Hounds of God (27 page)

You,
said Nikki,
could never be anything but Alf’s son
and Thea’s. What are you doing in that body?

He inspected each paw, his belly, his back and the white
whip of his tail.
It’s my body.

You don’t
remember—
Nikki broke off. Cynan’s puzzlement was transparent.
Nikki’s throat swelled shut. His cool curiosity had shattered over the
roil of his emotions.
Alf,
he said
faintly.
Alf. For God’s love, Alf!
His cry echoed in the void, unheard, unanswered.

The room flooded with unbearable brightness. Nikki flung up
his hand against it.

“What are you doing, standing here in the dark?”
demanded Stefania. She set the lamp on the table by the bed, gathering Cynan to
her and scratching his ears until he groaned with pleasure. “Do you know
this woman?”

Yes.
Nikki was
curt, lest he break and scream aloud.
This
is my sister. The one I told you of.

She blinked. “Are you sure?”

I know my own kin!
He snatched Cynan and set him down with force enough to stagger him.
Where were they when you found them?

“I was over by Sant’ Angelo in Pescheria when
the pup started following me and begging me to notice him. Then he ran away and
I went to Rocco’s to see if he’d found any new books, and the imp
came back with Anna. I’ve told you the rest.”

I found her,
said
Cynan.
Stop thinking I’m too young.
I’ve got power.

Then tell me how,
where, when—
Nikki shook with eagerness, with fear. This could be a
trap. Or an illusion; or a dream on the verge of becoming nightmare.

Cynan crouched on the coverlet near Anna’s hand, ears
flat to his head.
I can’t tell,
he
said in a very small voice.
He won’t
let me.

Who?

I can’t tell.
Mother told me to, but he’s too strong. He laughed when he let me go.
Cynan snapped viciously at air.
I hate
him!

That was all he would say, for all Nikki’s pressing.
He bristled and cowered; he warded himself with both strength and skill, fierce
in his terror.

Nikki could not torment him so. He cradled the small
beast-body with its great fire of power, thinking calm and ease and freedom
from fear. But behind it echoed a constant cry:
Alf! Why won’t you come?

I have.
It rang in
the room, strong and sweet as the note of a bell. The door was too low for Alf’s
height; he stooped to pass it.

Stefania’s eyes went wide as she looked up and up. Her
breath caught once for the height of him; once again, sharply, for his face. He
did not even see her.

Anna sat up with a high sharp cry. Cynan lunged savagely,
slashing at the hand that stretched to him. Nikki swayed toward the
witch-child, swayed back toward his sister, seizing her, shaking her as hard as
he could bear to. She would not stop babbling. “I won’t go back. I
won’t, I won’t!”

Anna,
Nikki willed
her.
Anna, it’s Nikki. You’re
free. Alf is here, see, he won’t let you go away.

“Not Alf. Simon, Simon Magus, I can’t bear—”

Alf shook her far harder than Nikki had, ruthless in his
strength. “Look at me, Anna. Look at me!”

She had no choice but to obey. Her eyes glittered in the
lamplight. Her face worked. “You—you aren’t—you can’t
be. You’re
dead!”

“Only half,” he said without humor. “Anna,
is Thea—”

“Alive.”

“Alive,” he repeated, soft as a prayer. He drew
a long breath. “Thank God. When Nikki called me, when I knew—I
thought it was ended. She was dead. My son, my daughter—”

“Cynan is here.” Rigid on the floor, staring as
if he could not stop, beginning to tremble.

Alf approached him slowly. He flattened. But he let Alf
gather him up, the thin hands not quite steady themselves, the face and the
voice carefully quiet. “Ah, child, are you afraid of me?”

Cynan moved within the curve of Alf’s arm, still
staring.
I remember,
he said.
I remember. He tried to make me forget.
Quickly,
with utterly unwonted timidity, he thrust his nose into Alf’s hand.
You were there when the world was born.

Alf had had almost all he could bear. Nikki moved before he
could break, too intent to be afraid, reaching to shake the steel-hard
shoulder.
You’ve got him back,
he said forcefully.
And Anna. The others
are alive. We’ll find them soon. I know it.

“You’d better,” Anna said.

