Gallowglass

by Jennifer Allis Provost

  “Do we have to fight all night?” I faced my brother, and caught a glimpse of more fairy kisses trailing under his collar. Gross. “Listen, I’m sorry I called Ethan. Really. Can’t a girl worry about her older brother?”

  Chris’s brow furrowed. “What about the guy?”

  “Robert,” I corrected. “I’m keeping him,” I said, as I filled the carafe.

  “Keeping?” he repeated. “Keeping as in keeping?”

  “Yes.” I poured the water into the reservoir and grabbed the packet of filters. “So, you and he had best learn to get along with each other.”

  Once the coffee maker was set up, I left my stunned brother staring after me, and escaped to the bedroom to throw on some clothes. It looked like I was going to have a long night ahead of me.

  ***

  Once Robert and I had dressed and formulated a bare-bones plan for helping Chris, whether he liked it or not, we returned to the common room and started on dinner. Since I’m not much of a cook—and Robert didn’t know how to use the stove—we opted for the canned cock a’ leekie soup. While it simmered away, Robert sliced up a loaf of bread, and I ate a few olives straight from the jar. Chris, most unhelpfully, loafed on the couch, flipping through the channels on the tired old television and complaining about the lack of suitable Scottish programming.

  “Then why don’t you read a book?” I suggested, cutting off his diatribe about how sitcoms were the lowest form of humor. Chris made a face, but he got up and perused the bookshelf. After a few minutes, he returned to the couch with a battered copy of Hound of the Baskervilles.

  “Dinner is served,” I proclaimed a few minutes later, ladling the soup into a few mismatched earthenware bowls. The three of us sat around the table, Chris as far from Robert as he could manage, and we proceeded to eat. Somehow we managed to make generic small talk instead of arguing, most of our conversation centering on the food. The cock a’ leekie wasn’t bad for canned soup, and the bread was excellent.

  “Want help with the dishes?” Chris offered, once we had finished.

  “Nah,” I said. “Just leave them to soak, for now. I want to get started on my notes.”

  Chris gathered up the dirty dishes and deposited them in the sink before returning to the couch and Mr. Holmes’s phosphorescent dog. I hacked up the pineapple for dessert, and once I’d delivered a plate of the yellow fruit to Chris, I took possession of the kitchen table. While my laptop powered up I spread out my research notes, and refilled my coffee. Not surprisingly, Robert opted to join me with a mug of his own. I wouldn’t want to sit next to my cranky brother either.

  “What’s all this, love?” Robert asked, eyeing my laptop warily. “A wee version of the talking box that so irritated Christopher earlier?”

  “Um, in a way.” I popped a wedge of pineapple in my mouth as I clicked open a few files, and angled the screen so Robert could see it. “It’s like a research library I can take with me. I enter all my notes and fieldwork into it, so I don’t have to carry random stacks of paper everywhere I go.”

  Robert nodded, his face thoughtful. “I remember when I first learned o’ microscopes, the description was so fantastic I thought they were the stuff o’ fiction. Then, I saw one wi’ me own eyes, and I realized that there are many worlds just waitin’ to be discovered.”

  I nodded. “I know exactly what you mean.”

  “How do ye write on it? With a certain type o’ stylus?”

  “Like this.” I called up a blank document, and typed Karina Siobhan Stewart.

  Robert’s eyes widened, then he tugged the keyboard toward him. “Why aren’t the letters in order?” he demanded.

  “I think they’re organized based on how often they’re used,” I replied, though I really had no idea how the Qwerty keyboard had been, um, Qwerty-ized. There must be some practical reason, right?

  “It was created by telegraph operators transcribing Morse code,” Chris called over.

  Scowling, I muttered, “Know it all.”

  “Those who teach tend to know things.” Chris retorted.

  “How do ye create a capital letter?” Robert asked, so I introduced him to the shift key. He grunted, and then very, very slowly, he typed Robert James Kirk.

  “Very good,” I murmured. Feeling mischievous, I took back the keyboard and typed

  Robert and Karina

  Sitting in a tree

  K-I-S-S-I-N-G

  First comes love

  Then comes marriage

  Then comes Karina

  With a baby carriage!

