Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3) (26 page)

“Da!”

Parlan MacMartain nearly sliced his hand open with his filleting knife at the cry. He dropped the fish he was gutting and glared at his son. “By the Rí’s bollocks, Donal, what are you squawking abou—”

Parlan stopped in mid-word, his gaze following Donal’s openmouthed stare. A naked young woman was limping up the slope from the water toward them, no older than his son, who was two double-hands of years. Her red hair was matted around her shoulders and water dripped from her body onto the stones and grass. She looked half-starved and hurt; she kept her left leg stiff so that the knee didn’t bend, and her body was bruised, with the scabs of cuts and wounds on her shoulder and torso, though she seemed unaware of her nudity. Parlan rose to his feet, the knife still in his hand, and the apparition narrowed her eyes, seeing his motion. Her hand lifted from her side and Parlan saw the thin golden chain around her neck and the stone there. Her hand closed around the jewel, a gesture that he’d seen once before, when he’d been one of the conscripts in the army the Tuatha had intended to use to invade Inish Thuaidh—an invasion that had ended at the terrible Battle of Falcarragh.

He had seen that motion there, far too many times.

That had been a horrible experience, made worse by Parlan’s unwillingness to be there. But the gardai who’d come to the village to enlist the young men had threatened the families if they didn’t come peacefully. So he’d gone, and his brother with him. His brother hadn’t survived Falcarragh.

Parlan threw the knife down near the fire and held out his open hands to her. “We have no weapons, Bantiarna,” he said. She didn’t reply, stopping a few paces away. “Donal,” he called to his son. “Get one of the blankets, would you, boy? Bring it here . . .”

He took the woolen blanket his son hastily pulled from the tent they’d erected the night before. Staying out here on this miserable rock hadn’t been their intention yesterday, but the currents had been against them and the sun had gone down too quickly. “Here,” he told the sea-woman, approaching her carefully. He stopped a step away from her, extending his hand. “You look cold, Bantiarna. Take it . . .”

Her right hand stayed around the cloch, but she snatched the blanket with her left. She was shivering, he saw, her lower lip quivering helplessly. “The fire,” he said. “You need to get yourself warm . . .” She stared at him. Slowly, she let her right hand relax; she pulled the blanket tight around herself. Beads of salt water fell from the curled ends of her hair and rolled down the nap of the wool.

“Thank you,” she said. Parlan nodded. Her accent was that of the Riocha, indeed, colored with a slight hint of the Inish.

“Get yourself warm, Bantiarna,” he told her, “and we’ll take you over to Inishlesch.”

Inishlesch was a long and narrow island tilted in the water, the western side all high sea cliffs, the eastern side low. There was one village, placed on the low side next to a small notch of a harbor. Parlan’s son’s cottage was a two-room stone house on the windswept eastern shore, the village—no more than a dozen buildings—lay just around the curve of the shoreline to the north. Sevei could still hear the waves beating against the shore while, behind the house, the land climbed to the rocky, abrupt cliffs. Gulls cawed and wheeled above, and the wind whistled in the cracks of the small shuttered windows and under the door.

Sevei stared at it all dully. None of it seemed to touch her. She was numb everywhere, even in her head. She felt that she was floating outside her body, watching all of this as if it were happening to someone else. They could have taken her to her great-uncle Doyle and she would have sat there mute.

Donal’s wife, Báirbre, cradled a baby in one arm while she filled the teakettle over the peat fire in the hearth. She was nearly the same age as Sevei, though life had already begun to carve defiant lines in her forehead and around the eyes and mouth. She kept glancing at Sevei, wrapped in Donal’s blanket and seated at the only table in the house, and her glance was suspicious and wary. When the baby began to cry, she sat on the chair near the hearth and began to nurse her, rocking gently back and forth even as she glared at Donal and Parlan. “If I were fished from the sea, I might tell a tale of being Riocha, too,” Báirbre said. “Especially if I thought those who saved me might be fool enough to believe it.”

“Look at the lass,” Parlan said to his marriage-daughter. “Look at her hands—those aren’t the hands of someone who works. And she has a cloch—or at least a stone that looks like one. And if she
is
who she says she is, then that’s hardly a tale I’d be telling right now.”

