Wil had asked for books. For Dallin.
Dallin was absurdly touched. “Sounds like you had an interesting morning.”
Wil’s gaze scudded over to the door and quickly back again. His expression went sour. “Mm.” He shook it off. “And how are you feeling?”
“Amazingly well. Still pretty sore, and oddly shaky, but that’s all. Well, thirsty.”
“From losing so much blood. The shakiness. That’s what Shaw said. You’re to drink a lot of water and eat. He should be by with your lunch soon.”
It made sense to Dallin. A simpler and more pleasant therapy than it might have been. “Now if I could just get some damned clothes.”
Wil’s glance flicked over Dallin’s bare chest, then quickly to his own lap. He shifted on the undersized mattress. His mouth pinched down tight.
“Calder wouldn’t let me go after the packs. And Shaw said if he gave you back your trousers, you’d just be hobbling about before you should do.”
It could have been worse, Dallin supposed—at least they’d left him his drawers.
“Well, as much as I’d like to have my clothes back, and everything else, I’m afraid I have to agree with Calder. It’s too much of a risk for you to go traipsing about the city.” Dallin managed to stretch a bit without it actually killing him. “Leave the matter of the packs, all right? We’ll figure something else out. You’ve still got the money, yeah?”
Wil nodded. “And your guns.”
“Good man. If we have to, we’ll just buy all new supplies. I know it would hurt to lose your things, but….”
Wil waved in a gesture that was trying to be dismissive. “I’ll see what I can do about getting you some clothes.”
He went silent again, fingers picking restlessly at each other now that there was no bandage to fuss with anymore. His head was bowed, hair hanging down to cover his face.
Dallin sighed. “How much did you hear?”
“Is there anyone, d’you suppose”—Wil dragged a leg up and propped an elbow to his knee—“who doesn’t want to kill me?”
Well. That answered that question.
Dallin had an almost overwhelming urge to draw Wil in, except he didn’t know if that would get him bitten for his trouble. “I don’t want to kill you.”
Wil scrubbed a hand over his face. “Well, yes.” He looked over at Dallin with a small, thoughtful smile. “There’s always you.”
He said it like he really believed it. Dallin was idiotically buoyed.
“Wil.” Dallin pushed force into the tone. “This isn’t about you, all right? You can’t take what he says any more to heart than you’d do with Síofra.”
By the slight twitch, Dallin guessed Wil had taken an awful lot of what Síofra said to heart. Dallin cursed the man silently and violently, wondering just how deep the damage really went. He didn’t fear its depths the way Calder apparently did, but Dallin worried Wil would never really be free of its echoes.
“He’s an extremist,” Dallin went on evenly, “with all the bigotry and mania that extremism entails.” He laid a hand to Wil’s shoulder. “We’re going to have to handle him carefully, but it’s nothing to do with you.”
“Of course it’s to do with me. His Aisling isn’t perfect, maybe even crazy, so he—”
“First of all, you are not his anything, and don’t let him treat you like it for even a second. Did you see how he bowed to you? That’s who you are to him. Take advantage of it.” Dallin squeezed Wil’s shoulder. “Second of all, ‘Aisling’ is not who you are. The way I see it, it’s a job, and one you’re still learning. It doesn’t have to be you unless you choose it.”
Wil peered at him, dubious. “You really believe that?”
“I live it. If I didn’t, I’d never have taken those shackles off you that first night in Dudley. Constable Brayden is… well, was my title. It’s never been my name.”
“You mean like….” Wil tilted his head, pensive. “Like… you’ve been a soldier and a constable, but you’ve always been Dallin?”
“Yes.” Dallin smiled. “Exactly like that.”
Wil looked down, thinking. Eventually he shifted infinitesimally, then leaned in just the tiniest bit. “Do you think I’m mad?” His voice was steady but very soft.
Dallin resisted the urge to open his mouth immediately on a sharp negation. It was a serious question—the answer would carry weight with Wil. Dallin could see the little bit of hope intertwined with rueful expectation. So Dallin paused and gave the question the careful consideration it merited.
