The Aisling Trilogy

by Cummings, Carole

  He shook his head, blew out a heavy breath. “If they’re all like Calder,” he furthered dubiously, brooding at the flicker of the torch by the door, “I may want to re-think going to Lind, too.”

  Bugger all. They were running out of places to turn to. No wonder Wil had kept moving and as out of sight as possible since he’d been running.

  “No,” Wil said with quiet conviction. Dallin shifted his glance back to find Wil looking at him with a surprisingly determined set to his face. “We have to go there,” he told Dallin. “We have to listen to whatever Calder has to tell us, and we have to go to Lind. I don’t think I care if it’s a trap. I need to know.”

  Dallin didn’t ask what Wil needed to know; the answer would be the same as his own, if he were the one asking the question: he needed to know everything.

  “He was talking about power,” Wil went on, brow twisting, and he peered at Dallin with canny interest. “So were you.”

  Dallin sighed, letting his hand fall away from Wil’s shoulder. “And this surprises you?”

  “I don’t know.” Wil stood slowly, and distractedly took to pacing in small circles beside the bed. “Calder said Siofra buried it.” He turned back to Dallin, gaze sharp. “How could he do that?”

  “How are your fingers not broken anymore?” Dallin replied with a shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t know that I have to know—it’s happened, it’s real. I imagine I should just accept it, learn to use it, and keep moving.”

  “All right… all right, yes, but…” Wil started pacing again. His head was down now, eyes to the floor, and his voice had gone lower. “If you’d never known, never realized…” His hand waved about. “Accept it, you said.

  Accept it, like it’s that easy, but if you’d never accepted it…” He stopped again, turned his back, his hand coming up to run roughly through his hair. He was breathing hard, agitated.

  Dallin frowned. “Does it frighten you?” he asked quietly.

  A small, cynical laugh whiffed out of Wil. “Frighten me.” He shook his head. “It frightens me that it doesn’t frighten me.” He turned about, peered narrowly at Dallin.

  “If I’d known… if I’d…” There were tears in his eyes, face screwing up in bewildered grief and anger. “Five decades,” he whispered harshly.

  Oh… Dallin closed his eyes. Shit.

  Damn it, it wasn’t bad enough that it happened to him; now he felt as though he could have prevented it?

  “Listen to me.” Dallin reached out, dragged Wil towards him and held on until Wil’s gaze finally lifted to Dallin’s own. “Listen to me,” Dallin repeated. “You keep taking on things that aren’t yours. You didn’t know—he kept you from knowing. I don’t know how, and it doesn’t matter, but you know now, or you will after tonight.

  Because I swear, even if Calder tells us nothing we don’t already know, we will find out what we need to know before this night is through. Somehow.”

  He wasn’t just saying it to make Wil feel better, and he wasn’t placating—he really meant it. He was damned sick and tired of guessing, of trying to fit half-hints into blank spaces far too big for them to stretch into connections. If Calder couldn’t tell them everything they needed, Dallin would… well, he didn’t know what he’d do—give the dream thing another try, shake the answers out of the Father, if he had to—but enough was enough. That inner-push to hurry, get themselves gone, it was starting to knock in his chest again, chitter over his nape like there were eyes on him, just like it had been that last day in Dudley.

  Wil was staring at him, head tilted to the side. His brow was creased, not in hostility but in concentrated interest. “So, you think it’s real? You think I can… you think there’s more?”

  “Wil,” Dallin answered tiredly, “I think there’s so much more that the effort of holding it back makes you bleed. I think there’s so much more that if you’re not very careful in how you use it, you could lose yourself.”

  “And you’re not afraid?”

  Dallin’s eyebrow went up. “Of you?” He shook his head. “No. If you ever turn that power on me, it’ll likely be because I’ve done something stupid enough to deserve it.” He shrugged, let go Wil’s arm. “For you?—yes, very much.” His brow twisted a little, and he tilted his head. “What is this about really, Wil? Because you said a moment ago you weren’t afraid.”

