Dreamspinner

by Lynn Kurland

  “And how would I do that?” Rùnach asked politely.

  “Be supercilious until she cracks.” Weger looked at him with one raised eyebrow. “That should come naturally to you, given all the superciliousness you witnessed in your youth from your grandfather.”

  Rùnach shook his head. “I don’t remember my past.”

  “You know,” Weger said slowly, “I once knew a gel who thought much the same thing. And look what happened to her.”

  “My sister possesses what I do not.”

  “Aye, a decent amount of wit,” Weger said with a snort, “and vast amounts of sword skill. I don’t care to discuss what she has running through her veins. I imagine she would prefer it that way.”

  “If it eases you, you were a powerful influence on her,” Rùnach said. “Sìle complains about it endlessly.”

  “A vile, insufferable man who wouldn’t last a quarter hour inside my gates.” Weger pushed himself up off the bed with an energy that belied his six centuries of living. “Go run in the morning. I’ll decide when you’ve had enough, then perhaps we’ll work in the afternoon. I think if I lash your hand to your sword, you might be able to heft it fairly successfully.”

  Rùnach refrained from comment. He could scarce hold that damned leather ball of sand Weger had commanded that he squeeze constantly on his runs. Whilst he wasn’t a cynic by nature, he had to admit progress was not being made as quickly as he would have liked.

  But at least he now knew the source of Aisling’s troubles. With any luck, he could see her fed that night and then perhaps they both would have a decent sleep. Though he was happy to see what of the remainder of the night he could use for that purpose. After, of course, he spent half an hour memorizing all Weger’s strictures.

  Old habits died hard.

  He woke to torchlight in his face. He waved it away with a curse, then sat up and rubbed his eyes. Once he could focus again, he saw Losh standing there, looking as if he expected the very stones of the floor to belch up a score of black mages who would then fix their sights on him and subject him to a lifetime of torture.

  “’Tis morning, my lord,” Losh ventured.

  Rùnach frowned at him, then looked at Aisling. She was sitting up, though she didn’t look much better than she had the night before. She did, however, look very surprised.

  “How do you fare?” he asked with a yawn.

  “I’m not dead,” she said, patting herself as if she thought she might find the secret of her survival somewhere on her person.

  “I imagine things will continue to improve from here,” he said, crawling to his feet with all the energy of a centenarian who had spent the night on a stone floor, which was exactly how he felt. “Let’s be off for something strengthening.”

  She didn’t move. “You didn’t wake me at midnight.”

  “I tried,” he said, though obviously he hadn’t. She had looked so wraithlike by the light of that terrible candle that he’d half feared she might just fade to nothing if she didn’t sleep enough to at least start to heal. He looked at Losh. “Something to break our fast, eh?”

  “If you dare, my lord,” Losh said, looking rather green.

  “I dare,” Rùnach said, “and I am no lord.”

  “So you say,” Losh said, with an added my lord muttered under his breath.

  Rùnach ignored that, for he was growing increasingly tired of correcting those who seemed determined to accord him what wasn’t his—

  Well, he supposed he was due that and at least a couple more courtesy titles, but those were things better left in the past.

  He started to hold down his hand to help Aisling up, then realized that was perhaps a more gentlemanly action than a man would extend to his companion that he thought was a lad. He instead reached down and took her by the forearms in the most gentle-yet-manly grip he could manage, then helped her to her feet. He held on to her until he was certain she wouldn’t pitch forward onto her face, then released her.

  “Thank you,” she said with a faint frown, as if a puzzle lay before her that she simply couldn’t solve.

  Rùnach hoped for her sake that it wasn’t a contemplation of any upcoming meals, then nodded to Losh, who led them forth out into the passageway.

