Holder of Lightning

by S L Farrell

  “I’m fine,” she answered, trying to keep her voice from trembling. Her arm ached, burning cold, and there was ice in the pit of her stomach, making her want to vomit, but she forced it down, forced herself to stand erect and pretend that she was calm. Later, she could allow herself to cry at the remembered fear and the death. Later, she could run to the andúilleaf and its relief. But not now . . .

  “What happened here?”

  Jenna pointed to the open door to the balcony, then to the quarrel embedded in the wall. “He climbed up from outside and shot that at me, but . . .” She paused, considering her words. She pulled away from her mam’s embrace. “I knew he was coming,” she said, more strongly, “and I swept the bolt aside with the cloch, then held him. He killed himself rather than be captured; if I’d suspected he would do that, I would have stopped him, but I was too late. No doubt he didn’t want me to know who hired him.” She watched Mac Ard’s face carefully as she spoke—certainly it wasn’t Padraic, not after all he’s done. He’s had a hundred better opportunities if he wanted them . . . Yet she watched. Mac Ard was frowning and serious, but she had seen him speaking with the Rí and knew that he could keep his thoughts hidden from his face. She couldn’t stop the paranoia from creeping back into her mind. He could easily tell an assassin where and when to find me.

  “You ‘knew he was coming’?” he said, his head tilted, one eyebrow raised.

  “Lámh Shábhála can do more than throw lightnings,” she stated: Sinna’s words . . . His eyes narrowed at that; his mouth tightened under the dark beard and he turned away from her. He went to the quarrel and pulled it from the wall, sniffing at the substance daubed over the point. “Aye, ’tis poisoned,” Jenna told him.

  There was anger and fury in Mac Ard’s face, but Jenna didn’t know if it was at the attempt, or at the failure of it. “The garrison will comb the grounds, and those on watch tonight will be punished for allowing this to happen,” he said. “I’m sorry, Jenna. I will have gardai sent here immediately. This won’t happen again.”

  How convenient that would be . . . to have his own people around me all the time. “Thank you, Tiarna, but I don’t need gardai,” Jenna said firmly.

  “Jenna—” Maeve began, but Jenna shook her head.

  “No, Mam, Tiarna,” she insisted. “Get rid of . . . that.” She pointed at the body. “Call the servants in to clean up the mess. But no gardai. I don’t need them.” She lifted Lámh Shábhála. “Not while I hold this.”

  20

  Love and Weapons

  “SO far,”Jennasaid,“theytellmethattheythinkthe assassin was sent from Connachta.”

  “Jenna . . .” Coelin’s arm went around her shoulders at that. For a moment, Jenna tensed, then she relaxed into the embrace, moving closer to him as they walked slowly along the garden path. The planted array in the keep’s outer courtyard rustled dry and dead in the winter cold, and a chill wind blew in off the lough, tossing gray clouds quickly across the sky and shaking occasional spatters of rain from them.

  Coelin had arrived early for the feast celebrating the win ter solstice, the Festival of Láfuacht, to be held that night. Aoife had come running into Jenna’s apartment, bursting with the news that the “handsome harper” was in the keep and asking about her, and Jenna had sent Aoife to fetch him. Jenna could feel the warmth of Coelin’s body along her side, and it felt comfortable and right. She knew there were eyes watching them, and that tongues would be clucking about the Holder and a lowly entertainer (and no doubt saying how “common blood will tell”), but she didn’t care. “You sound as if you don’t believe them,” Coelin said.

  “I don’t,” Jenna said firmly. “What good would it do for Connachta to have me killed here, where someone else would simply become the Holder? That makes no sense unless the assassin himself was to be the new Holder, yet he wasn’t from the Riocha families.”

  “But how else could someone from Tuath Connachta get the stone? You said none of the Riocha from Tuath Connachta are here. If that assassin was so loyal that he’d kill himself rather than be caught alive, he might be loyal enough to take the cloch to his employer without keeping it himself.”

  “Maybe. That’s what Tiarna Mac Ard said, too.” Jenna shivered as the wind shook water from the bare branches of the trees. “I don’t think so. I think he was hired by someone here.”

  “Who?” Coelin asked.

  “I don’t know. But I’ll find out.”

  “Finding out could be dangerous.”