  “I think I lied,” Wil told him. He paced away again, bare feet slow and silent on the stone floor. Head bowed, he stopped halfway across the room, back turned. “Or not lied exactly, but… I’m afraid, but I’m not afraid, and that… it should scare me, except I want it, and it doesn’t scare me, which scares the shit out of me.”

  “You want what?” Dallin asked slowly. “Power?” His eyes narrowed. “Are we talking about revenge?”

  Wil turned, somewhat ponderous and deliberate, and looked at Dallin straight. “And what if we were?”

  Dallin thought about it. “For almost ten years,” he answered carefully, “my job has been the law. And the law frowns upon revenge. But there are very clear benefits to, as I think you once put it, removing certain people from out the world. And I can’t even pretend that I haven’t got a personal interest in all this.” And it was getting more personal by the moment. “If you’re asking would I stop you… probably not. I don’t think it’s my place or my job to decide right and wrong for you. But I’d like to think you wouldn’t need me to.”

  “What d’you think your job is?” Wil wanted to know, real curiosity in the inflection.

  “To take care of you,” Dallin replied, then frowned.

  “No—to make sure you know how to take care of yourself. Better than you were, I mean. Watcher, Guardian… what was the other?—Intermediary—none of these names mean jailer or keeper, and that’s what I think Calder thinks it ought to be. But we agreed to do this on my terms, and I’m going to hold you to that.”

  One dark eyebrow rose. “And your terms being…?”

  Dallin sighed, rubbed at his brow. “Wil,” he said, weary resignation, “if you’ve not figured that out by now, there is nothing I can say that you’ll trust.”

  Wil looked down and shoved his hands in his pockets.

  “I think,” he said slowly, a slight flush to his cheeks, like the saying of it embarrassed him, “that you’re the only one in the world I do trust.”

  Dallin was as close as he’d ever been to pole-axed.

  Even closer than he’d been after that first dream. Even closer than he’d been when Wil had knelt in the dirt beside him and tried to help him up. It was… nearly boggling in its depth. Wil trusted no one— no one. The weight of it should have been choking, but it wasn’t. It was oddly bracing.

  Dallin nodded slowly. “Thank you,” was all he said. Anything more would make it cheap.

  Wil just flushed a slightly deeper shade of pink, jerked a small nod. “Shaw should be by with lunch in a little bit,” he muttered, then turned and walked quickly from the room.

  Slumping back, Dallin turned his gaze up to the ceiling. Groaned. Wondered why he felt as though he’d just run several leagues. With a boulder on his back. And then he laughed.

  The dream this time wasn’t unnerving; merely confusing. He was back in the alley, except it was on fire this time, and he knew Wil was just on the other side of it, he could hear him shouting, but he couldn’t tell what he was saying. Dallin kept yelling at Wil, telling him to run, get away from the flames, but the gate guard turned into the little burnt corpses, screeching their songs, drowning out Dallin’s voice, until Calder stepped through them, waved a hand and scattered them to ash.

  He knows your purpose, Calder told him gravely. And yet he gives you his trust. He shook his head, sadness and condemnation both. He was weaned on betrayal—would you cage him now? And then he held out his hand, a tiny, golden frog perched in the middle of his palm, its bulbous little eyes staring bold and unblinking at Dallin.

  I won’t betray him, Dallin had argued, stung. I wouldn’t, but he was standi
ng in a boat now, the river rising and roiling, and again he couldn’t make himself heard. And then it didn’t matter, because someone was shooting at him. Dallin’s own guns were in his hands then, aiming at the ashes of the skeletons, when Shaw shook him awake.

  He didn’t wake groaning or cursing—there was no point anymore—he merely blinked away the blurriness.

  Wordless, Dallin dragged himself up and let Shaw poke at the bandages, marvel and remark upon how quickly he was healing, then tsk and evade the question when Dallin asked if Shaw might be persuaded to find or buy him some clothes.

  “Eat your supper,” Shaw chastised lightly and pushed a tray at him.

  Dallin sighed, tucked into the bread and the fish crusted in pepper. Wil had said he’d see what he could do about clothes, so Dallin decided to leave him to it.

  He obviously had a better rapport with Shaw than Dallin did. He took a sip of weak white wine.

  “Where’s Wil?” he wanted to know.