  The buttery could have been reached in the dark by its smell alone. Rùnach had eaten worse on a very long journey he preferred not to think about when he’d had to kill things by stepping on them and tear into them with his teeth—

  He pushed aside those memories abruptly and strode into the buttery, prepared to appreciate the best it had to offer. He walked up to the long slab of a table that held all manner of pots and bowls, then folded his arms and eyed the cook as his meal was slapped onto a round wooden trencher.

  “Baldric, is it?” he remarked as he accepted the plate.

  The cook looked at him uneasily. “Aye, my—”

  “I am no lord.”

  Baldric licked his lips nervously. “As you say.”

  “I understand my sister came to an understanding with you sometime during her first fortnight here.”

  Baldric had an attempt at a swallow. “Heard your sister is Morgan.”

  “So she is.”

  “A peerless swordsman, that one.” He looked at Rùnach with a sick smile. “Don’t suppose it runs in the family.”

  “I imagine that isn’t anything anyone would want to test seriously, don’t you agree?”

  Baldric nodded enthusiastically.

  “And this lad here is part of my company,” Rùnach said, tilting his head toward Aisling. “Be a shame to find out that he hadn’t been fed properly.”

  “Ah—”

  “I couldn’t agree more.” He handed off his plate to Aisling and stared at Baldric. “And now that we’ve come to an understanding, I’ll have my meal.”

  Baldric took the other plate he’d been holding, a plate that Rùnach hadn’t watched him dish up himself, wobbled a bit, then dropped the plate with a curse.

  “Clumsy me,” he said, spooning out slop from the same pot he’d unearthed Rùnach’s breakfast. He handed it over. “Here you are, m’lord. Hot and tasty.”

  “I’m sure it will be superb.”

  Baldric simply nodded several times, as if he strove to convince Rùnach that no beatings needed to be administered. Rùnach could only hope the man would be inspired from then on to leave the lobelia in the infirmary where it belonged.

  He sat down at a long table with Losh, Aisling in between them, and set to something that was every bit as disgusting as everything he’d eaten up to that point. If he ever escaped Gobhann, he would make it a point never to visit any other kitchen that could possibly rival Weger’s for the vileness of its victuals.

  Once the break-of-day misery was over with, he walked back up to the upper courtyard with Aisling and Losh. Weger was waiting for him, which Rùnach supposed should have made him a little nervous. Weger looked at Losh.

  “See if you two feeble lads can get from here to the gate and back again before the sun sets.”

  “Of course, my lord!”

  Weger looked at Aisling. “What, no questions from you, lad? No vexing me, no driving me from my own comfortable seat before the fire with books you shouldn’t own?”

  Aisling was mute, just as she’d been the entire morning so far, as if she simply couldn’t believe she was still breathing. Then again, Rùnach supposed if he’d been puking up his guts for two solid days, he might have looked a bit stunned as well.

  Weger shot Rùnach a look of unease, which he returned with a shrug.

  “Harding’s nephew, see that one there up and down all the stairs, then put him in the sun and leave him to bake until he finds his tongue.” He made a shooing motion. “Off with you children and leave me to my sport.” He looked at Rùnach. “Come along, old woman, and let’s see what can be done about you.”

  Rùnach glanced at Aisling. First she’d been frantic to speak to Weger, but now she had nothing to say?

  He motioned fo
r Losh to take her away. It was her affair, not his, not anything he wanted to get involved in. He had problems enough of his own without taking on the simple, womanly cares of a wench who should have been home learning the gentler arts of stitching and cooking.

  Then again, his sister had been thrust out into the world to do things that he never in his life would have wanted for her. For all he knew, Aisling was in like circumstances, without friend or kin…

  “Are you done with your thinking,” Weger asked politely, “or should I watch you dither a bit longer?”

  “I have nothing to think about.”

  “Well, that is likely the first bit of unvarnished truth I’ve had from you since you arrived,” Weger said. “Come along, little lad, and let me see what I can make of you.” He tossed Rùnach that accursed black leather ball full of sand. “Give that a few squeezes on your way down to the gates and back. When you look properly wrung out, I’ll allow you to stop.”

