“What am I hearing?”
“My memories, I think.” The ghost smiled sadly and the scent of magic rose again.
Once the shock and pain were under control, Aini’s mind began clicking things into place.
She was in some holding area that Nathair controlled. Everyone thought she was dead.
“Can you send a message to someone in this building? He should be nearby. His name is Thane Campbell and he is—”
“He is the Heir.”
“Yes. Please tell him I’m alive. Can you tell me where he is and tell him where I am and…I don’t know…”
What should their plan be? They were surrounded. The rebels most likely thought she was gone. What was the best move? Well, first everyone needed to be informed. That at least was one thing she could accomplish here. Plans could wait until her mind was working better. Or until the rebels somehow messaged her to tell her where they had fallen back to.
Oh! There was that cave they were going to use as a headquarters for the full attack. Gilmerton Cove. Yes. And then Neve would make sure Father knew she was alive. He wouldn’t have to mourn.
“Number One. Please find the Heir. Tell him which room I’m in if you are able.”
“I was a Threader. I can see the connection between you two.”
“Number Two. If you can, if you are willing, please go to Gilmerton Cove and tell the rebels I am alive.”
The ghost flickered and nearly disappeared. Aini couldn’t hear her voice. She needed more taffy, but her belt, weapons, and all her materials, including Macbeth’s knife, were nowhere to be seen.
The ghost vanished completely.
Aini closed her eyes and focused on the tingling heat moving in and around her gunshot wound. What was it that the spirit had bled into her? Energy, maybe. Could she ask the ghost to do that for anyone? Or was that a Seer perk? Thane was most likely injured himself. Aini hoped the ghost would heal him too. A sad smile spread over Aini’s dry lips and a tear ran out of one eye as she tested the plastic ties holding her wrists to the bed posts. She was alive, Thane was alive, and that was a start. She knew very well it could be so much worse.
Aini woke to a whisper from an invisible source. Early dawn light oozed through the window and glided over the sixth-senser ghost’s barely visible cheek, nose, and arm.
“The Heir knows you are alive.”
Relief sang through Aini. At least she’d accomplished that. At least he wouldn’t mourn her anymore.
“I will try to make it to Gilmerton.” The spirit shimmered, faded. “They are coming and mean you harm. Be strong!”
The voice trickled away, and Aini fought the fear scratching up her throat. “Who is coming? Jack? Nathair?”
The door opened and Jack walked in. A very thin man came in behind him carrying a video camera that looked like something from a television studio.
Aini’s whole body tensed.
He began plugging things in and lining up the camera to face a chair in the corner. Aini wanted to close her eyes again and pretend she didn’t have a very good guess as to what was coming, but she forced herself to look straight at Jack Shaw.
“So you’re going to do something to me and record it. May I ask the purpose?”
Jack sniffed lightly, checked his phone, then eyed her. “The Heir needs some additional motivation to embrace his fate.”
Aini swallowed. Motivation. Yes. She knew exactly what this meant for her. “May I have a drink of water and would you please untie me? I’m not going to fight or run. I can’t possibly beat you two up nor can I escape with you two right here. I simply would like to feel my fingers again before I quite possibly lose them.”
Jack closed his eyes. “I won’t take your fingers.” He glanced at the thin man, who then cut Aini’s wrist ties with a switchblade.
She sat up and rubbed the skin the ties had bruised. “So you have your limits when it comes to torture, do you? How nice.”
“I do.”
“Your employer has no such qualms.”
“No, I’d say you’re right on that. Earl Nathair is an…impassioned man.”
“He is a monster, and you’re helping him devour our cause.”
“It takes a beast to defeat a beast. King John will not have limits and so our leader must sometimes go beyond the pale, so to speak.”
Aini clamped her lips shut. She was finished talking. She’d already had a much wiser, kinder, and higher-level version of this conversation with Bran. Jack and Nathair’s vision of war was nothing she’d ever accept.