Bold though her words were, her hands faltered, reaching for
Alf as if her touch would dissolve him into air. “It’s you. It
is
you. What are you doing in Rome?”

“Looking for you.”

She surged up outraged. “You left Rhiyana? You
abandoned it when it needed you so much? Gwydion could dead by now. Aidan is
dead. And you’ve been—”

Aidan is dead?
Nikki seized her again, this time with real force, and no compassion at all for
her bruised shoulders.
How do you know?

“She doesn’t,” Alf said. He sounded weary
but calm, in full control of himself. He would pay for that later, but for now
Nikki was glad. “Your captor mistook my vanishing under Nikki’s
shields for my death. Perhaps Aidan found a way to deceive him likewise.”

“I saw it. I saw him fall. Why weren’t you
there?”

“I was commanded. I was given no choice.”

She turned her back on him. Nikki could have hit her. She
could be unreasonable—she had been in prison, she had suffered, she did
not know truly what she did. But this was cruel.

He settled for harsh words, driving each through the stony
hardness of her mind.
Gwydion sent him
here. Now there’s no going back. The walls are too high and too hard, and
that one waits between.

She whirled to face him. “What do you know of that
horror?”

I’ve fought him.

That surprised her. “You?”

I.
His temper
seethed in his eyes, around the edges of his words.
I know what his power is like. What of the man?

Anna began to shake. She could not stop herself. “I—I
can’t—” She smote her hands together in a passion of
frustration. As if a spell had broken, the words flooded forth. “His name
is Simon. He’s a monk of Saint Paul. He could be Alf’s brother, the
two are so like; but his power is beyond anyone’s measuring, and it’s
mastered him. Is it true-did he kill Alun?”

Alf nodded once.

“I haven’t wept for him yet,” she said. “I
wouldn’t give our jailers the satisfaction. There was another, a fat one,
all complacent and cruel. Thea said he was the mind; Simon was only the hand.”

Alf sat on the bed, settled Cynan in his lap, reached for
her hands. They came of their own accord, clasping hard, defying the set
courage of her face. “Will you let me see?” he asked her.

She hesitated. It was Alf who asked. Alf. And yet… “Yes,”
she gasped. “Quick. While I can still bear it.”

He took her face in his hands. His touch was light, his gaze
steady, clear as water. She leaned toward it; it closed over her head.

Fear vanished. Grief swelled, broke, faded. Anger shrank to
an ember.

Too late she remembered. She did not want him to see—

His face filled the world. She had forgotten how young it
was. She had never seen it so thin. Gaunt. Frightening, now that she had the
wits to see.

Her finger traced his hollowed cheek; she pursed her lips. “Thea
will be furious when she sees you like this.”

“As furious as you?”

He was mocking her, but gently, to make her smile. She
caught a lock of his hair and tugged until he winced. “You’re too
pretty, you know. Even with nothing on your bones but skin. Much prettier,”
she added, “than Simon Magus.” All at once, with no warning at all,
she burst into tears.

He gathered her into his lap, ousting Cynan, rocking her as
if she were still a child.

As to him, she knew in the perfection of despair, she would
always be. He had not seen what was there in her mind to see; he had no eyes
for anything so ridiculous as unrequited passion. He looked on her with deep
and purely fraternal concern, soothed her and healed her as he would any
creature in need of his care.

Cynan offered no less, licking her hand and willing her to
be comforted. She pulled the witch-child into her own lap, dividing her tears
between his flank and Alf’s shoulder.

Her despair was seeping away. It was almost pleasant to let
her body have its will, to let the tears fall where they pleased, with no care for
her pride.

Nikki came to close the circle, walling out the world. He
was brotherly indeed, a mingling of annoyance and compassion; he braced her, he
strengthened her.

She straightened shakily. Both her brothers eased their
grips. Cynan’s tail slapped her thigh. Still streaming tears, she laughed
and hugged the damp wriggle of him. “You men; don’t you know enough
to let a woman cry herself out?”

It’s wet,
Cynan observed.

