by Jim Butcher
The others hadn’t been idle, either Lammyr or Sithe. As I rebalanced and lifted my sword again, the chaos and carnage around me was in full-throated roar. I wiped sticky Lammyr-blood from my face and sought another, but we’d had them outmanoeuvred from the start, and in here they hadn’t the space to use their speed to full advantage. There was nothing for me to do but finish a few scraps my fighters had started.
When the last blade had fallen we stood in the silence, alert for a stirring hand or limb or a sucked breath, hearing nothing but the slow oozing drip of blood.
I was glad to be able to drop my block and communicate properly. And, of course, scan the caves. ~Any of us wounded?
Niall Mor raised a questioning eyebrow at a fighter whose blood streamed from her scalp down the side of her face and neck. She shook her head, angry but not weakened.
~Nothing serious.
I narrowed my eyes at the woman, half-blinded by her own blood. ~Dobhran, go back to Grian. The rest of you, follow me. I frowned as I peered into the darkest corners. ~And block again.
“We took them all, Griogair,” said Niall Mor, though he kept his voice low.
“Maybe. I want to know what else is here. Search the whole warren.”
If anybody grumbled, they kept it behind their own blocks, but they went to the task without enthusiasm. This was no place for a Sithe, or not for my Sithe anyway. If someone liked living underground he could go to be the queen’s bondsman, and even Kate’s lair felt like the sweet open air next to this place. It was as if the rocks above us were pressing down slowly, shrinking the spaces between, reluctant to let us leave. I suppressed a shiver.
There were faint lights in the lower tunnels, muted by iron sconces that were surprisingly beautifully made. The Lammyr could still astonish me. There were times I could almost like them. But it never got beyond almost.
The air was cold and stale, but the rankness that accompanied Lammyr occupation was mostly absent. There were only the scents of earth and water and small squirming creatures. I made my way with care, and I kept my blade unsheathed, and so did Niall Mor at my back.
All the same, I might easily have missed her. She was only a shadow, small and dark, huddled in the corner of a side room. It was Niall’s intake of breath that alerted me, since his eyesight was so much sharper than anyone’s.
I went still, watching for movement. The child might have been a corpse, so stiff was she, but her eyes were wide, unblinking, and lit with the silver glow of a Sithe. No full-mortal girl, then, brought from the otherworld on one of their illicit forays, but a captured Sithe child. Their brazenness was breathtaking, but even this didn’t explain their reluctance to leave.
I stretched out my hand to the child, made a beckoning motion. If anything, she pressed even closer against the wall.
Niall stepped cautiously past me. ~Come, child. It’s safe.
I didn’t have time to swear at him for dropping his block. He reeled back with a short scream, clawing at his forehead, and the Lammyr came down on him like a falling demon, its leather coat swirling around it.
I lashed with my sword, hacking its wrist more by accident than skill, and it was only by that outrageous chance that Niall avoided having his throat opened. Its hand spun and bumped to the stone floor, and I had to duck to dodge the squirt of blood. Niall rolled out of its way too, reaching out for the girl in the corner. But instead of taking his hand, she scuffled along the wall towards the wounded Lammyr. It gave me a twisted smile.
Still rubbing his head, Niall glanced up to ensure there were no more Lammyr skulking in the roof; I could only stare at the girl, huddling behind her captor, more afraid of us than she was of it. The Lammyr shook the stump of its wrist at me, mockingly, scattering thick clotting droplets. “She’s ours, Griogair,” it hissed.
I shook my head. “How young did you get her?”
“Young enough.”
“You might as well give her back.” Niall Mor lifted his sword with a snarl, as angry with himself as he was with the Lammyr. “The rest are dead.”
“It was worth a try,” said the Lammyr, and sprang at us.
I felt its second blade whisper past my skull, and an instant later the sting of pain, but I’d dodged in the right direction and Niall had leaped high to come down on it. His first strike missed as the creature twisted sideways, but his backslash caught its belly, making it slump with a groan to the ground. I finished it with a thrust to its back.
