Beanón had questions to ask about the fight. In particular, he wanted to know if I had seen who delivered the fatal blow to Corb. It was all very well to lie about True; what other option did any of us have? But I would not lie about that. “The biggest of the men,” I said. “And yes, I saw it with my own eyes, despite the confusion of the scene. He was following an order from the man I now know to be Master Seanan.”
Beanón’s tone sharpened, as if, now that I was telling only the truth, he no longer entirely believed me. “Was it not a noisy scene? Shouts, screams, blows, the clashing of blades? Are you sure there was an explicit order, Master Brocc?”
“I am. Master Seanan did not fight in this skirmish. He stood on the sidelines, out of harm’s way, watching. I glimpsed him as he gestured to his man, then pointed to Corb. His meaning was unmistakable, Master Beanón.” I mimed what I had seen. “I had to fend off another attacker and I could not reach Corb in time. Master Dau was fighting blind. Liobhan was injured and slowed by the drug she had been given. And Torcan is not a trained fighter.”
“What about you?” The lawman’s gaze was sharp. “A traveling storyteller? I am surprised that this fight ended as it did, Master Brocc.”
“I’ve had to learn to defend myself on the road,” I told him. “I can’t speak for the others.”
Beanón allowed himself the slightest of smiles. “Mm,” he said. “You can go now; Iarla will walk you back to your chamber. I don’t plan to ask questions tomorrow about the odds of one side or the other winning the fight. That seems irrelevant. But your testimony is important—you are the only independent witness to what occurred.”
I returned to this chamber. I have tried to rest, as I know I should. But my thoughts have been on True, up in the forest on his own. Not that True is ever quite on his own, since his small passengers go with him everywhere. He and I brought supplies with us. He will do well enough until tomorrow or even the next day, should this drag on.
We have seen little of Dau. He came back briefly to check how we were faring and to tell us the hearing would be going ahead. The look on his face forbade further questions. I hope he will tell us more later.
We told Torcan that I am Liobhan’s brother. Liobhan trusts him to be discreet. With all of us confined together until tomorrow, holding back this information would rule out honest talk between us. I think Torcan is aware of the constraint his presence brings, for after we finish the meal, he takes himself out to the antechamber and closes the connecting door. Liobhan and I sit in silence for a while. Only a night and a day, then I will be gone from here. How can I leave her again? Last time nearly broke my heart.
“So tell me,” she says, turning that very direct look of hers on me. “How is it, living in that place? Are you content? Is Eirne well?”
“If I answer three questions, you do the same.” My voice cracks. I want to weep.
“Oh, Brocc.” She draws a long breath, lets it out in a sigh. “This is not a game.”
“Where I live now, everything feels like a game or a trick or a tit-for-tat exchange. As a bard reared on tales of the uncanny I should have expected that, I suppose. I lost my singing voice in exchange for safe passage across a certain body of water. A long story. It’s all right,” I add hastily, seeing her expression. “It is temporary. One year; I bargained the other fellow down. But awkward. More than awkward, dangerous. Eirne was not happy.”
“Isn’t that a little unfair of her? She must know how these things work.”
“She’ll be even less happy when she learns about True’s healing potion and that it’s all been used up. We have no way to help any of the clan who are hurt by the Crow Folk, and my singing was our best means of keeping them at bay.”
“And yet you chose to help them. Wanted to do so, badly.”
“I believe it’s the key. I don’t believe they are truly evil. Only lost. Hurt. Broken. Perhaps driven a little crazy by whatever has befallen them. Dau’s brother has treated them cruelly, no doubt of that. But I’m speaking of an event far more catastrophic, something that drove them from their true home, scattered them so widely that they lost their way.”
“And you think you can earn their trust?” Liobhan sounds skeptical. “You’re too kind for your own good, Brocc.”
“She won’t like what we’ve done. Squandering the last precious drops on them.”
