“Back, whelp,” growled Barric.
Dion protested: “No! Padraig? Padraig, you’re safe!”
“Of course, cherry!” he said, and Dion caught a glimpse of his laughing eyes over Barric’s shoulder. “And I brought someone with me. Aren’t I a darling?”
Aerwn was beside him, bouncing as she walked and kicking stones ahead of her without regard to noise. “Di, I heard all about it! Oh, what I wouldn’t have given to see you shouting at them all!”
“I didn’t shout,” said Dion, rousing herself to gaze wonderingly at the rough-hewn stone ceiling that curved away over their heads.
“No, no, of course not. You talked to them in that furious little gruff voice that terrifies the life out of me, all the while with tears of rage pouring down your face.”
Dion, lacking the energy or the need to protest what was, after all, largely true, simply said: “I’m glad you’re safe.”
“Oh, and he didn’t bring me,” Aerwn said, outpacing Barric with her energetic walk until Dion had to turn her head to see her sister. Padraig followed, still smiling at Dion, and Aerwn jerked her thumb at him. “I brought him.”
Barric’s eyes flickered toward her. “Get it?”
Aerwn’s eyes sparkled back at him. “Got it!”
“What have you got?” asked Dion.
“The first shard, of course!” said her sister. “Don’t tell me he didn’t tell you about the shards! This one’s been in the castle gardens for years with a little something to discourage Fae from getting too close.”
“He told me,” said Dion, blinking deep and long. There was a sharp, twisting feeling in her stomach that she didn’t recognise. To Barric’s collar, she said: “Were you teaching Aerwn, too?”
Barric glanced down at her, his scar pulling. “No. Only you.”
“I had my own imaginary friend,” said Aerwn. She threw an arm around Padraig’s shoulders in a friendly fashion. “Padraig kept me company and showed me around. We had a few close scrapes, didn’t we?”
Dion wasn’t sure if that was any better than Aerwn being taught by Barric. When had she become so jealous of Aerwn?
“Just a few,” said Padraig, with a rueful grin; but Dion thought she caught an apologetic look from him. She felt the shivers coming on again and tucked her head exhaustedly back into Barric’s shoulder, trying to ignore Aerwn’s entirely bright, entirely healthy presence.
Barric said: “You’re underfoot. Go check the way.”
“Which one of us?” demanded Aerwn, by no means pleased to be summarily sent off.
“Both,” grunted Barric. Padraig didn’t look any more pleased than Aerwn, but he followed her anyway, and they soon disappeared into the gloomy passage. Barric said softly: “Sleep if you can. You’ll need your energy.”
Dion said wearily: “I’m sorry. I hoped when the time came– I hoped I wouldn’t be so weak.”
Barric shrugged his huge shoulders. “Your strength lies within.”
“No, it doesn’t,” said Dion, and found that there were tears slipping down her face again. “If you’d been able to talk to me about it earlier– if Aerwn had been able to confide in me– if I hadn’t been so blind–”
She saw his scar jump, but not with a smile. “You trusted; and your honesty makes you see honesty in others. Loyalty and sense of honour are not to be ashamed of.”
“Both of them were misplaced,” said Dion quietly, and with bitterness. “Llassar will be well off with Aerwn as queen.”
“Aerwn will be a good queen,” said Barric. “Perhaps. In time. But Llassar can’t be saved without you.”
Dion said: “And Padraig’s hammer and anvil,” and let her head fall against his shoulder. A stubborn, clinging thought was nudging at her, and she gave voice to it. “I want– I want to see the Duc.”
“Peace,” said Barric’s voice. “Ap Rees is out of Harlech this morning. He has an army to gather in readiness for their leader.”
“This,” she said. “All of this. It was poised on the edge of the precipice, just waiting for the last stone to fall. We’re at war?”
“Yes,” said Barric.
“Then it is…time to die,” said Dion, and fell asleep.
The Bitterness of Winter
There was sunshine in Dion’s eyes when she woke the next morning. Perhaps it was the sunshine that woke her. When she opened her eyes the first thing she saw was Padraig’s face smiling down at her, and it seemed that the sunshine grew warmer. She couldn’t help the smile that involuntarily curved her lips, and though the memory of the previous day rose immediately after, it wasn’t quite enough to take away the lingering warmth when Padraig pulled her to her feet.