Báirbre sniffed. “Well, she canna stay here,” she said, her eyes accusingly on Donal. “There’s not room. Donal, I don’t know why you let your da bring her here. If she
is
the Banrion Ard’s daughter as she says, then this isn’t our affair. It’s dangerous and you know it, and me with a new babe.”

“Ah, leave my young man alone, Báirbre,” Parlan answered. He and Donal had strung some of the fish to smoke in the little shed near the house; the rest would be taken to the village to sell. “’Twas my boat and my decision to make, not his. I couldn’t leave the lass out there, now could I?”

“She’s the one the gardai came looking for the other day, the one they said had betrayed the Rí Mas Sithig and jumped overboard from one of their ships,” Báirbre persisted.

“I thought you didn’t believe her,” Parlan said.

Báirbre frowned at him, twin lines deepening between her eyes. She settled the baby at her breast with a quick glance at Sevei. “If they find out we have her . . .”

“The gardai can go hang themselves,” Parlan answered. “I don’t have any love for them or the Riocha or Rí Mas Sithig. ’Twas his warring that killed my brother and he wouldn’t have cared a whit or even have known if I’d died with him. As far as I’m concerned, that old bastard—”

“Aye,” Báirbre interrupted sharply, “and we’ve all heard that tale a thousand times before, Parlan MacMartain, and don’t need to hear it once more. That was then, and now it’s your son and me and your great-daughter who are at risk. You should be thinking of us.”

“Báirbre,” Donal interjected. “I agree with Da. We couldn’t leave her there, and none of us have any love for the Tuatha.”

“You agree with the old fool, do you?” Báirbre sniffed and shifted the baby to the other breast. Steam hissed at the fireplace. “The water’s boiling in the kettle.”

“I’ll get it,” Parlan said. He fixed tea for all of them, drizzling honey into the brew and handing Sevei a wooden mug full of the fragrant liquid. She tried to smile at him; he smiled back at her. “Drink,” he said. “Don’t mind Báirbre; she’s only worried.”

Reaching for the mug was more of an effort than Sevei expected, and the ache in her shoulder snapped her back to reality. She could see the tips of her fingers were still tinged blue, and bending them through the handle of the mug sent prickles to stab the skin of her hand and arm. She cupped the mug gratefully. “I don’t want to be a bother,” Sevei said as Báirbre stared firmly at the fire. The child suckled loudly, coming off the nipple once to look up at her mam and then returning to the breast. “I could go to the village, see if I can find someone to take me to Inish Thuaidh . . .”

Sevei said it automatically, surprised to hear the words coming from her mouth.
Is that where I should go? Back to Inish Thuaidh? To Inishfeirm?
She found herself thinking about Inishfeirm and the White Keep and Máister Kirwan. She shook her head—just a few days ago, she’d been on her way to see her mam and sibs, hopefully even to see her da and Kayne again. Best of all, she’d been with Dillon . . . and thinking of him brought back to her his dead, bloated face and his hair waving in the sea currents, and she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out.

She realized that Parlan was saying something.

“You don’t want to do that, Bantiarna. You wouldn’t get that far; from what I hear, the Rí Infochla’s ships are stopping every boat in the Stepping Stones, especially those heading out toward Inish Thuaidh. You’d never get there.”

“Yet Báirbre’s right,” Sevei said, and saw the woman glance at her with the mention of her name. Sevei sipped at the sweet tea, grimacing at the heat but enjoying the feel as it spread through her stomach. She took a breath that shuddered with unshed tears. “I can’t stay here either. I have no home.”

“There’s Dún Laoghaire,” Donal said. “The Banrion Ard—”

“My mam’s dead. They killed her, too, and my da. My whole family ...” The tears threatened again; she hid them behind the mug, drinking without caring that the tea scalded her tongue. At least the pain reminded her that she was alive.

“How can you know that?” Donal responded. “No one here’s heard such a thing. If that’s true, then it is the worst news you could have brought. The Healer Ard, dead . . .”

“I
saw
it,” Sevei told him. Donal grimaced, Báirbre gave a mocking exhalation; the baby stopped nursing and gave a vexed cry before settling back to feed.

“She sees visions, too,” Báirbre said. “It must be wonderful to be a Riocha. And you
believe
her.”