  “Baby carriage,” Robert’s deep voice rumbled.

  I flushed, and hit delete. “I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t really think past the kissing part.”

  Robert stayed my hand, leaving most of my juvenile rhyme intact, and pressed a kiss behind my ear. “Let me see if I have the hang o’ this contraption,” he murmured, reclaiming the keyboard. After an agonizingly long time, he turned the laptop back to me.

  rObert James Kirk would gladly wait another three hundred years just to be kissing his Karina Siobhan Stuart once more

  I laughed, though it was cut short when Robert kissed me. “I do no’ think much past the kissing, either,” he murmured when we parted.

  “You spelled my surname wrong,” I said.

  Robert glanced at the screen. “Forgive me, love. I was thinkin’ of our King James.”

  A cough reminded Robert and me that, unlike the past few days, we weren’t the only ones in the cottage. I looked up, and saw my silver-spotted brother standing before us. “Since you two obviously want to be alone, I’m going out for a drink.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Maybe we’ll meet up with you in an hour or so.”

  “Sounds good,” Chris said. He nodded toward Robert, then he grabbed his coat and was out the door.

  “That worked surprisingly well,” I said as I shut down my laptop. “I figured it would take hours for him to work up the nerve to leave on his own.”

  “Ye forget, love, like as no’ he is under the Good People’s thrall,” Robert pointed out.

  “Why weren’t you ever under Nicnevin’s thrall?” I asked as Robert held out my coat for me. Once my arms were in the sleeves, he kissed my temple.

  “She could no’ offer me anything I wanted,” he replied. “If Christopher does prove to be enthralled, likely he has been given a glimpse o’ something he desires greatly. Do ye ken what that desire may be?”

  I considered Chris’s floundering careers, both as an English professor and as an author, his relentless pining for Olivia, the friends and colleagues that had abandoned him, the lawsuits that were threatening to break him. “I can think of a thing or two.”

  Robert opened the door, and we stepped out into the chill night air, intent on following my enthralled brother. Just like the oft-quoted movie line, I had a bad feeling about this.

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Chris

  I leaned back against the cottage door, relieved and amazed and wondering what my sister was really up to. After Rina had told me she called Ethan, I worried that she and Robert were going to attempt some kind of woo-woo intervention on me. I probably could have convinced them that, even though I’d lied about being with Ethan, I was just having some fun with a local girl. Then again, my sister had inherited the Stewart stubbornness, seemingly undiluted, from our father.

  There was also the fact that I still hadn’t told Rina about Sorcha, and I honestly had no idea why I hadn’t. Before Rina had started interrogating me, and leaping to her ridiculous conclusions that I had been spending time with imaginary creatures for the past few days, I’d fully intended to. Even after she’d calmed down and dropped the subject, I’d wanted to tell her all about Sorcha, but my mouth couldn’t form the words.

  Then, after we’d eaten, Rina and Robert had started making eyes at each other. There was no way I wanted to stay around and watch that. And what the hell did she mean by keeping him, anyway? Instead of asking her, or him, what had
happened between them while I was gone, I left.

  Before, I never would have left. If I’d thought anything was coming at Rina, be it a mosquito or a full grown Scot, I’d have stayed right there and demanded answers. Hell, I still didn’t really know what had happened at Inchmahome, and who that Robert guy really was. But instead of asking any of those questions, as soon as Rina was distracted I left to find Sorcha. Brother of the year, that’s me.

  I shook my head, and started toward the center of the village. As I walked, hands stuffed into my pockets and collar turned up against the night breeze, I considered what I really knew about Sorcha. It had only been a few days since we’d met, so I didn’t know much, but I had been inside her home. It was a grand house, with marble floors and hand painted scenes on the walls, but I didn’t think it had any heat; despite the many blankets and cushions on her bed, I’d woken up shivering. In fact, the entire house was stuck in winter, from the cold marble floors to Sorcha’s icy fingertips. Only her kisses were hot, especially when her pink lips had wrapped around my—

  “Christopher.”