  Rùnach nodded, because he’d come inside Weger’s gates willingly and with a purpose.

  Two hours later, he was wondering if he’d lost his mind. His hands ached so badly he was seriously considering cutting them off, his shins felt as if some terrible feline with double the usual amount of claws had been using him as a sharpening post, and he was almost numb from the chill and lack of sleep. He wondered absently if spring ever came truly to Gobhann or if Weger had struck a bargain with some local wizard to make certain that a bitter wind caressed the western side of the island at all times, just for the pleasure of the inhabitants trapped there.

  Gobhann. Had he been mad? Sìle would have only lifted a single white eyebrow and said nothing at all, because words wouldn’t have been necessary. The truth was, he had left sanity far behind and strode stupidly full into whatever land lay past absolute madness.

  He leaned over and sucked in desperately needed breaths. A hundred times, two hundred, perhaps it had been three hundred times up and down those blasted stairs already that morning. Damn that Miach of Neroche, whose neck he would cheerfully wring the next time he saw him, for remaining mum on the more particular details of life at Gobhann. Mhorghain also could be shouted at for having refrained from giving him tales she’d said would bore him. They had colluded, those two, and he would have words with them next time they met. Assuming Weger’s light exercise before the true work began in the afternoon didn’t kill him first.

  Sadly enough, he suspected Mhorghain had enjoyed it. His associations with his sister as an adult had been woefully few, but he recognized in her the same relentless determination to carry on past where others with sense took a rest that seemed to infect all his siblings. For all he knew, she would have assumed he would have enjoyed the torture.

  “Ah, finished so soon?” Weger bellowed from where he was resting his sorry arse on a comfortable-looking bench with his feet stretched out before him. “Another few turns, Rùnach love, then we’ll see about starting you on the rudiments of swordplay. I don’t imagine you’ve even held a sword before, have you?”

  Rùnach was too tired to curse, nor did he have the energy to repay any of the other inmates for their laughter at his expense. He simply nodded at Weger, then turned and trotted back down the stairs. He passed Aisling making her way down them as well, a look of suspicion on her face, her hand resting protectively over her belly.

  That one had secrets, he decided, but secrets he didn’t want to know, he decided even more quickly.

  He had secrets enough of his own.

  Eight

  Aisling stood at the edge of the upper courtyard and wondered why it was she wasn’t dead.

  It wasn’t a thought she was accustomed to having, but it was, she had to admit, something she had become rather preoccupied with of late. She couldn’t believe that she had done such a poor job of counting the days that had passed since leaving Bruadair. It was possible, she supposed, to mistake twelve days trapped in a carriage for a fortnight, but more than that? Impossible. And she herself had been painfully aware of her time on the ship, the passage of the moon overhead as she’d limped away from Sgioba, and the terror of that first day when she’d felt the first pangs of the curse taking root in her.

  Only she hadn’t died that night. She hadn’t died the next night either. It wasn’t possible that the peddler had been mistaken in his calculations, but what else could be the truth of it? What if he had meant that she had not three se’nnights, but three fortnights?

  She eased along the edge of the courtyard, avoiding the men who fought like fiends in its midst. The stone of the wall she trailed her hand along the top of was rough, but worn, as if innumerable hands had used it to find their way just as she was. She paused at a certain spot, where the roar of the sea wasn’t too loud to hear herself think and where the sun seemed to have found its way through the gloom.

  She peered over the wall, pulling her cloak—which was Rùnach’s cloak, actually—more closely around herself. She wasn’t sure how often anyone could see the rocks below given that Weger’s tower seemed to be an unnatural attraction for an endless amount of gloomy mist. Then again, perhaps that was a boon. Better not to know what potentially waited below than to have a full sight of it at all times. She could see them very well at the moment and wished that weren’t the case.

