“I will.” His haunted expression told me what he saw through that arch. Death.
He would have been here during the height of the plague and seen the worst of its carnage. I had accumulated so many questions from Bram, and the female I strode toward held all the answers.
When she grinned so crookedly at me, I wondered what the information would cost me.
Isolde elected not to rise and clasp my hands in greeting. Instead, she patted the bench, and it became clear I was unable to avoid sitting beside her. I sat gingerly, on the edge, angled her way.
“You wanted to see me, Lady Isolde?” My formality made her lips flatten.
“We’ve been over this.” She dusted her hands. “Call me Isolde plainly or nothing at all.”
I bobbed my head, though she might have missed it, staring at the garden as she was.
“You know what happened here.” She sounded certain of it.
“I do.” I took my first good look at what had served as a mass grave.
The grass was clipped short and neat around the farthest edges, but the rest of the lawn was a scuffed reminder of the somber purpose this garden had last served. Heavy pots were stacked with their contents spilling onto the ground. If there had once been flowers here, none remained. What was left of a milling stone path seemed lost amid the confusion of the torn lawn and bare dirt.
“You feel it, don’t you?” She held out a wavering hand. “There’s something here.”
Leaning forward, I inclined my head so my earring swung free. I listened and was rewarded with blessed silence. I exhaled through a burst of relief. “There’s nothing here,” I assured her.
Lowering her arm, Isolde twisted on the bench until our knees bumped. “Is that right?”
“Isn’t it?” Unsure what she expected from me, I played on her impatience for my answers.
“Play games with me at your own risk.” She pointed at me. “Be aware I win at all costs.”
“I sense the unease of the place,” I ventured. “It’s not uncommon after such tragic events.”
That seemed to appease her. “Mana is cleansing the garden of negative energy.”
“Murdoch said as much to me.” After sitting here, I understood why she felt moved to do so.
“You and I are of a mind, I think.” She patted my knee. “I was once a maven-in-waiting. I too have had to make rash decisions to protect those who became my clan. Though I made mine years after becoming maven, after the rightful paladin had passed and I was left to rule alone.”
I kept quiet. Rebelling against her son’s plans for me was one thing. Doing it to her face was another.
“Ah, I recognize that look.” She cackled. “Gods know I wore it often enough in my youth.”
“Paladin Vaughn seems certain that Hishima will want to wed me despite our differences.” I let her glimpse my fear. “If he comes, it won’t be desire for my wellbeing that brings him here.”
“I know that. Vaughn does too.” The steel of her gray hair slipped into her expression. “You have no choice. I had none, either. I did my duty for the sake of my clan, and you will do yours.”
“In return for your son’s aid, I will leave with Hishima and see that our pact is upheld.”
“Good.” She patted my knee again. “Then we’re in agreement.”
“It appears so.” My lack of enthusiasm earned me another amused look.
“I won’t ask why you ran from him. It’s your business. It won’t help me to know, so you can keep that to yourself.” She bent down and hefted a satchel from the ground. “Now this, this we need to discuss.” She held my spade in her hand. “You made this my business when you dug into Mimetidae soil. My son sees the larger picture. An alliance with the Segestriidae gives us the two richest clans in the nation at our backs. He likes that. I like it too. But the problem is this. By seeing the big picture, he misses what’s right in front of him. Me? I think death is in the details.”
The spade glinted as Isolde rolled the handle between her palms.
“What are you going to do with that?” Dig me a grave among the souls left in her garden?
“Give it back to you.” She kept the spade whirling. “No female should be left unarmed.”
“Thank you.” Though I had no use for it now, I admit I was relieved to see it again.
“Don’t thank me yet.” She drove the blade into the ground. “I expect answers for it.”
With a final longing glance at the spade, I rose. “I’m not interested in such a trade.”
“Pity you want to do things the hard way.” The gleam in her eyes belied her sentiment.
Still seated, Isolde swept her leg hard under mine and shoved the center of my chest with her palms. I stumbled back, and she leapt at me, wild hair dancing joyfully around her head. Her teeth were bared in the same smile her son wore, but hers was edged with a crazed glee where his was colder, more calculating. When I hit the ground with her atop me, I gasped, stunned and panting.
Reaching behind her, she dislodged my spade and held it to my throat. “Well?”
I turned my head a fraction in the hopes of meeting Bram’s eyes, but he glanced aside.
“What do you want?” I narrowed my eyes at him. I would remember this betrayal.
“Keep that fire, girl.” Isolde eased up so the spade no longer cut into me. “You’ll need it.”
“Lady Isolde…” I grated, “…please remove yourself from my person. I can’t breathe.”
At once the blade was cold at my throat. “Now that was plain rude.”
I almost laughed. “Assaulting a guest isn’t?”
“Guest.” She snorted. “It’s a polite label for what we both know you really are.”
Fury lent my voice a bitter edge. “Yet your son applied it, and he is your paladin, is he not?”
“If you’re asking if I fear my son, then no, I don’t. It’s hard to fear your own child after you spend a few years wiping its arse.” She bent so our noses almost touched. “Don’t try and threaten me, girl. Unless you want to find yourself in chains upon Hishima’s arrival, you will cooperate.”