“Actually, it was Dau who got the last precious drops. I’ll never cease to be grateful for that. Never. And it was True’s choice, not yours. Will Eirne be angry with him?”
I shake my head. “No. Only with me. She . . . sometimes she is quite cold toward me, Liobhan. And she has been out of sorts. Not herself . . .” The words start to flow from me; I can’t hold them back. I tell my sister about the clan and about Eirne and about our struggles with the Crow Folk. Our high times and our low times, Eirne’s sweetness and her fury, her tenderness and her chilly authority. Her bouts of sickness. The times when she seems too weary even to speak to me. “She has been much better of recent times,” I say. “Kinder. More ready to listen. Eating with good appetite, walking out more. But she’s always troubled over the Crow Folk, the danger they pose, the very limited defenses we have against them. She does not understand my argument, though I have explained in as many ways as I can find.”
Liobhan picks up her cup, takes a sip of her mead. There’s a little frown on her brow. “How long has Eirne been feeling sick, Brocc? Getting tired, losing her temper more often?”
“Why would you ask that?”
“Just answer the question, will you?”
“Since early spring. Perhaps before that.”
She gives me a quizzical look. “There may be a much simpler explanation than you imagine. Isn’t it possible your Eirne may be with child?”
I stare back at her with my mouth hanging open.
“You are husband and wife,” my sister says with a smile. “I assume you’ve been doing the things that husbands and wives do. And you’re both young and healthy.”
“Oh.” This eloquent bard is lost for words. I do not know if I feel shocked or delighted or terrified or just plain stupid.
“You’re the son of a healer and you didn’t think of this?”
“But why wouldn’t she tell me? Why wouldn’t anyone tell me?”
“Oh, Brocc. You sound like an infant. Maybe she didn’t know either. Maybe she didn’t recognize the signs. And it might only just be starting to show. Add her worries about the Crow Folk to her feeling tired and sick, and it’s no surprise at all that she’s often a bit short with you. Is there a healer in the clan? A midwife?”
I’m thinking hard. Eirne herself was taken from her human foster parents at the age of five. The clan brought her up, more or less; that strangely assorted group of uncanny folk became her family. Moon-Fleet is a healer, yes. But she might know nothing at all of how such matters work for a human woman, or a half-human one. There would have been nobody to teach Eirne such things. “There is a healer. But I’m not sure she would have recognized the signs. And I don’t think Eirne knew. Not until . . . not until recently. I was away. Both True and I. When we came back, things were different.” Because Eirne suspected this, and she knew what peril the child would face, living in the forest with the Crow Folk all around. Even knowing that, she forgave me. She welcomed me back into her arms and into her bed.
And yet . . . and yet when a bird brought Liobhan’s cry for help, Eirne hid the message under her pillow and did not wake me. My wife is kind, and she is cruel. I am a bard. She is of the Otherworld. Why should I find this surprising?
“You’re crying,” my sister says. “Here.” She offers me a handkerchief, then puts her arms around me. “It’s a good thing, isn’t it? Having a child? I look forward to telling our parents they’ll have a grandchild—I can imagine the looks on their faces. And since I’m not likely to produce one for them, and Galen is so close t
o Prince Aolu he might as well be wedded to the man, it’s all up to you.”
I cry on her shoulder for a little, feeling grateful that Torcan closed the door. I consider the wonder of a small life growing. I remember how Eirne spoke of how seldom children were born in the clan and how precious each life was. But I think also of those captives flying free from their cage, out into the forest. I remember the one I laid to rest with a song. I recall how the young bird chirruped as I sang, and how it died in my little house while I slept beside it unawares. Is this how it will be when my own child is born? A constant perilous dance with fate, in which each misstep might mean a life taken, each careful move a safe day won, a night of rest?
“I don’t think I’m ready to be a father,” I say.
47
LIOBHAN
At last Dau comes back to our quarters. He waves away offers of food and drink—we saved some for him, not knowing if he would eat supper elsewhere—and sinks down onto a stool near the fire. “Gods,” he says. “What a day.”