  The sea, though, was glorious. She took as deep a breath as she dared, and felt the air sink into the whole of her. She watched the water endlessly swirling, spinning, pulling things into itself as it slipped up to the rocks, then receded. If Gobhann hadn’t been so relentlessly grim, she might have been tempted to see if she could stay for a bit. Just for the sea.

  Though perhaps the lads who were working behind her wouldn’t agree. She didn’t need to look at them to know that the ones in the uppermost courtyard were the most elite of Weger’s students. Losh, who had proved to be a veritable fount of information, had said as much. In fact, he said much about all sorts of things. She hadn’t been unhappy to have him be sent off on an errand a quarter hour ago so she could have a bit of peace for thinking.

  And the first thought that came to mind was one that left her wondering if any of Weger’s lads would agree to her quest out of the goodness of their hearts.

  “They wouldn’t.”

  She almost fell over the wall. The only thing that stopped her was a hand catching her by the cloak and pulling her back into the courtyard. She looked up and realized it had been Weger himself to save her.

  “Excitable, aren’t you?” he drawled.

  “You startled me.”

  His smile was particularly self-satisfied. “Then all is as it should be.”

  Aisling readjusted her cloak, willed her feet and knees to be steady beneath her, and tried to still her pounding heart. She would have made polite conversation with the lord of Gobhann, but she had no idea what the topic should be. Death? Swordplay? Her death by someone’s swordplay? She managed to turn herself around and lean carefully against the wall in a way that she wouldn’t pitch over backward if he startled her again, which she had no doubt he would try to do if it suited him.

  “Well,” he said briskly, “you have me here. What do you want?”

  She shifted uneasily. “What do you mean?”

  “What do you think I mean? You’ve been angling to talk to me since you trotted inside my gates, so talk.”

  “Ah—”

  “And let it be the truth,” he warned, “else I’ll toss you over the walls, and sooner rather than later, to save myself any more vexation in the evenings. You said before that you needed a soldier. Why?”

  “For business I cannot name.”

  “Very well,” he said, taking her by the arm, “’tis over the wall with you.”

  “Wait,” she blurted out. She supposed that since the moment she’d been waiting for had truly come, she had no reason not to be as honest as she dared be. “I need an assassin.”

  Weger stopped, released her, then turned to face her. How he managed to lean his hip against that rock wall witho
ut taking a tumble himself, she couldn’t have said. Years of practice, no doubt.

  “An assassin,” he repeated slowly. “That’s an interesting thing to need.”

  “It wasn’t my choice,” she said quickly, “but it is my task.”

  “And what sort of lad sends a wee lass out to hunt for a hired sword?”

  “I—” She shut her mouth because she realized what he’d called her. “I’m not—”

  “Of course you are. You can’t swagger to save your life, and you couldn’t defend yourself against an inebriated granny.”

  “I am not so helpless,” she said, thinking perhaps that a bit of bluster might serve her at the present moment. Never mind that anything she knew about swordplay had come from reading about it in a book. There wasn’t much call for stabbing people in the halls of the Guild, though she had to admit that there had been those for whom the thought had definitely crossed her mind.

  “I think you’re exactly so helpless,” he said with a snort. “Tell me what you want this hired killer to do for you.”

  “Oh, the usual ordinary business,” she said carelessly.

  He smiled without humor. “The business of killing is generally not ordinary, but we’ll leave that for the moment. Does the someone you want killed have a name?”

  She blinked in surprise. “I never said I wanted someone killed—”

  “Don’t bore me with your hedging,” he said sharply. “When you want a lad to do a tidy bit of killing for you, it usually means you already have someone in mind to be on the receiving end of his ministrations. Who is that?”

  She looked at him unflinchingly. “I cannot say.”

  He studied her in silence for a moment. “I could wring the answer from you, you know.”

  “I know you could, my lord,” she said slowly, “but if you knew the price that would be exacted from me for giving voice to that answer, you might have mercy on me.”