He answered just as carefully. “I think you’re different. I think what I might once have seen as madness is more just a way of coping and carrying on that I never would have thought of. The simple fact that you now and then wonder about your sanity tells me you’re saner than a lot of people I know—Calder not the least of them. D’you think he ever wonders about his sanity, or if he’s even right? D’you think Síofra ever did? The Brethren?” Dallin shook his head. “If they’re all like Calder, I may want to rethink going to Lind too.”
Bugger all. They were running out of places to turn. No wonder Wil had kept moving and as out of sight as possible since he’d been running.
“No.” Wil said it with quiet conviction. He looked at Dallin with a surprisingly determined set to his face. “We have to go there. We have to listen to whatever Calder has to tell us, and we have to go to Lind. I need to know.”
So did Dallin, when it came to it.
“He was talking about power.” Wil peered at Dallin with canny interest. “So were you.”
Dallin let his hand fall away from Wil’s shoulder. “And this surprises you?”
“I don’t know.” Wil stood slowly, and distractedly took to pacing in small circles beside the bed. “Calder said Síofra buried it.” He stopped and turned back to Dallin, gaze sharp. “How could he do that?”
“How are your fingers not broken anymore?” Dallin shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know that I have to know—it’s happened, it’s real. I imagine I should just accept it, learn to use it, and keep moving.”
“All right… all right, yes, but….” Wil started pacing again. His head was down now, eyes to the floor, and his voice had gone lower. “If you’d never known, never realized….” He waved a hand around—ironically, the one that had been broken only a few days ago. “Accept it, you said. Accept it, like it’s that easy, but if you’d never accepted it—” He stopped again, turned his back, his hand coming up to run roughly through his hair. He was breathing hard, agitated.
Dallin frowned. “Does it frighten you?”
A small, cynical laugh whiffed out of Wil. “Frighten me.” He shook his head. “It frightens me that it doesn’t frighten me.” He turned around to peer at Dallin. “If I’d known… if I’d….” There were tears in Wil’s eyes, face screwing up in bewildered grief and anger. “Five decades.”
Oh…. Dallin closed his eyes. Shit.
“Listen to me.” Dallin took hold of Wil’s arm, and dragged him in until he met Dallin’s eyes. “Listen to me. You keep taking on things that aren’t yours. You didn’t know—he kept you from knowing. I don’t know how, and it doesn’t matter, but you know now, or you will after tonight. Because I swear, even if Calder tells us nothing we don’t already know, we will find out what we need to know before this night is through. Somehow.”
Dallin wasn’t just saying it to make Wil feel better. He was damned sick and tired of guessing, of trying to fit half hints into blank spaces far too big for them to stretch into connections. If Calder couldn’t tell them everything they needed, Dallin would… well, he didn’t know what he’d do—give the dream thing another try, shake the answers out of the Father, if he had to—but enough was enough. That inner push to hurry, get themselves gone, was starting to knock in his chest again, chitter over his nape like there were eyes on him, just as it had been that last day in Dudley.
Wil was staring at him—head tilted to the side, brow creased, not in hostilit
y but in concentrated interest. “So you think it’s real? You think I can… you think there’s more?”
“Wil,” Dallin answered tiredly, “I think there’s so much more that the effort of holding it back makes you bleed. I think there’s so much more that if you’re not very careful in how you use it, you could lose yourself.”
“And you’re not afraid?”
“Of you?” Dallin shook his head. “No. If you ever turn that power on me, it’ll likely be because I’ve done something stupid enough to deserve it.” He let go of Wil’s arm. “For you? Yes, very much.” He paused. “But you’re not. You said a moment ago you weren’t afraid. So what is this about?”
“I think I lied.” Wil paced away again, bare feet slow and silent on the stone floor. He stopped halfway across the room, back turned. “Or not lied, exactly, but… I’m afraid but I’m not afraid, and that… it should scare me, except I want it, and it doesn’t scare me, which scares the shit out of me.”
“You want what? Power?” Dallin raised his eyebrows. “Are we talking about revenge?”
Wil turned, somewhat ponderous and deliberate, and looked at Dallin straight. “And what if we were?”
