A wide, heavy hand lands on his shoulder, and he jolts, peers up into deep, dark eyes and stumbles back.
Sucks in a ragged breath and screams—
“Bloody hell!” Brayden sputtered.
Wil jerked himself up, heart thumping wildly, and scuttled back over the tiny cot until his back hit the wall, immediately regretted every single move, as stars exploded behind his eyes and every bone, joint and muscle seemed to scream in agony. He gasped, slumped, probably would have toppled over if a wide, heavy hand hadn’t landed on his shoulder, gripped firm. He wanted to scream again at the touch, but he hadn’t the breath.
“Easy, now.” Calm, smooth, and soothing.
The hand wouldn’t leave, just kept holding on, keeping him upright—not hard, not threatening, not cruel…
Wil made himself take several deep breaths, ignoring the way the muscles in his chest and belly protested, drew his knees up, and cradled his pounding head in his hands. The bandaging around the right one reminded him that his hand was hurt, too, and he followed that thread until he remembered how it had got so, and how he’d got to where he was now…
Groaned.
Right. Dudley. Jail.
He probed gingerly at his forehead, fingertips carefully marking the scabs and swelling. Groaned again.
A semi-urgent need to piss was knocking at his groin, but the thought of standing up made his stomach turn over.
It took him another several moments to work up the courage to open his eyes, and when he did, bright afternoon sun stabbed into them, slanting in through the barred windows of the doors and the window above the sheriff’s desk. He winced, blinked eyes gone gummy, tried to focus and couldn’t quite make it.
“All right, then?” Brayden asked. “Didn’t mean to startle you, but you’ve been sleeping a long time.”
Wil almost nodded, thought better of it and merely closed his eyes again. “Sorry,” he said, only it came out a hoarse whisper. He reached up to his throat, tried to clear it.
“Here,” said Brayden, taking up Wil’s hand and pressing a warm mug into it.
Wil didn’t even have the energy to flinch at the touch that time. Brayden’s hand was over his, guiding something hot and fragrant to his lips—some kind of spiced cider with a very strong liquor that gave its mild taste an impressive kick. Wil took several cautious sips, relieved when it soothed the dry burning in his throat.
“Can you hold it yourself?” Brayden wanted to know.
Wil wanted to say, Yes, get your great paw off me, wanted to fling that great paw away and be rid of the unsettling touch, but found himself mumbling, “Dunno,” instead. He pried open his eyes again, squinted at the cup, his hand wrapped around it and Brayden’s around his. “I… what…?” He paused, confused, not at all sure of what he’d meant to say, then he blinked up at Brayden, peered a question at him with a slight tilt of his head.
“You’ve been dead to the world since last night,” Brayden told him, “and it’s now early afternoon. I’m sorry I startled you—I imagine your injuries have set into the muscle while you slept, and all that jumping about couldn’t have felt good. Are you in much pain?”
Wil just kept blinking stupidly.
“The healer was by, but I told her I’d call for her again when you woke. I didn’t think you’d appreciate someone prodding at you while you slept.” A wry little snort. “Considering the way you woke, I’m thinking I was too right.” Wil couldn’t see anything but a big, dark smudge fringed with gold, so he couldn’t tell for sure, but it sounded like the constable might be smiling. “D’you always wake like someone’s trying to kill you?”
Wil didn’t know if he was more surprised by the question or by the fact that Brayden was actually making an attempt at a light tease. He shrugged, muttered, “Someone usually is,” flushed at the truculent bent to his tone, and took another sip.
“Right,” said Brayden, cleared his throat, and changed the subject. “Anyway, the healer left some mæting for you, if the pain’s bad. You took rather a beating, y’know.”
“Ya think?” Wil retorted, a little less sarcastically than he might’ve done another time, but Brayden’s hand was still wrapped about his, and the fact that it was no longer unnerving him was unnerving him. He gingerly pushed the cup away until Brayden took it and released his hand. “What’s mæting?” he wanted to know.
