The Dowry Blade

by Cherry Potts

  A hush fell on the watching crowd, not one of them sure that Maeve would stop now, each wondering what that meant for them, under her command. Tegan felt that moment drag; aware of Eachan slowly drawing himself up straight beside her, his hands gripping the rail tightly, twisting about the pole in unconscious anxiety, willing Maeve to stop. Tegan’s mind was empty of future; there was only the space between Maeve’s anger and Brede’s painful fear.

  Maeve held her tension to herself, tempted, no question but she was tempted. She caught the look in Brede’s dark eyes, and nodded abruptly, allowing Brede to end the bout. If she had really wanted to kill Brede it would not have been the hilt of the knife that she used. Maeve tossed the knife down and wiped the sweat from her face with her scarf. Brede’s face lost its closed, frightened expression and she blinked, getting her ragged breathing back under control. She flexed her hands and found they would obey her, just, although she still shook. She gathered her knives back into their sheaths and picked up the discarded longswords aware of the buzz and murmur of the watchers, trying to disguise the way her body was barely under her control. She carried the weapons back to the racks, checking for new nicks and scores as she walked.

  Tegan met her at the racks. Brede scowled at her, self-conscious. Tegan barely noticed, shaken by what had just occurred, uneasy with knowledge.

  ‘You’ve attracted some interest,’ she said tersely.

  ‘Whose?’ Brede asked, instantly alert.

  ‘The Queen. She has asked to see you.’

  Brede stiffened, recognising the cause of Maeve’s abrupt skill – showing off for Grainne – and then the full meaning hit her.

  ‘Must I go?’ she asked.

  Tegan laughed, incredulous.

  ‘Of course you must. It wasn’t a casual request.’

  ‘How should I be, what must I do?’

  Brede fiddled with the swords, sorting them unnecessarily to size, concentrating her thoughts on making her body do what she wanted of it without shaking too much. Tegan began to relax. This was the Brede she was used to, not the fighter she had been watching on the practise grounds.

  ‘Wash;’ she suggested and Brede laughed despite herself.

  Tegan thought, giving serious consideration to how best Brede should present herself.

  ‘Be honest,’ she said, ‘be yourself. If that isn’t what she wants, you’ll be back out here fast enough and none the worse for it. If you are what she needs, you’ll be glad you have no boasts to live up to. And don’t stand on ceremony; she hasn’t the strength for it.’

  ‘It’s true then, that she’s dying?’

  Tegan drew in her breath.

  ‘Never say that out loud. No, I do not think it is true. She looks better than the last time I saw her. She has some witch in attendance; she seems to be doing some good.’

  Tegan didn’t mention that she recognised that witch, and had drawn her own conclusions. Brede must sort that for herself. Brede pulled a face.

  ‘For all I care she can wither away.’

  Tegan cast a sharp look at Brede.

  ‘If that is how you feel you’d best not go. Grainne won’t thank you for that association.’

  ‘I don’t mean that I believe the superstitious nonsense they talk in the inns. I don’t think that she can be crushed by war or starved by famine; I doubt she cares enough for the trouble out here to bother her.’

  ‘Well, but you’ve not met her. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Do I not? And haven’t I been a beneficiary of Grainne’s concern for people who are none of hers?’

  Tegan shook Brede’s arm gently.

  ‘Peace. If you can make a friend of me, can you not make an employer of Grainne?’

  Brede frowned, considering Tegan, and friendship.

  ‘But you don’t trust me, Tegan, friend or no, or you wouldn’t be talking to me like this, you’d have stopped with the advice to wash.’ Brede stopped for breath, now that the fear was gone. ‘So why should Grainne trust me? Why did you let her think she could? And why would she want to speak to a raw recruit who isn’t even contracted to her guard, who is permitted to do no more than tend the horses and make use of the practice yard – one she has just seen humiliated?’

  Tegan shrugged unhappily.

  ‘She didn’t stay to watch, they didn’t see.’

  ‘They?’ Brede asked blankly, and then she remembered. ‘A witch?’ she asked thoughtfully, and a fleeting smile crossed her face, smoothing the anxious scowl. Tegan sighed, recognising that expression for what it was and cuffed Brede across the shoulder.

