by Prue Batten
A whirling angry breeze filled the anteroom, biting at the flames of the candelabra, tearing at the stumpwork robe and the tails of the men’s coats. The cursed woman and the limp body of her man disappeared as Jasper walked to the doors. Turning he spoke, not unkindly. ‘Adelina, muirnin, it is time. And you too, Phelim.’
Chapter Forty Six
The crowd circled like wolves around prey. Eyes glittered from the cavities of expressionless masks and a hum of anger began to rise around the ballroom as the interlopers were placed in the center of the eldritch space.
Severine stood imprisoned in a half-mesmer, and Luther lay on the floor, a bloody heap folded in as if he were a babe. Jasper stared at the two with expressionless eyes, bending to place a finger on Luther’s neck. ‘He lives. By a thread.’ Anyone listening could be excused for thinking that he cared little one way or the other, his tone so neutral.
‘Ná!’ The angered buzz was cleft apart by a cry and a willowy, black- clad woman with a pale visage and blood-red lips swooped in front of Jasper to harangue the accused.
‘Thy murderous bitch.’ She spat the words at Severine, turning to Luther with the fires of hell sparking in her eyes. Such hatred began to spread further through the crowd, agitated whispers rising and falling. ‘And thee!’ Maeve kicked at the asassin’s crumpled body and before she could be stopped, she bent towards the assassin, raising a stiletto that she struck with force into the rounded back that lay facing her.
‘Maeve!’ Jasper shouted and hastened toward her but she stared him down, fury filling the air as she drew herself up taller, hissing vituperative.
‘Too late.’ She kicked Luther with her toe and he rolled back, blood trickling from the thick lips. ‘The length of a dance tune and he will be gone. And what right dost thou have to stop Maeve anyway? Thou art only a healer, not the Lady Aine.’
Jasper’s face darkened. The white hair had been clipped close to the fine head and the fine brow had lines of anger ploughed deep into the surface. ‘It is I who shall control this Court of Judgement and it is I who says it must be Adelina who exacts redress and now you have taken from her that which was her right. How did you enter Faeran?’
‘How did murderer enter?’ She kicked Luther again. ‘Maeve followed him because she knew if she had waited for Stitcher to take revenge, she would have waited for eternity. Never trust mortals.’ She flashed a look at Adelina, ut then her gaze slid to Severine. ‘But look,’ she pointed her finger. ‘That one still stands. Let Stitcher have her. Carcass on floor killed my sister and was mine. Maeve repaid debt.’ Without another word, she sliced through the agitated crowd as if she were a cleaver and walked to the massive open windows overlooking the Canal. Shape-changing, her dark as night wings spread and she flew away into the star-lit sky.
The crowd in that sumptuous room seethed, Maeve’s violent rebellion having goaded them like the smell of blood to dracules. Adelina shrank against the hob. Until now, her eyes had barely left Jasper’s face, loath to confront Severine or Luther, even Maeve. But now her timorous gaze swept the crowd and she trembled.
From their toes to their chins, this room was the very picture of gorgeous indulgence. Satin gown, silk hose, muscular thigh, dainty waist and daring décolletage - all enhanced with flashing gem and jewel. But from collarbone to coils of curls, images of purgatory prevailed.
Hawkish, mawkish masks surrounded her, row on row, leering and sneering until her heart almost jumped from her chest. So cowed was she under their intense scrutiny, she didn’t realize Jasper shouted above the ruckus.
‘SILENCE!’ His sharp tones rattled the chandeliers. ‘Silence!’ The noise lessened, still angry, but Jasper could speak without shouting and chose to lower his tones further, the better to reel in the quiet as if it were a fish on a line. ‘I would say the mortal - Luther, son of Maud - has been weighed and measured and found utterly wanting. His time is short. Our attention must by necessity turn to her.’ He pointed at Severine. ‘Consummate evil.’ He advanced upon Severine who neither cowered nor paled, her upper body rigid with fury, her lower body rooted to some Faeran substrata. ‘Let me list her crimes.’ Jasper walked in front of the crowd. He stood tall, thinner than Adelina remembered and she closed her eyes as she listened to the list that read like a memorium.
‘She has most willingly, deviously and cruelly killed Gertus Goblinus. She murdered Elriade and,’ his voice trembled faintly, ‘Liam of the Færan maliciously with the ancient Soul Stealer.’
