Trinity Rising: Book Two of the Wild Hunt (Wild Hunt Trilogy 2) (29 page)

‘And let you go into the south alone?’

Teia bit her lip. Her mother had guessed – she should have realised Ana was sharp-witted enough to deduce Teia would not be leaving with the rest of her family in the spring.

‘I don’t think I’ll still be here by then.’ Dead or exiled, it made no difference; the Speaker’s word was law. In the heart of winter, there was little to choose between the two anyway.

‘Hmm.’ Ana pursed her lips and Teia tried one more time.

‘It’s for the best.’

‘I will speak to your father. It will be his decision, after all.’

‘Mama—’

‘Teir is the head of the family, Daughter,’ her mother chided gently. ‘I know he believes you, as do I. He will know what to do for the best, when the time comes.’

That was the closest to a promise from Ana as she would get, so she nodded and tried to smile. Lifting the corners of her mouth felt as hard as lifting the Archen Mountains themselves.

‘You’d better go,’ she said. ‘I have my chief’s supper to prepare and he will be displeased if it is not ready on his return.’

Her mother borrowed one of the Speaker’s long looks. It was not nearly so stern; Ana’s complexion was too dimpled and rosy to manage much better than mildly reproachful, but Teia read the question in it nonetheless.

‘He won’t raise a hand to me, don’t worry. I think he’s even a little fond of me now he thinks I’m going to give him an heir.’

Ana’s sniff was as eloquent as a thousand words, but she kissed her daughter farewell and went to the door. One hand on the curtain, she paused. ‘Take care of yourself, Teisha. You cannot best clan law with your powers, even if you can best Ytha with them.’

‘I know. But I have to try – it’s too important not to.’

Her mother dropped her gaze, sighed and nodded. She understood. Then she lifted the curtain and left.

Ytha swung on her heel at the sound of footsteps behind her, her skirts dragging in the deep snow. Drwyn emerged onto the ledge overlooking the lake and before he could take three steps she levelled a finger at him. ‘She could be the ruination of everything, Drwyn!’

‘She’s naught but a girl.’ He lounged against the rocks, one foot up, as if he could not see her plans crumbling. ‘Why so anxious?’

She flung up her hands – how could he not understand? – then counted off the hated girl’s crimes on her fingers. ‘She has a Talent that she hid from me for years. She has a child inside her whose aura I cannot read – I cannot even tell if it will be boy or girl. She has the gift of foretelling – true foretelling, like the Banfaíth of old. That’s a skill not heard of in four hundred years and more.’

‘Is that what’s soured your porridge? That she sees what is to come? Surely that’s an asset to us, to know what is to be before it comes to pass.’

Lackwit! By all the stars, what possessed me to think I could mould this dolt into a Chief of Chiefs fit to burn our names into the histories?

Controlling herself with an effort of will, Ytha stalked over to him.

‘What if the other chiefs come to hear of what she has seen? What if they believe her? You cannot become Chief of Chiefs without the acclamation of the other clans. They are as good as sworn to you now, but if even one falls away we will have much work to do to bring him back at the Scattering. If more than one falters, well, we might as well return to our tents and be content with our exile!’

Her final shout echoed back to her from the peaks around them, distorted and shrill. In the corner of her vision, she saw the waters shiver. Drwyn merely folded his arms and gave her a measuring look.

Insolence!

‘What has she seen that irks you so?’ he asked.

‘She sees all our planning come to naught and disaster for the clans. She sees the Wild Hunt turned against us. She questions the word of Maegern Herself.’ Ytha spat out the words as if they were coated with bile. ‘And when I questioned her, she used her powers against me!’

A dark brow quirked upwards; his beard twitched to hide a smile.

Grinding her teeth, she schooled her own face to stillness. ‘She is a mystery, Drwyn. Things I cannot know, I cannot counter. Things I cannot counter may be a threat to us.’

‘So what do you propose?’

‘She must be silenced. Immediately.’

‘She is the mother of my child, Ytha.’

The steadiness of his tone should have warned her, but rage had boiled away her finer instincts.

‘Who knows whose whelp it is? I tell you, I cannot read the child! Either she has some power at work to hide it from me – in which case, what other powers does she possess? – or the child itself is prodigiously gifted, even more so than its deceitful wretch of a dam!’

He thumbed his lower lip, black eyes considering. ‘Then we wait until the child is born. You can delve it then, find out the truth.’

‘By then it will be too late!’

Whirling about, she prowled to the edge of the rocky outcrop. By the Eldest! First the girl, playing her for a fool and putting all her careful plans in danger. Now Drwyn, the man she had moulded to be what his father would not, laughing at her! How dare they? She was the
Speaker
! She kicked out and scattered clods of snow into the waters below.

‘She should have been given to me long since. The law dictates that a gifted girl be surrendered to the Speaker of her clan without question.’

‘Her kin did not know. You said yourself she had concealed her Talent.’

Insufferable. The man was speaking sense when she was supposed to be leading
him
! Who was the kingmaker here – had he forgotten?

She bit off her next words crisply, each one as sharp and clear as a shard of ice. ‘She must be silenced.’

‘Can you not command her? Is she not under your authority as one of your apprentices?’

‘She is, but I suspect she chooses when to obey. She does not fear me, unlike the others. Since she manifested her gift –’
and what a gift!
‘– I cannot cow her any more.’