Brayden bent and placed the cup on the floor then retrieved the tray he’d apparently laid on the far end of the cot when Wil was having his little spasm. “Reverie,” he answered, jerking his chin and waiting for Wil to straighten out his legs before placing the tray over his lap. He noted Wil’s questioning look, shrugged and clarified, “The more common name for it is dreamleaf.”
Wil stiffened, panic flaring again in his chest.
Viscous needwantdemand, it has a form, liquid and murky, and it chokes him, he can’t breathe, but they don’t stop, won’t stop, always dragging him through more, and it tears at his mind, steals pieces of him, and he screams at the pushpulltugtear until his throat bleeds, but they keep on, make him keep on, and he can’t make them stop—
“I don’t want it,” he croaked, realizing when the great smeary blob that was Brayden only kept standing there, being a very silent great smeary blob, that it had come out rather harsh and heated. He uncurled the snarl that had unconsciously pulled at his sore mouth, looked down at the smudge on his lap that was the tray. He willed the banging of his heart to slow, didn’t dare take his hand from its grip on the edge of tray; it was shaking and if he moved it, he’d likely wind up with whatever was in the bowl all over his lap, and then Brayden would want to know why.
Brayden was silent for a long moment. Wil could feel those eyes on him, digging away, and only just held back another resentful snarl. What right did the man have, after all?
“No need to be brave,” Brayden finally ventured slowly. “You’ve enough injuries to justify a painkiller, I should think. You’ve more bones in your hand broken than not, and that head can’t be feeling good. The healer was quite reproachful that we hadn’t given you something last night.”
And why did Wil have the impression that it was said more to gauge his reaction than it was out of concern? “I don’t want it,” he said, more calmly than before, then tried to focus on the bowl—some kind of beefy soup, he guessed by the smell, but his vision was horribly blurry and all he could see was something brownish and sloshing slightly as he shook. He’d thought the smell would make him nauseous, but instead, despite the rabbiting of his heart, the rich, hearty aroma made his mouth water. And then he peered up sharply, narrowed his eyes. “You didn’t put it in anything, did you? That dreamleaf—it wasn’t in that drink, or in—”
“Of course not!” Brayden snapped, indignant. “You think I’d drug someone all unsuspecting? What d’you think I am?”
I know exactly what you are, Wil thought, and a lot better than you do, but said, “I wasn’t…” He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply… anything. I only… well, the problem is that I don’t know.”
Another long silence, Brayden staring while Wil sat, silently enduring it and trying not to twitch, until Brayden finally pushed out a long, heavy sigh, said, “Right. Hold on a moment.” And then he turned and walked out of the cell. Wil didn’t even have time to wonder where he was going; the big blur that was the constable was back almost immediately, dragging what was likely a wooden chair behind him, because he set it in front of the cot and dropped himself into it. “We need to talk.” He gestured at the tray. “You should eat, get some of your strength back. Or would you rather wash up first?”
Warm water on his sticky eyes did sound rather good, and there was also the matter of needing to piss… He weighed the all-encompassing ache that was his body against the other two prospects, decided moving still came out on the bottom. Wil looked back down at the tray, blinked and squinted, but it wouldn’t come into focus. “I can’t see,” he said quietly. “Is there a spoon?”
“It’s blurry,” Wil told him. “I can see a big brown spot that I assume is soup, but…” He shrugged, almost shook his head before he remembered not to. “And I smell eggs.” He frowned. “They’re not in the soup, are they?”
“No,” Brayden snorted, his tone relieved now, and he leaned in to pluck up a spoon and put it in Wil’s hand. “There’re some boiled eggs in the office, I’ll get you some if you want, and if you hold down the soup. The blurriness will likely be gone in a little while. Sometimes, I’m told, it can last for a few weeks, but it mostly clears up when the headache starts to go away. Are you left-handed?”
