Wolfsbane: 3 (Rebel Angels) (26 page)

‘Have you got a headache?’ I asked guiltily. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Well. That’s nothing, is it?’ He stared at me. Branndair lifted his massive bulk and stalked up the bed, flopping down proprietorially next to him, and Seth scratched his
neck.

I gave the wolf a rueful look. ‘He’ll never let me forget this.’

Seth laughed one of his low villainous laughs. ‘No more hearth rug, my pet,’ he told Branndair. He glanced at me. ‘Thanks, lover. But don’t do it again.’

‘Oh, sure.’ I looked skywards. What was it with him? Testosterone?

He snorted. ‘Well. You’re very talented.’ Standing up, he took my hand and pulled me off the bed. ‘But it’s dangerous, what you did.’

‘Yep,’ I agreed. ‘And riding around the woods with a sword on your back picking fights with kelpies is ever so safe.’

He had the grace to look sheepish. ‘I’ve been at this game longer than you have.’

‘As you never tire of telling me. Just stick at ‘Thanks’.’

‘Thanks. I love you, you know.’ He held my wrist and kissed my temple. ‘Only don’t get mad at me if I don’t say it again for a while. Ah, Finn, you must be
hungry.’

‘Starving, pal.’

‘There’ll be some kind of breakfast downstairs. Sulaire doesn’t get hangovers.’ Seth stretched and yawned. ‘Oh, Finn. Seven hours’ sleep feels so good.’
He wrapped his arms around me and bent his face into my neck. Then he pulled away abruptly. ‘You need some sleep yourself, though.’

‘I know. I just want her never to know if I’ll be there or not. She felt it, you know,’ I said with vicious satisfaction. ‘She felt it.’

‘Your ruthless streak is showing. Not before time. You think you could help my son find his?’

I gave him a Look. ‘Give him time, you old despot.’

‘I got him something. Here, see what you think.’ He opened the low trunk at the foot of the bed. It was one of Sionnach’s, the fretwork over its lid as delicate as lace, but
three centuries old already and still strong. Seth reached inside and with a nervous smile, handed me a rolled bundle of soft leather.

I unwrapped it. A yew-and-deerhorn bow with a quiver of blue-fletched arrows. I drew one of them out and stroked the arrow’s tip with my thumb.

‘Do you think he’ll like it? He’s not keen on swords. I thought, you know... a longbow… and it belonged to his grandfather...’

‘It’s gorgeous.’ I eyed him askance. ‘Seth, I don’t think he’s ever going to be a mighty barbarian warrior, know what I mean?’

He sighed, raked his hair. ‘I know. I just wish... he needs to defend himself.’

‘He’ll get there. Let him work it out for himself. What’s that?’

I was glad of a distraction, but I was genuinely curious. I knelt by the trunk and lifted out a little wooden carving. Its edges were smoothed by time, the surface glowing with the sheen of
years. The shape of it was primitive but it was still identifiable. I turned it very gently in my fingers as Seth crouched beside me.

‘It’s a wolf,’ I said.

‘It’s not a very good one.’

‘It’s beautiful.’

‘Yes. It is.’

I tucked my hair behind my ear, the better to see his face. ‘And she was too?’

He nodded. ‘She made better ones later, but that was always my favourite.’

‘It’s very old.’ I stroked the little bumps of its wooden ears. ‘That’s a long time to miss someone.’

He just nodded. I laid the carving carefully back in its nest of soft cotton. I was about to close the trunk lid when he caught it and reached inside again. He drew out a faded photograph and
passed it to me.

Conal and Seth, playing the fool. They were sitting on Leonie’s sofa at Tornashee, arms folded and leaning against each other, and they wore happy stupid grins. Between them was propped an
incredibly startled week-old baby, its eyes round with confusion. I’d been staring at the picture for a while before I realised Seth was holding his breath.

I looked up at him. ‘I’m so tiny. This is before my father died.’

‘Yup.’

‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ I said. ‘But this looks almost as if you like me.’

Embarrassed, he shrugged.

‘So what did I do?’ I winked solemnly at him as I stood up and examined it again. ‘Was I that awful a toddler?’

He stood up too, looking over my shoulder and twisting a strand of my hair between his fingers. ‘It all went wrong after Aonghas was killed. You know that.’

‘Uh-huh. So why did you take it out on me?’

‘Oh Finn. I dunno. I was in a permanent rage with your mother, and you were a piece of her. And I was jealous of you and Conal and how close you were. And I’d been over there too
long and I hated it. Hated it, hated the full-mortals, and I was afraid of getting fond of you because I didn’t want to get close to somebody who was going to be a kind of honorary
full-mortal and never even know where she came from.’ He was counting mockingly on his fingers now. ‘Oh, loads of reasons, no excuses.’