She drank all the water in the glass on the side table. It tasted like the smoke curling away from Jack’s snuffed-out cigarette in the dish. “Let’s get on with it then so I can weigh my challenge here.”
“Brave as a lion,” Jack murmured. “Fine then. Go sit in that chair and take this.” He handed her a card. “Hold it up and look at the camera when the light turns green.”
The thin man maneuvered behind the big, black thing and flipped a switch.
Aini sat and read the card.
I suffer when the cause suffers. Be the Heir. Do your duty.
“So the camera has no sound.” Her voice sounded like someone else’s.
Jack lashed her ankles to the chair legs, his fingers warm and quick, his face devoid of any emotion. “Correct. Hold up the card now.”
The light glowed and flickered. Aini stared into the camera’s wide lens. She held up the card. Jack looped a rope around her neck and tied it to the chair’s back slats. The rope was loose enough that she could breathe just fine. It sat against her esophagus, the pressure like a snake ready to constrict at exactly the right moment. Her fingers were numb and her heart ticked like a broken clock. The material at the back of her shirt and jacket clung to her skin. She licked a drop of sweat from the side of her lips.
The camera stared. The men stared. Thane was on the other end of this video feed. He was reading the card right now.
Aini pinched the top of the card, middle finger and thumb, middle finger and thumb.
Staring right into the lens, she ripped Nathair’s message in half.
Chapter 7
Seared Bones
Jack’s men escorted Thane to the toilet. He’d been sick twice in the last hour since Aini had been shot. He wanted to see her body. But he didn’t want to see her body. His stomach kept wanting to turn itself inside out, but he really didn’t feel anything. He was numb and cold, unable to blink. The faucet water ran over his hands and washed the soap bubbles down the drain. Like some kind of automaton, he dried his hands on the gold-lettered paper towels. There was a shining letter for each of the king’s names on the towels, glittering and ornate.
Back in his room, his prison, he stood at the window and watched a watery ray of sun break through the dark gray clouds to illuminate the stain of Aini’s blood on the courtyard stones. He made his lungs move in and out. They had no desire to do it, but he forced them into it.
Why did you run right at them, hen? Why?
There had to be a good reason. She was smart. Careful. She wouldn’t have simply rushed at an enemy like that.
Grief seized Thane’s throat. A cold that seared bones—like the winter night he’d spent in John O’Groats with Bran and Rodric years back on orders to watch a suspected traitor’s hideaway—wrapped around Thane and pulled the grief right out of him.
A voice like tiny bells whispered in his ear. “She is here. She is alive. Your Seer sends you word…”
Thane looked left, but there was nothing there. He gripped the windowsill and strained to hear more. “Say it again, please? I’m listening.” His heart galloped through his chest, bumping into ribs and flesh and driving him mad.
The Glaswegian and Birmingham guards surrounded him, and he obediently held out his hands to be tied again, this time in front of him. “What’s that he’s saying?” one guard asked the other.
“He’s gone off,” the second man said. “Ignore it.”
Breathing slow to ke
ep his head, Thane closed his eyes and tried to believe he’d heard what he’d thought he’d heard. That Aini wasn’t dead. She was alive. Was it madness to believe it? Maybe. Maybe not. She’d used a ghost to communicate with Callum. She could’ve done it again. But he’d seen her bleeding. She’d gasped for air like a person does before they die of blood loss, the brain lacking oxygen the blood provided and the mouth working as if it could do the job instead. He knew how death looked and he’d seen her go through it. Hadn’t he?
The men finished tying him. He would fight them again. He would get out of here, dead or alive. But not right now. Right now, he was a husk of a man. Getting his lungs to draw in air was a feat in itself.
Nathair strolled into the room wearing the whole cat with the canary look. God, how Thane hated him. “Have a seat, Heir,” Nathair said.
