The Sea Thy Mistress (25 page)

“It never came up.”

The old priest smiled. “Good. You might want to keep that one to yourself, if you think you still have reason to be suspicious.”

Cathmar pursed his lips and puffed his cheeks before releasing a thoughtful breath. He glanced around the room, noticing its age and the furrows worn in the flagstones by the feet of the patrons and staff. “Mom used to come here?” he asked.

Aethelred nodded. “It’s been in business for—what, six, seven hundred years now. Different owners, of course.”

“All right,” Cathmar said, answering an earlier comment. “And how is my dad?”

“Crap,” Aethelred said. “But you knew that already. We’re doing everything we can for him, Cath. But I can’t promise you it’ll work.”

“Ah.” He was surprised by how much that piece of information stung. “I went to talk to him…”

“… and you didn’t make a dent?” The old priest poured more tea and drank it, blowing the steam out of his asparagus-colored bowl. “Sometimes you have to hit ’em in the right spot or at the right time. There’s an art to it. Sometimes you can’t do a damn thing but stand by and watch them go down in flames. Sometimes the going down in flames is what does it. You can’t save anybody from themselves, kid.”

Cathmar didn’t answer, twirling the bowl in his fingers, his gaze trained out the window—seeing, but not recording. Moreaux, humans, bicycles, a single taxi whirled past, and Aethelred’s last sentence echoed in his head.

Just like nobody can save me from me.

Aethelred let the silence hang a little before he went on. “You’re still mad at him, too.”

Cathmar glanced back; their eyes locked. “Yeah. You’re right about that.”

The return question was rapid-fire. “How come?”

“Because of Mom.” That wasn’t an adequate answer, but he didn’t know what else to say. “Because of a lot of things.”

“Right. He ever hit you, Cath?”

Slowly, brow wrinkling, Cathmar shook his head. “Of course not. Why do you think he would?”

Aethelred grinned. “If I thought he would ever have been anything but gentle with you, I never would have handed you over to him, kid.”

“So why are you asking?”

Aethelred finished his tea and started on his sandwich, breaking half off and setting it aside on the splotched pottery trencher. “Just think, for a second, what it took him to remember, every second, that it wasn’t okay to hit you—when he had no other experience of being a dad whatsoever to go on, except being hit. You know his father’s the one who cut his face up, don’t you?”

It stopped his breath like a blow in the gut. “No,” he said. Except yes, he did know, sort of. Whether his father had told him or he’d figured it out Cathmar couldn’t remember, but he knew. He’d just never thought about what it meant, what it would be like if his own father did something like that to him.

Aethelred touched his hand, pulling him back. “Think that he did that with nobody holding his hand, with nobody showing him how to do it, with nobody to so much as trade off shifts with. Someday you’ll be raising a kid and you’ll understand how hard a thing that can be. And
you
”—he jabbed the forefinger of the hand not holding the sandwich at Cathmar’s chest—“didn’t sleep when you were a baby, either.”

Thinking about that, Cathmar tapped one forefinger on the table. “Are you saying I’m selfish?”

“I’m saying you’re not a kid anymore, kid. Kids get to be self-absorbed. Grown-ups have to be part of the community. And I’m saying parents are people, too, and you were lucky enough to have one who put you first. So maybe it’d be fair to rethink that anger, is all.” Aethelred wiped mustard off his mouth and let the silence hang a little. “And on to other things. So tell me, Cath, what you’ve been doing with yourself.”

50 A.R.
On the Twenty-eighth Day of Autumn

Mardoll slipped out while he was in the bathroom, and she took her riding boots. Cathmar, however, heard her sneaking down the stairs over the water splashing into the porcelain tub.

He’d been waiting for it, and his boots were still on, Nathr propped against the door.

Grabbing the sword, he shut off the water and hopped out the window onto the fire escape.

The riding boots gave him an idea where she was going. He didn’t want her passing him down on the road, so he headed to Boulevard and hailed a taxi, paying the moreau behind the wheel in advance with salt and whisky. The pilot took them up while Cathmar settled himself on the ragged upholstery. “You know the chapel on the Eiledon road?”

“I do,” the pilot said, nodding hard. His elegant, fringed golden ears flicked back when Cathmar talked: a canid.

Cathmar leaned forward, put a long-fingered hand on the dog-man’s shoulder. “Do you remember the Angel?” he asked. He’d never quite had the courage to ask one before, other than Borje and Selene.

The driver’s ears pricked as he turned around in his chair. “Selene kissed me. Selene kissed most of us, but yeah. I remember the Angel. Who are you, to know to ask?”

“I’m the Angel’s son,” Cathmar answered. “And I’m going to ask you to do something crazy. You ever think you might want to be an einherjar?”

*   *   *

A taxi descended over Borje’s cottage, and the bull came out to meet it. He was surprised when Cathmar stepped out, more surprised when the young einherjar opened the front door and held it for the driver, who powered the machine off and stood.

Borje recognized him. “Erasmus. You drive a taxi now?”

The dog chuckled, feathery yellow tail describing slow arcs in the sea air. “And I hear you clean up a church. ‘Deacon Borje.’ It’s got a ring.” He walked up to Borje, and Borje ducked his heavy head so that Erasmus could sniff his nose.

Hoofbeats reached Borje’s sensitive ears from somewhere in the middle distance.

The dog pulled back then, and grinned in a disturbingly human fashion, long snout curling up over sharp yellow teeth. “The einherjar here has an idea,” he said. “He wants to talk to you about something.”

Borje tilted his head at Cathmar, examining the young angel’s eyes. “Is it urgent, Cath?”

Cathmar shook his head. “No. It can wait until tonight.” He grinned. “When the moon’s up.”

Borje nodded. “Good,” he said. “Because we need to get inside.”