“Drink the mead, at least.” I pour a small measure and put the cup into his hands. He feels cold. “We’re full of questions, as you may imagine. But we can wait.”
He says nothing. Holds the cup for a little, then sets it down on the hearth without taking so much as a sip. Bends his head and puts his hands over his face.
Brocc and Torcan get up and retreat to the antechamber. It is, in fact, past time for bed. The door closes quietly.
I sit. I wait. I can’t tell if Dau is shedding tears; he is very still and quite silent. After a while I don’t want to wait anymore. I move to kneel beside him. “I’m here,” I say quietly. “I’m here by your side, for as long as you want me. You can talk to me. Or you can tell me to shut up and go away.”
There’s a long moment, then he brings his hands down from his face and I see his features in the glow of the firelight as he looks at me. He’s dropped his mask; this face is full of fear and courage and love. He always was a handsome man. But this face is beautiful. I know in this moment that what is between us now is precious and solemn and lifelong. Perhaps, deep down, I already knew.
“That’s better,” I murmur, reaching to brush a stray tear from his cheek. My thumb lingers there a little longer than it might. “Can you tell me what happened? With your father?” The news can’t be all bad, since we know the hearing is going ahead. But I see that not all is well.
“When I first went in, he thought I was Seanan. ‘Oh, Seanan, you’re back,’ he said, and smiled. Then realized it was me and didn’t smile anymore. Sorry I couldn’t talk to you just now. I was trying not to scream and throw things.”
I pick up the cup and put it back in his hands. “Drink. Please. You’ve got another day of this to get through tomorrow. You need to keep up your strength.”
He drinks, shudders, wipes his mouth. Sets the cup back down. “We told him the story. He insisted on ceasing the draft immediately. No compromise, even when the likely consequences were spelled out for him. He wouldn’t believe Seanan might be responsible for doctoring the contents. That needs further investigation. Iarla has been told what’s going on. He and Brother Petrán will look at who might be involved, though it doesn’t help that Seanan dismissed his body servant, Ardgan, yesterday morning and the man’s already left Oakhill.”
“Morrigan’s britches,” I murmur. “It’s even more of a tangled web than I thought.”
“Father didn’t want to believe any of it. But the facts of what happened are undeniable, and I was backed up by the others. Liobhan . . . I found out why Seanan chose yesterday morning to execute his unpleasant plan for you. Naithí said a message came from Lord Ross this morning, calling off the betrothal. My father commented that it was disappointing and that the reasons were a mystery to him. But Naithí said Seanan was furious long before that, as soon as he heard the visitors were leaving early. My guess is that someone had seen me talking to Cormac and passed that information on to him. He’d have guessed the truth straightaway. I’m sorry, Liobhan. I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”
“It certainly wasn’t the most pleasant of experiences. But it wasn’t your fault.” My arm has been poulticed and bandaged. It still throbs. Worse than the pain is the thought that I’ll be spending the rest of my life with Master Seanan’s brand on me, as if I were a prize cow. “It’s a pity your brother has never learned to settle his differences by negotiation. Thank the gods that girl isn’t marrying the man.”
“Liobhan.”
“Mm?”
“I don’t know how it will go tomorrow. Maybe we should have waited. Given Father more time, so his mind would be clearer. He kept asking where Seanan was, though we’d explained that he and his men were in custody. He didn’t want to decide anything without Seanan present. It took some time for him to understand that if he didn’t approve this informal council, his heir would face a formal hearing presided over by someone of higher standing than a local chieftain, with the charges including abduction, unlawful imprisonment, and torture. Beanón had to point out the inevitability of that news spreading far and wide before Father would agree to the plan. So it goes ahead. Seanan will lie. He’ll do what he’s always done, twist the facts so I’m the instigator of everything. He’ll probably mention your unhealthy influence over me, or how going blind addled my wits. His men will back him up. Nobody will care about a few crows stuck in cages and experimented on. Everyone else will be afraid to speak out against him. And Father will believe exactly what he wants to believe, no more, no less. That’s if going straight off the draft doesn’t render him unfit to understand any of it.”