“Oh, for pity’s sake!” said Aerwn’s voice. She had been fixedly watching Barric make breakfast over a small fire, but now she made a face at Dion and Padraig. “Don’t flirt with my sister, Padraig! It’s disgusting!”
“Mind your own business, Aerwn,” said Padraig, grinning in delight at the bright crimson that flooded Dion’s cheeks. He murmured: “I missed you, cherry. You’re looking bonny this morning.”
Aerwn went back to staring at the breakfast, but she muttered: “Eugh! It’s like watching my brother and sister flirt.”
“You don’t have a brother,” said Dion, reluctantly pulling her hand out of Padraig’s.
“Close enough,” Aerwn grunted. “Feeling better, Di? You’d better eat something.”
“I’m fine,” Dion said, accepting the bowl that Barric silently passed to her. “Where are we?”
“Comfortably outside Harlech,” said Padraig, as Dion walked a circle around the camp, automatically eating her porridge. “And nicely hidden, too, if it comes to that. Ywain was a fierce clever man.”
“Yes,” said Dion thoughtfully. Her eyes told her that they were in a circular ruin that was part of Old Harlech, perilously open and bare to prying eyes from Harlech’s guard towers to the east and west. And yet, she could never quite see any of the guard towers; and if it came to that, although she could see Harlech’s wall, she never managed to catch a sight of any part of the Guard Walk along the top of it. She looked closer at the skeletal brick remains around her and saw the faintest glimmer of the foundational magic that had gone into creating the effect. The ruins themselves weren’t formed from magic; any Fae looking out over the wall from Harlech would have noticed that at first glance. No, Ywain—if it was he who had done it—had used magic to move actual bricks and hold them in place: in carefully constructed place, so that from the walls of Harlech it would have looked as though it were not capable of hiding a mouse. Every seemingly teetering spire of remnant brickwork was carefully positioned and painstakingly scaled to conceal the well-provisioned camp that it was.
“We came through tunnels,” she said, frowning. She couldn’t see anything like a tunnel entrance around them, but with the hidden perspectives and clever masonry, Dion wasn’t prepared to swear that there wasn’t one. “Or was that just a dream?”
“That was real,” said Aerwn. She was bouncing on her toes in eagerness for her breakfast, but Barric’s eyes were on Dion. Dion wasn’t sure if he was deliberately baiting Aerwn or was merely waiting to see what Dion thought of the pretend ruins, but when she met his eyes he smiled faintly and passed a bowl to Padraig.
Dion said: “Where do we start, Barric? How do we begin to fight back?”
“Where’s mine?” demanded Aerwn, seizing a bowl at the same time that Padraig said reproachfully: “Not over breakfast, cherry!”
“Dion likes to fix things as soon as she finds them broken,” Aerwn said through a mouthful of porridge.
“Oh, that’s beautiful,” said Padraig, steering Dion to a seat beside his own chosen one.
“You said last night that Owain is gathering an army,” Dion said to Barric. She could feel the trembling deep inside, but thanks to Tutor Iceflame’s hard work, there was no sign of it in her beautifully set shoulders. The worst had happened: she could face it now that she had had time to
prepare herself. “We’ll fight.”
“No,” protested Padraig. “We’ve more important fish to fry, think on.”
“There’s nothing more important than ridding Llassar of the Fae,” Dion said. “We fight.”
“You have another purpose,” said Barric. Dion met his eyes, seeing in their black depths the life given in binding, and knew that she would be too busy collecting shards of the Broken Sword to have any time left for leading an army.
“All right,” she said. “But where do we begin?”
“And who will lead the fight?” demanded Aerwn, by no means pleased. She always hated to see Dion give way to anyone but herself. “We can’t let Owain have all the fun! We’re meant to meet him outside Tywyn.”
Dion said: “You’ll lead the fight, of course. You’re second to the throne. When I die–”
“Nothing is going to happen to you!” said Aerwn furiously.
