Requiem for the Wolf

by Tara Saunders

  She had dreamed it, then, about Cú. A good thing, even if it didn’t feel like it. There was enough here to try to understand.

  “Did I change because of the moon?” Was it even a full moon? Sionna couldn’t remember. The moon had meant nothing to her last she saw it.

  “No moon, no garlic, no mistletoe or any other nonsense. If one of the Daoine bites you, you either end up dead or you’re luckier than you know. You can’t catch it like fleas.” Anú spat through the open door of the stove.

  “None of the stories tell it true, then? There’s nothing I should worry about?” Not a surprise to Sionna. She had diced garlic through Proinsis’ meat so often that people teased him for the smell. Hung mistletoe from the door and every window. Had seen full moon and new moon and no moon as she turned her face away from him and withdrew inside herself.

  “There’s nothing that’ll hurt you more than it would one of them, girl, outside of some secrets the Eolaí have. Handed down from the Dawntime, designed to make our people do what we don’t want. If a Daoine ever tries to collar you, young’un, run fast and run far. And keep a careful distance from that knife your friend carries so close.”

  Breag. He would be here, soon, ready to take her North. How would Anú tell him that he had to go back empty handed? After all the years he’d searched, did the old one think he’d turn around and hunt eight years more? Did Breag even know that Anú was one of their kind?

  And Tarbhal. Would the guard help her this time? Knowing what she’d done?

  “I need to think.”

  “Think fast, girl, time’s against us. I’m not intending to bait my hook with you, or roast you for supper. This is what you want, so you said. The teaching you should have had from your mother.”

  The last of the cobwebs blew from Sionna’s mind under the torrent of resentment the old woman’s words undammed in her. How dared the old hag use her mother as a fuzzball to lure a wobble-footed kitten! Gratitude would not snare her into a trap that stole her future.

  What should she do?

  Run. Take Cú and Laoighre, and run.

  Not an answer. Take those she cared for in the company of an uncontrolled Lupe? Or leave them to take the blame for the filth in her? No.

  “Breag will come soon to take me with him. I’ll have an answer by then.”

  The old woman wasn’t happy, that much was clear in the pursed mouth and seamed face. She would wait, though. She needed Sionna more than she wanted it known, and that held power.

  Sionna ached to wail and scream and bawl. Instead she waited. Each minute, viscous as fish oil, drawn each behind the next as the time when she owned herself leaked away.

  She would remember how sweet freedom tasted.

  The sickroom door creaked open to allow Laoighre out scarce a moment before Breag’s knock rapped from the street. Sionna’s breathing came tight and hard.

  I’m afraid.

  “I’ll be glad to leave this pit.” Laoighre grinned best he could through swollen lips when he saw her. He held his left arm stiff and careful, but he seemed in little pain.

  Breag followed behind him, head high and eyes bright. His hair was close braided and he carried no travelling knapsack. The grin he gave her was tight and genuine, before a now-black Cú launched itself at him and claimed his attention.

  Soon they’d all know what she was.

  And Tarbhal, face creased with smiles and eyes empty save for twinkles. He stopped in the corridor, his body half tilted in the doorway, his greeting hearty and indiscriminate.

  There would be no help from Tarbhal, not this time. Whatever had happened in the night had taken him away from them already. A balloon of lead swelled in Sionna’s chest at the realisation that once again she had nobody.

  Laoighre manoeuvred himself to the arm of her chair, left arm resting along her shoulders with the weight of comfort. So hard, to give this up when it was so newly hers. Sionna squeezed her eyes shut against prickling tears.

  “You aren’t ready to leave yet, then?” Breag misunderstood her sorrow.

  “No, she’s not.” Anú spoke for Sionna.

  Anger churned through the grief, clenching Sionna’s teeth to grinding tightness. Breag’s glance skittered from the old woman, sliding to Sionna and Laoighre, and his face tightened to something like its old suspicion.

  “She can speak for herself, healer.” His eyes met Sionna’s for an instant before finding the bird behind her. A spark there, something new.

