Daughters Of The Storm (15 page)

‘Father is elf-shot,' Bluebell said. Every time she said it, it burned her afresh. ‘Ash says so.'

Rose's eyebrows shot up. ‘But who?'

‘We don't know,' Ash said. ‘It could be anyone. He's a king, kings make enemies. We mustn't jump to conclusions.'

‘But somebody must have been near him to cast a spell on him,' Bluebell said.

‘Not necessarily,' Ash said. ‘It might have come with a package or a messenger.'

‘I think we should look to Gudrun,' Bluebell said, ‘or, at least, we shouldn't take our eyes off her.'

Ash shook her head. ‘It's ridiculous. She loves him.'

‘We know nothing about her. She's —'

‘We've known her more than three years.' Rose put her hand on Bluebell's wrist. ‘You know she's not capable of killing Father, surely. Examine the facts, Bluebell, not your feelings.'

Bluebell noticed her heart was thudding at her throat.

Ash leaned forwards. ‘Bluebell, if you keep too close a watch on Gudrun, you might not see who the real culprit is.'

Bluebell vowed then not to mention Gudrun again. Nobody would believe her, so she would keep her opinions to herself. She was tired of being treated as a fool.

‘In any case,' Ash continued, ‘who did this to him is not as important as making him well again. Rose, we're going to move him in the hopes it will dislodge the elf-shot.'

‘We're leaving Dunstan in charge of the city and telling everyone Father and I are going to a King's hearing on the border,' Bluebell added. ‘Nobody will miss us for a few weeks.'

‘Has Gudrun agreed to this?'

‘Gudrun knows nothing,' Ash said, indicating Bluebell with an upraised palm.

‘The only people I trust with the king's life are my sisters, Dunstan and Byrta,' Bluebell said. ‘You cannot convince me otherwise.'

‘She will worry,' Rose said. ‘She will fret.'

‘We'll send her word when we've arrived safely.'

‘Arrived where?' Rose asked.

Bluebell and Ash exchanged glances.

‘We don't know yet,' Ash said.

‘Thriddastowe?' Rose suggested. ‘There are counsellors there who might understand the magic.'

Ash was already shaking her head. ‘This isn't common magic. This is undermagic. Besides ... I've sort of run away from study. There will be trouble waiting for me there.'

Æthlric stirred, his eyeballs skittering behind his eyelids. Bluebell's body tensed. His hands moved on the blankets and she was about to warn Ash to stand back when he fell limp again, quietly sleeping. The adrenaline in her body, with no action to burn it up, ached along her veins.

‘And all the undermagicians are in Bradsey,' Ash continued.

‘Do we know anyone in Bradsey?'

‘Well, we don't know who we can trust,' Bluebell said. ‘The underfaith is amoral. You can't predict what they'll do. And so we are undecided what to do next.'

They fell to silence, watching Æthlric's chest rise and fall. Where was his dignity, when his daughters sat around him arguing for his future and he knew nothing of it? What Bluebell wouldn't give for this not to have happened, to be on the first morning of a campaign with him, riding out by his side on Isern with her weapons rattling against each other.

‘I know someone we might be able to take him to,' Rose said, but she said it slowly, as though she had been thinking it for a long time but was unsure whether she should say anything at all.

‘Who?' Ash asked.

‘I think he has a sister.'

Bluebell thought, at first, she had misheard. ‘He doesn't have a sister,' she said.

‘He does. I mean, he might.'

‘What do you mean, Rose?' Ash asked.

Rose twisted her hands together. ‘When I was pregnant with Rowan, I had a sending from a woman who said she was Æthlric's sister ... an undermagician named Yldra. She tried to warn me Wengest was going to take the trimartyr faith. She was right.'

‘Father doesn't have a sister,' Bluebell said again. ‘He would have told us. He would have told
me
.'

‘He may have had a reason to keep it secret. I asked him. He was ... evasive.'

Bluebell was torn between wanting to believe she had an aunt who could possibly cure her father, and not wanting to believe her father had kept such a secret from her. She was angry, but she didn't know who the anger was directed towards.