  Shaw frowned, peering about the small room, as though he thought perhaps Wil was skulking in a corner and he’d simply overlooked him. “I don’t know,” he told Dallin. “I thought he’d be here. He’s not been?”

  There was no reason in the world for Dallin’s stomach to dip down like it did; no reason for his mind to start racing off in every cynical direction. “No,” he replied steadily. “Calder?”

  Shaw waved a hand. “Never can tell with that one.”

  There was a bang then some shuffling and low mutters from the passageway, and Shaw turned to flip a sly wink at Dallin. He tipped his chin toward the doorway. “Like a ghost, sometimes—comes and goes.”

  “More coming than going just now,” Calder growled as he lumbered over the threshold, prodding a stone-faced Wil in front of him.

  Dallin hadn’t realized how very sure he was that something terrible was in the process of happening, until he almost shuddered with relief at the sight of Wil. Strange, how Wil skiving off wasn’t the first thing that sprang to Dallin’s mind anymore.

  They had their coats on. Wil’s cheeks were red, and his eyes glistened as though he’d been out in the cold. And it was the first time Dallin had seen him shod since they’d arrived.

  Dallin was almost afraid to ask, but he did anyway:

  “Where’ve you been?” And then the packs caught his eye.

  He winced. “Oh, hell.” He shot Wil a glare. “What did you do?”

  “I did as you said,” Wil replied brusquely—even grinned a little. “I took advantage.”

  Dallin’s mouth dropped open. “I said to let the matter of the packs go—in fact, I’m pretty sure those were my exact words. What part did you not understand?”

  “I took care of myself,” was the pointed retort. “And you. You’ve clothes now. Here.” He pulled Dallin’s pack away from Calder, half-dragged it over to the cot, and dumped it to the mattress with a strained grunt. “And it wasn’t easy,” Wil told Dallin with a bit of a glower toward Calder.

  Calder rolled his eyes and turned to Shaw, who was watching it all with a small smile hidden behind his long fingers. “Would you excuse us?”

  Shaw merely jerked his head toward Dallin. “Make sure he eats it all. And he’s not drinking enough.” With a stifled snort, Shaw quit the room.

  Calder wasted no time: he turned to Wil, barked, “It was plenty easy after you pulled that trick with—” He sputtered and turned to Dallin. “Did you know he could do that?” He snapped back around to Wil and pointed at Dallin. “Why don’t you tell your Guardian how you’ve been using your magic?”

  Dallin looked at Wil with narrowed eyes. You didn’t.

  But the smug look Wil gave back told Dallin that yes, indeed he had. Dallin rolled his eyes. “Bloody hell.”

  “To put it lightly,” Calder agreed.

  Dallin ignored him. “Are you all right?” he asked Wil.

  The last time Wil had got someone to bend to his will that way, after all, he’d ended up gushing a couple pints of blood from his nose.

  “It was just a little push,” Wil defended. “I just needed the lad to tell me where the packs were and then forget he saw me, that’s all.”

  Dallin’s teeth clenched. “Wil—”

  “A little nosebleed,” Wil put in quickly. “Teeny-tiny, it was nothing. And it wasn’t like in Dudley—the boy’s fine, I swear, ask Calder. Who, by the way,” he went on with a scowl, “was almost no help at all.”

  Calder’s jaw tightened. “If you’d bloody warned me—”

  “Well, if I’d warned you, I would’ve warned him, would I?”

  Dallin was getting a much clearer picture of how events had likely played out than he thought perhaps he wanted.

  “You wouldn’t’ve needed to warn me, if you’d just stayed out behind the stable like I told you.” Calder turned to Dallin. “It was safe back there—no reason in the world for him to have followed after, but he wouldn’t stay put.”

  Wil merely continued to scowl, flushing a little. “I wanted to make sure the horses were being cared for,” he retorted. “Like I said.” He turned to Dallin, too. “Miri’s left hock was swelling, and I wanted to make sure they were putting liniment on it. And Sunny gets twitchy if Miri isn’t right there, so I had to make sure they were stalled next to each other.”