  “So, what now?” Tarbhal propped himself in the doorframe.

  “This morning I may have shot my bolt too early.” Breag’s eyes met Sionna’s rather than Tarbhal’s. “We should give Caislean a chance to turn up the answers we need, seeing as we came so far.”

  “Things have changed since the morning.” Again, Anú spoke for Sionna.

  Breag’s body swivelled to face the old woman, freezing like a hound on point. His right hand rested on Cú’s head where the animal leaned into his thigh, his left clenched tight by his side.

  He’s afraid of her.

  What did that mean for Sionna? Her head ached. Too much had happened, and so little of it made sense.

  “What do you mean?” Breag’s words were wound as tight as his body.

  “You need to leave Caislean today. Now. Sionna stays here with me.”

  In the weight of silence, Sionna felt every eye turn on her. Laoighre’s hand clenched tight on her shoulder, and from behind her she heard his hissed sound of pain.

  “No.” Breag’s refusal was firm.

  “Yes. Like I said, things have changed.”

  Breag understood what the old woman meant, Sionna could tell from the way his head jerked backwards. He turned to her, then, and there was so much pain in his eyes that it sliced Sionna from breastbone to pelvis.

  I’m sorry.

  Breag’s head shook, once. “I shouldn’t have let her come here.”

  “There’s more you don’t know.” Anú continued, relentless. “It isn’t safe here for you now.”

  Sionna felt the warm weight of Laoighre’s arm withdraw from her. He stepped backwards until his back met the sill under the quarter-paned window. He held a space around him, his face tight.

  “There were soldiers.” Sionna tried to make him understand, but the words came out pale and useless. “I had no choice.”

  “If this is what Sionna wants then so be it.” The Caislean grin was back on Tarbhal’s face, and it hurt Sionna to see it pointed her direction.

  “Is it what you want?” Breag, the animal, was the only one to offer her a choice.

  Sionna feared to blink, knowing that once the first tears broke loose she would never be able to stop them from falling. Cornered. No way out except the wrong one.

  From a shelf above her head she heard Heliod croak, “Problem. Problem. Go away.”

  16

  How could she do this to him?

  Betrayal was no new thing for Breag, that it should catch him so much by surprise.

  After Proinsis, after everything she had seen, how could she make this choice? She had turned her back on every concession he made for her, every apology, every soft word.

  Talk sense, fool! You planned to take her where she didn’t want to go and she found a way to break free.

  What now? After coming close enough to feel the breath of freedom on his skin, could he give up and start again?

  He could feel the difference in Sionna. On the outside she was the same as always: drawn into herself, double-fenced to keep the world outside.

  But her aura held something else now. There was a rough-fuzz feel to her that at once grated his nerves and stroked him from tongue to tailbone. She sat still only through an effort of will, but inside she fizzed, bubbled, exploded. Alive.

  Life she had leeched from the throats of soldiers. The gush of their blood gulped into her wolf’s throat to warm her belly.

  “I won’t go to Tearmann.” Sionna’s voice wobbled.

  Breag jerked backwar
ds, catching himself before he could make more than that single, betraying movement. He had forgotten that the old one demanded the formality of a spoken decision.

  “I’ll stay, for now. But I don’t want to stay alone.” She turned huge hazel eyes on Laoighre, pinned him to the window frame.

  The eyes turned to Breag next. His breath dwindled to a single, shallow gasp at the begging in them. That was new, too. Sionna’s attention flickered onwards to Tarbhal, leaving Breag with the feeling that something huge had been lost, and won.

  “I’m not ready to go anywhere yet.” Breag looked to his own interests, of course that was all.

  In Caislean he knew of two Lost Ones. Anú was beyond his reach, no doubting that. The chance of taking Sionna shrank with every moment and every word, but still it was a chance. And Anú surely knew of other Fallen. Caislean offered possibilities and for that reason, for no other, he would stay.

  Cú rumbled low in his throat, his weight a blackness that seeped through Breag’s boots. Here was another that found it easy to pretend to be what he was not.