  “Not finding out is more dangerous, Coelin.” She stopped, moving so that they stood face to face, his arm still encircling her shoulder. His face seemed bewildered and innocent with all she had told him, and she knew that she would have looked the same a few months ago, thrown without warning into this situation where agendas were veiled and hidden, and the stakes of the game so high. Looking at him, she saw reflected back just how much she had changed in the intervening months. He is a harper, and nothing more—right now singing is enough for him and all that he thinks about. If he has ambition, ’tis to be a Songmaster like Curragh, who plucked him away from a life of servitude.

  “Jenna, you should leave the investigation to Tiarna Mac Ard and the others.”

  “One of the others may have sent the man in the first place.” She hesitated, not wanting to say the rest. “I can’t even rule out Tiarna Mac Ard.”

  His eyebrows lifted, widening his sea-foam eyes. “I thought he and your mam—”

  “They’re lovers, aye,” Jenna said. “But I’m not my mam, I’m not his blood, and I hold what he was searching for when he came to Ballintubber. Wouldn’t it have been convenient, for him to be the first to find my body? He could have plucked the cloch from around my neck before anyone could have stopped him.”

  “You don’t know that, Jenna, and I don’t believe it.”

  “You’re right, I don’t know that and honestly, I don’t believe it’s true, either,” she answered. “But I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  He was looking somewhere above and beyond her, as if he could find an answer written on the stones of the keep. He shook his head as if to some inner conversation. “Jenna . . .” he began. “This is so . . .”

  Jenna reached up, twining the fingers of her left hand in the curls at the back of his head. She gently pulled him down to her. The kiss was first soft and tentative, then more urgent, her mouth opening to his as he pulled her against him. When at last it ended, she cradled her head on his chest. He stroked her hair. “Jenna,” he said. “How can I help you?”

  “I don’t know yet,” she answered. “But I will. And I’ll ask when the time comes.”

  “And I’ll be there for you,” Coelin answered. He brought his head down to hers again, and she opened her mouth to his soft lips and his hot, sweet breath, and when his hands slid up to cup her breasts, she did not stop him.

  “I can tell you this much about the assassin, Holder,” the Rí Mallaghan told her, his trebled chins shaking as his mouth moved. Nevan O Liathain stood at the Rí’s right shoulder, frowning appraisingly at her as the Rí spoke and stroking his thin beard. “He was not a Riocha that anyone here recognizes. I have people who would know such making inquiries in Low Town to see if he’s a local, but I don’t think so. We may never know who he was. I know that’s of no comfort to you, but I assure you that the gardai here will be more . . .” He paused, and a smile prowled his face for just a moment. “. . . vigilant from now on,” he finished.

  Jenna knew that the gardai on watch that night had been imprisoned, and the sentry assigned to the north side of the keep nearest Jenna’s room had been executed in front of the others as an example. The punishment had been exacted before she could protest and without her consent. She suspected that it never occurred to the Rí to inquire about her feelings—it was his domain, and he did as he wished.

  It’s also true that dead men don’t talk, if they’d been told to look the other way and their knowledge of who gave them the order was now a dang
er. The Rí Gabair has the money and the knowledge and the desire, as much as anyone here.

  She smiled blandly back at the Rí. “I appreciate your efforts, Rí Mallaghan. Your concern for my well-being is gratifying.”

  The Rí laughed at that, his body shaking under the fine clothing. “There, you see, Nevan—as fine a response as any Riocha could have fashioned. Tiarna Mac Ard has taught the girl well.”

  Jenna gave the Rí the expected smile, resisting the impulse to retort. Tiarna Mac Ard may have helped, but I taught myself more by listening to the lies I hear around me every day, she wanted to say. But she curtsied instead, as a Riocha would, and continued to smile.

  “The Rí Ard is also concerned with your well-being,” O Liathain said before Jenna could escape. “I have put the

  Rí Ard’s garrison here in Lár Bhaile at Rí Mallaghan’s disposal.”

  “That is kind of you, Tanaise Ríg,” Jenna answered. “Some good has come of this incident, though. I’ve discovered that the stone I hold has greater and more varied powers than I’d thought. I may be able to discover who my enemies are on my own.” She touched Lámh Shábhála with the scarred, patterned flesh of her right hand, looking from O Liathain to Rí Mallaghan. “And I’m certain the Rí and the Rí Ard would allow me to exact my own retribution. Wouldn’t that be interesting?”