  As if thinking her name had made her appear, I turned and found Sorcha leaning against a brick wall beside me. I’d been so deep in thought, I hadn’t noticed my heart’s desire mere inches from me. She was wearing a deep green sweater and a tan suede skirt, along with chocolate brown riding boots. Her dark hair was piled atop her head, with a few stray tendrils curling about her ears. I couldn’t wait to wind those tendrils around my fingers, kiss the soft skin of her neck.

  “Were you looking for me?”

  “I was,” I replied, gathering her in my arms. “I told my sister I was stepping out for a pint, but I really only wanted to find you.”

  Sorcha smiled. “Then let us get you that pint.”

  She led me to a door, and we entered the pub, weaving among the other patrons as we headed toward the seats in the rear of the room. The blonde woman behind the bar gasped when she saw us, though a glare from Sorcha quieted her. Before I had time to wonder what that was all about, we were sliding into a corner booth. The bartender then appeared before them bearing two pints on a tray.

  “My lady,” the bartender murmured, then she bowed her head and disappeared.

  “Did she just call you ‘my lady’?” I asked.

  “Did she?” Sorcha asked. “I hadn’t noticed. I was busy looking at you.”

  I smiled, then I sipped my beer. As long as I was with Sorcha, I couldn’t be anything but happy.

  Chapter Thirty Three

  Karina

  Even though Chris had a good ten minute head start on Robert and me, it didn’t take long for us to track him down. Really, all we had to do was check the pubs. He was in the second pub we entered, the one where the Ice Princess worked behind the bar. Chris was seated in the farthest booth from the door, cozied up with a rather normal looking young woman.

  “She looks mortal enough to me,” I said. The woman in question had dark hair, so dark that it seemed to absorb the light, artfully coiled atop her head, creamy olive skin, and big, dark eyes. Chris was so wrapped up in her that he didn’t notice Robert and me until we were standing right at the edge of their table, and I’d said his name three times.

  “Chris,” I repeated. Finally, he tore his gaze away from the woman and acknowledged me. “Robert and I decided to have a drink, too.”

  Chris nodded, then he grabbed the dark haired woman’s hands. “Rina, this is Sorcha,” he said.

  “Ah, the famous sister,” Sorcha murmured. Good to know that Chris hadn’t completely forgotten my existence while he’d been off doing whatever he’d been doing with her. “A pleasure to meet you.”

  “You as well,” I mumbled, taken aback by the fact that maybe Chris had been spending time with a not-fairy person after all.

  “And who might this be?” Sorcha asked, with a nod toward Robert.

  “Oh, he’s my…” I blinked; what was Robert to me? The term boyfriend had always sounded a bit trite to me, and calling him my lover would be revealing too much to a stranger. “Robert.”

  “Your Robert?” Sorcha asked, raising an eyebrow. “It’s a pleasure to meet you as well, Rina’s Robert.”

  Robert grunted a greeting to Sorcha, then he took my elbow. “We do no’ wish to disturb the two o’ ye. Karina and I shall take our pints at the bar.” He led me to the bar, where we claimed some stools and waved at the Ice Princess. She acknowledged us with a nod, and started filling two pint glasses.

  “I guess he wasn’t with the Good People,” I whispered. “She’s obviously human.”

  “Do no’ be so deceived,” Robert warned. “The wort I prepared for ye only allows one to see around the most basic o’ glamours. Some creatures hardly use any glamour at all.”

  “You mean, like how the fuath inhabited that old woman at the priory?” I shuddered, remembering the monster’s needlelike teeth, its head as it rolled away from its body, and all the black, sludgy blood that had soaked the ground.

  Robert put his hand on my knee and squeezed. “Yes, love, exactly like that.”

  “Then how will we know if she’s one of them?”

  “We watch. And we wait.”

  I scowled; I wasn’t much for watching or waiting. I like to be doing, or at least researching my options in preparation for doing. Before I could express my displeasure about this lack of activity to Robert, the Ice Princess arrived with our pints.

