Gael?" Alaysha felt a touch of regret when she
thought about the large man. She put her fingers to her lips,
remembering his kiss. Thorough, passionate; yes. And so very
different from Yenic's. While Yenic's kiss took possession, Gael's
was that of a master leading his student, giving back as much as he
took.