Deception's Princess (Princesses of Myth) (12 page)

“Then I’m glad Father knows nothing about horses.” Odran grinned.

“I’m surprised he was willing to let you harbor wild things even before the two of you began this journey.”

The druid’s son grew serious. “I was born sickly. Not even Father’s healing lore could bring a healthy color to my face or give me the endurance to run and scuffle with the other children. Then my mother died, and I mourned so deeply that I couldn’t eat or sleep. Everyone said I was destined to follow her to Tech Duinn.

“And it would have been so, if not for my mother’s dearest friend. That good woman brought a robin’s nest to my bedside with a broken-legged birdling inside. ‘I can’t persuade the little one to eat,’ she said. ‘Won’t you help me?’ She showed me how to feed it by hand, how to keep it clean, how to check the binding on its leg and how to retie it. By the time the little robin could hop to the door and fly away, she’d saved two lives. After that, whenever I found an animal that was hurt or ailing and brought it home to heal, Father scowled but didn’t interfere. Mother’s friend was there to remind him that he owed my life to Flidais, the goddess who cares for wild things. If Father wanted to keep me, I must be allowed to keep my creatures.”

“How many do you have?” I asked, picturing the ringfort of Munster with all the king’s warriors ankle-deep in limping badgers and runny-nosed hedgehogs.

“Oh, I didn’t mean that I
keep
every creature I heal. If I have the skill and good fortune to make them well again, I send them back to their true homes. It’s only rarely I take one in who’s meant to stay with me. Guennola and Muirín came into my care as orphaned babies. I couldn’t teach them how to live wild. They’d die.”

“I wonder how your teachers at Avallach will react to them.”

“I’m hoping Father will bring them around.” Odran dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’ve convinced him that these two rascals help me concentrate on my studies.”

“I’d love to know what magic spell you used for that. You must be a born druid,” I said drily.

“There was no magic at all to how I did it. One day I asked Mother’s friend to keep Muirín and Guennola for me and went to my lessons without them. Father had been after me to rid myself of the creatures ever since I found Muirín abandoned in an empty den. He tolerated Guennola because my stoat could keep out of his sight inside my tunic, but a poor scrawny runt of a fox cub was too much for him.”

“He never tried taking them away from you by force?”

“And have us waste precious learning time quarreling about it?” A dimple showed itself.

“He must have been pleased when you parted with them,” I said.

“
Pleased
is a weak word for his reaction. Not even a bard could describe how overjoyed he was.”

“A short-lived joy, I’m sure.”

“You’ve hit it. All that day my hands kept straying to the place where Guennola usually nestled, my eyes drifted to Muirín’s spot at my feet, and my mind”—he feigned a melancholy look—“my mind wandered so far away that my recitations of lore and ritual and history sounded like the babbling of an infant just learning how to talk.”

“Was that all it took?” I asked. “A single day of stupidity?”

“Certainly not. It took at least seven days and as many beatings before Father began asking himself if my creatures weren’t also my touchstones, living tokens to guard and build
my power of memory. That was why he let me have them at lessons again.”

“Either that or his arm grew tired from trying to whip sense into a block of wood. He had better things to do. You say his goal is to see you become a druid. He swallowed his annoyance and let you have your pets so that you’d stop playing games and get on with your education.”

“Do you really think so?” Odran looked disillusioned. He plucked the stoat from the ground and said, “What a shame, Guennola. All this time we thought we’d been so cunning, outwitting Father that way, and here comes Lady Maeve to tell us he was twenty steps ahead of us.”

“It’s time for
you
to be twenty steps ahead of
me
,” I remarked. “I’ll see you at dinner.”

“Whatever you say, Lady Maeve.” He placed the stoat on his shoulder and whistled for Muirín to attend him.

“Wait, Odran. Before you go, there’s unfinished business between us.”

“You’ve already argued with me, fed me, mocked me, listened to my troubles, and as good as told me I’m a simpleton next to my father,” he said in a friendly way. “What’s left?”

“That you never again call me
Lady
Maeve.”

“Is that all?” He placed his hand over his heart. “I swear it, now and forevermore.”

And he sealed the new bond between us by waiting until my back was turned and tangling a sticky strand of trout bones in my hair.

M
ASTER
Í
OBAR
’
S SON
must have had a large inborn share of his father’s mystic power: he disappeared the day after our meeting under the willow.

To be truthful, he was invisible only by day. He ate with the rest of us every evening, suffered a tongue-lashing from his father, and went to bed. The reason for these nightly rebukes was Odran’s daily absences. Master Íobar could not give lessons to a ghost or ask a phantom to repeat things from memory. The bitterly funny thing was that those scenes between father and son were so repetitive and unchanging, I found myself mouthing their words while the druid ranted about all the ways Odran was a disappointment and a failure, and Odran responded with the same passive apologies.

Never once did he promise to change his ways.

I tried to talk with him at meals, but he timed his arrival for after I was already seated. It would have drawn the wrong kind of notice if I’d risen from my place to sit beside him.
Once, I tried lying in wait, lingering at the doorway into the great hall until he arrived. He greeted me in a friendly way, walked in with me, shared my bench, then announced he had to answer the call of nature. When he returned from doing his business outside—his
alleged
business—he sat elsewhere.

What had I done to earn such treatment? I’d enjoyed his company and his conversation. I hadn’t taken the slightest vengeance for the trout-bone incident. We had parted as friends. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got.

What in the name of all the gods is
wrong
with him?
The question boiled in my brain. I wished I could scream it out loud.
And a hundred curses on him for acting like there’s something wrong with
me!