Wil blinked. “Why does that matter?”
“Well… it doesn’t,” Brayden answered, “not in that way, at least. Except that you’ve not started eating yet, so I’m wondering if your left hand is clumsy and you don’t want to risk eating soup with it, or if you’re nauseous, too.”
“I’m not nauseous,” Wil told him quietly. “And I’ll manage.” To prove his point, he aimed the spoon for the brown blob, pleased when it hit its mark. He ladled up a spoonful, managed to get it to his mouth without spilling it down his chin, and sighed a little when the lush, meaty flavor of the broth hit his tongue. His mouth was incredibly sore, and his bottom lip felt like it was a three-foot wide bees’ nest, but eating was a pleasure he never rebuffed. Anyway, he hadn’t realized until now how foul his mouth tasted.
“The hostel next door sent over a late lunch before their kitchen got busy for supper,” Brayden told him. “I don’t think I’d want to sleep in the place, but their food is surprisingly good.”
Wil would have agreed, but he was keeping his mouth busy with slurping the soup.
“They’ve a small room off the kitchen with a tub. Miss Jillian says if we let her know an hour before, she can have a bath ready for you. The healer said a good soak would likely loosen you up some.”
That seemed… unusually generous. Either the sheriff was owed several very large favors by the hostel owner, or Brayden was a lot more charming than Wil would have given him credit for.
Apparently, an awful lot had gone on today while Wil slept.
“Locke stood the watch overnight, so she’s gone home for a bit,” Brayden continued. “She’s arranged for a few of the local militia to stand post outside, so we’ve got a little while to talk.”
“Talk?” Wil ignored the little frisson of nerves that skittered up his spine, concentrated on the dip and lift of the spoon.
Brayden, in his turn, ignored the mock-innocence in Wil’s tone, kept his own even and conversational. “It seems to me we’ve been working at cross-purposes. More cider?”
Wil gave a careful shake of his head and kept his murky gaze on the bowl, dipped the spoon.
“So,” Brayden said, leaned back in his chair. “I’ve been wondering what I should call you.”
Wil paused, looked up and squinted. “Sorry?”
“Well, it occurred to me when I was sending off my report this morning, that I’m still calling you Wilfred Calder when it’s obviously not your name. So, I’m wondering what your real name is.”
A little bubble rose in the back of Wil’s throat, but he stubbornly swallowed it down, shoved another spoonful of soup into his mouth. He swallowed, pushed the spoon back into the bowl, swirled it slowly. “How d’you know it’s not my name?” he asked quietly.
“Oh, come,” Brayden sighed. “We’ve been through this. And by the time we get back to Putnam, we’ll have confirmation from Lind. Anyway, in case you’d forgotten, you admitted you were Ríocht’s Chosen last night—that makes you a Dominionite and not Wilfred Calder. Let’s put away at least one game between us, shall we?”
He had forgotten, actually. Damn. And even though he’d more-or-less been expecting… well, something clever, anyway, the question had caught him too much by surprise. He didn’t like that he couldn’t see the constable’s face, didn’t like guessing at his expressions by the carefully controlled tones of his voice. Brayden was too experienced at keeping those sorts of things tucked away where others couldn’t see them, unless he wanted them to.
“I doubt you want me to go about calling you ‘Chosen,’ do you?”
Wil tried to shovel another spoonful into his mouth, couldn’t quite manage it. He let the spoon drop to the tray. “I’d rather you didn’t,” he answered, annoyed when it came out a raspy little croak. He cleared his throat. “I like ‘Wil.’”
“Hm,” Brayden hummed, shifted forward in his chair. “But it isn’t your name, is it?”