  ‘I’d worry about that, were I you, not smile like a love-struck goose.’

  Brede’s smile broadened, and she became abruptly aware of the warmth of the sun on her bruised and protesting back. She turned her face into the sun, drinking in the light, her eyes closed.

  ‘Are you listening?’ Tegan asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Brede said, loosening her collar, conscious of the cooling sweat in her hair, ‘but I’ve never known a goose smile.’

  Tegan shook her head in mock despair.

  ‘There is no hope for you,’ she said, moving out of the sunlight, back into the deep shadow of Grainne’s tower. ‘No hope at all.’

  Brede idled away to the bathhouse, stripping away her borrowed leather guards, piling them together in the outer room. She glanced around, seeing that Maeve’s guards also lay on the bench. She slid resignedly onto the wooden slats and worked off her boots, wincing at the pain in her back and wrist as she tried too hard to get the tight boots free. She could hear faint splashing from within. Brede would have preferred not to speak with Maeve for now. She would have much preferred to wash away the sweat and dust and aches in comfortable silence. She needed time to think how to speak to a ruler she did not acknowledge as her liege, who held the lands of her ancestors, and ordered the destruction of her kin; who had bought her allegiance with money. For the space of a heartbeat, Brede couldn’t remember why she was in this city, closed in by walls, choking on alien dust. She swallowed her need for open space, for movement. Grainne was only a woman; Brede could only speak to her as she would to anyone else – like Maeve, perhaps?

  Corla glanced in through the door and grinned sympathetically.

  ‘Here,’ she said and threw a bundle of herbs to her; ‘put that in your water and mash it up a bit, it’ll help the bruising.’

  Brede gathered the bundle to her and sniffed. There was that smell again, it reminded her of something, but she couldn’t place what.

  ‘Thank you, Corla,’ she said softly, but Corla had already gone.

  Brede pulled the ties out of her hair and ran her fingers through, forcing her braid apart. She sighed; she couldn’t afford to wait. She pushed through the leather curtain, glancing swiftly at Maeve, and then away, busying herself with the cisterns of water filling the tub as hot as she could bear, throwing in Corla’s herbs, pulling bits of clothing off as she went, her back and shoulders protesting at every jug of water, and thanking the Goddess that she was permitted to ignore Maeve’s rank in the bath house.

  Maeve watched her in silence, noting the awkward way Brede was moving, and her determination not to acknowledge her presence. She inspected the spreading bruise on Brede’s back furtively. An inch or so further to the left and she might have paralysed or killed her. Maeve sank lower in the water, so that Brede was out of her line of vision. She had made a fool of herself, insisting on a public display of her disapproval. She had not sated her anger, nor had she forced Brede to recognise the errors she was making in the way she fought, which was so subtly different from what Tegan had tried to teach her. And, it seemed, humiliation didn’t work with Brede. Perhaps she should have killed her. She listened to the slop of water as Brede lowered herself into the tub, the involuntary groan of relief as the hot water cradled her aching body. Maeve frowned at Brede’s apparent indifference; still smarting from the way Tegan had gone straight to Brede after the bout.

/>   They lay in far-from-companionable silence; the only sounds the slosh and slap of water in the tubs, dripping from one of the cisterns. Maeve stared at the ceiling, at the curls of steam dissipating in a stream of sunlight, and sighed. The water was getting cold. She got her feet under her, forcing herself upright against the drag of the water. Brede glanced in her direction, and continued the slow washing of her hair.

  Maeve wrapped a towel securely about her, and turned to up end the tub, emptying the water into the runnels in the stone floor. Not really thinking about what she was doing, her grip was not as secure as it could be, and she let the tub fall.

  Brede heard the curse, and the sodden thud, and grinned to herself, as water slopped over the edge of the tub, soaking Maeve’s towel.

  ‘Leave it,’ she said, ‘I’ll empty it when I’ve done.’

  Maeve rounded on her, anger rekindled.

  ‘You think you can manage that?’ she said, scornfully.