  “If you intend on staying, lassie, you best have good company.” Tarbhal’s voice swelled with hearty support.

  “And me.” Laoighre’s was milk and water in comparison.

  “A pretty show of solidarity. No use, sadly.” Anú fair crackled with authority and rigid determination.

  “You have something I want.” The salt-tang of Sionna’s fear wound through her words, along with something else. “And I have something you want.”

  The two women, old and young, locked eye to eye for a long moment. Breag feared to breathe too loud, anxious that he might tip the balance of will between them.

  “I can’t help you, I’m sorry.” Anú had the upper hand.

  “You mean that you won’t, not unless it pays you.” Sionna slid to the edge of the chair, hands on knees.

  “That’s right, girl, I won’t.”

  “And you think I’ll bow my head, do you, when my friends are taken? That I’ll be glad of your welcome?” The girl’s voice soared higher and sharper on every word.

  “Have sense, little one.” Anú mirrored Sionna’s posture, leaned forward in that rocking chair of hers. “If you all stay then the Brotherhood will take you too.”

  “Maybe I should stand up and take my fair punishment before the finger points at the wrong person.”

  “You aren’t a small boy caught stealing from the orchard. Men are dead. Military men.” Anú’s frustration spoke plain in the thump of her fist on the chair’s arm.

  “Men are dead. Dead men.” A dark voice croaked from the darkness. Breag’s skin broke into goose-pimples at the thought of the raven, unseen and hearing all.

  “Enough.” Anú’s words were for the bird, and also for Sionna. The smiling healer-face of their first meeting showed not a wrinkle here.

  “I won’t be forced. Not to stay and not to go. I’ve had enough of that.” The fuzz of Sionna’s aura swelled, sharp and tart. Entwined through it her scent, green apples and fresh-baked soda.

  “If not this then what?” Anú’s voice dropped low and wheedling. “A farmer’s wife somewhere, old at twenty and dead by thirty? Have sense girl!”

  “I don’t fear death or hard work, not if it’s my own choice.” True words, if the voice that spoke them could be trusted.

  “So be it.” In Anú’s mouth it didn’t sound like defeat. Or truth.

  Tarbhal was first to interrupt the bull-crash of wills between the pair. “What will happen to the soldiers?”

  “Watch sharp another hour or two. After that, the problem is solved so long as you hold on to a straw of sense. Remember where you were, and who with. Don’t offer what you’re not asked, and keep out of the way of notice. Sionna was with me the morning.”

  The old one had done this before.

  “You owe me for this, girl.” The healer’s voice could have peeled onions.

  “I owe many debts.” Now the point was won, Sionna just sounded tired.

  “This is one to remember. The question is saved for another day. Not answered.”

  “We should leave you to your arrangements and get back to the inn.” Contradicting Anú made Breag feel like a child caught stealing sugar-beet. The feeling irked him, but the chance to leave the strong-scented, low-roofed kitchen was worth the discomfort.

  “You have our thanks for what you’re doing for us.” The guard snapped an old world bow towards the healer.

  Breag couldn’t guess whether Tarbhal intended the words to be potato-bland platitudes, but the frown that pulled Anú’s face tight as a death’s-head made him hope so. A shame to strike so close to the bone by accident.

  Breag kept the guard under his eye as they made careful farewells and shuffled from the healer’s home. Something had changed in the hours Tarbhal spent searching for the Lady knew what. The guard had cut himself off from them, even his scent broadcasting thick-draped secrecy.

  A sharing of secrets was needed, and soon. If the night-time prowling had nothing to do with Lost or Lupes or the girl, then the old man was welcome to hold them as tight as he saw fit. Breag struggled enough with the old woman’s secret whispers without holding any more confidences close.

  “I wish there had been time for another way.” Anú’s mutter was directed towards Sionna, but the glitter in the old healer’s eye as she watched Breag leave arrowed her meaning in his direction.

  Too many words, too much thinking. Anú’s stories threatened to riot through his mind if he didn’t keep them tight-damped. So many questions and no answers.