‘Do you know anything more?' Ash said. ‘Where she is?'

‘No. I'm sorry. I know nothing more.'

‘But they all live in Bradsey,' Bluebell said, slowly. ‘They worship out on the plains and they live in the forest caves. Ash, can you reach out with your sight and find this woman?'

Ash wouldn't meet her eye. ‘I can try,' she said.

‘Do more than try,' Bluebell said. All of a sudden she couldn't bear to be still. She rose and strode from one side of the dim room to the other. ‘We will head north then, the morning after tomorrow.' She thought about Sabert's aunt's flower farm, seventy miles north. Quiet and well away from the road. ‘We can decide where we go next once we're moving, but we have to get him away from Blicstowe,' she said. ‘His life depends on it.'

The night air was cool and soft, and the smell of damp earth and flowers rose up around her. Rose stood in the centre of the garden, looking at the swelling moon and fighting a losing battle with good sense. Rowan was asleep in Byrta's bed. Bluebell was in discussions with Dunstan. Ash had pleaded a headache and taken herself away somewhere quiet.

And somewhere in the alehouse, Heath was alone. Tomorrow, he would be gone.

What was she to do with this turmoil of longing in her body, tugging her in seven directions at once? When she'd seen him once more for the first time in years, it had started again. His long absence had not diminished the weight of desire, but it had dulled the edge of it. Now, though, every moment she lived in two worlds: the real one, and the one built of clouds. She could be eating supper, wiping snot off Rowan's face, having a conversation with one of her sisters, but in her mind she was bare-skinned with Heath, his mouth against her shoulder, his hands firm and hot on her thighs ...

Rose made up her mind. The only way to make the turmoil go away was to give herself to him, once. Then she could go back to
the blunted yearning she was used to: it was misery, but it didn't threaten to tear her apart.

She slipped out of the garden and through the night-time alleyways of Blicstowe. Cold mud squelched underfoot. From inside the wooden buildings, warm firelight glowed, cooking smells brewed. The alehouse was ablaze with lanterns and noise. She opened the front door. The room was smoky and brightly lit. She found the alehouse wife tending to a spitted deer at the hearthpit.

‘Princess Rose?'

Rose swallowed hard on her guilt, opened her mouth to say the words she had rehearsed:
I have a message to deliver to the nephew of Netelchester. Which room is he staying in?
But the words wouldn't come.

‘How's that little girl of yours?' the alehouse wife said with a smile.

‘I ... she's well. She's strong and growing. Exhausting.'

‘Ah, they always are at that age. Might I suggest a little brother or sister will sort her out? That will make her realise she's not at the centre of the world.' She wiped her hands on her apron. ‘Now, how can I help?'

There: her womb, always a topic for public speculation. What went on between her legs could never be private, nor secret, nor truly her own. The danger of her situation burned on her lips as she tried to speak. Bluebell's words came back to her.
You can count on thousands of lives lost.
One shred of suspicion, passed from someone's lips to someone else's ears, and she would have let down her sister, her father, her daughter. The whole kingdom.

‘It's nothing,' she muttered, withdrawing, backing away. Her skin ached as though bruised from the inside.

She could feel the alehouse wife's curious eyes on her as she returned outside into the empty dark.

Ivy didn't much care for travel. She didn't much care for the smell of horses or carts or the constant bumping or even the pretty countryside. She didn't want to be heading up the hill towards Blicstowe to see her dying father; she wanted to be back home at her Uncle Robert's in Fengyrd where she could keep an eye on William Dartwood's strong, suntanned hands. But here she was, sitting on a fur that did nothing to soften the shuddering bounce of the cart, sucking the last of the flesh from a plum and confined to the company of her sister Willow, who had become duller than a brackish pool since their fifteenth birthday.

‘Iron-tits isn't going to like you doing that you know,' Ivy said to Willow.

Willow looked up from the silver triangle she was turning over between her fingers. ‘Isn't going to like what?'