“So it is, imp. And so are you.” Anna freed
herself from all the hands and rose with Cynan, reaching for a corner of the
sheet to dry him.

oOo

Stefania had not understood a word of it. It was almost as
if—somehow—there were four people talking. But it was only the
three and the pup. And what they spoke of made no sense at all. Something to do
with Rhiyana, with the Church, with prisons and madness and death; yet they
could smile, laugh, jest through tears. There was nothing like them in her
philosophy.

The fair one, the one they called Alf, had taken the pup
from Anna and commanded her to lie down again. After a moment’s rebellion
she obeyed. He was absorbed already in the young alaunt, regarding it as if he
himself would have liked to weep, speaking to it not in Greek as he had since
he appeared in the doorway but in some other, stranger tongue, both harsh and
melodious. She recognized only the name, Cynan, and the tone, gentle yet stern.

Nikephoros blocked her vision, mere familiar humanity beside
that shining wonder. For an instant she could only wish him gone.

Her mind cleared. He had seen; his brows were knit, his jaw
set. She flung her arms about him.

For a long moment she feared that he would pull away. His
rigidity eased; he completed the embrace. His sigh was loud in her ears, his
voice soft.
I think we had better go.

She drew back to see his face. For once she could not read
it at all. “Why? Is there something I’m not supposed to see?”

She had come close, she could tell by the flicker of his
eyes, the quickness of his response.
I
can’t explain now. Can you trust me, Stefania? For a while?

Her brows drew together. He did not seem to be mocking her. “You
know how I treat mysteries,” she said. “I solve them.”

I’ll tell you, I
promise. But not now.

He drew her with him away from the others. She considered
escape. She did stiffen and refuse to move. “Who is that man? Can you
tell me that much?”

He’s my brother.

That silenced her completely. She was on the stair before
she knew it, walking without thinking, struggling to imagine those two in the
same family. Even without the beauty, that other was no more a Greek than he
was an Ethiop.

She stopped in mid-step, bringing Nikki up short behind her.
“He’s not,” she said.

It was too dark for her to see Nikki’s expression, but
his voice had a smile in it, a hint of wickedness.
My father said he was, and I wasn’t in a position to argue. It
was a perfectly legal adoption.

Stefania hit him. He laughed. She hit him again, but somehow
she had his head in her hands and her lips on his. It stopped the laughter at least.

She pushed him away, not hard. “You’re
insufferable, do you know that? Is he real?”

I’ve always
thought so.

He was not as lighthearted as he pretended. Jealous? She
decided not. It was something deeper. Something to do with Anna, and with the
conversation she had not understood.

And with you.
She
could barely hear him. And how could he have said anything? She certainly had
not.

She had imagined it. She turned and made her way down the
stair, surefooted in the dark.

“I can’t do it,” Alf said.

Jehan thought they had settled it, and with no help from
himself. Anna was still with the people who had taken her in, who by God’s
own fortune were well known to Nikephoros; though that lad was no more a toy of
chance than any of Gwydion’s true Kindred, particularly where a woman was
concerned. Cynan was here in San Girolamo, sound asleep in his father’s
lap, curled nose to tail and most comfortable. He had been there since Alf
brought him in, wide awake at first, greeting Jehan with admirable courtesy and
an even more admirable vocabulary.

But of course,
he
had said when Jehan was amazed.
Mother
taught me. It was a secret. He was to think us witless.

He knew how to laugh as Nikki did, in his mind; it emerged
as a broad fanged grin.
He did, too. So
did Anna. She was surprised when I started to talk.

Not much,
Nikki
observed, rather uncannily when Jehan stopped to think. Neither of them could
or would utter a spoken word.
She knows
Thea.

It was Nikki who had told it all, with a little help from
Cynan until sleep claimed him. Alf had been silent, remote as he often was in
council or in company, stroking the beast who was his son.

He spoke at last when Nikki was done, breaking into a brief
stillness. Nikki was feeding the brazier; he paused in mid-movement. Jehan, who
had begun to ponder the whole strange tale, looked up sharply.

“I can’t do it,” Alf repeated. “Cynan
won’t change. His mind is safe enough thanks to my lady’s power,
but his body remembers no shape but this. It won’t return to the one it
was born to.” He laughed shortly, painfully. “He’s certainly
my child. I won’t shape-change either, even to save my life. Though I
promised her—when she was strong again—”