Dion looked at Barric, then Padraig, her eyes wide with dismay. “You didn’t tell her?”
“They told me some nonsense about giving your life in Binding,” Aerwn said, hunching her shoulders. “It’s rubbish. Good magic doesn’t kill humans.”
“It’s not killing me,” said Dion. “Not exactly. It’s me giving myself.”
“I won’t have it! I won’t! I’m coming with you!”
Dion said quietly: “You can’t. Someone needs to lead the fight, and no one less than one of us can do it. Who will stand up to the king and queen without a princess to lead them?”
“You lead them, then! I’ll do the binding!”
“You can’t,” said Dion. “You’re not special enough.”
Aerwn choked on an involuntary laugh and tried to hide it in a dignified cough. “I’m very special, thank you! What can you do that I can’t?”
“Magic,” said Dion. “It’s no use, Aer– we have to do what we have to do. I can’t lead an army, but I can Bind the land. Besides, if we fail you’ll need to take back Llassar by force.”
Aerwn, silenced, sat back with her breakfast. She ate in silence for a few minutes before saying: “It’s just me and the gingery old Duc, then, is it? All right. We’re all of us for Tywyn, then?”
“Aye,” said Padraig. He looked as if he had given up protesting about discussion over breakfast. “To begin with.”
Aerwn grunted. “Well, I suppose that’s something, anyway. I’ll stay with you as long as I can. If you’re going to go off and die I want to see as much of you as I can before you go.”
Padraig batted his eyelashes at her. “Aye, I knew you cared!”
“You can die in a ditch as far as I’m concerned,” Aerwn said politely. “If I’m only going to have my sister for another day, I’m not sharing.”
Padraig winked at Dion. “Sure, we’ll let Dion decide. A man of my good favour, or a lass of–”
“Careful,” Aerwn warned, grinning broadly. “Dion and I look exactly the same.”
“Not exactly,” said Padraig. His eyes flicked briefly over Aerwn’s head as he said to Barric: “Guests, big man.”
Dion followed his gaze and saw a strange Fae by the edge of their camp, followed closely by a human woman. She gasped and hurled a fiery bolt of magic, her breakfast dish clattering to the rocky floor. The strange Fae caught her assault with a yell, and there was the scent of singeing.
Aerwn, instinctively covering her head, yelped: “Dion! Stop!”
“He’s Fae!”
“He’s on our side!”
Dion said: “N-none of them are on our side! Get away from him, Aerwn!”
“How appallingly rude!” said the Fae, wringing his scorched fingers. He cautiously felt his face and said in dismay: “My eyebrows! My luscious eyebrows!”
“Your eyebrows are fine,” said the woman next to him. “Carmine, we’ve talked about you being so caught with your appearance.”
“Yes, but that’s when I’m being effortlessly gorgeous!” he protested.
“You’re getting slow, Carmine,” said Barric. “Peace, Dion.”
Dion, who had been building another deadly charge of magic, very slowly let it dissipate. Carmine had been watching her cautiously, despite his loud dismay, and when the last of the magic left her fingers he relaxed again.
“Is this a new way of greeting friends?”
“Sorry,” said Aerwn. “Di doesn’t understand. She had a nasty experience or two with the Fae in Bithywis.”
“Why are we working with Fae?” said Dion tightly. The anger that had been slowly building in her since that day in Bithywis was threatening to make her voice tremble, and she was by no means willing to trust any Fae, even if Barric and Aerwn did know him.
Aerwn tossed a frown back at her. “Sorry, what? You do know that Padraig is Fae, too?” Padraig made a sharp noise of protest but Aerwn shot him a glare, too. “What? Why didn’t you tell her? What were you playing at in Bithywis? And Barric–”
“Peace, Aerwn,” said Barric. Aerwn turned resentful eyes on him but closed her mouth. “We have no time for talking. Finish your breakfast: we move in a quarter hour.”
