by Grace Martin
I moaned, the sound oddly echoed by Aoife who was right beside me. It was probably the first time Aoife and I had stood shoulder to shoulder. I turned to face her. She looked back at me, looking as shocked as I felt.
‘Get them back!’ she screamed at me.
She was out of her mind, but I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity. I quickly stepped up to the stone in front of me, ready to dive off. Here was freedom, freedom for me and Sparrow and Caradoc. I jumped.
The next thing I knew, Aoife had caught me around the waist and bore me back to the hard stones on the ground. ‘No, you’re not going!’ she cried as we fell together and landed in a painful pile.
I struggled, but there was no point. The guards gave up on Cuchulainn after only a moment’s hesitation and turned back to do Aoife’s bidding. Perhaps they had realised that to show any further deference to me was going to mean death at the hands of their Queen. Other guards followed with Rhiannon who watched the whole thing impassively. Gwydion remained in the cage alone. At least Lynnevet was safe with Ronan. It was devastating to realise that the safest place for my sister was far away from me.
Chapter Sixteen
After that ‒ well, at least I wasn’t in a cage. I was locked in a room with Rhiannon, which wasn’t exactly pleasant for either of us, but it was better than a cage over a dark abyss in the Eyrie. We were only there for a few hours before the guards were back to escort us outside.
I’d wondered how Aoife planned to take me around the countryside to show off my bad manners. When we were in the care of the creepyguardians, Sparrow and I had travelled from Guardian to Guardian in a closed in cart. I don’t know why I’d expected Aoife to do the same when we were presently situated on top of a spike of stone sticking up out of the ruins of an ancient mountain range.
The guards took us outside to the courtyard, where I’d run with Cuchulainn and Gwydion when we’d so nearly escaped. There must have been at least a dozen dragons in the air that night and there was still half a dozen dragons in the courtyard when the guards brought me and Rhiannon out into the new light of dawn.
We were separated, Rhiannon and I, as though we might have hatched some dastardly plan together. We hadn’t done that... well, not for a while at least.
Rhiannon was directed to one dragon and I to another. I saw Kiaran among the riders, being attentive to Aoife to the point of obsequiousness. He didn’t look at me once and I thought, ‘The treacherous bastard,’ even though I was the one who was leading him into treachery. I may have plans to destroy Aoife, but at no point had I ever pretended to like her.
I’d only flown on a dragon once, the night that Ronan and Lynnevet were captured, and then I’d not only been filled with fear, I was also in the shape of an insect at the time. Flying a dragon while I was in human shape and no longer in fear for my life was ‒ exhilarating. The anonymous Dragon rider seated behind me had an arm around my waist that was impersonal enough to keep from making my skin crawl. When we lifted into the air as the dragon beat its massive wings and we lurched in the semi-reclining saddle I gripped the rider’s arm tightly, even though I was lashed in.
Aoife took us to the seaside city of Cairnafell first. It was the closest to the main spire of Cairastel and was well known to be one of the White Queen’s most faithful cities. Most of her guards went to Cairnafell on furlough and all the supplies for the spires were routed through the city. I’d never seen it because the creepyguardians feared discovery, but I’d always wondered about it for that very reason.
Cairnafell meant city by the cliff, in the old language of the Meistri. The town had grown up around an old citadel that stood on the edge of a cliff that fell into the sea. When the White Queen conquered Cairnafell, back when I was only a little girl, she all but destroyed the castle, leaving only ruins to mark the once-great fortress. The town that stood at the base of the ruins had flourished, since Aoife used it as a staging point to bring supplies to the spires and Cairastel.
Someone set this up beforehand, I realised, when I saw the crowd gathered. The dragons landed at the edge of the square. The rider sitting behind me dismounted and put his arms up for me to follow. I looked around at the dragons, the other riders, at the guards and the crowd, at Rhiannon’s impassive face and Aoife whose lip was curled into a sneer. She was looking forward to seeing me slide inelegantly from the saddle, showing her faithful people that I was just as ungainly as anyone.
