A Cavern of Black Ice (57 page)

Kale, which Effie classified in her
mind as tough cabbage, was no longer grown in the kaleyard. Dagro
Blackhail had forbidden it, calling kale "that foul leaf."
Effie rather liked it, though she did allow that it took quite a
chewing. Now Anwyn grew herbs in its place, lots of them, like leeks,
black sage, and white mustard, all pulled up for winter so that
nothing but mulched-over soil remained.

Effie felt her heart race as she walked
around the exterior of the roundhouse. She tried to keep her eyes on
her feet and not look up at the wide-open spaces, but sometimes she
forgot and found herself staring north toward the badlands and the
Want… places that had no
end
. Only when the gate on
the kaleyard was closed and bolted and her world was reduced to a
size she could walk across in less than a minute did she begin to
feel safe.

Drey sat on the nearest bench. Effie,
still a little breathless from the walk, chose to sit on the second
bench, across from him. She watched as her brother took in the
details of the kaleyard, trying to decipher the look on his face. A
willow planted in the farthest corner of the yard creaked like a
loose shutter in the wind.

"Last time I was here I got a
beating from Anwyn Bird," Drey said after a while. "I was
out throwing spears behind the stables, and the wind caught one of
them, sent it clear over that wall. Took the heads off at least a
dozen cabbages. Of course, Raif tried to fix them. Stuck the heads
right back, he did, smearing them with mud to make them stick…"
Drey's voice trailed away to nothing. The hard look came back to his
face. "Anyway, it's been a good many years since I was here."

Effie nodded. She could think of
nothing to say.

Abruptly Drey leaned forward. "Effie,
there is just me and you now, and we must look out for each other. We
must stay close. While I was riding back with the raiding party, I
had time to think. Arlec lost his twin. Bullhammer lost his foster
brother…" He shook his head. "I'm not much for
saying things—I don't think anyone in our family ever was—but
I see things, and I've stood and watched as you've grown more and
more into yourself. I've known something was wrong, but I kept saying
to myself, Effie will be all right. Effie's a good girl, she won't
come to any harm. Now I think you must tell me what's wrong.

Every time I see you there's less than
the time before. Raina tells me you take food, but she doesn't know
if you eat it. Anwyn tells me that since the night Raina became
betrothed to Mace, you only leave your cell to visit the dogs. What
are you afraid of? Has anyone said anything to you? Frightened you?
Please, Effie, I need to know."

Effie, who had been looking into her
brother's brown eyes from the moment he began speaking, looked down
as he spoke the last few words. It was the longest speech she had
ever heard Drey make. It made her feel sad. She made no reply.

"You went to the woods that day
with Raina, didn't you? That day when she and Mace—" Drey
stopped himself. "The day when they became betrothed."

A small shaking motion was all Effie
could manage. She didn't want to think of that day. Wouldn't.

Drey rose from the bench with great
difficulty, his hand bracing his lower abdomen as he moved, and came
and sat next to her. "You're frightened of something, Effie. I
can tell. I saw you hiding under the stairs in the entrance chamber.
You didn't want to be seen. I know these past months have been hard,
and I know you miss Da… and Raif. But I think there's
something different here. A secret."

Effie looked up at the word
secret
.

"Please, Effie. If something is
wrong, I must know."

"Secrets have to be kept."

"Not bad ones. Never bad ones."

Effie's hand found her lore.

"Bad secrets lose their power when
they're told. The badness is shared."

"Shared?"

"Yes. Between you and me."

"You and me?"

Drey nodded. He looked so old, like a
proper clansman in his boiled-leather breastpiece with its ribs of
steel. And he was hurting so much—she could tell by the border
of sweat around his hairline and the uneven rhythm of his breaths.
She didn't want to disappoint him or lie to him. She didn't want to
lose him, too, the way she had lost Da and Raif.

A quick squeeze of her lore steadied
her, and then she spoke. She told her brother everything about the
day in the Oldwood: how Raina had woken her and bade her come to
check on the traps, how Mace Blackhail had come upon them, his horse
lathered and muddy, and told Effie to leave as he wished to speak to
Raina alone; how she had scrambled onto the cliff above them and what
she had seen and heard. She told about the threat Mace had made to
her, and the dead look in Raina's eyes. Effie wasn't good with words,
and sometimes there
were
no words to describe what had
happened between Mace and Raina, but she told everything as best she
could, encouraged by Drey's silence and patience and the unchanging
expression on his face.