They might as well be back in the interrogation room in Putnam. This was Constable Brayden now, the man who’d been trained to ask the right questions in just the right way, the man who had the audacity to pin a bug to a cork with no compunction, and the patience to watch it writhe. The real concern Wil had felt from the man only a few moments ago was gone, buried beneath whatever Brayden saw as his duty and his righteous loyalty to what he thought was right. There was no table between them this time, no chains on Wil’s wrists, but he was just as caught, just as trapped with a man who knew how to draw secrets from a person, how to drag things out your mouth you didn’t want to tell.
He wanted to baulk at the snare, mulishly refuse to give even an inch, but there was no real point in dodging this time. Brayden had known the second he’d laid eyes on Wil that he wasn’t from Lind, so it followed that he wasn’t Wilfred Calder. And there was the matter of whatever confession he’d made last night, so what was the point? Except the truth wasn’t any more believable.
“I have no name,” Wil whispered, incensed at the tears that rose at the bald reality of the statement, the lump of genuine ache in his chest—even more incensed at the man who forced it from him.
“No?” It had the lilt of a question, the right upward curl to the tone, but Brayden was too good at this, and Wil had no doubt the inflection was deliberate. It wasn’t a real question—it was some kind of set-up, and Wil had opened his mouth and walked right into whatever little trap hid beneath it. And would keep on walking into them, because he didn’t know how not to.
Brayden leaned in farther, until the dark blur of him blocked the hard autumn light from the window. “Not ‘Aisling’?” he asked softly.
Wil jolted so hard the tray went over, a rush of warm liquid spraying over his throat and chest. He didn’t know where he thought he was going—he couldn’t even see and Brayden was between him and… well, everything—but he lurched anyway, threw himself sideways, but Brayden’s wide, solid hands were grabbing him by the shoulders, pushing him back against the wall.
“Listen to me,” Brayden said, voice even and unruffled. “I’m not going to hurt you, but you’re going to hurt yourself if you don’t calm down.”
He didn’t have much choice. He was pinned—Brayden had been ready for him and had got them both into a position that would make it easy to keep him still. He had no leverage, he had no open path to escape and he had no strength. And even if those three things had converged in his favor, he still couldn’t see. If he tried to run, he’d likely sail headlong into a wall of bars or bricks and knock himself cold.
Which might not be so bad, he reflected morosely.
There should have been terror roiling in his gut, and there was, but it was overwhelmed by a smothering wash of pure, unadulterated rage. How dare the man toy with him like that? How dare he play at sympathy, slip hope into Wil’s heart, the insidious trickle of it so small and subtle that Wil hadn’t even known it was there and growing until it was suddenly and cruelly snatched away. Every time Brayden had a chance to kill him and didn’t, every time he’d spoken a small defense, every time he was kind when he didn’t have to be… it had been a game, all of it, culminating in this one moment of trickery and revelation. Wil could’ve wept—which only enraged him further.
And how dare the man do it all when Wil was
weak and beaten and vulnerable?
“So that’s it then, is it?” Brayden went on softly. “Aisling?”
Wil lifted his head, glared up into what he hoped was Brayden’s face, snarled, “That is not my name!”
“It’s certainly something,” Brayden retorted. “You can’t tell me you had a reaction like that to something you’ve never heard before. You know the name—it’s what you’ve been running away from all this time. If it’s not your name, then what is it to you?”
“It’s a command!” Wil snapped, sorry immediately that he’d said it, but what difference did it make now?
“It means ‘dream,’ doesn’t it?” The hands on Wil’s shoulders tightened. “Is that what the Guild commanded you to do—dream? D’you dream true?”
They weren’t questions—Brayden knew. He was the Guardian—of course he knew. Everything else had been some kind of cruel sport. Wil shut his eyes, bowed his head. The anger deserted him in one great, searing rush, left only emptiness behind it, wider than he’d ever thought possible, and so choking that breathing became all at once painful. Wil sucked in a shaky breath, shook his head, tried to hold back the defeated tears, but they burnt at the backs of his eyes, fell down his cheeks in great, scorching drops.
The Aisling Trilogy Page 15