It was bitterly cold for the time of year, thought Dion. The years had successively become colder since she was a child, which now seemed sinister somewhere at the back of her mind where all her private musings happened; but the last two years had been exponentially colder than those before. The summer sun that should have been warm on her head was thin and glittering, more beautiful than useful for warmth. Adding to the frozen feeling of the day was the chilly, uncomfortable knowledge that Padraig was walking beside her still, hours after they had left the environs of Harlech by stealth. He had tried to talk to her at first, his lively blue eyes unusually shadowed, but Dion had refused to answer his conversational gambits or even to look at him more than fleetingly. The trust that had grown between them as they journeyed toward Harlech was forgotten; and having learnt to hate the Fae in so short a time, she found herself unwilling to trust again so swiftly. Before long Padraig ceased trying to talk to her, but he didn’t leave her side. Their silence was no match for the chatter from the Fae and the human girl up ahead, or for Aerwn’s cheerful, if one-sided, conversation with Barric. Despite her declaration of wanting Dion all to herself, Aerwn had been keeping her distance. She looked slightly ashamed of herself.
Dion wished Padraig would walk with someone else; wished she didn’t flush when she felt his eyes on her; wished above all that he wasn’t Fae. The Fae were the enemy– all Fae were the enemy. How could their expedition be successful if there were two Fae in the company? How could she be certain that they wouldn’t be betrayed?
Dion remained deep in thought as the morning drew out into afternoon, and then as the afternoon lengthened into evening. After they stopped for lunch her silence was less noticeable: everybody but Barric was also weary and silent, and Barric didn’t speak a great deal at the best of times. Much to Dion’s relief, he ousted Padraig from his position by her side some time before the sun began to go down, and she was able to take comfort in his tall, striding silence. If she had looked behind at Aerwn and Padraig, who were thus forced to walk side by side, she would have seen the angry looks they exchanged.
By the time the sun was setting they had begun to walk through light forest, and the last town was some hours behind them; now merely a flickering light on the horizon. Dion found herself curious: what were they doing at the base of the Caerphilly ranges? Tywyn was close, but south-easterly of their position. Were they to cross the ranges after Aerwn left them? Even in summer it would be a cold, arduous climb to cross them, and since it wasn’t likely that they could take the king’s highway through the mountains it would be a more arduous climb still. And then what? wondered Dion. The mountain scaled and descended, they would be in Shinpo; where the king and queen had reportedly been ousted from their throne and the land overrun by the Fae. Dion couldn’t think of a worse place to begin their search for the shards– unless– unless Aerwn and Barric knew something that she didn’t. That was like
ly to be the case, she thought rather wearily.
She said to Barric: “Does Aerwn know where the next shard is?” and found that her voice was rusty and cracking from lack of speaking.
“Aerwn!” called Barric, by way of reply. “Give me the shard.” Something sharp and metallic hissed through the air at his head, and he caught it delicately between his fingers. “Here,” he said, passing it to Dion. “See for yourself.”
Dion took it gingerly, very much aware that she was holding her life in her hands, as it were, and as she held it she began to understand something of the certainty of their direction. The shard was unmistakeably pulling at her, drawing her towards north-east Shinpo in general and somewhere else in particular. She looked back up at Barric in wonder.
“It’s– is it telling us where the other shards are?”
He nodded. “The closest one.”
“But–” Dion stopped, unsure of how to voice what she was thinking without sounding either snide or ignorant.
“Why haven’t we collected them earlier?” asked Padraig’s voice. He and Aerwn had caught up with Dion and Barric while they were engaged and unheeding, and there was something of a determined look to his eyes. “Well, cherry, there was a difficulty. We Fae have an inbuilt disadvantage when it comes to the Broken Sword.”
Dion’s eyes flickered at him and then away. She said stiffly: “What disadvantage?”
“It’s the nature of the thing. The Broken Sword is a defence against Faery–”
“Not against,” said Barric. “Around.”
“Even so,” shrugged Padraig. “Yet the Fae are the ones most likely to challenge it, and the magic of the Sword reflects that. When we hold the shards, they tell us nothing. Nor are they comfortable for us to be around.”
“I said we should begin collecting them earlier,” said Aerwn. “I was wrong, actually. If we’d started collecting them earlier and tried to keep them safe ourselves, the Fae would probably already have them. I had to steal this one back as it was. Just think if I’d tried to give them to our parents.”
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