It was easier to admit whilst facing out over the valley, when she did not have to look at him and watch him enjoy her failure, however small, which he most assuredly would, gods rot him. But the power of the girl! How had a gift so strong come to fruition without her knowing?
How?

‘Either her powers are greater than I can assay, or there is iron in that girl’s backbone that I never expected. I cannot allow her to put our plans at risk.’
I will take back the plains, and that girl will not stand in my way
.

She heard the scrape of his boots as he came to his feet behind her.

‘Speak plainly, Ytha. What do you intend?’

A sacrifice to Maegern, to assure me of victory
. She held that thought close and silent. Drwyn would never countenance it if she suggested it, but perhaps she could plant the notion in his mind, arrange matters so that his temper would do the rest.

It would be tricky, though; the thought of an heir to come in a few short months had stayed his hand of late, and he had not even sought an outlet for his lust now that the girl’s belly was growing larger. He was not known for such restraint, even with his wives. Ytha’s lip curled. Had he actually become
fond
of the wench?

Composing her features, she turned to face him. ‘This requires careful handling. She must be stripped of all honour, robbed of any shred of credibility that might make the other chiefs heed her words, should they reach their ears. They must have no reason to trust her. Then when the child is born, I will burn that wench out.’

Drwyn’s eyes widened and he took half a step towards her. He stopped when she raised her hand.

‘Peace, Drwyn. You will still have her in your blankets and she will bear you many fine children, I’m sure, but I intend to see to it that she cannot so much as light a lamp with her powers. The loss of her foretelling will be a sore one, true enough, but we never knew of it when we drew up our plans, so the absence of it cannot set them awry.’

His hands flexed restlessly at his sides, clenching and releasing a bunch of his thick plaid cloak. A muscle worked in his jaw in time with it.

‘I cannot say I like this plan, Ytha,’ he grated. ‘She’s done nothing to hurt us.’

‘How do you know? I am certain she spied on us at the Gathering – who knows what she overheard and what she intends to do with that knowledge? She is a snagged thread in the tapestry we are weaving, you and I, and she must be snipped from it.’

‘No.’

Had her ears deceived her? After what the girl had done, it was inconceivable that he would defy her, too. Incredulous, she stared at him. ‘What did you say?’

‘I think you’re starting at shadows.’ Drwyn refolded his arms across his broad chest, giving her a level look from beneath his brows. ‘Do nothing. We wait until the child is born. Women in her way are often given to strange fancies; anything she says can be dismissed as such, and no chief will give it credence. But I will not permit anything that risks harm to my son.’ She started to protest and he raised his hand. ‘Hear me on this, Ytha. I am the chief.’

And I am the Speaker of the Crainnh! You would not even wear that torc were it not for me, you ungrateful pup!

Oh, it was so hard to keep the words behind her teeth, but she had to, had to. She could not risk losing his compliance, not after all those years, all those plans. But the girl had shaken her – more than she cared to admit, even in the privacy of her own mind. A mere chit had bound her in air and shrugged off her compulsion like rain off oiled leather. How had she learned that trick? How had she become so strong?

‘Very well.’ Ytha gathered her skirts and dipped the smallest of curtsies. ‘It shall be as you say, my chief. But once she whelps, you will give her over to me.’

A curt nod. He was not happy. Well, let him be unhappy. She had more important matters on which to spend herself for the moment, like that child.

17

STRANGE DAYS

After eleven days at sea, the desert heat struck Gair’s skull like a hammer as he stepped from the shadows of the
Skimmer
’s stern deck. The steel-blue sky was as hot as a forge, striking white sparks from the waves tossing beyond the harbour mouth. Barefoot sailors swarmed aloft, darting past him as he walked to the railing and squinted against the sun to watch their approach to Zhiman-dar.

It was not the most prepossessing of places. Sand-coloured buildings girdled a crescent-shaped bay, squat and square as a child’s wooden blocks. Behind the city, shimmering in the haze, was a range of low hills of the same sun-dried ochre colour. Nothing green, nothing growing that he could see. Even the ships in the harbour looked dusty and dried out beneath their dead-tree thicket of masts.

And the heat! Not even mid-morning and already he had a headache with it. It didn’t help that he had slept even less than usual; the air below decks had been too close and breathless for much more than catnaps, punctuated by the kind of dreams that brought him thrashing awake with his sheet in a tangle. Shading his eyes with his hands, he peered at the approaching city. Once they were ashore, it would doubtless get worse.

If only he’d kept his mouth shut. He’d been so bewildered by the outcome of his trial, so grateful to have been offered a way out of the Holy City, that he hadn’t thought through the consequences of what Alderan had asked of him. If he had, he wouldn’t be in this predicament, spending who knew how long in this Goddess-forsaken place, dissolving in his own sweat.

Gair mopped his forehead with his shirtsleeve, then wished he hadn’t as the least movement made the linen cling uncomfortably across his back. He pulled the shirt away from his skin and flapped it, but even standing at the railing there was barely enough of a breeze to fill the sails. Saints, the heat was brutal.

As the
Skimmer
edged closer to the harbour, shapes began to resolve themselves from the glare. Long stone wharves jutted into the water, backed by tall warehouses and chandleries. Gulls wheeled and shrieked through the forest of masts. Small craft plied the narrow water between the rows of wharves, darting amongst the heavier merchantmen like pond-skaters.

‘Welcome to Gimrael,’ said Alderan, stepping up to the railing beside him. ‘Abode of sun, sand and fundamentalism.’