  The smile on O Liathain’s face wavered and for a moment Jenna wondered if she’d gone too far, but Rí Mallaghan also frowned. “The laws are the laws,” Rí Mallaghan intoned. “An accusation would need proof—and proof that I as Rí can see.”

  Jenna inclined her head. “I’ve heard that the Rí Mallaghan has excellent methods for obtaining proof when it’s needed,” she responded.

  The Rí snorted. “Taught well, indeed,” he commented to O Liathain. Cianna drifted over to them before he could say more, with Tiarna Galen Aheron of Tuath Infochla accompanying her. Cianna touched Jenna’s shoulder and nodded to O Liathain’s abbreviated bow.

  “The servants tell me we should begin moving toward the table soon, my husband,” she said, her voice too fast and colored with a slight wheeze. “Let me take the Holder for a few minutes before we sit. Here, Tiarna Aheron wishes to speak with you.”

  “Certainly,” the Rí answered. “Holder, I will speak with you later.” Jenna curtsied to the Rí and O Liathain again, and let Cianna guide her away. O Liathain’s head moved toward the Rí’s ear before they were a step away, as Galen Aheron bowed to the Rí.

  “What did you say to the Tanaise Ríg?” Cianna asked quietly as they moved through the crowd. “Poor Nevan looked as if he’d swallowed a fish bone.”

  “I simply suggested to him that Lámh Shabhala might have ways of uncovering treachery,” Jenna said. Cianna laughed at that, the laughter trailing away in a cough. She stopped, drawing Jenna into a corner of the hall.

  “I would be careful with what you claim, Jenna,” she said. “It’s not good to put an enemy on alert with a bluff.”

  “I don’t know who my enemies are, Banrion,” Jenna answered. “I thought that I might find out—and I wasn’t entirely bluffing.”

  “Ah,” Cianna said thoughtfully, nodding. She gestured at the room. “They’re all your enemies, every one of them here,” she said. “Even me, Jenna. Any of us would take the cloch and become the Holder, if we thought it would gain us power.”

  “I think I can trust you, Banrion. Or you wouldn’t have said what you just said.”

  Cianna smiled. “Thank you, Jenna. But look at them. There are more plots there than leaves in the forest, and many of them concern you. In the last cycle, my husband was nearly killed himself when one of the céili giallnai decided that he might increase his standing by allying with one of the Connachtan families. He managed to actually draw his blade at the table before he was cut down, not five feet from the Rí. Trust is a rare commodity here, Jenna. Don’t take it lightly, and don’t believe that it’s eternal, either. Allegiances shift, friendships fade, love is ephemeral. Be careful.”

  Jenna glanced worriedly at the throng, at the faces overlaid with smiles and politeness. “How do you stand it, Banrion?” she asked. “Doesn’t it drive you mad?” The crowd parted momentarily, and through the silken rift, Jenna saw Tiarna Mac Ard across the room, with her mam at his side and a quartet of the Riocha women also surrounding him. Maeve looked uneasy in the midst of the other women, her smile lopsided as her attention went from one to another of them, all of them obviously much more at ease and more skilled at the game of flirtation. Maeve’s hand cradled her abdomen more than once. Jenna felt Cianna’s gaze shift, following her eyes.

  “There are rules even in this, Jenna. You’ve already learned some of them; if you want to keep the stone and also stay alive, you must continue to learn. You think Padraic Mac Ard doesn’t understand how our society works? He does, all too well. That’s why he doesn’t marry your mam—because marriage to him is another weapon, one that often can be used only once, so he won’t unsheathe it lightly.”

  “He uses my mam, then,” Jenna said heatedly.

  Cianna coughed, though it might have been a laugh. “I don’t doubt that Padraic also loves her, or he wouldn’t be so openly with her—he knows that his relationship with your mam dulls the blade of the marriage weapon, because it says that his true affection is elsewhere. He does love your mam, and that may have saved you as well, Jenna.”

  “You said to trust no one, and I wondered . . . I wondered if Tiarna Mac Ard sent the assassin.”