‘That’s not all,’ I said.

‘Well...’ He looked shamefaced. ‘It’s embarrassing. I don’t even want to say it.’

‘Tell me or the wolf gets it.’ I pointed a finger-gun at Branndair’s head, and he made puppy-eyes at Seth.

Hands over his face, Seth mumbled, ‘So there was this prophecy.’

‘Not
another
one!’ I couldn’t fight my huge grin. ‘About you and me? Couldn’t somebody have shot that soothsayer?’

‘She did catch it in the end,’ he reminded me darkly. He stared at the photograph in my fingers.

‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’ I flicked its corner.

‘Depends on your point of view. Stella wanted to have me killed.’ He gave me a wry shrug. ‘Finn. You and me. She said it would happen.’

I almost roared with laughter. I had to bite my cheeks. ‘Is that why you wouldn’t come near me? Because you
didn’t want to prove a soothsayer right
?’

His mouth opened in the beginning of a laugh, the start of a shared joke. It never quite got there. He moved away from me, ever so slightly.

‘What?’ My neck prickled. ‘What else?’

He said it so fast I almost couldn’t make it out. ‘I’m going to be the death of you.’

I thought about it. I came close to him again, touched his face, made him look at me. There were tears in his eyes, but he coughed a laugh that was almost hysterical.

‘
I told you I was selfish.
’

‘Seth,’ I said. ‘Seth. The two weren’t connected?’

‘No.’

‘Because I wouldn’t care,’ I hissed. ‘Even if they were.’

He laid his hand over mine, turned his mouth into my palm and kissed it. His eyes were closed. ‘Not-binding, staying away from you. For all I know,
that
could have been your
death. I don’t know. Oh gods, I don’t know.’

‘Seth,’ I whispered in his ear. ‘It’s a crock of shit. Remember?’

‘Course it is. Yes. Even Conal said so.’

I pressed my forehead against his, fiercely. ‘I’m not interested in what Conal thought. Do you hear me? Not him, and not my mother, and not Leonie.’

Seth’s fingers curled round mine, and he dragged my hand down from his face. But he did not let me go.

‘Finn. I won’t let you die.’

‘I second that.’ I kissed his fingers and shot him a grin.

He hesitated, then laughed unsteadily. ‘I was livid. Every damn thing in my whole damn life, that witch wanted to control. But I wasn’t half as livid as Leonie, or your mother. I
told myself as often as they did that it would never happen.’ His sudden smirk was wicked. ‘And when you did turn up, you were such an ugly baby...’

I jabbed him in the stomach, making him wince. ‘Well. Never mind, dear. I hated you too.’

‘You hated me because I hated you.
That’s
okay.’

‘Seth, I hated you because you were a complete tit.’

‘Oh, okay.’ He laughed and made a face.

I looked back at the discoloured photograph and saw that Seth’s little finger was surreptitiously clutched in the baby’s curled fist.

‘I’m really sorry, Finn. I’m sorry how it all turned out.’

I pulled his face to mine again, and kissed him. ‘Me too. I’m glad you showed me this.’

‘And now I’m stuck with loving you senseless again, for the rest of my life.’

‘I’ll hold you to that, you schmuck.’

‘You already have. And I still don’t know if I’ve done the right thing.’

‘Don’t worry, sweetie. I’ll do the knowing for the both of us.’

I felt his mouth grin against mine. ‘You are going to be
intolerable.
’

I’d have replied, but his head jerked up suddenly and he turned to face the door. ‘
What
?’ he barked, before whoever it was had a chance to knock.

The door swung open and Braon leaned in. ‘Half an hour ago.’

‘And I don’t suppose Nuall MacInnes is going to lift a finger to help.’ He picked up his sword.

‘He probably invited them in,’ remarked Braon. ‘That one’s playing his own game.’

‘No he isn’t, he’s just chickenshit.’ Seth cursed. ‘Finn, they’re raiding Letterhaugh. East of Dunster.’

‘I caught that much,’ I said. I lifted my knife belt.

He seized my wrist. ‘No way, Finn. I haven’t got time to look out for you.’

Braon shot me a sympathetic look as my cheekbones burned. ‘It won’t take that long, Finn,’ she said. ‘We only need to show our faces. He’ll be back for a late
breakfast.’

‘Save us a bacon roll.’ He kissed me and was gone.