When she had finished, he nodded once.
He did not question her in any way or ask her if she was
sure
.
He took her hand in his and sat and thought. Effie had started
shaking sometime during the telling and continued to shake now as she
waited to see what her brother would do. She noticed that the sky was
almost dark. It was very cold, but only her outsides felt it. Inside
she was hot and rigid.

After some time Drey rose. "Come,
little one. Let's go inside." Effie rose with him. She hated how
tired he sounded. She hated how she couldn't tell what he felt.

The walk back to the roundhouse took
forever. Effie looked down at her feet, crunching frozen weeds from
step to step. They found the entrance chamber much changed from when
they had left it. Torches burned, clansmen were gathered in small
groups, speaking in hushed voices and drinking beer. Four young boys
were sitting around a pile of mud- and hair-matted weaponry, cleaning
hammer and ax heads in silent awe. Massive red-haired Paille Trotter
was singing a song about the Clan Queen Moira Dhoone and the Maimed
Man she had loved and lost. All the wounded had been carried away.

Effie thought that Drey would lead her
through to the kitchens or the Great Hearth or even her own cell, but
he cut left across the hall, toward the little crooked stair that led
down to the chief's chamber. Realizing straightaway what he meant to
do, Effie pulled back, but Drey held her firm and would not let her
go. They met man-chested Nellie Moss on the stairs. She was carrying
a fiercely flaming lunt, which she made no effort to shield as they
passed. Effie felt the heat of the flames singe hairs around her
face.

Clan Blackhail had no seat like Clan
Dhoone. No Hail chief had ever called himself a king, though over
time many had gathered items of kingly power to them. The Clansword
was one such thing, known throughout the clanholds as the symbol of
Blackhail power. Clan Bludd had the Red Axe, which wasn't really red
at all and was said to be older than the clanholds themselves.
Ganmiddich had a great plate of green marble known as the Crab Lode,
as it had a giant fossilized crab in its center and had been quarried
a thousand leagues from the nearest sea. Effie could recite all the
clan treasures and emblems. Her favorite was Clan Orrl's; they
weren't known by some grand weapon or polished stone, rather a simple
oakwood walking stick known as the Crook.

Effie liked the thought of these
treasures. They seemed beautiful to her. Precious. Once, when she had
been reciting the emblems of each clan to Raina at the ladies'
hearth, Dagro Blackhail had walked in. She had stopped straightaway,
but Dagro had bade her continue, and she'd gone through the clans
from Bannen to Withy, pausing only once to show respect for the Lost
Clan. When she had finished, Dagro Blackhail had laughed heartily—but
not in a mean way—ruffled her hair, and told her that no one in
the clan, not even Gat Murdock, could remember all those things.
Dagro Blackhail had then thrust out his hand toward her and said,
"You'd better come with me, young clanswoman, and I'll show you
our treasures firsthand. That way if anyone ever makes off wi' them
in the dead of the night, we can send you straight to the smithy.
Between your memory and Brog's hands, we'll have new ones forged
within a day."

Effie had loved being called
clanswoman
. She had loved going to the chief's chamber with
Dagro Blackhail even more. Dagro had talked for hours about the clan
treasures, holding them up to the torchlight and polishing them with
the cuff of his sleeve before he'd let her look. It was the last time
Effie had been in the chief's chamber, a year before Dagro's death.

These thoughts and others passed
through Effie's mind as she and Drey descended the stairs. It seemed
a very long time since Dagro Blackhail had been chief.

Reaching the glistening, tar-blackened
door of the chief's chamber, Drey paused to push a hand through his
hair. He took a breath, then shouldered open the door and forced his
way into the room. Mace Blackhail, who had been sitting on a hide
stool behind the square stone table that everyone called the Chiefs
Cairn, stood. He was alone. His eyes flickered yellow and black in
the torchlight. As he looked from Drey to Effie, his hand slid down
to rest upon his sword-belt.