  Jenna felt more than saw Cianna shake her head. “Mac Ard would take Lámh Shábhála if he could, I agree. But I know him well, and his personality is more suited to the frontal attack. He can be subtle when he needs to be, but when action must be taken, he prefers to do it himself and openly. I wouldn’t entirely trust him, if I were you, but I also doubt that the assassin was his man.”

  Jenna wasn’t certain she was convinced, but she nodded her head in the direction of the Rí, still in conversation with O Liathain. “The Tanaise Ríg, then,” Jenna said, and watched Cianna purse her lips.

  “Possibly,” she said. “Hiring someone to do his killing for him is more his style, certainly—he wouldn’t want to bloody his own hands. And through the Rí Ard, he has the money and connections; the assassin could have come from the east rather than the west. The Rí Ard used an assassin himself to kill his predecessor—or at least that’s the rumor—and Nevan is more ambitious than even his father. Holding Lámh Shábhála and being Rí Ard: that would place him in a very powerful position indeed.”

  “You think it was him, then?”

  Cianna shrugged. “Possibly,” she repeated. “Maybe even probably. But there are other contenders here: my husband is certainly one; Tiarna Aheron, whose uncle is Rí of Infochla and who has been snatching any reputed clochs he can find, buy, or steal, is another. Jenna, any of the Riocha here could be the one.”

  Jenna’s head whirled. She’d taken andúilleaf a few hours ago; the effects were already starting to fade, and her arm throbbed with a promise of pain to come. She looked out at the crowd and saw skeletons and ghouls underneath the fine clothing and polite speech.

  A gong rang. “There, we’re being called to table,” Cianna said. “Come, walk with me. You will sit next to me tonight—we’ll let Padraic move a seat farther down.”

  “Banrion?”

  Cianna smiled. “Just a little object lesson, Jenna. Everyone will notice your elevation, though no one will say anything until afterward when they’re alone. Even Mac Ard will gracefully make the shift, but he’ll also see the message in it: that the Holder is now more important than the one who found her, and that what happens to you will be of intense concern to me.” She coughed, and cleared phlegm from her voice. “That also means no one will question too much what you do, even if you should decide to consort with a simple harper.”

  Jenna felt her cheeks flush. “Banrion, I . . .”

  “Oh, he’s handsome enough, I’ll grant you, and has talent for wh
at he does. A little dalliance with him won’t hurt you as long as you take the proper precautions—I’ll make sure the healer sends a packet of the right herbs to you. But he can’t help you, Jenna, not in this. Tell me, is it true you knew this Coelin in Ballintubber?”

  “Aye, Banrion.”

  Cianna nodded. “Convenient that he should arrive here in Lár Bhaile just at this moment, don’t you think?” she asked, but she gave Jenna no chance to ponder that question or to try to answer. “Come. All the tiarna are seated by now. Time to give them something to contemplate . . .”

  “You were wonderful. The Rí and the Banrion were rapt—did you notice?”

  Jenna could see the grin tugging at the corners of Coelin’s mouth as she complimented his performance. “Aye,” he said. “I did. I thought I might forget some of the words, but they came back to me in time. The captain said that I might be asked to sing again at an entertainment for the Tanaise Ríg in five days, and he gave me a gold mórceint for the evening. That’s more than I saw for months in Ballintubber.” The grin spread, and Jenna impulsively reached up and kissed him. She started to pull away, but his arms went around her and he brought her close, cupping his hand around the back of her head. The kiss was long and deep, and Jenna wanted more, but it was late and the carriages were already waiting at the gates of the keep to take the extra servers and entertainers back down into the town. “Jenna, when can I see you again?”

  Stay, she wanted to say, but she remembered Banrion Cianna’s admonitions, and there would be her mam’s questions, and the pain in her arm was getting worse . . . “The day after tomorrow,” she said. “You know the market in Low Town? I’ll meet you there, when they ring the bells after morning services at the Mother-Creator’s temple.”

  “I’ll be there,” he promised. He kissed her again, quickly this time, and held her hand—her left hand. He didn’t touch the right. His fingers pressed against her. “The day after tomorrow will seem like forever before it comes,” he said, and walked quickly away toward the gates across the courtyard. Jenna watched until he reached the gates and the gardai there pushed the inner door open. He went through, and she could hear that he was whistling. She smiled.