For a full minute I stared at the door that closed behind them, mortified and angry. After that I came to my senses and realised he was right. I made myself picture it: me getting in a scrap;
somebody having to rescue me, and not necessarily Seth. That would be a lot more mortifying than being left behind.

‘Practise more, you silly cow,’ I muttered. ‘Then he’ll take you.’

I made myself not-picture the other thing: Seth getting in a scrap he couldn’t handle, Seth with no-one to watch his back or the sword plunging into it. Shaking the vision loose from my
brain I sloped downstairs for breakfast, still bereft.

I wasn’t the first. Seth had taken only a small detachment, and there were maybe twenty fighters awake in the hall, forcing down breakfast, plus the eight men and three women of the night
patrol, gloating at their hungover comrades and preparing to hit the sack.

And Hannah. She glanced up expressionless, her mouth full of toast.

I stopped short. Her hair was cropped nearly as short as Eili’s. It suited her, I thought, wondering why a tremor had run the length of my spine.

‘Nice, Hannah,’ I said. ‘What’s your aunt going to say?’

Hannah swallowed a mouthful of toast. ‘Like I give a flying fu…’

‘Suits you,’ I snapped, and turned to the coffee pot that simmered on the range. Iolaire was there already, yawning, helping himself.

He kissed my cheek, his jaw rough with stubble. ‘Your lover gone out fighting with a headache?’

‘Uh-huh.’ The real reason for Seth’s sore head was too complicated to explain at this hour, and anyway, he deserved one however he’d got it. I grinned, remembering
Iolaire slumped on a sofa last night, hands over his eyes in mortification as Seth and Jed danced an elaborate tango. ‘Yours too?’

‘Yep. He woke up at five and drank the entire water jug and then he was fine, the bastard. I don’t know where he puts it.’

‘Jed drinks too much,’ I said. ‘He’s fun, but he drinks too much.’

‘I know he does.’ Iolaire bent to murmur in my ear. ‘I look after him. Honest.’

‘I know you do.’ I kissed his cheek, just while it was there.

‘And how’s Eili this morning?’

‘How would I know?’

‘It’s all over the dun, the mood she’s in,’ said Iolaire dryly. ‘We know you gave her hell. Look out, Finn.’

I felt a hand on my arm, then Sionnach was taking the coffee pot out of my hands. ‘Right behind me, Finn,’ he said apologetically. ‘Be warned. And
please
be
careful.’

‘Fionnuala.’ Eili’s voice cut the atmosphere. Eyes like chips of mica, she pointed at me, then at the doorway.

The hall had fallen silent, and a couple of fighters stood up, uncertain. Sionnach took a step towards me and Eili, but I raised a hand.

I followed Eili out to the courtyard, and the door closed softly behind us.

The day was already hot, and soon they were going to start to smell. Up in the blue, a buzzard soared, its cry piercing his bones. Seth sat very still on the blue roan,
watching Jed pick his way through the bodies, rolling one over with a foot, hauling another by the armpits to lie next to its mother.

‘What was the point?’ Braon was off her horse too, but she leaned against its shoulder, frowning.

‘They’re not ready for a full attack. Kate’s taunting us again.’

‘That’s not what I meant. Doesn’t surprise
me
that Cuthag scuttled back to her skirts before we got here.’ She sniffed. ‘But Nuall was a useful idiot. Why
do it at all?’

Seth didn’t reply. He knew why, and she’d work it out in the next five minutes. At least, he hoped that was all it was. The headache he’d got from Finn and whisky was muddling
him, but there was an odd and new and different throb of absence, deep in his brain. He couldn’t pinpoint it, couldn’t deal with it; it was like the itching void of a missing limb. He
certainly had no words to spare for Braon, not right now.

Seth rubbed his forehead hard. Jed trudged back towards him, his face dark with hatred. Behind him surviving villagers were moving like animated dead things, hitching litters to horses, lifting
corpses.

‘Do we stay and help lay them out?’

‘Yes.’ Every word was an effort. ‘Their death ground’s two miles east.’

‘It’ll take a while. What about him?’ Jed jerked his head at the glowering man bound to a rowan trunk. Branndair stood over the captive, stiff-legged and snarling, but still
the man wore that truculent adamant expression he’d worn when they rode him down.

For a few seconds, Seth didn’t trust himself to get off the roan. He wasn’t sure his legs would obey him; no two parts of his body seemed to be connected. At last, with a deep
breath, he dismounted. When, to his dizzying relief, he didn’t fall, he walked across to Nuall MacInnes and ran his hand across Branndair’s bristling neck, coaxing the wolf to sit. Then
he crouched to stare into the man’s eyes.