Panic set my heart pumping. I dared not be at such a disadvantage when he arrived.
I forced out, “Ask your questions.”
She leaned back but kept pressure applied to my neck. “What brought you to Cathis?”
I kept my tone civil. “I followed the plague here.”
“Murdoch says you looted the bodies. Is that why you kept to the fields? Easy pickings?”
Shame made my gaze slide to her chin. I could not meet her eyes. “Yes.”
“Is that what you do? Follow the plague and make your living stealing coin from the dead?”
Again I answered, “Yes.”
After seeming to decide something, she said, “Tell me about the spade.”
“It’s a tool.” I shrugged. “I use it to dig up graves and take what treasures I can from them.”
“It’s also a weapon.” She lifted my earring. “How would you feel if I took your treasure?”
Her thighs pinned my arms to my sides, but my nails dug into the dirt. “Don’t touch that.”
“Who’s to say I can’t? You? A thief who has taken much from me and mine telling me that I can’t have reparations from her?” Isolde threw back her head and brayed to the sky. “You’ve got balls. More than some males I’ve met. Balls won’t save you. Information, well, that just might.”
“I’ve answered your questions.” I even told the truth, mostly. More than I had for Murdoch.
“I need more from you than frippery if helping you is to be made worth my while.”
Pushed to my limits, I snapped, “What I know, no one in their right mind believes.”
“Ah. Then we understand one another.” She stood then, propping the spade on her shoulder.
I gawked at her. “We do?”
I began to see why her son had replaced her.
Isolde was stark raving mad.
“Give me you
r arm.” She clasped my forearm and pulled me onto my feet. “Come with me.”
With no other choice, I followed her through an archway similar to the one where I had left Bram waiting. “Where are we going?” Speaking of my guard… “Should I tell Bram I’m leaving?”
“If he hasn’t noticed you’re gone by now, he’s hardly fit to be your guard.”
“Good point.” I doubted the sluggard had moved an inch from where we left him.
“Murdoch said you’re friends with Mana?” Isolde shoved opened a door and peered inside.
“I am, or I was.” I hastened when she waved me forward. “Her greatfather had business with my uncle. We spent several days together each time Old Father came to visit my uncle Ghubari.”
“Did you ever visit her in Beltania?” Isolde waited until I passed, then rammed her shoulder into the door, jiggling a bolt in place behind us. She leaned against it, listening. Content we had not been followed, she crossed the room and dragged a heavy wooden easel from the corner.
But that wasn’t what caught my eye. Spread across a weathered work table were metal items I recognized as being curative implements. Their purpose, I could not guess. I saw a syringe and a tray filled with several vials of reddish liquid. Blood perhaps? Several amber bottles sat in neat rows. Their labels faced the wall as if by design. There were scalpels and other items I could not name. Rather than ask after Isolde’s health again, I catalogued her odd collection to ponder later.
“No,” I answered, realizing for the first time how one-sided our friendship had been.
“Then there’s little point in asking if she ever showed you anything like this.” She ripped a thin sheet from her makeshift display, and what she exposed turned my knees to pudding.
I flung out my hand, bracing against the wall. “Has Mana seen this?”
“Not this one.” Isolde watched my every shaking breath. “Do you know what it is?”
Shaped like a tear. Translucent and ethereal but for the delicate black veins running throughout.
“A wing,” I whispered. “Where did you find it?”
She paused to consider. “Murdoch found it in the garden.”
“Murdoch?” He hadn’t breathed a word of it to me. “Did he find anything else?”
“What?” She jabbed my ribs with her elbow. “One’s not enough? It’s a bloody wing.”
“One is more than enough,” I assured her.
“Do you think this one’s a match for that first wing they found in Beltania?” Isolde frowned as she appeared to consider that might be the case. “I suppose I’ll have to show this to Mana after all. If she can remember if hers was a left or right, we’ll have more evidence for the Araneidae.”
“What stake do they have in this?” Except that Isolde was the Araneidae paladin’s mother.
“Lourdes has funded an investigation into the plague. There are those who question how the plague breaks necks. Those who question why only females are infected and where the survivors go.” She watched me carefully. “They can’t have all died. There weren’t enough bodies found.”
I studied her just as warily. “Why show me this?”
“You lie well enough, but this has shaken you.” She traced the edge of that hateful wing, and I wanted to slap her hand away from it. “Your reaction is telling. You know what this is. What it means. Why else would you fear it so? You don’t strike me as the type who fears the unknown.”
I tore my gaze from her admiring caress. “Fear is not rational. I need no reason to be afraid.”
But I was. I remembered well the first time I saw such a wing and who it was attached to.
That Isolde spoke of it so casually, that she showed no fear toward it, appalled me and gave me hope that perhaps I was less alone than I realized. If the Araneidae wanted answers, I had no doubt they would get them. For who did not owe them a favor or did not benefit from their coin?
Fabric rustled as Isolde covered her eerie trophy. “Have you seen its like before?”