  ‘Yes, despite your best efforts to maim me. I’ve not lost the strength that nine years at an anvil gave me,’ Brede said, biting down on her own swift anger. ‘I told you I don’t want to be a warrior. I know my limits. Why do you want to make me into something I’m not?’

  Maeve glared at Brede, white with anger, then abruptly shook her head, and laughed, unwilling to compound her earlier misjudgement. She pulled another towel from the pile between the tubs, discarding the wet one. She was about to turn away when Brede spoke again.

  ‘Did you see Grainne watching us?’

  Maeve nodded, feeling again the abrupt surge of conceit, which had made her force the pace so dangerously. It had worked against Brede, but against a more experienced opponent it would have been rank idiocy. Not that Brede knew that. Maeve sank slowly onto the edge of the tub.

  ‘Did you?’ she asked, wondering that Brede could have divided her attention from the fight.

  ‘No. Tegan told me. Grainne wants to see me. Can you think why?’

  Maeve frowned.

  ‘Are you asking me what service she wants of you, or why she chose you?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘I don’t know. If she asked me, I would tell her not to trust you; but she won’t ask. You are a no more than competent fighter but also eminently expendable, which might be the reason she chose you – so whatever it is she wants you for is likely to be dangerous, or secret – so don’t tell me what it is when you find out.’

  Brede nodded slowly, recognising the lukewarm praise in Maeve’s terse words. She started to pull herself from the water, and gasped as her back locked and refused to let her up.

  Maeve laughed.

  ‘I don’t think you are going to be emptying any tubs, Brede, not when you need help to get out.’ She hesitated, wondering whether she could bring herself to help, watching Brede try to get a purchase on the edge of the tub with arms that would not take her weight. ‘Can you get your feet under you?’

  The tub was narrow and awkward. Brede scrabbled until she had one knee under her. Her back eased. Carefully she got her other foot flat to the bottom of the tub. She pushed up slowly and steadily until she could sit on the rim.

  ‘Ahh, Goddess,’ she gasped, past caring what Maeve thought of her.

  Maeve draped a towel over her shoulders, shrugging away Brede’s muttered thanks. She retired to her own tub and emptied it carefully, giving Brede time to clamber out with a semblance of dignity. They viewed each other with wary curiosity.

  ‘There’s something you could tell me,’ Maeve said cautiously.

  ‘What would that be?’

  ‘What is there between you and Tegan?’

  Brede stared at her, wondering how to tell her the truth.

  ‘A death,’ she said.

  ‘Tegan says she is indebted to you for her life.’

  ‘She would say that. It’s not how I… but you don’t want to know what there is between us. You want to know what there has not been between us. We haven’t been lovers, Maeve, if that is what has been causing you pain. We could never be that.’

  Maeve would like to know why Brede was so adamant, but the trembling in Brede’s hand, where it held the towel close, warned her not to ask. She had pushed too far, words would make Brede dangerous, in a way that no other threat could. She saw, in that trembling, the spark that she had hoped to see on the practice ground. It made her uneasy. Maeve left Brede to empty her tub, if she could, and went in search of cleaner clothes, and what she hoped would be an honest conversation with Tegan.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Tegan walked slowly, loose limbed with released tension, towards the barracks. Eachan had given her one sharp glance and vanished towards the stables, his opinion of Maeve unvoiced. And Tegan’s opinion of Maeve? She hardly knew, but future was finding room in her brain again. She stopped at the bottom of the steps. Her breath came in short angry gasps. She leant against the wall, wondering what she had sent Brede into. With her breathing easier, she dragged her heavy limbs up the steps and into the darkness of the barrack block. No one was around except Inir, sitting silent and brooding in the darkest corner. He glanced up as she came in, saw who it was, and subsided back into his shadows. Another problem. She was not equal to his grief. She nodded to him, and climbed the ladder to the upper floor, trying not to let her weariness show.