Dallin thought about it. Very carefully.
“For almost ten years, my job has been the law. And the law frowns upon revenge.” Dallin shook his head. “But there are very clear benefits to, as I think you once put it, removing certain people from out the world. And I can’t even pretend that I haven’t got a personal interest in all this.” He scratched at his chin. “If you’re asking would I stop you… probably not. I don’t think it’s my place or my job to decide right and wrong for you. But I’d like to think you wouldn’t need me to.”
“What d’you think your job is?”
“To take care of you.” Dallin frowned. “No—to make sure you know how to take care of yourself. Better than you were, I mean. Watcher, Guardian… what was the other?—Intermediary—none of these names mean gaoler or keeper, and that’s what I think Calder thinks it ought to be. But we agreed to do this on my terms, and I’m going to hold you to that.”
“And your terms being…?”
“Wil—” Dallin sighed and rubbed at his brow. “If you’ve not figured that out by now, there is nothing I can say that you’ll trust.”
Wil looked down. “I think….” He hesitated, a slight flush to his cheeks. “I think you’re the only one in the world I do trust.”
Dallin was as close as he’d ever been to poleaxed. Even closer than he’d been after that first dream. Even closer than he’d been when Wil had knelt in the dirt beside him and tried to help him up. It was… nearly boggling in its depth. Wil trusted no one—no one. The weight of it should have been choking, but it wasn’t. It was oddly bracing.
Dallin nodded slowly. “Thank you.” He made himself stop there. Anything more would make it cheap.
Wil just flushed a slightly deeper shade of pink and jerked a small nod. “Shaw should be by with lunch in a little bit.” It was mumbled as he turned and walked quickly from the room.
Dallin slumped back, turning his gaze up to the ceiling. He groaned. And wondered why he felt as though he’d just run several leagues. With a boulder on his back.
THE DREAM this time wasn’t unnerving. Merely confusing.
Dallin was back in the alley, except it was on fire this time, and he knew Wil was just on the other side of it. Dallin could hear him shouting, but he couldn’t tell what Wil was saying. He kept yelling at Wil, telling him to run, get away from the flames, but the gate guard turned into the little burned corpses screeching their songs, drowning out Dallin’s voice until Calder stepped through them, waved a hand, and scattered them to ash.
He knows your purpose, Calder told him gravely, and yet he gives you his trust. He shook his head, sadness and condemnation both. He was weaned on betrayal—would you cage him now? And then he held out his hand, a tiny golden frog perched in the middle of his palm, its bulbous little eyes staring bold and unblinking at Dallin.
I won’t betray him, Dallin argued, stung. I wouldn’t. But he was standing in a boat now, the river rising and roiling, and again he couldn’t make himself heard. And then it didn’t matter, because someone was shooting at him. Dallin’s guns were in his hands, aiming at the ashes of the skeletons, when Shaw shook him awake.
Dallin didn’t wake groaning or cursing. There was no point anymore. He merely blinked away the blurriness and dragged himself up to let Shaw poke at the bandages, marvel and remark upon how quickly Dallin was healing, then tsk and evade the question when Dallin asked if Shaw might be persuaded to find or buy him some clothes.
“Eat your supper,” Shaw chastised lightly and pushed a tray at him.
Dallin sighed, tucking into the bread and the fish crusted in pepper. Wil had said he’d see what he could do about clothes, so Dallin decided to leave him to it. Wil obviously had a better rapport with Shaw than Dallin did.
He took a sip of weak white wine. “Where’s Wil?”
Shaw frowned. “I don’t know.” He peered around the small room as though he thought perhaps Wil was skulking in a corner and had simply been overlooked. “I thought he’d be here. He’s not been?”
There was no reason in the world for Dallin’s stomach to dip down like it did, no reason for his mind to start racing off in every cynical direction. “No.” He tilted his head. “Calder?”
Shaw waved a hand. “Never can tell with that one. Like a ghost, sometimes—comes and goes.”
“More coming than going just now,” Calder growled from the door, prodding a stone-faced Wil in front of him.