The girl did not look at us, but at the Lammyr. Not with grief exactly, but perhaps regret. She did not move from her dark nook, keeping her arms wrapped round her knees. When she finally did catch my eye, through a straggling curtain of black hair, I didn’t know what I saw there. The strongest impression was of nothing. Her mind-block was astonishing in its thoroughness, its smooth glassy impenetrability.
Niall was quicker than I was to break the strange deadlock. Sheathing his sword on his back, he crouched in front of her, his fingers linked so that she could see them.
“Child, you’ll have to come with us. You don’t belong here.”
She looked from him to the corpse of the Lammyr and back, then got to her feet. For a moment she looked terribly old, but then she nodded quite meekly.
“Where am I going?” she asked.
It was almost a shock to hear her speak. “To be with your own kind,” Niall said.
Again she glanced at the Lammyr before studying the two of us. Her reply was almost indifferent. “All right.”
It wasn’t Niall she approached; she sidled close against me. Niall might have put a reassuring arm round her thin shoulders; I refrained, though, and I suspected, then and now, it was why she chose me. And she stayed close enough to touch me—though she didn’t—as I led the way out of the tortuous caverns.
We didn’t think to ask her if she had any possessions; we must have assumed she had none, and in that at least our instincts were right. At least, she had none but the thin dress she wore, and the leather belt and pouch around her waist, and the silver collar on her neck. She drew the stares of every one of my fighters as we emerged from the cavern mouth, but she walked on beside me with her head straight and unbowed, her expression once again not so much insouciant as indifferent. She waited only for me to mount my own horse, and didn’t hesitate to be pulled up onto its back after me. So small and skinny was she, I couldn’t even be sure she was still there till I urged the horse forward, and I felt her bony arms go round my waist.
There was no point racing home; our wounded had already gone with Grian to the dun. This meant he wasn’t there to mend the slash in my ear, but for all its copious bleeding the wound was superficial and I made do with a strip of cloth wrapped round my head. At any rate we could afford to take it easy, to revel in the faint sunlight breaking through the earlier mist. Eventually the heavy sense of ill-omen lifted even from me.
It had not gone badly, after all. The Lammyr were cleared from this particular nest, and our casualties had been surprisingly light, and the job I’d been dreading was done. Whatever Crickspleen had wanted with the unnerving girl at my back, he was thwarted. I even felt light-hearted enough to make conversation with her.
Not that the conversation itself was exactly light. “Where are your parents?”
“They’re dead. Ever so long ago.” Her tone was matter-of-fact.
“Did the Lammyr kill them?”
“I don’t remember.”
She might have been blocking like a three-hundred-year-old veteran, but I could still tell that was a lie. I glanced over my shoulder, but she seemed untroubled, watching the light flow over the landscape. I wondered how long it had been since she’d last seen the sunlight. It depended on how closely she was kept prisoner, and given how calmly she seemed to have accepted her captivity—as calmly as she’d greeted her release, in fact—I suspected she’d had a certain amount of freedom.
“What’s your name?” I suddenly remembered to ask.
She paused again, barely perceptibl
y. “Lilith. I think.”
“You think?”
I felt the slightest of shrugs in her body behind me. “They called me Lilith.”
Why did I get the feeling that everything she said was not quite a lie, but not quite the truth either?
I stopped worrying about it when we came in sight of the dun, its stone walls gilded by sunlight and dappled in sea-reflections. My heart never failed to lighten when I rode home, especially on a morning like this: the mist had cleared altogether and sparks of light glittered across the water, and the air smelt of sea-grass. Unthreatened for now, life in the fortress was raucously cheerful, and the gates were thrown wide. Falaire was leading five horses across the machair and the dunes for their swim; the black cattle cropped lazily; the guards on the rampart gave us a yell of welcome. So none of our wounded could be too badly hurt, and the news must have spread that the raid on the Lammyr had been as straightforward as it ever could be.