  The party they made was a surly one, every shoulder drooped as they walked through rain-slick streets. Another time Tarbhal would have joked them back to good humour, but this time he kept his own counsel. His pace, normally set with consideration for those with shorter legs, now drove the still-healing Laoighre almost to a trot.

  Sionna hooked her chin low to her chest, careful to look any direction except towards Breag. Exhaustion spoke in the drag of each foot. Her scent tangled dense as a winter coat, clothing her with warmth and fuzz. Her step matched Laoighre’s, and his was the only direction her head turned.

  If Laoighre knew it he showed no sign. The boy followed the middle of the street close as a beggar to a drunken lord, varying his path only when one of the others came close. Only to Cú did he drop his guard and stretch a hand that gave comfort and begged it both.

  Breag allowed the others to gain a good ten paces on him, ignoring Cú’s anxious whines as the hound bounded from one of the group to the next. Best to hold himself separate, and to watch. It was too easy to feel part of them. A Marbh kept no company. Time to remember that.

  Did you learn nothing from Eithne? You’re a man that women make use of and no more.

  The promise he had made to Sionna was safe in his own breast, its breaking known only in his own heart. So much better than speaking only to be forsworn.

  He caught a flicker at the corner of his eye, quickly gone. His memory held many faces, seen once and no more, but this one was worth the remembering. Flame-red hair and a face scarred to good humour. The guard from Dealgan, the one who had crossed words with Aod. Not easily forgotten.

  And again, lounged in a coppersmith’s doorway, his hair two shades darker than the pots hanging over his head. If Breag hadn’t recognised him as a Dealgan guard would he have seen the tiny-sharp nod the man directed at Tarbhal?

  Frustration kindled to ignition in Breag’s belly, hot and welcome. There would be an accounting, soon.

  I put myself first from now on. Stupid to think there could be any other way.

  Sionna slouched at Tarbhal's shoulder, shoulders hunched and head bowed. She didn't seem to notice Scarface, but then she did a lot of seeming.

  Trust nobody.

  Cú bumped hard against Breag's leg, unbalancing him. A pulse jumped in Breag's jaw, clenched over gritted teeth. The animal, too. Tailstump wriggled black and glossy, so happy to be what he was not. Only Cú's happy
nose pressed into his clenched fist prevented Breag from planting his boot in the beast's ribs.

  Three more corners towards the inn curved past in rage-streaked silence. He would do what he must. What he wanted, like everybody else in his company seemed to do without a thought. He would take this Lost One to Tearmann and win back his place. It would be harder now that the girl had powerful friends, but Breag knew about impossible tasks. Lady help the woman or boy who stood in his way.

  * * *

  WhenBreag stepped through the double-breadth doorway into the inn's smoky gloom, Laoighre had already slumped into the hearth's impersonal welcome, his skinny back turned to the rest of the company. Sionna shuffled towards the stair-mouth, head lowered, but Breag's stretched an arm to bar her way.

  "Not yet."

  “Please. I’m tired.” Her eye found his with an instinct that forced the pulse of his rage still higher.

  "The guard and I need to talk." The girl’s needs were nothing to him now except a tool to drive her by.

  Sionna's face puckered. She turned to a table on her left and lowered herself to a bench that faced the fire. The poker-back she turned to him made a pulse jump in Breag's cheek. Her shoulder-blades weren't as sharp as they had been when he found her in Proinsis' house, but the prey-look she darted back towards him was just the same.

  The glitter of her tears compelled him to turn his own back to meet hers.

  "Come with me." Breag side-stepped the green-aproned innkeeper hovering between the group and the door, and stomped towards the stairwell. Tarbhal had better follow.

  The guard did, silent but for the susurrus of leather-soled shoes on polished wood. No limp this time.

  “What’s on your mind, lad?” The guard spoke along with the door’s closing creak. He leaned backwards against the whorled pine, his arms folded across his chest. His bulk dominated the tiny room and he knew it.

  "I saw your friend." No room for more through gritted teeth. Breag moved in front of the six-paned window, struggling to find a space to breathe in that wasn’t cramped by the grey-painted walls.