To hell with her and her expectations. I stood up in the saddle and spread my arms wide and using both my own magic and the wind that resulted from it, I floated gently to the ground.
The crowd sighed.
Aha. So, they knew who I was. That was an important piece of information.
Aoife marched over to me and grabbed me by the ear. I yelped from the sheer unexpectedness of it ‒ and the fact that she was pretty close to twisting my ear off and ears are tender.
She steered me across the square and up some steps to a dais at one end of the square.
‘Do you see this child?’ Aoife cried. ‘Do you see this helpless little girl in front of you? This is your famous Bach Chwaer! She is nothing! You’ve been telling yourselves stories for twenty years about a girl who is nothing!’ She twisted my ear sharply. I couldn’t help but twist my body to try to follow her because I’m very attached to my ears and I’d lie it to stay that way.
I think she thought they’d laugh. Instead, they gasped.
‘Ask yourselves,’ Aoife shouted, ‘ask yourselves, whom do you want for your Queen? Me, who was raised to be Queen, the person who has brought prosperity and stability to the Thousand Counties ‒ or this nothing who knows nothing and has done nothing?’
I reefed my head away from Aoife’s hand. I hated her beyond sense. I only had a moment. I turned to the crowd and opened wide my arms.
‘Yes!’ I shouted. ‘Me, who saved you from Darragh’s ravages or the usurper who has tyrannised you for twenty years?’
Aoife gestured and one of the guards hit me so hard I fell to the ground. Once, when I was in the past, I was beaten severely and Caradoc had healed me. As the pain washed from one side of my skull to the other, I wished he was there with me now.
After that ‒ well, let’s just say that the morning was not an unqualified success. The crowd stayed silent as I was beaten. I’m sure Aoife was expecting cheers.
When I was a rapidly swelling blue pulp, the dragon rider who brought me here scooped me up and took me away with the rest of Aoife’s entourage. This time when we flew, he held me tighter, because I couldn’t hold myself upright anymore. It was all I could do to remain conscious.
We had a tight schedule. Aoife had a busy day planned. It seemed like every citizen in Meistria was waiting in the main square to watch Aoife beat me up. The poor bitch had to heal me a few times or I might have done something extravagant, like the showman she had once accused me of being, and die. I could hear her now, through the ringing of my ears. ‘Trust you to make your death dramatic.’
She was angry because it wasn’t going the way she’d expected. None of the crowds had roared with delight. They’d gasped. They’d pressed horrified hands to their faces to block it out. Some had wept. None had cheered. By afternoon Aoife realised she was using me as a stick to beat herself with. They saw her now as more of a monster than ever.
In the last town, Eramar, not far from the Camiri border, the dragon rider was dragging me away from the crowd when I fell over. I landed near a little boy about four years old. He was dark haired with round little hands and looked so much like my son that for the first time that day, I started to cry.
He hurried forward and picked up my bruised hand in both of his little ones while I tried to cover the tears with the other hand. He pressed a kiss to the scratched palm and said something about, ‘Kiss it better,’ in his little childish voice.
It was only a moment. The dragon rider was quick to scoop me up and carry me away, but he couldn’t take away what I’d received. There is no gift so preci
ous as the compassion of a child. I would never forget that sweet boy as long as I lived.
We stayed in Eramar that night. Even by dragon, Cairastel was too far away to return in a single evening. I should know. I’d flown from Camaria to Rheged in the shape of an eagle once, twenty years ago ‒ a few months ago. It took me three days then.
I had a lot of time to think that night. Sleep was out of the question, even though Rhiannon had spent hours trying to heal me. I couldn’t get that little boy out of my mind. He’d had no reason to show me compassion, except for the fact that it was the outpouring of a great heart in a tiny body. Small as he was, little though he could do, he still did what he could. Could I do any less than a child?
#
Even without Umbra, I was still more powerful than Aoife. Aside from my magical power, I also knew I had the people on my side. A whole generation had grown up hearing stories of my heroism. That it had been done purely out of selfishness was a detail they didn’t know and didn’t need to know. Even a four-year-old child would know about the Bach Chwaer. Even the Camiri knew about the Bach Chwaer.