I left the reins loose, let my horse pick his own way up the rock-and-peat slope to the dun gates. Niall was joking and flirting with one of the other fighters, and I was half-listening and laughing under my breath at her retorts, and I’d almost forgotten the thin creature at my back when she leaned forward, showing eagerness for the first time.
“It’s beautiful,” she said. Her tone was still noncommittal, but there was no mistaking the way her body tensed with interest.
“Yes,” I said.
She said no more, but as we clattered into the courtyard she didn’t shrink under the stares of my clann; she returned them with a frank curiosity. All the same I felt a little protective of her, so when my fighters halted I rode on to the door of the forge, and dismounted into the force of its blasting heat. The child slid down into my arms and I set her on the ground.
For the first time she hesitated, and gripped my arm. Her cheekbones were flushed with the heat, and the darkness within seemed very deep compared to the sunlit courtyard, but with my hand on her back, she stepped inside at last.
“Griogair?” Wiping sweat from her forehead, Lann straightened and stared at the girl. “What’s this?”
“Her name’s Lilith,” I said.
Warily Lann laid down the half-made sword and stepped forward. She slipped a finger under the carved circlet round the child’s neck. It was slender, delicate and strong, and exceptionally beautiful.
“That’s not silver. That’s Lammyr steel.”
Lann had an annoying habit of telling me what I knew. “Of course it is,” I said sharply. “Get it off her.”
“Yes, Griogair. And do what with it?”
I shrugged. “Melt it down.”
For the first time the child shot me a look of hostility, and her hand went to her throat. “It’s mine.”
“No. It was theirs, and so were you. Now you aren’t.”
She frowned, studying my eyes. I wanted to blink and look away.
“All right,” she said at last. “If I’m yours instead.”
~
“Where the hell did they get her?” I asked Niall Mor as we leaned on the rampart watching the sun set.
“You’re not expecting an answer from me,” he pointed out dryly.
“Just thinking aloud.” I took a long swig of ale. “Either she doesn’t remember or she isn’t telling.”
The last of the light lay green on the sea, so that it glowed like liquid tourmaline. The child Lilith sat on the rocks down by the shore, perfectly alone and perfectly content. She was just as she’d been all day: quiet, self-contained, but not remotely shy. She had made no complaint about the scratches and grazes Lann had left on her neck as she cut the Lammyr collar away; in fact Lann had seemed unnerved by her.
So was I.
“It’s not surprising she’s strange,” said Niall. “She must have been years with the Lammyr. I’d be bloody strange.”
“Who says you aren’t? And you make Lann nervous.”
He grinned. “Not as nervous as she makes me.”
I rolled my eyes. “Do something about it, then. Don’t be so damn indecisive.”
“Yes, boss. And speaking of bound lovers, when does Leonora come back?”
“A week.” I felt the usual ripping stab of longing in my gut. Gods, binding hurt sometimes. But I wasn’t about to say anything that might dissuade Niall. He’d been pissing about for quite long enough, and he wasn’t the only man in the dun who was sniffing around Lann like an enthusiastic hound. Not to mention at least one woman: my best sharpshot archer who’d taken a sudden interest in the creation of swords.
“It’s not as if we have to bind,” he said unconvincingly.
“Uh-huh. Wait till she’s bound to Falaire, and you don’t get to sleep with her whenever you like.”
Niall fell silent. I hoped he felt bad. And jealous. Binding would make offspring a little more likely, after all, and I couldn’t wait to see the warrior he and Lann would come up with.
That only made me think of Leonora again. Abruptly I stood up.
“Either go and flirt with her, or get a detachment together and do something about that broken wall on the south boundary.”
“It’s dark.” My lieutenant yawned and stretched, and grinned as he got to his feet. “Can’t see the stones at this hour.”
Shaking my head, I watched him jog down the stone steps towards the forge. About to follow him, I turned back to call to Lilith. The sun had lowered beyond the sea horizon and the landscape was darkening fast to charcoal and indigo.