"What is the meaning of this?"

Drey tightened his hold on Effie's
hand. He took a breath, then said, "Effie told me what happened
in the Oldwood. You are not worthy of my respect, Mace Blackhail. I
call you out onto the court, here and now, to settle this matter with
swords."

Effie let out a choked cry. No. Drey
couldn't fight with Mace Blackhail. Not now, while he was injured.
Not ever. The sword was Mace Blackhail's chosen weapon, Drey's was
the hammer. Why had she told? Why? Why?
Why
?

Mace Blackhail looked at Effie, his
thin lips curling to something between a sneer and a smile. A finger
came down upon the Chief's Cairn, casually, as if he were testing the
surface for dust. "So you would cross steel with me, Drey
Sevrance? Raina's honor means that much to you?"

Drey made no reply. His body shook him
with every breath.

"Now I come to think of it, it was
you who thought to bring my foster father's last token back from the
badlands. You who tanned the hide, making it soft for Raina's back."

Drey wrenched his head savagely. Effie
didn't understand what Mace Blackhail was getting at. Of course Drey
cared about Raina… everyone did. The chief's chamber, which
was small and coved like a bear cave, suddenly felt as hot and
dangerous as a firepit primed with fat.

Mace Blackhail made a negligent gesture
with his hand. He was dressed in wolf hides dyed black. "No
matter, Sevrance. You're not the only yearman who feels…
protective
of my wife. I know how highly she is regarded.
And while your concern for her honor is touching, your rashness is a
grave mistake. I—

"This isn't about Raina's honor,
Mace. It's about yours—your lack of it."

Effie swallowed air. Part of her wanted
to cheer at Drey's words. The other part of her was deeply afraid for
her brother. Mace Blackhail was dangerous in different ways from
other clansmen. He wasn't hot-blooded like Bailie the Red, or fierce
like Corbie Meese. He was as cold and sharp as the spikes of needle
ice that formed on the bottom of melt ponds in spring, impaling bears
and dogs by the act of simply existing.

"I wouldn't be so foolish as to
challenge my chiefs honor on the word of a half-grown girl."

"My sister is no liar. I would lay
my life on that."

"I didn't say she was a liar,
Drey. She saw some things and heard some things, but only through the
eyes of a
child
. She doesn't understand what goes on between
a man and a woman when they're alone and in private. Tern lived like
a hermit. She never happened upon
him
lovemaking, that's for
sure. She doesn't even know what lovemaking is. Think, Drey. When
Effie spied upon me and Raina in the Oldwood, what did she see? She
saw Raina playing coy and slapping me away—what woman would not
do that? You know how they are. We tussled in the snow, I will not
lie about that, and I daresay I pinned her down and she cuffed me for
my trouble. A woman like Raina needs her loveplay rough—

"
Stop it
!" Drey
lashed out at the space separating him from Mace Blackhail, his face
contorted with rage. "I will not hear such filth about Raina."

"No. And I wouldn't have had to
speak it if it hadn't been for your little sister here. It's not her
fault. Of course what she saw distressed her—all lovemaking
looks like violence to a child."

"You threatened her."

"Yes, I did, and with good reason.
I didn't want the truth of what had happened coming from anyone's
mouth but mine or Raina's. The child had no right to tell. It was not
her business."

"You're lying. You have no honor."

"Don't I? Perhaps we should call
Raina in and ask
her
the truth of it. She was the one who
agreed to be my wife."

Effie saw something within Drey waver.
He didn't step back exactly, but he let out a breath, and part of him
seemed to withdraw as he did so. Effie felt sick with relief. She
didn't care about Mace Blackhail's lies—and she knew they
were
lies. Mace Blackhail would kill Drey in a fight.

"Drey, heed me in this. I am your
chief. I will not stand by and watch as you take the same path as
your brother. You are too valuable to me and this clan. I see how the
yearmen respect you. Corbie and Orwin are full of your praises. Just
this past quarter, Corbie was here telling me how you saved Arlec's
life at battle's end. I need men like you by my side. Good men, whose
honesty and loyalty I can rely on.