  Dallin stared. There were so many things to be addressed in that last exchange, but the first straw he latched onto was: “You named the horses?”

  Wil shrugged, reddening a little more. “Well, no one else did.”

  Dallin scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Which is which?” was all he could think to ask.

  Wil lifted his chin this time, apparently having decided, since he’d accidentally dipped a toe, he might as well swim for it. “Yours is Sunny,” he told Dallin.

  Calder was rubbing at his eyes like he was trying to keep his brain from escaping through the sockets. Wil, on the other hand, was quite proud of himself—had handed over that pack like a cat dropping a dead mole on the front step—and now had a defiant set to his chin Dallin recognized all too well. Dallin couldn’t find the words he’d need to get through to Wil yet, so he turned on Calder instead.

  “What were you thinking?” he wanted to know. “I thought we were staying out of sight.”

  “We were out of sight,” Calder defended. “It’s well past dark, and we stayed to the backstreets.”

  “What were you even doing taking him out in the first place? He’s got a pocket full of gilders, for pity’s sake, there was no need to take a risk, we could have just as easily—”

  “It was my doing,” Wil cut in boldly. “I told him I was going with or without him, but it would be easier if he came along. Your pack is huge, y’know.” He shot another glare at Calder. “And it would’ve been easier, if Gran’da here hadn’t got all arsy and decided I was some kind of dimwitted bonehead who didn’t know how to put one foot in front of the other without his help.”

  “I think you’re confusing arsy with cautious,” Calder snapped. “A distinction you might do well to learn.”

  It was getting clearer and clearer with every word.

  Dallin could just imagine what the walk back to the temple had been like.

  Wil turned on Dallin, then, snapping a wounded glare on him. “D’you think I’m helpless, too?” He waved a hand at Calder. “You sound just like him.”

  “Damn it, Wil, no.” With less effort than he’d expected, Dallin stood and took the few steps over to stand in front of Wil. “You know I don’t think that. But Calder’s right—you’ve got to be more cautious than that. I understand that what you’ve got in that pack means a lot to you, but do you understand that you just risked yourself for what amounts to a couple changes of clothes and a few rotting apples? When are you going to understand that you’ve nothing to prove?”

  Dallin actually felt a little sorry for Calder. He styled himself, after all, as some sort of servant to the Aisling, and there the Aisling had been, telling him he had every intention of doin
g something—well, Dallin might as well call it what it was—something incredibly stupid, and his only choice was to come along. Dallin supposed he should be grateful that Calder hadn’t tried to tackle Wil and chain him to a wall, though he’d’ve been a lot more grateful if Calder had done the wiser thing and woken Dallin. Who knew if Dallin would’ve got Wil to leave it, but his chances were a lot higher than Calder’s were.

  Obviously.

  “Perhaps not to you,” Wil told Dallin softly; Dallin slumped, suddenly feeling somehow small and… mean.

  “And we were cautious,” Wil went on, once again grabbing at confidence through what he insisted upon seeing as a job well done. “No one saw us but that lad and he won’t remember any of it.”

  They were getting nowhere. In this sort of mood and with Calder looking on, Wil was never going to admit to Dallin—much less to himself—that anything about this evening had been ill-advised.

  “Anyway,” Wil added, “if we hadn’t gone, we wouldn’t’ve known about the notices.”

  Dallin winced. He didn’t really have to ask—he rather guessed—but he did anyway: “Notices?”

  “The drawings don’t look anything like you,” Wil offered hopefully.

  Calder rolled his eyes again. They must have looked enough like him, Dallin reflected morosely, that at least Wil and Calder had recognized him and identified the placards for what they were—neither one of them, after all, could read.

  It was only with a very determined effort that Dallin held back a groan. He sighed, rubbed some more at his brow. Decided a tactical retreat was the only intelligent strategy right now.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he muttered. “We need to get ourselves gone, we’ve been here too long already, and wanted bills are only one more reason.” He sat back down on the cot, shifting his glance between Wil and Calder. “We’ve other, more important things to take care of right now, and we need to take care of them before we leave here.” He took a long breath, mentally shifting gears, then let his gaze rest on Calder, steady. “We need to decide where we’re going.”