My shout of summons stayed in my throat. She was standing at the edge of the water now, balanced delicately on a slab of basalt, arms outstretched and head thrown back, like a little girl about to spin into a dance. She looked blissful but she looked rapt, too, and in a way that sent tremors down my spine. Falaire was leading two horses up the path through the rocks and back towards the dun, but she took no notice of him, simply swayed back and forth on her tiptoes, singing softly.
I shuddered. As far as I could tell she was singing to the empty air and the ocean. I had no grounds for suspicion, no reason to rebuke her: only the solid certainty that she was calling, over and over again, to someone—something—beneath the water’s opalescent skin.
~
She seemed happy to be solitary, haunting the dun like a small quick shadow, and I admit I didn’t take enough interest in her: not then. Of course that was a mistake, and of course I regretted it, but I had much on my mind, and more to do. There were patrols to coordinate, quarrels to settle, a whole winter to prepare for; and that winter was already drawing near, hauling itself across the land like a sluggish giant, shadowing the broad blue skies and crushing the sun tight against the horizon.
The clann gave her a place to live with her own people; we provided her with warmer clothes and furs now that the darkness fell earlier; and then we let her slip from our conscious minds. I knew she wasn’t exactly gregarious, but I saw the other children try to make friends; I saw her sit peacefully watching their games even when she didn’t join in, and—it seemed to be all she required—they were distantly kind to her, and didn’t persecute her for her strangeness.
All of them but one, that is.
Ramasg MacRaonull: never my favourite child of the clann, but he had the makings of a sturdy fighter. He had a head of wiry black curls, impenetrable hazel eyes, and quick violent fists. He also had a tendency to sulk at criticism, and an inclination to laziness, but I knew he’d grow out of both. I didn’t take him for a bully till the day I found him tormenting Lilith; I’d certainly never thought him capable of actual malevolence.
I wasn’t accustomed to taking notice of the clann children; at least, not till they were old enough to begin proper fight training. I found Lilith harder to ignore, largely because I’d often scratch an itch on my neck and turn to find her watching me. I suppose I was just more aware of her than of the others, and that was why I noticed that evening when she wasn’t around.
There had been some name-calling, but that was hardly surprising;
she’d lived with Lammyr for the gods knew how long and even the children who liked her were properly wary of her. I thought a few insults and insinuations harmless, under the circumstances, and it wasn’t as if they seemed to affect her. Lilith was fearless. I’d seen her eyes linger on Ramasg when he threw taunts. She never flinched and she never responded, just looked; I tell you, I would not have wanted that gaze on me.
Niall said the trouble with Ramasg was that his tongue was faster than his brain. I knew otherwise: that his mouth was a true reflection of his mindset. It wasn’t pleasant, but as I said, I knew he’d grow out of it.
I wish I’d been right about that.
Niall only went into the stables that evening because he wanted to check on a horse that was lame. Falaire was anxious about the animal, and since she was one of Lann’s favourites, Niall wanted to check her before nightfall. No doubted he wanted to the excuse to convey any news to Lann, still occupied in the forge.
It was quiet and musty in the stalls, with the low snuffling snorts of contented horses, the shift of a hoof, the slow tug-and-crunch of teeth on hay. Niall comforted Lann’s mare, gave her an extra treat, prepared to leave. He told me he almost missed the girl, cowering there in the furthest stall beneath the hooves of my grey hunting stallion. And when he did see her, he almost failed to recognise her.
She’d managed to free herself from the post she’d been tied to; the rope’s frayed remains hung there. But she was still gnawing at the length of it around her wrists, though she stopped when she saw Niall, and stared at him in silence. She didn’t say a word, though her glaring eyes were stained and swollen with tears. Her long black hair no longer straggled across her face; it had been hacked back to a rough dirty crop.
She didn’t flinch when he crouched and sawed through her wrist-bonds with his hunting knife, but she did at least manage to spit a name.
“Ramasg.”
~
Ramasg was unrepentant, even in the face of a hard strike from me.
“She should have had it off long ago,” he snarled, putting a hand to his bruised cheek. “She never cut it when her parents died. I asked her.”