  Tegan sank onto her bed, and lay on her back staring at the low vault of the ceiling, measuring the depth of the darkness and the play of light from the slit of window at the end of the room. She closed her eyes, but nothing could block out her thoughts. Up again to pace across the small room, from one stone wall to the other. Her wound was pulling; she concentrated on that; anything rather than the look on Maeve’s face earlier. Gently Tegan stretched her arm above her head, grazing the ceiling with her fingers. It hurt. She was almost glad. She located her pack, and the salve Corla had made for her.

  Maeve took the steps up to the barracks two at a time. Her wet hair was loose on her shoulders, her shirt and jacket unlaced; she carried her guards bundled under her arm. She strode into the darkness without a glance, making straight for the ladder. She stopped at the bottom, her head raised, listening for sound from above. Her sharp hearing caught a faint rustle. She put her foot to the first rung, and climbed the ladder as though scaling an enemy wall in the dark. Not so much as a creak from the wood to betray her presence.

  Inir watched, and was uneasy at the sudden change from bustle to stealth. He edged off his bed, and crept forward. As he reached the bottom of the ladder he heard Maeve’s voice above him, astonished into laughter.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’

  Inir’s mouth twisted into a smile. He patted the ladder gently, scooped up his money belt, and went out into the sunlight.

  Tegan pulled her shirt together. She held out the little pot of salve. Maeve dropped her guards, and came to sit on the floor in front of Tegan. She crossed her legs, and straightened her back, flicking wet strands of hair back behind her ear. She took the salve, and sniffed it.

  ‘Ugh.’

  ‘It’s not meant to be a perfume.’

  Maeve dipped her fingers into the salve and offered her hand. Tegan frowned, then pulled her shirt up so that Maeve could smear the greasy mess onto the shiny ridge of new skin.

  Maeve hesitated, her fingers not quite touching Tegan’s flesh. She took a good look at the wound, then put her hand lightly over it, letting her fingers slip to and fro, feeling the thickness of the ridge, probing gently for the edges of the pain. Her expression softened, and she let her hand lie against Tegan’s ribs, warming her with the light pressure of her palm.

  Tegan looked down into Maeve’s face, into an expression molten with loneliness and relief and desire. She placed her own hand over Maeve’s. Maeve shifted her eyes upwards, meeting Tegan’s gaze.

  ‘You are angry with me.’

  Tegan nodded. Maeve frowned.

  ‘I did not kill her.’

  ‘Why not?’ Tegan asked.

  Maeve slippe
d her hand out from under Tegan’s. Tegan let her go, massaging the stiff skin herself; and waited while Maeve worked out what to say.

  ‘I didn’t want to enough.’ Maeve glanced away, finding her soiled shirt an adequate place to wipe the remaining salve from her fingers. She shifted onto her knees, meaning to stand, but couldn’t summon enough will. She sank back onto her heels, and looked up at Tegan. Her eyes focussed on the curve of Tegan’s breast, above the still circling fingers against the scar tissue. She bit her lip.

  ‘Tegan.’

  The fingers stopped moving.

  ‘Maeve?’

  ‘I’ve talked to Brede.’

  ‘About me?’

  Maeve nodded. Tegan wondered what Brede would have found to say about this, after an entire winter of saying nothing.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Maeve said quietly.

  ‘You didn’t trust me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You were right not to.’

  Maeve flinched. She reached and pulled Tegan’s hand into her own.

  ‘What do you mean? Brede said… ‘

  ‘And it was the truth. And I would never have asked her, but if she had…’

  ‘Why didn’t she? Not because she didn’t want you. Any idiot can see she worships the ground you walk on.’

  Tegan laughed.

  ‘Not anymore she doesn’t. No, that wasn’t it. Think about it, Maeve. She’s Wing Clan. Why do you think I let her have Guida?’

  Maeve’s hand tightened convulsively about Tegan’s.

  ‘Ah. And she still made sure you lived.’

  ‘Touch and go.’ Tegan pulled her hair back, revealing the ghost of bruising.

  Maeve reached to caress that bruise.

  ‘So, that is all there is to tell. I can’t despise a heart that can throw all that at me and still have the sense not to sleep with me. So you were right not to trust me, Maeve, but you can trust Brede. Killing any woman I look at will do you no good, if I am the cause of the trouble.’