“I…” I debated lying, but she was right. I was too shaken to stray far from the truth. “Yes.”
“Gods damn it all. I knew it.” She snapped her fingers. “Where?”
“In Titania,” I said numbly.
She pinned me against the wall with her palm. “Did you get a look at what it came from?”
I couldn’t answer. I didn’t dare. It took all my strength not to retch on her floor.
“You know. It’s written all over your face.” She snarled, “Tell me what we’re facing.”
“I don’t know.” I struggled until I could stagger free of her. “I don’t know what they are.”
“If you’ve truly seen one, then you can bloody well describe it to me. Names are of no use if we don’t know what to look for or what the enemy can do. Tell me. Now. What have you seen?” She slapped me. Hard.
My fingers curled, nails biting into the meat of my palms. I anchored my arms to my sides. I tasted metal and bile and my own cowardice. That last flavor saved Isolde from retaliation.
At once I was flung back to that night, to Maier’s desperate bid for freedom.
Rain battered my cheeks, mingled with my tears as I knelt between gravestones…
The time to share all I knew had come.
“Tell me,” she demanded.
“The plague isn’t what you think.” My voice quavered. “It’s—”
Heavy pounding rattled the door, and Isolde shut her eyes and swore until my ears burned.
“Isolde?” Murdoch bellowed. “Open this door.”
“I’ll open the door when I’m damn well ready to,” she yelled at him.
“Is Kaidi with you?” he demanded. “Isolde?”
“If she is, it’s her guard’s fault for letting her out of his sight.”
Realization crept in and soured my already tender stomach. “You lost Bram on purpose?”
“If I wanted him here, I’d have invited him.” She raised her voice. “Same goes for you.”
My head began pounding to the rhythm of Murdoch’s fists. I was about to scream at them to stop their infernal racket when the door ceased rattling and Isolde’s last insult died in her throat.
“Mother.” Vaughn’s cool voice drifted through the silence. “A word?”
Rolling her eyes, she raked a hand through her unruly hair. “You and I are not finished, girl. Don’t breathe of word of this to anyone. We’ll finish this talk later, in private, understand?” She stormed off to press an ear to the door. “I’ll have your word first that you won’t enter this room.”
Vaughn’s muffled sigh carried. “You have my word.”
Wood groaned as she worked the bolt free and flung the door open. “Go on, girl. Get.”
I hurried past her, avoiding Vaughn’s accusing stare when he put an arm around his mother.
Murdoch caught me past the threshold. “The second I turn my back on you, chaos erupts.”
I opened my mouth to protest.
“Not one word.” He clasped me by the back of the neck and shoved me ahead of him.
“That hurts.” I sagged, too tired to fight him.
“Hurt would be if I took off my belt and lashed your arse like you deserve.” Yet his grip did loosen. “Never have I met a female so determined to drive all those around her to do violence.”
Flustered, I shouted at him, “I did nothing wrong.”
“You’ve sung that same tune since your arrival.” He glared. “I believed you more then.”
I returned his glare twofold. “I liked you more then.”
His answer was to lock us both inside his room. “That makes two of us.”
Chapter Eight
Night fell somewhere between the start of Murdoch’s lecture on how I had led Isolde astray, an accusation I couldn’t believe he brandished straight-faced, and the point where I crawled into his bed and slept away my headache earned from the day’s ordeal. It was a good rest, dreamless.
If only it had lasted longer.
“Wake up.”
I curled onto my side to escape the voice at my ear.
“Kaidi.”
The mattress dipped and I rolled with it, right against Murdoch’s knee. I knew it was his leg because his scent enveloped me. Even if I hadn’t cracked open my eyes and found myself facing his crotch, I might have been equally alarmed by the urge I had to run my hands up those thighs.
“What are you staring at?” Husky as his voice was, I bet he could guess.
I turned my face into my pillow to hide my blush. “The oaf who ruined my nap.”
He lifted the curtain of hair from my cheek. “Did you hear anything I said?”
“I heard the high points.” All had foisted blame to me.
He caught my chin and turned me to face him. “I heard you assaulted a former maven.”
“I did no such thing.” I fumed. “Ask her—ask Isolde and see what she says.”
“I did.”
“And?”
He smothered a grin. “She said the day a wisp like you bests her, she’ll slit her throat.”
“You’re baiting me.” I scowled. “That’s not nice.”
“Nice doesn’t work for you.” His fingers brushed my lip. “Force, now that you understand.”
“I am capable of rational thought.” I spoke against his touch. “I can be reasoned with.”
“Not that I’ve noticed.” He traced my pulse and pressed down when it fluttered.
“What are you doing?” I asked when his hand slid lower.
“I don’t know.” His thumb smoothed over my collarbone. “I don’t know anything when I’m with you.”
I sat up and propped on my elbow. “Is that such a bad thing?”
“Yes.” His voice went hoarse. “You’re betrothed. You will be a maven. You are a prisoner.”
“None of those things are by my consent.” I dared touch his knee. “I thought I was a guest?”
Murdoch cupped my cheek. “You are the most frustrating female I have ever met.”
A Time of Dying (Araneae Nation) Page 10