Thane took note that he didn’t use the word son. That was just fine by him. One of Nathair’s new men set up a small television on the dresser. He switched it on, and all Thane saw before the man blocked the view to adjust the knobs was a black and white image. A room like his maybe. Two people?
The bed gave under Thane’s weight. Hands tied behind him, he sat up straight, but ducked his chin a little like he was about to go into a fight and wanted to protect himself from a knockout.
Nathair put his hands on his hips and looked down at Thane. “You and yours did a fine job finding allies.”
“We did, aye? I suppose that’s why I’m tied up and my better half is dead.” He forced his lungs to work through the pain of being the one left alive. But was he? Had he really just heard that voice? It could’ve been ghost. But he was no Ghost Talker. Confusion pounded against his temples.
“No, you did,” Nathair said, oblivious to Thane’s state.
Thane was more scared of hoping the message was real and true than anything. If it wasn’t and he was crushed again…
Nathair bent to stare into Thane’s face, his breath smelling like the cigarettes he only smoked when he was feeling down. Broken blood vessels made his cheeks looked flushed. Thane’s Coronation Stone necklace slid out of Nathair’s collar and rested against his throat’s massive scar.
A pressure built in Thane’s ears and he leaned close. Closer.
If he could touch it, even with his forehead, he might be able to enact the curse and take all of them down.
Nathair frowned and tucked the necklace back into his shirt, turning away. “An anonymous donor left a barge of anti-aircraft weapons and some serious guns at our dock last night. They look French.”
So Lord Darnwell had received Lewis and Aini’s message for his French wife, Eloise, kin to the French queen.
“Why your dock?” Thane asked.
“We intercepted your coded message and added a line or two.” Nathair’s predatory eyes glittered. His claws weren’t out yet, but it was only a matter of time. “And we have reason to believe the French will protect our coastline from John’s future advances too. He won’t be able to sneak up on us there. We have France’s support even though it is being kept quiet.”
This was huge. With France’s support at sea and with guns, they truly had a solid chance against King John. If Aini was alive. If Thane could get that necklace. If. If. If.
Nathair opened the armoire that stood against the wall. The shelving inside held sweaters and Campbell tartan. He ran a hand over the Campbell colors, then closed the armoire door gently.
“So you see, Heir, our teams are working well together. It will all end in you being on the throne for our Scotland and King John leaving us to it, taxes and all. We’ll be rich, you and I. But neither of us care for that, I know.”
He paced the floor, passing back and forth in front of the Glaswegian who stood in front of the television.
“We will change Scotland for the better. Now that I know all about sixth-sensers, they’ll be permitted to live as anyone else. And we’ll make taxes more beneficial to the Clan Campbell. No English will be allowed to cross our borders. We’re done with that. And all business licenses will run through Campbell hands or my loyal men I’ve hired here. We will get a cut of everything and make sure to protect the people from anyone who dares to infringe on their freedoms as Scots.”
Thane’s jaw tightened. “You don’t see yourself as the one infringing on freedoms currently?”
Nathair’s hand cracked across Thane’s already sore face.
But Thane smiled. “You’ll come to realize I won’t go along with your madness. I don’t want to be king. I will never be king of anything now. You’ve ruined it by shooting down the only one who could lift me into such a complicated, challenging position. You killed Aini.”
A vein pulsed on Nathair’s forehead. “Did I now?” He held a hand toward the television and the man moved to show the screen.
Aini sat in a chair. Jack Shaw stood beside her. She held up a card.
Heart shunting away in his chest, Thane stared and stared. The ghost had spoken to him. He had heard the truth. It was too much for him to grasp. His head spun. There she was, right there on the television screen. “It’s not real. This is a fabrication. You’ve used—”
“It’s no camera trick, Heir. That’s Aini. The one who should’ve been the Seer and a strong member of the upcoming monarchy, but now she is simply your motivation.”
She was alive. Aini was there, heart beating, eyes flashing, soul filling his own with light.
