Wolfsbane: 3 (Rebel Angels) (9 page)

Just as well I gave myself time to watch in peace. The next day when I got to the arena, fuzzy and yawning from my disturbed night, he and Eili were already hard at duelling
practice, silent and intense. His face, when he caught sight of me and raised a hand to stop her, was its normal friendly self. Friendly and stern and proud and paternal and affectionate and
entirely a mask; joy and agony were smoothed from his features and absorbed into daytime efficiency. The man, in other words, was obliterated by my father and my Captain.

He leaned on the fence and grinned at me, making a broad gesture of invitation. ‘Come and get a thrashing. You deserve one.’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Let me wake up first.’

Eili snorted with amused disdain. Which was all very well for a woman who could probably kill in her sleep. ‘I’ll train him today if you like, Murlainn.’

My father shot me a knowing look. ‘How awake are you planning to be, Rory?’

My heart sank, not so much at the thought of Eili’s pitiless discipline as the prospect of two fun-free hours. The woman did not believe in either breaks or banter. ‘Couldn’t
Sionnach–’

‘Ask him yourself,’ said Eili.

She always knew where her twin was, and right now he was jumping down from the fence behind her. He nodded to me; had no need to greet Eili; and drew my father quietly aside. Their conversation
was conducted entirely in their heads, and I didn’t recognise the combination of emotions that crossed Seth’s face. You ask me, he didn’t know himself if it was grief, relief or
happiness.

‘What is it?’ I asked, unbearably curious.

Seth still didn’t know what he should be feeling, and it showed. He turned with a small helpless shrug, glanced at Eili and then at me.

‘Stella’s dead,’ he said.

I knew the name. My aunt, Uncle Conal’s sister. She and my father had never got along; and I’d never met the woman. It was Eili who tensed, suddenly the focus of attention though she
never moved or spoke. Something emanated out of her, that was all, and only her brother could have identified it, and he said nothing either.

‘Reultan,’ she said at last. ‘Her name was Reultan.’

And then Eili slung her sword into the sand, and walked away.

This is how it is, I tell him, when he’ll listen.

The world nothing but mist and monochrome, because the day hasn’t had time to give it any colour. Rain that’s barely enough to wet your skin, yet you feel it down to your bones. A
lonely wind off the sea, cold and grey as its mother sky. The smell of – what? The beginning of morning?

It’s life in your nostrils, is all: the tang of cold life, mournful and lovely because it might be your last scent of it. It’s lying there between earth and sky, knowing that when
you raise your head and spring that you’re independent of either, mortal and fragile and visible. It’s fear and it’s hate and it’s love, and you can barely tell which is
which. But the one thing you can identify is the longing to live through it, and that’s the one thing you can’t dwell on, because that way lie cowardice and betrayal, and I should know,
I should recognise those.

It’s the moment before it starts, when the wind sings in off the sea, and there isn’t a third dimension to the world, and all the air smells of is indistinguishable
life,
and you can’t afford to be scared to lose it
.

And to go there, and not run away, you’ve got to believe you’re right, you’ve got to believe in something and someone, even if it’s only the wolf on your right or the
friend pissing himself on your left, even if it’s only a memory or a thought or a ghost. I can’t really explain it. There’s no explaining it till you’re there.

That’s what I tell my son.

But he doesn’t listen.

The friend on my left on this occasion was Orach, and she’d never been known to piss herself. Other people had, when they saw her coming down on them with a bared
blade.

~
How’s the back, Murlainn?

~ Fine.

~ Uh-huh. It’s always fine in a fight.

~ Focus,
I snapped. I knew she wasn’t accusing me of malingering at other times, but this was hardly the moment for the argument.

~
Yes, Captain.
She couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her thoughts, and I shot her an evil look.

Dunster was a shabby but compact village on the very rim of the world; at least that was how it felt, and I thought that was probably what had attracted the Lammyr. They’d enjoy the
bleakness, and the desolation of the marsh, and I imagined they’d thoroughly approve of the achingly cold wind that swept in with the tide. They liked their home comforts, it was true, but
they also had a fondness for a nice bit of atmosphere.

They’d installed themselves in a cluster of old fishermen’s huts and set about their business, which doubled as entertainment. I hadn’t heard about the killings for months
after they began; that was a typical trick. Sowing arguments, feeding resentments, freshening old hostilities until the villagers did their work for them.

From where I crouched below the edge of the sandbank, I could make out the lolling figure at the drowning-stake. The tide was out now, and the sea was reduced to thin salty runnels that made a
glistening jigsaw of the marsh, but it was all too easy to imagine those trickles swelling and rising around you with agonising slowness, and the struggle to keep your face raised above the
encroaching water, and the inevitable horrible inundation. The man at the stake shouldn’t have slit his captain’s throat, of course, but then the captain should never have inflicted the
drowning fate on the man’s sister, and all on the heels of a savage woman-to-woman argument and a miscarried baby. That was Lammyr-influence for you.

One day, if I could be bothered, I’d trace it back to the original deed: a silent strangling in an alleyway, maybe, or an unexplained poisoning on the back of a too-obvious grudge. It
hardly mattered now. It was one of the younger villagers who’d rounded up a delegation to come to me, though Dunster lay just outwith the dun lands and was not officially under my protection.
I was angry with their elders for letting it get so far, for sitting on their fat pride and their dignity too long, but that was how it worked. They wouldn’t have known the Lammyr were even
around, not to start with. Never try to sort out a Lammyr nest yourself; not without a good detachment of fighters and a better assortment of blades.