All of a sudden, I sat up. The Camiri would have received most of their stories about me from their Queen, from Aine, my friend. Thoughts began to form very quickly in my head. I turned to Rhiannon.
‘Wake up!’
Rhiannon just grunted. She had spent all her magic on me tonight. She had to be exhausted. On the other hand, she had to be told, and more importantly, I had to tell someone.
‘Rhiannon, wake up!’
Another grunt. And then ‒ another grunt that wasn’t Rhiannon. My eyes, already wide in the darkness, went wider. Rhiannon sat up quickly. The voice was too deep to be either of us ‒ it was a man.
A cry, cut off very quickly, and a sound like someone slicing fresh fish. A sigh. Rhiannon’s eyes met mine. Neither of us dared to speak. Men were dying ‒ quietly and efficiently ‒ just on the other side of our cell door.
Then the same voice as I’d first heard and the sound of a key sliding into the lock as he said my name. ‘Emer? Are you in there?’
Rhiannon’s mouth fell open and for the first time I saw a clear expression on her face: horror. I was breathing faster too. I got to my feet because I wasn’t going to die sitting down.
‘Yes,’ I said, clear and proud because I wasn’t going to die a coward, either.
‘Emer, don’t kill me when I open this door, please. I’m your friend.’
Offhand, I couldn’t think of any friends of mine who could cut up a pair of Aoife’s Dragon Guards with nary a sound above a whisper as they died. Then again, the request for me not to respond without thinking did sound like someone who’d met me before.
‘Whether you’re a friend or not remains to be seen,’ I replied. ‘Once you open that door you’ve got just about a second before I overreact.’
And he laughed. I recognised his laugh. Despite the dark days, he’d laughed a lot when I’d known him.
‘Emer, who is it?’ Rhiannon whispered, clambering to her feet and hurrying over to clutch at my arm. I shook her off a moment before I realised that to do so would be a massive blow to her pride, which was never a small target anyway.
Even so, she whimpered when she saw him. I nearly whimpered, too, but I’m even prouder than Rhiannon. It was Andras, but not as I’d known him. He’d been one of the Camiri King’s guards, but I’d never seen him in battle. I’d seen him happy among his friends, peaceful at home, even grim and businesslike as he healed me and Aine after a horrific assault.
He’d been twenty years younger then and so handsome he made even my heart flutter. He looked so much like Kiaran that there had to be a family resemblance there somewhere. He was tall and muscular, his face lean and always ready to snap from severity to mirth, one errant lock of dark hair falling over his forehead and into his eyes.
That was in the past and by the look of him those days were long gone. The bright youth had been replaced by a hard man, the light in his eyes steely now, his face determined and vicious. And he was covered in blood. It was all over his hands and even sprayed on his face, smeared across his cheekbone where he’d tried to wipe it away. He was dressed all in black, but I was willing to bet that his clothes were soaked with blood, too. There was a dripping sword in his hand.
I’d been breathing too fast. When I saw him I stopped altogether. I swayed.
In my defence, it had been a long day. I’d been beaten to within an inch of my life more times than I could count, only to be healed for long enough to beat me up again. Rhiannon had been harvested only a few nights ago so she didn’t have enough power to heal me completely.
And now Andras appeared, looking like the vengeance of God.
He tossed the sword to Rhiannon, who yelped and dropped it, and caught me as I fell.
If I’d been Sparrow, I would have woken up in half an hour and fluttered my eyelashes prettily at the strong, handsome man carrying me in his arms to safety. I might have sighed a sweet sigh as I turned my face into his shoulder ‒ if I was Sparrow.
Instead, because I was not the nice one, I woke up in the same dark cell I’d passed out in. I was still nominally on my feet, being held upright by a man who was admittedly strong and handsome, but because I was a Hawk and not Sparrow, he was twenty years older than me, covered in blood, and pissed off because I was wasting time being a sissy.
Andras shook me a little bit until we found my centre of balance by trial and error. ‘Are you finished?’ he demanded.