His eyes burned with unshed tears. He blinked, trying to read the card she held up.
I suffer when the cause suffers. Be the Heir. Do your duty.
Her mouth titled up at one side and she tore the thing in two.
On the television, Jack moved quickly toward Aini and another set of hands came toward the camera and the screen went black.
Stomach heaving, Thane ran to the television. “Stop! Stop now. What happened? What is he doing to her?” It was too much. He was going to smash the television and rage through the door on sheer will to get to her.
“He is a bad man. I won’t lie. But he listens to me because I pay for his vices. Horse racing. Women. Expensive whisky.”
Thane’s anger festered like a bad wound.
Nathair paused. “Don’t growl at me, Heir. It’s your doing that led to this. If you would’ve simply done as I’d asked, we wouldn’t be where we are. You chose this.”
Thane felt as though a sword had pierced him through and all his life was draining to the floor. He had to find more strength to fight through this, to win, to get Aini safe. He took a breath, nostrils flaring, and braced himself.
“And as for Aini,” Nathair said, “all I need to do right now is call Jack and tell him to keep her safe and sound.”
“Do it then. Do it or you’ll not get a thing from me for the rest of my life. I’ll fight you at every turn if you hurt her.”
“Exactly. You have the logic now. Tomorrow, we’ll put on a lovely show for Edinburgh and you’ll claim your role as the true Heir to Scotland’s throne. We’ll declare our break from King John. You’ll raise me up as your Prime Minister and I’ll create a new kind of Parliament here to assist you. The king will come soon after. I’m sure. But by then the people of Scotland will have seen our combined might of Campbells and Dionadair, France’s support of our cause, and of course there will be no more tolerating the king after the horrible event following our show.”
“What horrible event?”
“King John’s spies will poison one branch of Edinburgh’s, Glasgow’s, and Inverness’ water supplies with some of the Bismian solution you developed and Lewis MacGregor so kindly explained during his time with me.”
“Lewis would never tell you that formula.”
“He didn’t handle sleep deprivation very well. I’d guess the man doesn’t even remember telling me all the ingredients and the proper process for its creation.”
“Turn the camera on again. I need to see her.”
“You don’t get to make demands, traitor turned king. Life as a royal w
ill be tough. There will be sacrifices. You’ll get used to it. It is your fate, after all. Oh, Lord and Lady Darnwell offered their condolences via coded message just now. On the death of your Seer.”
How did they already know? They were in close contact if a message came and went that quickly. Or Nathair was simply lying. “I’m supposed to go along with the lie that she is dead? For how long? You can’t keep that going—”
“We’ll see how it works out. If the lie becomes too much trouble, Jack will simply turn it into truth. Quickly or slowly, depending on your behavior as ruler of our country. Now, I’ll be back soon to be sure you’re ready to speak to the crowds. Now, rest that nasty cut. Maybe read one of the books there.” He nodded toward the shelves lining the wall and tied a strip of cloth across Thane’s mouth.
Nathair and his man locked the door behind them.
Thane lifted his tied-up hands and tugged the gag away from his lips.
“I am here, Aini!” His throat burned with the shout, his head pounding with blood and rage. “I will never stop fighting for you!”
Turning his back to the solid oak door, he launched himself at the surface and the zip-tie snapped. He pressed his head and hands against the door, breathing through his nose and trying to rein in his anger. Possibilities, variables, the damage he could do if he got his hands on such simple things as cleaning supplies from the toilets—all of it spun through his mind in letters, numbers, formulas, lines, and charts. He would not follow Nathair’s plan out of fear. He would change this. Fix this. Or burn the whole thing down trying.
He rammed his good shoulder into the door. Again. Again.
An unfamiliar voice with a Birmingham accent similar to Jack’s spoke outside. “Settle. I have permission to break your arm if need be.”
The Edinburgh Seer Complete Trilogy Page 49