Even though I knew there was no decent reason for Odran to be treating me that way, his behavior still hurt. Like a hound with a thorn in its paw, I retreated to nurse my wounded pride in private. When my brooding resentment left me, it was only because it had smoldered so long that it caught fire and became a burning desire to make
him
hurt for a change. I reached a cold conclusion: I was done with him. If he didn’t want to be with me, I didn’t want to be with him.

I’ll ignore him from now on
, I thought, then reconsidered.
No. Ignoring him’s a good start, but not enough. I’ll make sure he knows he’s being ignored. Let Odran make himself vanish as long as he likes. I’ll make him vanish the rest of the time! Who’s the spell-caster now?

I put my scheme into action that very night. He didn’t notice. I wouldn’t have minded if only he hadn’t looked so content. For a moment no longer than a butterfly’s wing beat I wished I could walk up to him, punch him in the shoulder,
and shout in his face,
“Pay attention to me when I’m not paying attention to you!”

I fought down that highly inhospitable impulse and soothed myself with the knowledge that even if my icy treatment hadn’t worked that night, there were plenty of other nights to come.

Your eyes will open, Odran!
I thought.
It will take time, but before the summer’s over, you’ll realize that I’m shutting you out the same as you’re doing to me and you’ll be sorry
.

My confidence was strong but turned out to be useless. While I was preoccupied with my plan of retaliation, other members of my family were also taking an interest in Odran’s chronic absences. Mother brought up the matter when she and some of her ladies were supervising a thread-spinning lesson among the fosterlings.

“Look at how big I’m getting,” she mused, studying the bulge of her unborn child. “And so soon! It feels like I’m carrying a warrior
and
his weapons. If it is a boy, I hope he’ll give us less trouble than Master Íobar’s son gives his poor father. Gone from sunup to sundown every day. What could he be doing?”

“Lady Maeve might know,” Guennola said casually.

“Why would I?” I held myself aloof and cold. “I don’t bother with him.”

“You did.” Her head bent over her spindle, a sly quirk tugging the corners of her thin lips. “When he and his father first came here, I saw the two of you coming back from— Well, I don’t know
where
you’d been or what you’d been doing, but I did see you return home together.”

“Together but not together,” another girl put in. “We both saw them, Guennola, remember? You and I were sent to gather some herbs, and
there
was Master Íobar’s boy, sauntering up the
path from the stream, that filthy fox of his trotting beside him, and
there
came Lady Maeve along the same road, not more than thirty paces behind him. If that isn’t proof that they’d been keeping company but wanted to keep it secret, I don’t know what it
does
prove.”

“It proves you two would rather gossip than work,” I said calmly. “And that’s like proving a fish can swim.” Guennola and her comrade blushed and squirmed under a downpour of giggles from the rest of the women.

I hoped that would put an end to all talk of Odran, but Mother had other ideas.

“Wouldn’t it be a delicious change for us all if there could be peace between Odran and his father? I’d rejoice to have one dinner without the same accursed clash between those two.”

“You’ll have some relief soon, my lady,” one of Mother’s attendants remarked. “When the king and his best horsemen go to Tailteann for the Lughnasadh races, Master Íobar will travel with him but not the boy—not after the way he’s been provoking his father.”

I doubted Odran would mind being deprived of a trip to watch horses run and men compete in countless athletic games to honor the god Lugh, but I saw no reason to mention this.

“Lughnasadh!” Guennola cried. “Is it so soon?”

“Soon enough,” her friend said, sighing. “Another Lughnasadh and not one of us will be handfasted.”

I rolled my eyes. It was this way every year among the older fosterlings. Many couples began wedded life at Lughnasadh by having their wrists bound together with ribbons in front of witnesses. It wasn’t the only way to be married, but Father claimed it was the best because the man could walk away from it at the
end of a year and a day. Mother agreed it was a good thing, adding that the women would like it better if it were changed to a month and a day instead.

“Stop your moaning, girls,” Mother said placidly. “Finding a man is easy. The hard part is finding one you can please. The blessed part is finding one who’ll please you.” She added more fleece to her spindle, teasing out the fluffy fibers into a strong thread. “As for me, I have a good-enough husband”—everyone laughed—“and I don’t mind making him happy. So to that end, I want you all to make those gossip-hungry ears and eyes of yours useful. Find out where Master Íobar’s son goes each day and what takes up his time. If you succeed …” She touched the gold bracelet on her wrist meaningfully.

I didn’t like what I was hearing. “Mother, are you serious? How is having Odran spied on going to make Father happy?”

“Once I learn his secret, he and I will make a bargain. If he’s not sneaking off to do anything vile, he can continue, but not all day nor every day. He must swear to give at least half his time to lessons. If not, I’ll tell Master Íobar everything. Odran’s smart enough to know what
that
would mean. He’ll accept my terms and assuage his father. That will put an end to all their arguments and
that
, dear Maeve, will make your father happy.” She set her spindle aside and took off her bracelet. “Now, who would like to try this on?”

The fosterlings swarmed around her, vying for a turn to wear queenly gold. Even Mother’s attendants crowded up. No one seemed to care when I stepped away from the mob, letting my spindle be trampled under their feet.

Why must she meddle in this? Whatever Odran’s been doing, it’s
his
business
, I thought. Mother enjoyed bringing order out
of chaos. The constant strife between father and son was upsetting her small world, but that didn’t give her the right to sacrifice Odran’s independence for her peace.
I’d like to see how
she’d
like it if I offered my gold torque to anyone who’d stifle
her
little spats with Father!

I no longer cared that Odran had been avoiding and ignoring me. I threw away my resolution to act as if he didn’t exist. I was determined to warn him about the snare being set.