~ Poor bastard.
Orach nodded at the sagging cadaver on the marsh below. Her voice in my head recalled me to the moment.

~ Poor bastards, the lot of them,
I told her briskly. ~
Shall we get on with it?

~ I wondered when you were going to say that.

There was not the usual over-familiar grin on her face, and she watched me strangely, but I’d farted about for long enough. I gestured half of my detachment round to the back of the
hut-cluster and sent two men up with Branndair into the raggedy birks: just as well, since the first Lammyr came from there.

It gave a shriek that could have been a laugh, grabbed a branch with a bony hand and let the rotten limb snap and carry it down onto Braon. She, anticipating it well, sprawled and rolled, and
the man who’d followed it down from the trees swept his blade across its scrawny back, severing the spine. By now the others were tumbling from doors and broken windows, but we’d taken
them well enough by surprise. They were fast, but we had the space we needed.

There were four of them besides the first, and I’d made allowance for more. That didn’t mean it wasn’t a fair fight. As I hacked and dodged and flew, I felt always in the back
of my skull my reluctant admiration for them. So efficient, so fast, as scruple-free as sharks but smarter. The translucent thinness of them sometimes made it hard to know where your blade had
passed, and that was what deluded me: thinking I’d gutted the leader when all I’d done was flesh-wound it. The pallid blood spurted and I somersaulted back out of its way, but it played
dead with conviction. When I was stupid enough to turn my back on what I’d thought lifeless, it took Orach to leap to my defence and pin it back to the earth with her sword.

As I caught my breath and my balance it blinked ruefully up at me, patting Orach’s blade. ‘Spoilsport.’ Colourless blood sprayed from its grinning lips.

‘What is it with you lot, Sleekshard?’ I glanced out at the drowned man in the bay, then up towards the village. ‘Haven’t you got enough to do at home?’ So far as I
knew the Lammyr still roamed the queen’s lands at will, since her pact with them four centuries ago. I’d always assumed there was plenty to entertain them there.

‘Singing for our supper gets dull. And Kate has other pets.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Oh, work it out. I’m off.’ Sleekshard rolled its eyes dramatically back in its head, the death-grin already stretching its yellow skin. Irritated, I snapped my fingers, and
Orach withdrew her blade, then plunged it belatedly into its shrivelled heart.

‘They’re never content,’ she observed.

‘No, but they’re happy.’ Carraig leaned his hands on his knees, gasping for breath as he rubbed Branndair’s neck appreciatively. The wolf had saved his throat, for about
the fifth time. ‘Are we done?’

It took me a while to be certain of five deaths, but at last we could get down to cleaning our blades in the burn that trickled seawards. I sheathed mine, satisfied. ‘Thanks,
Orach.’

‘You’re so welcome.’ There was that edge in her voice again, and I cast her a puzzled glance. I’d have asked her, I’d have soothed whatever lay between us and
apologised for my forgotten crime, but she turned away as I opened my mouth, nodded to another fighter, and the two of them went out together to retrieve the drowned corpse.

‘Women,’ I grumbled under my breath.

Sionnach sized me up with his cool eyes, and a couple of the others exchanged amused glances.

But nobody actually laughed.

The thing with Lammyr is that you know it has to be done, you know it’s right. You know the bargain you make with them, and the nature of both sides; everyone’s
motives are clear. Human beings: now, they’re more of a pain in the neck.

I was still riled and distracted by Orach’s behaviour when we returned to the village, and I wasn’t in the mood for its new captain’s attitude. He seemed sulky more than
grateful, and he fed and watered us with a bad grace, as if he was looking after his annoying neighbour’s strayed sheep. There were plain wooden tables with benches outside the inn; he
entertained us there, supposedly to bask in the warmth of the sun, but we knew he wanted shot of us as soon as possible and he didn’t want us ensconced inside some cosy building.

‘I daresay it was good of you to come,’ he said snarkily, when the man who brought the beers had turned away, ‘but I’m still not sure who requested it. Dunster
isn’t your protectorate, Murlainn.’

‘Somebody has to protect you,’ said Braon mildly, ‘since you’re clearly incapable of doing it yourselves.’

I liked that woman. I’d liked her since she was nine years old, and a hostage to Calman Ruadh, and I’d rescued her from the noose, but not before she’d rescued me, too, from my
youthful over-confidence. I flashed her a grin, she returned it flirtatiously, and Orach followed our exchange, frowning slightly.

Gods, what had everyone got against me lately? Aggravated, I turned back to the village captain. ‘Were you going to ignore them till they’d wiped out the lot of you?’

‘We handle our problems carefully.’

‘You don’t handle Lammyr
carefully
,’ I said.

‘You take the greatest damn care with your queen,’ he spat.

‘That’ll be why she isn’t mine,’ I began, but as the captain’s eyes widened at the blatant treason, a younger Sithe interrupted, clearly disturbed by the tone of
the discussion.

‘It was me, Nuall,’ he confessed sheepishly. ‘I called Murlainn. It had all gone far enough.’

His captain glared at him. ‘I’m your chief and I deal with these things my way. Do you think Kate’s going to like it that we called on someone else’s justice? Have you
any idea how much diplomacy it will take to pacify her? If she’ll be pacified.’