‘That trimartyr nonsense.'

‘It's not nonsense, and I'm not afraid of Bluebell.'

‘You ought to be. With Father dead, she'll be in charge.'

Willow shrugged. ‘Maava is the only king I honour.'

Ivy looked away, annoyed. The afternoon sun was warm on her face. She'd insisted the canopy be turned back this morning
when they left, but now it grew too hot and she knew her face would be pink and flushed by the time they reached Blicstowe.

‘What are you praying for, anyway?' Ivy asked, not really expecting an answer.

‘For Father's soul.'

Six months ago, Willow had been a normal, if slightly too-serious, young woman. And then, around the same time Ivy discovered men, Willow discovered Maava. Ivy could understand in a way: her own mad obsession with men and all of their warm, hard, hairy parts gave her insight into passion out of control. Maava was such a morbid, boring thing to be obsessed about though. Uncle Robert and Aunty Myrtle were at the end of their tether with Willow, which suited Ivy well as it took the attention off her.

‘Driver,' called Ivy, ‘can we stop and put this canopy back on?'

The driver didn't respond. Ivy grew irritated. Hot, flushed, the sun making her eyes ache.

‘Driver,' she said, wriggling forwards in the seat and raising her voice. ‘Stop. I need you to put the canopy back on.'

‘We're half a mile from Blicstowe,' he said sharply. ‘It's been a long day and we've already stopped half a dozen times. You'll be inside out of the sun soon enough.'

‘Did you hear that?' Ivy asked Willow.

Willow looked up from her trimartyr chain and triangle, her face placid beneath her distinct widow's peak. ‘Hmm?'

‘He won't put the canopy up.'

‘We're almost there. You made him stop so many times on the way here.'

‘I did not.'

‘Yes, you did. You wanted to pick flowers, you needed to wee at least three times, then we had to stop so you could buy those plums. He's lame. Leave him be. He's done enough.'

‘But he's being paid and we're daughters of the king. He should do as we say.'

‘It's nice to have a little sun on my face,' Willow said.

‘Driver!' Ivy said sharply. ‘Stop and raise the canopy.'

‘No,' he said.

The anger grew so intense inside her that she wanted to scream. She raised her hand and released the plum stone. It cracked against the back of his head.

The cart shuddered to a halt.

‘About time,' Ivy muttered.

The driver climbed down from his horse, limped to the back of the cart and hauled out their trunk.

‘What are you doing?' Ivy asked.

He dumped the trunk on the ground. ‘Get out,' he said.

‘Nice work, sister,' Willow said with an eye-roll.

‘I won't get out. You've been paid to take us all the way to Blicstowe. You have to take us.'

‘I don't have to do anything.'

‘My father is the king.'

He shrugged.

‘My sister is Bluebell the Fierce. I will tell her what you've done and —'

Willow clamped a hand over Ivy's mouth. ‘Enough,' she said. ‘Get down.'

Willow climbed over Ivy and down to the ground. Ivy still refused to admit she was defeated. ‘No!' she said. ‘Wait!'

The driver reached up and lifted her down. She struggled against him, but as soon as her feet were on the ground, he stepped away unevenly. ‘I served with your sister,' he said, ‘right up until I took a blow to my leg. I would die for her. Not for you.' He spread his hands apart. ‘Enjoy your walk.'

Then he was limping back towards the horse. Ivy stood speechless on the side of the sunny road, watching as the cart rattled away.

Willow had the silver triangle pressed to her lips, eyes closed and was muttering softly.

‘Well, you were a lot of use, weren't you?' Ivy said.

Willow opened her eyes. ‘You take one handle, I'll take the other.'

They lifted the chest and began the walk towards the gates of Blicstowe. Insects skimmed across the grass on either side of the road. She could smell mud drying out and horse shit, and her shoes were pinching her: her own fault. They were such pretty shoes — leather lined with fleece, and blue ribbon decorating the front seam — but they hadn't really fit her properly for a year. She hadn't expected to be walking in them at all, let alone half a mile in the sun.