“We do?”

“Yes.” Borje’s tail swished, driving away imaginary flies. He knew something about protecting a herd. And something about the ways of females. “Now. Erasmus, hide that taxi please. And don’t take it high.”

The dog scurried back to his vehicle while Borje brought Cathmar into the house, laying his hoof on the angel’s shoulder and steering him to a spot behind the eyelet curtains. In bare minutes, he felt Cathmar’s body tense.

Borje knew the boy heard the racing hooves a few moments before he saw the red mare and the golden-haired figure bent low over her neck.

“Yours, isn’t she?”

Cathmar nodded. The girl and her mare rounded the back side of the bluff and vanished from sight.

“You need to walk around the bluff, Cath, and see what happens next.”

*   *   *

The red mare’s flaxen mane caught the sunlight like honey in a glass jar as Gullveig swung down off her back. She smiled when she saw Cahey watching her from the doorway. She wound the mare’s reins around a wooden railing beside the path and turned back to him.

Sand scattering from her footsteps, Gullveig came toward him; he raised his eyes to meet hers. The shadows and the resignation around them told her everything she needed to know. Noticing the bruises, she forced herself to smile.

“I don’t need to bind you this time, do I?”

His eyes spoke a word to her. The word was
defeat
.

He shook his head. He started to unbutton his shirt.

*   *   *

Cathmar trotted over the bluff rather than hiking around it. He wasn’t sure what he was going to see, and Borje wouldn’t tell him.
You have to make up your own mind,
the moreau said.
Come back and we’ll talk about your idea after.

The horse was out of sight by the time he crested the little hill, and the sick feeling in his stomach only got worse as he followed the well-worn trail to his father’s house. He saw the red mare tethered by the door. Coming up beside her, he hushed her with a hand on her muzzle.

Afternoon darkness filled the house, but Cathmar caught voices clearly. Standing alongside the window by the front door, he waited for the breeze to stir the curtains, but those inside were standing near the door and he could not see them.

Cahey spoke first: “Get it over with.” Cathmar shuddered at the savagery in his manner, a note like glass grating on bone.

Then Mardoll’s voice, mocking. Cruel, as Cathmar had never heard it. “Such a hurry,” she said. “I’d think you didn’t enjoy my company, my love.”

He heard his father take a breath as if in pain. Or something else.

“This isn’t about
love,
” Cahey answered with a violence thick as clotted blood. “So, if you please, whatever your name is, find something else to call me.”

Cathmar stuffed his fist into his mouth, stifling a gasp at the stainless hatred in that tone. The wood of the windowsill creaked in his other hand; Cathmar realized he was squeezing it with all his might.

“My pet,” she answered. “Do you like that better? I think it fits, don’t you?”

Cahey didn’t answer, but Cathmar felt a shudder through the wall as if someone shoved somebody hard against the door.

His father’s voice, when he heard it again, was a brutal gasp that made him shut his eyes and press his head back hard against the wall.
Go in there,
he thought.
Put a stop to this, whatever it is.

He didn’t move. The red mare lipped his pockets; the sun shone through his closed eyelids.

“Tell me what you want.” Cahey’s voice was dull, but ragged with determination.

“Pet,” Mardoll replied—smug, leisurely. “This time, I think you shall decide. Just keep it interesting, or it doesn’t count toward what you owe.”

Cathmar shook himself—
shuddered, who are you kidding?
—shoved the mare’s curious head out of the way, and bolted back toward Borje’s cottage. Blistering tears smudging his vision, he fell three times. When he reached the doorway, though, the moreau was waiting.

50 A.R.
On the Twenty-eighth Day of Autumn

Selene had never marched anywhere in her life, but this was definitely marching. She didn’t bother to knock. She just opened the painted wood door and strode into Cahey’s cottage, not at all sure what she expected to find.

She hoped it wouldn’t be the Imogen.

She didn’t like the way the room smelled, or the fact that he was just sitting, curled and staring, in an armchair in the corner when she came in.

She also didn’t like the lack of light in Cahey’s eyes when he turned to face her as she came into the living room. He shoved himself clumsily to his feet, who had never had an awkward moment in all the years she’d known him.

“Selene,” he said. The agony in his voice took her breath away.

She came to him, and he didn’t resist her, thank the Light, or she would have injured him. He was strong, after all. But she was deadly.

Sheathing her claws, unspeaking, she reached up and caught him by the back of the neck, dragging him down into her embrace. He stiffened and tugged away, but she forced his face into the angle of her neck and dropped to her knees on the hard tiles beyond the hearth-rug, taking him with her. Her other arm went around his shoulders; she pulled him close and squeezed until she felt him relaxing incrementally in her arms.

She cuddled him close, stroking his head, sensing his confusion and his unwillingness to push her away, to risk her forgiveness, both at once. His arms slid around her and he cradled her to his chest as if he were doing the comforting. She crooned to him as she would have to her kittens, if she’d ever had the chance.

When she finally spoke to him her voice was ragged. “Cahey, you noble stupid fuck, what in snakerot do you think you’re buying?”

He would have jerked away, but she held on to him, not caring that her claws bit. Or … caring. But accepting for now that she must cause him pain. He blinked at her with startled eyes, and she permitted herself a whisker-flicker of amusement. “What do you know?” he asked.

She perked her ears forward. “I know you’re sleeping with your son’s girlfriend, for one thing. And I know you think you have some damn good reason for doing it, and it’s killing you. And she’s torturing you, I know that, too. Are you going to tell me what it is so I can help you, or are you going to make me beat it out of you?”

“Gullveig,” he started, and then stopped. “You haven’t told Cath.…”

“Cahey,” she said, as softly as she dared. “Brother of my heart,
he
told
me.
”