“How long since you had anything to eat?” With an effort I keep my tone light.
“What?”
“You’re talking as if disaster is inevitable, Dau. But it’s within your power to prevent that. Right now, you need to look after yourself and build up your strength, so you’ll face this like the warrior you are. So eat. And drink the rest of that. Pity I can’t brew up relentless hope for you. I know you feel sick with worry. I know your mind is spinning. If it helps, imagine I’m Archu and do as I say without question. Eat. Drink. Rest.”
He stares at me for a long moment, then his face relaxes into a smile. “What are you offering?”
“A slice of chicken pie with a dish of vegetables. It’ll be cold by now, but ours was quite tasty. There’s some fruit, too. Everything’s on the table, there, under the cover. I might make chamomile tea. I have everything I need in here. Don’t want to disturb the others.”
He sits at the table and, seeing my eyes on him, starts to eat. But his mind is not on the meal. “It was odd that Brocc turned up just when he was most needed. With his strange friend.”
“The mysterious Elouan. I’ve seen him before, on a certain memorable day when I coerced you into singing.”
“You’ve coerced me into quite a few things. Didn’t we dance together three times?”
“You enjoyed that as much as I did.” I scoop out dried chamomile flowers from my little jar and drop them into the jug I keep for the purpose. I set the kettle on the fire. I remember dancing with Dau in the royal household of Breifne. And I remember dancing with him in the forest, perhaps that same forest out of which Brocc and True appeared today, a miraculous rescue party. “It wasn’t odd that Brocc turned up. When I was in that place, tied up and helpless, a little bird came in, not one of the Crow Folk but a tiny thing no bigger than a wren. They’re uncanny creatures. Messengers between worlds.” I have Dau’s full attention now. He would once have scoffed at such an idea and accused me of making up fanciful tales. But he’s known me long enough now to understand that this is no wild flight of imagination. “It unpicked the knots binding my wrists up to the wire. Just as well, because it had been set up so that if I passed out or fell asleep the cage would open and the Crow Folk could get at me. Before the little bird flew off it plucked out some of my hair. I was
dizzy and confused, and I couldn’t think why it would do that. But it flew back to Eirne’s realm, to where Brocc was, and showed him the hair, and the bird told Eirne where to find me.”
“Told her? How? Do these birds have human speech?”
“No, but Eirne can understand them. Brocc knew it was a call for help. He came as quickly as he could. Not as fast as a bird can fly, but perhaps quicker than most human folk can walk.”
“What was Seanan going to do, just before Brocc and his friend came into the fight? What was he threatening?”
I hesitate, thinking how it must have been for Dau, blind in the conflict, doing his best, hearing his brother’s voice utter those chilling words.
“What was he going to do, Liobhan?”
Something in the way he speaks makes me suddenly cold. I look at him and for a moment I see Seanan’s eyes looking back at me. My heart is suddenly hammering. “Save that voice for tomorrow. Save it for your brother.” I turn abruptly away and busy myself with the kettle.
There’s a silence. Then I hear Dau say, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Liobhan.”
“It’s all right. Just don’t speak to me like that again. The answer to your question is, he got out a knife—Ultán was holding me, restraining me—and . . . Seanan was going to do something to my face. Cut me, mark me. Put out my eyes. One or all of those.” Everything comes flooding back. Not just that part but the night before, and Corb, and the whole sequence of horrors. Tomorrow I’ll have to tell it all over again, tell it and answer questions, perhaps from Seanan himself. Perhaps from Lord Scannal. “Shit!” I exclaim as I spill hot water onto my hand.
A Dance with Fate Page 39