“She can stay with me,” Parlan said. “You needn’t deal with her.”

“What, and have everyone in the village talking about how Parlan has taken a stripling young enough to be his daughter to his bed?” Báirbre told him. “I can hear it now: ‘Old Parlan must have seen his son’s reflection and thought it his own, and with his old gray-haired wife buried in back of the house, too. Her haunt will be howling in the wind and darkness. Taking up with some horrible lass he pulled from the water, who seduced the poor man . . .’ And we’d be laughingstocks, too, for having a da who’s gone daft.” The baby was sleeping now; she put the child on her shoulder, patting its back softly, her dark eyes moving from Parlan to Donal but avoiding Sevei. “No good can come of this, whether she’s who she says she is or just some waif washed overboard from a Riocha’s ship. Take her to the village. Let the Aldman make the decision. That’s the right thing to do. Think of us, if not yourself.”

Parlan sipped his own tea, staring at the fire. Donal moved behind Báirbre and put his hand on her shoulder. Sevei felt depression and grief settle around her again. Bhralhg was right: going to her own people had done her no good. She could rise from the chair and run out of this house to the sea to change again, though her body rebelled at the thought, wanting to stay in this form.
Tired. You’re so tired and so hurt . . .

Parlan rose, the legs of his chair scraping against the stones near the hearth. He held out his hand toward Sevei. “Come with me, Bantiarna. We’ll go to my house; you can rest there. Tonight’s not the time to make decisions.”

“Da . . .” Donal began.

“The Mother sent her to us,” Parlan answered, “an’ She didn’t mean for us to just hand the lass to the Ald or the bloody Rí.”

Báirbre’s voice was gentle. “Athair Céile,” she said, addressing him as her marriage-da for the first time, “she’s only a lass taken by the sea and washed up, not a sign from the Mother-Creator. You’re a good man who has raised a good son who I love. Don’t let your goodness betray us. That’s all I’m asking you.”

“An’ would I still be a good man if I abandoned the lass, no matter who she may be or who sent her here?” Parlan extended his hand to Sevei again. “My home’s not much,” he said to her. “’Tis smaller than this, but you can have the bed and a night’s sleep at least, and we’ll see what the morning brings.”

Sevei stared at the hand. In the silence, she could hear the crackling of the fire and the soft snore of the baby.

She took Parlan’s hand.

KAYNE DIDN’T HEAR Séarlait approach. He only felt her presence suddenly at his side, and he turned from his contemplation of the mountains to look at her in the last fading light of the sun.

Séarlait was staring at him as she had near Ceangail, as if judging him with her oak-brown eyes. He still didn’t know what she saw. Her bow, unstrung, was in its pack on her back: he realized then just how much longer her bow was than the shorter weapons he knew. “How many of them have you killed with that?” he asked her.

She showed him both her hands, fingers extended. She closed her fingers once and showed her hands again, with only two fingers and a thumb showing on her right: a double-hand plus a hand-and-three. “So many . . . When will it be enough?”

She seemed to chuckle at that, soundlessly and without mirth. They were standing atop the wall. She reached down and picked up one of the loose stones there. She showed the rock to him and showed him one finger on her other hand. She dropped the stone and gestured at the wall itself, its long length snaking over the land. “When you’ve killed as many as there are stones in the wall?”

A nod. She pointed toward him, tilting her head quizzically.

“For me? I don’t know,” he answered. He turned his attention back to the mountains, purpling with evening, the valleys shrouding themselves with a late fog. “I know the gardai—and I know that most of the soldiers from Airgialla were just doing what they were told they must do. So I can’t really blame them. The ones I want are those who gave the orders to find my da and kill him. The others . . . I’d do what I need to do if they tried to stop me, but otherwise . . . I’ve seen too many of them die, just following orders. They’re just people: some good, some not. Just people.” He looked at her: at the determination in her thin face, at those expressive eyes whose gaze wouldn’t leave his face. “What was done to you and your family—that was unforgivable and those who did it deserved death. But the others, the rest of them . . . I don’t know. I’m sorry; I’ve no right to judge you. In your place, I might do the same, and you clansfolk have a different view of the Tuatha and the Riocha.”