The crowd roared, as if some ghastly final doom had been revealed.
‘AND,’ Jasper shouted, his voice quelling the rowdy mob. ‘And, there have been many mortal deaths, not least her own husband and the Raji, Khatoun.’ He walked in a circle addressing his peers, holding the unruly crowd in the palm of his hand with subtle pressure. ‘Some months ago the mortal Adelina, imprisoned by the offender, grieving for her lover and for her friend Liam, made a promise to Maeve Swan Maid that she would avenge the deaths of Liam and Elriade of the Faeran and in so doing would avenge herself for the death of her betrothed, Khatoun.’ He had reached the point of the circle where he could turn and face Adelina. The hob supported her, Phelim stepping to her other side. ‘Ah!’ Jasper spoke in a quieter, more solicitous voice. ‘Such valiant supporters - a hob and a Faeran.’ He looked directly at Adelina. ‘The hour is come. What is your choice of revenge?’
The eager crowd pressed closer.
Adelina found hands clutching her own and the hob’s voice whispering, ‘She deserves what’s coming.’ From Phelim’s side, his voice… not the one she wanted to hear. ‘Adelina,’ he said. ‘Be strong, muirnin. She is finished whatever happens.’
She slipped her hands from her friends’ grasp and placed them folded and mother-like on the mound of her belly. Her child moved and in that moment, she knew what she must do and she quailed neither from the responsibility nor the need. But even so, she mused, so easy for Others. They truly know nothing. Severine’s Fate may even now be weaving her shroud, but I wonder, I wonder if they know what my Destiny is doing. Is it measuring my baby and I for similar coverings? Her child kicked her hands. Huh little babe - what do you think these Others shall do when they learn I must reneg on my promise? For I must. Momentarily she shivered as ghosts of present, past and future stalked her. The tiny berries on the gown trembled and the crystal dewdrops on the splendidly embroidered spider-webs flashed.
Get it over with, get it over. ‘It’s true,’ she responded softly. ‘I am to seek revenge.’
‘Louder,’ Others shouted, words like splinters.
‘It’s true,’ she called back. ‘I promised. But a loved one became deathly ill and I bargained with the Lady Aine.’
‘And?’ Jasper cast a look at the fractious crowd.
‘She saved my loved one and I am in the Lady’s debt. I must forgo all hatred and revenge. It is what I vowed.’
The crowd began to push and hustle and she heard Phelim and the hob warn them back.
‘SILENCE!’ Jasper turned toward her, a vengeful tone in his voice. ‘Adelina, how could you? She killed Liam. Aine child, she killed the father of your babe.’
‘I know!’ Adelina stamped her foot. ‘I know. And I hate her. I could have slit her throat weeks ago. But what does it achieve by killing her or him? Momentary relief and nothing else.’ She could barely look at Luther, remembering the callous battering. ‘It’s not going to bring anyone back. Not Others nor my babe’s father. So tell me,’ she turned bravely around the circle, unabashed. ‘What does it really achieve?’
‘Satisfaction,’ someone yelled from the crowd. ‘Complete satisfaction.’
‘But not for me,’ Adelina bravely riposted. ‘I am unlike you...’
‘Mewling mortal.’
‘Yes. A mortal Traveller. We live by legal mores, by codes.’ Your code is dubious at best, fulsome cruel and I will not sink to your level. She held herself tall and could feel the baby kicking gently, what passed for applause.
‘T
hen you are a fool,’ the same voice jeered back followed by hollers of acclamation. Snarling dissent filled the room on a rising tide of volume.
‘Maybe,’ she would not be cowed. For the first time in an age she felt the old Adelina blossoming, the one who always had an opinion and would vent it readily. Oh Kholi, she thought, would you be angry? But she unpicked the thought from the fabric of her mind as quickly as she had unpicked unwanted stitches in the past. ‘In any event, it is what I choose to do and the way I choose to live. That way I can live with myself.’
Jasper walked in a circle, driving the crowd back as he swished past. His movement was enough to silence the room but what little of his own equanimity that was left trailed behind him like the remnants of a cloak. Adelina sensed such anger and disappointment rising from him - a foetid mist that pervaded each Other in the room and she knew with the anguished certainty of the condemned that her future was as short as the wick on the candle that flickered in front of her.