Dallin hadn’t realized how very sure he was that something terrible was in the process of happening until he sagged with relief at the sight of them. Strange how Wil skiving off wasn’t the first thing that sprang to Dallin’s mind anymore.
They had their coats on. Wil’s cheeks were red, and his eyes glistened as though he’d been out in the cold. And it was the first time Dallin had seen Wil shod since they’d arrived.
Dallin was almost afraid to ask, but he did anyway. “Where’ve you been?” And then the packs caught his eye. He winced. “Oh hell.” He shot Wil a glare. “What did you do?”
“I did as you said.” Wil’s reply was brusque. He even grinned. “I took advantage.”
“I said to let the matter of the packs go. In fact, I’m pretty sure those were my exact words. What part did you not understand?”
“I took care of it, all right? You’re welcome. You’ve clothes now. Here.” Wil pulled Dallin’s pack away from Calder, half dragged it over to the cot, and dumped it to the mattress with a strained grunt. “And it wasn’t easy.” Wil shot a glower toward Calder.
Calder rolled his eyes and turned to Shaw. “Would you excuse us? There are things you’ll not want to hear.”
Shaw was hiding a small smile behind long fingers. “And things I wish I could.” His smile curled wider, eyes twinkling. He jerked his head toward Dallin. “Make sure he eats it all. And he’s not drinking enough.” He flashed a crooked smile over at Wil, who gave him a bit of a grin in return and tipped his head. With a stifled snort, Shaw quit the room.
Calder wasted no time in turning on Wil. “It was plenty easy after you pulled that trick with—” He sputtered and turned to Dallin. “Did you know he could do that?” He snapped back around to Wil, pointing at Dallin. “Why don’t you tell your Guardian how you’ve been using your magic?”
Dallin looked at Wil with narrowed eyes. You didn’t. But the smug look Wil gave back told Dallin that yes, indeed, Wil had.
Dallin rolled his eyes. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
“To put it lightly,” Calder agreed.
Dallin ignored him and looked at Wil. “Are you all right?” The last time Wil had gotten someone to bend to his will that way, after all, he’d ended up gushing a couple pints of blood from his nose.
“It was just a little push.” Wil’s tone was just this side shy of defensive. “I just needed
the lad to tell me where the packs were and then forget he saw me, that’s all.”
Dallin’s teeth clenched. “Wil—”
“A little nosebleed. Teeny tiny, it was nothing. And it wasn’t like in Dudley—the boy’s fine, I swear, ask Calder. Who, by the way”—the scowl Wil turned on Calder looked deeply offended—“was almost no help at all.”
Calder’s jaw tightened. “If you’d bloody warned me—”
“Well, if I’d warned you, I would’ve warned him, wouldn’t I?”
Dallin was getting a much clearer picture of how events had likely played out than he thought perhaps he wanted.
“You wouldn’t’ve needed to warn me if you’d just stayed out behind the stable as I told you.” Calder turned to Dallin. “It was safe back there—no reason in the world for him to have followed after—but he wouldn’t stay put.”
Wil merely continued to scowl, flushing. “I wanted to make sure the horses were being cared for. Like I said.” He turned to Dallin too. “Miri’s left hock was swelling, and I wanted to make sure they were putting liniment on it. And Sunny gets twitchy if Miri isn’t right there, so I had to make sure they were stalled next to each other.”
Dallin stared. There were so many things to be addressed in that last exchange, but the first straw he latched on to was—“You named the horses?”
“Well, someone had to.”
Dallin’s mind went blank. “Which is which?”
“Yours is Sunny.”
Calder was rubbing at his eyes as though he was trying to keep his brain from escaping through the sockets. Wil, on the other hand, was quite proud of himself—had handed over that pack like a cat dropping a dead mole on the front step—and now had a defiant set to his chin Dallin recognized all too well. Dallin couldn’t find the words he’d need to get through to Wil yet, so he turned on Calder instead.
“What were you thinking? I thought we were staying out of sight.”
“We were out of sight. It’s well past dark, and we stayed to the backstreets.”
“What were you even doing taking him out in the first place? He’s got a pocket full of gilders, for pity’s sake. There was no need to take a risk. We could have just as easily—”
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