  “Do no’ allow your brother to leave wi’ the likes o’ her,” she hissed, without preamble. “He has spent far too much time wi’ them already.”

  “What do you mean?” I hedged. And how did the Ice Princess even know that Chris and I were related? “Chris and Sorcha seem to be getting along well enough.”

  “Do no’ play games wi’ me, lassie,” she said. “Ye ken as well as I that she be no mortal.”

  My eyes widened, and I bit my lip. “What makes you say that?”

  The Ice Princess leaned forward and tapped Robert’s silver collar. “Oh, I do no’ ken, mayhap a good guess on me part?”

  I was stunned; she had known all along that we could see her, and hadn’t once betrayed us. “Why did you keep our secret?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Ye are no threat to me and mine. And ye tip well.”

  “Where has she been taking him?” Robert asked.

  The Ice Princess shrank back. “No, ye canna go there,” she whispered, then she said to Robert, “Especially not ye.”

  Robert’s mouth became a slash across his face. “We canna leave the boy to them.”

  Ice Princess nodded. “Ye always were a noble one, I’ll give ye that, e’en while ye were carryin’ out her whims. ‘Tis no wonder ye endured far longer than the rest.”

  “The rest?” I asked.

  “That I did,” Robert said. Neither answered me.

  The Ice Princess nodded, then she rummaged under the bar, and produced a pencil and notepad. “Are ye familiar with the bens beyond the paved roads?”

  Robert and I affirmed that we were, and the Ice Princess quickly sketched out a map to the hollow hill where Chris had been spending his days and nights. Once that was done, she gripped both of our hands, then without another word she retreated through the swinging doors to the kitchen. I hoped she was really our friend, and not a double agent running off to tell her fairy friends to spring the trap.

  “What did she mean?” I asked Robert, my eyes still on the swinging doors. I didn’t want to ask him about this, but I had to. The Ice Princess had piqued my insatiable, and somewhat foolish, curiosity. “About that enduring comment?”

  “What about it?” Robert countered.

  “She said that you lasted longer than the rest,” I said. “The rest of whom?”

  “Before I was taken, she had had her fair share o’ gallowglasses,” Robert replied, not bothering to explain which she he was referring to. I was most certainly aware of her identity. “Most lasted less than a year; a few had survived for a decade or so, but no’ much longe
r than that.”

  I blinked at him. “But, you were one for over three hundred years.”

  “Aye, and I am still. As long as I wear this collar, I am the gallowglass, naught more than a murderer.” Robert raked a hand through his dark hair. “To retain my lofty position as her assassin, I killed all those she pitted against me. I…I canna imagine the amount of life that has been sent to hell by me own two hands.”

  I watched his profile as he took a long pull on his pint. I’d known that Robert had had to kill the gallowglass that had come before him, but I’d just assumed that was the end of it. I mean, he’d told me that he was Nicnevin’s assassin, but he’d gone on to describe himself as more of a guard than a killer, and I’d ended up deciding that he was a gallowglass more in title than deed. I had no idea that he’d gone on to kill anyone and everyone that had gotten in his way over the next few centuries.

  I pressed my hand to my mouth, hot bile burning my throat. How could I reconcile the two halves of Robert: the man that held me as if I was precious, and the one who described himself as a murderer?

  Robert glanced at me, my clenched hands and blood-drained face, and set down his pint. “Now, love, do no’ be frightened,” he murmured, cupping my cheek with his hand. “I only wish to speak honestly to ye. Ye ken well I would ne’er harm so much as a hair on your head.”

  I opened my mouth, but I was distracted by a flash of dark hair: my brother and whatever she was were exiting their booth. “Chris and Sorcha are leaving.” I left some money on the bar, and slid off my stool. “We should follow.”

  “Karina.” Robert captured me in his arms, and tilted my chin upward. “Tell me you are no’ frightened o’ me.”

  “I…” I pursed my lips. “I don’t want to lie to you.”

  Robert nodded, his face grim. “Fair enough,” he murmured, his lips against my forehead. “I love ye, Karina me heart, ne’er forget that. No matter what may come to pass, promise me ye will no’ forget that I love ye.”