I glared at him, but I probably just looked myopic because I could see two of him and I wasn’t sure which one I wanted to glare at more.
He grabbed my upper arm and dragged me alongside him through the door. Sparrow’s Romantic Hero would have clasped her hand. Her soft hand, as opposed to something else, apparently. I stumbled as I realised I’d never had thoughts like these in my life. Maybe it was something to do with the healing energy I’d received from Rhiannon, although she didn’t seem the soppy type.
I was trying to avoid looking at the corpses that littered the floor. No wonder Andras was covered in blood. I wondered what it would have been like if Caradoc, as I’d known him twenty years ago, had been the one to rescue me. Longing struck me like lightning and the thunder that followed was a surge of bitter anger because how dare he turn his back on everything we had been to each other? He deserved to hide in a hole in the ground. If he couldn’t find courage inside him to stand up to Aoife, then he deserved to live in fear.
Andras knew where he was going. He ran a little ahead of us, having let go of my arm, pausing occasionally to look back at us with completely unconcealed impatience. Rhiannon was exhausted from healing me and I, apparently, was a sap.
It got too much. I might have been half dead, but I was still capable of feeling the sting of shame. Andras had made it quite clear that I was holding everyone up, so when he paused, ducked behind a pillar, I didn’t stop to rest. I wanted to show him I wasn’t some sissy who needed a rest.
Oh, to laugh. Boy, did I show him.
Chapter Seventeen
I ran straight past him, my head down and legs pumping hard because it took all my strength not to die on the spot. It was too late when I heard him cry, ‘Emer, stop!’ I only glimpsed his bloodstained arms reaching for me.
I rounded the pillar, my head still down, and only looked up when I heard someone shout, ‘Look, up there!’
I skidded to a halt and looked up just in time to stop myself from going over a balcony. Below me, arranged at their ease, was every guard and dragon rider at Aoife’s command.
I didn’t even have time to react before Andras’ arms came around my waist to jerk me backwards. He flung me halfway across the wide corridor and I stumbled until I hit the wall.
‘You always were a damned, stubborn fool!’ he cried. Behind him, Rhiannon plastered her hands to the tattoos on her face in horror. She was even quicker than Andras to step forward.
‘If we are captured because of you, I will k
ill you myself,’ she snapped.
Between them, they spun me about and pushed me into a run back down the hallway we’d come from.
The guards had been relaxed, eating, drinking, probably gossiping like sparrows, but they mobilised themselves at once.
‘Hurry! Quickly!’ Andras whispered. ‘This way.’
Quickly. I mean, no shit.
We followed him around a corner and found ourselves on a balcony on the outside of the palace. We were still well within the castle walls, but at least we were out under the moonlight.
‘Up onto the roof,’ Andras whispered. ‘Quickly and quietly. Do what I say, Emer, or so help me.’
I swallowed the quick retort.
‘Stand on the railing,’ Andras went on. He was already helping Rhiannon up onto the wide stone coping and stepping up to stand beside her. She turned her face away from the chasm beneath us. The roof of the next building was slightly below us but far enough away to give us plenty of time to regret our poor choices in life if we fell.
‘Oh, God, I can’t,’ Rhiannon whispered, turning to Andras who put his arm around her.
‘What are you, a coward?’ I asked in a low voice. How many times had I stood on a height and thought of throwing myself down to my death? What was there left to fear? I crouched, letting my weight go backwards to give me more momentum then sprang from the railing to the roof below. My arms opened wide of their own accord and for a moment, I felt freer than I ever had in my whole life. I’d dreamed of this, feared it, longed for it, and now that I had the courage to jump, I felt like a falcon free of the jess for the first time.
I turned to glare at Rhiannon. Andras, as he had ever been, was far too grown up to put up with my shit, ignored me. Rhiannon by now had completely lost it. Even from that distance in the dark I could see her shudder with every breath. Andras tried to talk to her but she was too far gone to hear him. She just shook her head. He tried raising her face to look at him, but she jerked her head backwards so swiftly that she nearly jerked the pair of them off the ledge.