‘Adelina, bravely put and it may be what you would choose, and I applaud your stand, but in fact you promised an Other before you made your pledge to the Lady. Simply put, you owe us before her.’
‘Jasper...’ she gasped.
‘I’m sorry, muirnin, it is the way of it.’
As Adelina turned to her friends, she heard Severine sneering, a nasty whisper. ‘Poor poor Adelina.’
Something wholesome and kind in the Traveller’s soul snapped, a sharp flick that she was sure all in the room could hear. The hatred and desperation of the last months flooded to her cold fingertips. The silk robe swished and crackled around her as she swept across to her nemesis and backhanded across one pale cheek and then the other with force that she had not known she possessed. ‘I don’t think so, Severine.’
‘Enough.’ Jasper could see the crowd agitate, the slaps acting like meat to starved dogs. A matter of moments and they would take things into their own hands. ‘Adelina, your decision, otherwise I must cast sentence on you just as I cast sentence on her.’
‘I...’
‘JASPER.’ A voice filled with the timbre of desert men shouted from the farthest corner where doors opened to the balconies and the moon shone brightly and stars could be seen in a midnight sky. Rajeeb strode across the floor as if he walked on a moonbeam, his quaint slippers hardly murmuring. ‘May I enter the world of Faeran, my Lord?’ He petitioned Jasper, bowing over a hand that folded at his waist.
Jasper nodded, waving a silencing finger at the room but there was hardly a need for it was many lifetimes since a djinn had been seen in Faeran and there existed a fascination amongst the Others as they stared and murmured.
‘Lady.’ Rajeeb acknowledged Adelina with a flick of his hand against his chest and forehead, ‘your last wish was for me to help Lhiannon.’
She nodded, hearing another Raji voice in another time. ‘When I found her, dear Lady, I could not help her.’ Adelina looked up at him, knowing what he would say and so wishing her babe was not attuned to her broken heart, to her realizations. Tears began to roll down the peach skin.
‘Hush now, beautiful one. She met her bane, it happens. But now, you see, you have one wish left and there is a way to use it.’ Black eyes met hazel and despite fresh grief, Adelina understood. She looked at the crowd of onlookers, at the expressionless masks covering unknown faces. Taking a breath, feeling a reassuring kick from her womb, she spoke clearly. ‘Then I wish for the djinns to exact punishment for the Others, Rajeeb.’
He nodded as if he had expected such an answer and was prepared. ‘As you wish, lovely one.’
Severine’s tones spiked the air. ‘I am not afraid of you,’ the woman hissed at Adelina and Rajeeb. Turning her eyes away, she threw a contemptuous glance around the ballroom. ‘Nor all of you! I have had all of Faeran running scared for months now with my ring. I bested you all! Two of you are gone because of my power.’
‘Power from this?’ Jasper interrupted, he moved his hand. Severine’s arm came up unconsciously as she spat at him, shouting vituperative. The ring slid off her finger and floated to Jasper to spin lazily in front of him, the crowd gasping at the sight of the infamous icon - the only weapon in the world that could kill a Faeran. The noise of a sword, a spoken charm and the ring split, bursting into black and green flame to fall in a pile of smoking ashes at Jasper’s feet, the crowd applauding wildly.
‘Was that in your nightmare, Severine! Did you see it? Is that how it happened?’ Jasper smiled most uncharmingly at her.
‘You can cheer,’ she screamed. ‘But I have your most ancient and powerful charms hidden, charms which could demolish this world, Other and mortal. Hidden where you shall never find them. If you want them, if you value your world, you can never kill me.’
‘Do you think so? Really? I think you talk of the Cantrips of Unlife, am I not correct?’ Jasper shook his head. ‘Ah my dear, you are truly delusional. You are only a mortal.’ He watched her wince at the bald truth of his words and talked over her as she went to argue with him. ‘You are not a changeling. You were not born in Faeran and left where you parents could find you. You are just a mortal. You have no power over us, none at all. We’ll find the charms never fear, and when we do they shall be destroyed as they should have been aeons ago.’
Adelina’s gaze had never left Severine’s face, that mouth that had issued the command to kill one and another and another. She smoothed the robe over her belly and picked the folds up in her fingers to stand directly in front of the woman. In the silence of the ballroom, the silk whispered and rustled, saying ‘You’ll find out.’ Severine glanced at the robe, her eyes drifting over the detail. Fear and raging envy lay like a shadow in her eyes. And despite her manner, her lips trembled, her eyes widening as Adelina spoke with irredeemable finality. ‘Rajeeb, take Severine. Take her.’
Severine began screaming, her arms struggling as Rajeeb enfolded her in a fierce clasp. He nodded at Adelina and in an instant he had disappeared with the murderer.
The crowd cheered with ecstatic hollers and clapping, an ovation as good as one would give for an inspired performance at an opera or concert. Adelina swallowed on the nausea. An accessory to murder then... she facilitated it. How ironic. She waited for Liam’s voice to come from the Afterlife and say, ‘See, it is never black and white, is it?’ And the Lady Aine, what would she think of her earthly supplicant now?
The music struck up, a gentle waltz, and the satisfied crowd, relieved the mortal had gone to her death, began to sway, to smile, to laugh and immediately to forget. Such is Other, such is Faeran.
As the orchard blossoms swirled in the musical zephyr, Jasper saw the twisted shape of Luther on the floor and with a flick of his hand, mesmered the man into some purgatorial never-land, as far from the sensibilities of Faeran and mortal as could be.
Phelim stood immobile, aghast at what he had seen, at what he had heard, at what he had done. Where now was the shepherd, where was the half-time mortal? Lost, a voice whispered inside his head. Lost.
‘Phelim,’ Jasper appeared by his side. ‘You have grown these past weeks. I think your brother would have been proud. You are a true Faeran!’
Phelim let his response drip from lips, bound up in acid and ice. ‘I have no wish to be I can assure you. As to my brother, he is unknown. I have no family other than Ebba the carlin, to whom I shall return.’
‘Then you do the memory of your brother a grave disservice.’ Jasper admonished.
‘I never knew him.’
‘That was not his fault. But that aside...’ the crowd swirled past and Jasper invited the three to follow him to chairs at the edge of the sparkling room, ‘you owe the memory of your brother some respect and affection.’
‘I am not aware of him. He is less familiar to me than the souls I carry.’
‘Ah, but you see, you are familiar with him. For it is his soul you carry. Liam of the Faeran was your brother. Give me the bag, Phelim. It is time for them to go home.’
Beside him Adelina m
oaned. ‘The bag of souls! You had the souls; you knew all along that Lhiannon was dead. Why did you not tell me? She was my friend and I deserved to know. I thought you were my friend too, Phelim.’ She cried his name, disillusionment and hurt in equal measure falling upon him and piercing his senses as sharply as an arrow from an enemy.
As Adelina spoke, a cloud filled her brain and a wave of fierce contractions swept over the surface of her belly. The child, in the thick of a pincer-like hold, kicked hard and the cloud in Adelina’s head became dense and black. She subsided onto the parquet floor of the ballroom, the robe pooling in a milky puddle around her and Others swirling around like breeze tossed blossoms in an orchard.
Chapter Forty Seven
The Ymp tree orchard mended. As it had done for Ana, so it did for Adelina. The months of mental and physical anguish could have ended her pregnancy but instead she slept as Jasper wanted her to do and time passed. As he said to Gallivant, ‘Hob, stop pacing. Time heals.’
The hob heaved one of his many sighs and walked out amongst the budding and blossoming fruit trees where one could scream or rant or even weep quietly for a woman who even though she was a mortal, had been as brave as she could be.
Phelim found him there as the pale blossoms fell about him and he sat down. For a while there was silence broken only by bees, birds and the breeze. Finally, Phelim shifted. ‘This is a despicable, tawdry world, Gallivant.’
‘I know,’ the hob nodded a miserable head. ‘You won’t stay will you?’
‘Gallivant I am not Faeran. Not in the way of Others. I know I can mesmer and speak Other, Traveller and a dozen Eirish dialects but my heart is on Maria Island, on the farm with my sheep and Ebba. It’s a gentle existence whereas the life of Others as I have experienced it is fraught with double standards and malicious games. I have done terrible things to women, I have seen Severine taken to a ghastly retribution as a crowd cheered. I have watched Adelina being manipulated and made ill with Faeran games. It disgusts me.’