Elisha Barber: Book One Of The Dark Apostle (33 page)

Dropping Elisha’s hand like a thing repulsive, Matthew stooped over his instruments and gathered them up, setting the irons upon his shoulder at a jaunty angle. With a last shake of his head, the physician accompanied him out.

Wordlessly, the two guards pinioned his arms behind him, tying his crossed wrists with no regard to the recent burns. Elisha barely noticed through the fog of confusion and pain. He had looked for answers that would satisfy the king, but the truth only brought more torture. The prince had carried his father’s message. Not the elder one, Prince Thomas, who was off defending the northern borders, or extending them, depending on who told the tale. This was the second son, Prince Alaric, who was to have married the duke’s daughter, the one who had started it all. Twice now, Elisha had saved his neck, only to find himself undone by the messenger’s identity. The thought that followed after stopped him cold, jolted away as the guards hauled him to his feet.

Elisha stumbled between them in the rain, sinking down again to his knees as they tied him, his elbows to either side of the whipping post, his bound hands a hard knot at his back. The muddy ground at the base of the post clung to him, and Elisha rested his head against the harsh, familiar wood. His breath shuddered as he tried to master the pain and the sudden sorrow of his knowledge.

Brigit knew. She knew who the messenger was, and they two had some other dealings, that much was clear. From the look upon her face when she had seen the man, Elisha strongly suspected he knew what those dealings were. Trysting in the chapel, Prince Alaric had told him. With her.

She would come to see him unless she had a heart of stone and even the threat of his death would not move her.

Two of the guards wrapped themselves in long cloaks, dragging up a bench to keep their watch over him. They sat each on an end, facing each other and a pair of dice, shaken and tossed, shaken and tossed.

Unlike the king, Brigit did not keep him waiting long.

He raised his head even as she came, picking her way across the mud, a cloak drawn close about her. She passed within a yard of the guards, but they did not look up. When she drew off her hood, she hesitated, and he could feel her eyes upon him.

After a moment of wary watching, Brigit dropped down before him, hugging her knees, close enough that the rim of her cloak fell over his knee. At least some small part of him would be warm.

“Hanging, is it?” she asked, her fair face streaked with rain, her forehead creased.

“Aye, and what else would it be?” he snapped, then turned from the pained look in her eyes.

“Elisha, don’t be angry with me, I’m here to help you—”

His chest throbbed. “You began it all, didn’t you? The battle, the siege, it’s all because of you.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked, her eyes glazing over with a strange detachment.

“Oh, I think you know. Prince Alaric, the messenger, the man who was supposed to marry this duke’s daughter. The man you love.”

“Elisha,” she whispered, reaching a hand toward him.

He could not withdraw from her touch, but he tilted his head away, his face to the rain, and as she let her hand fall back, he went on. “He couldn’t tell his father the real reason he wouldn’t marry her, so he made something up: the lie for which a thousand men have died. Oh, God, Brigit, I can forgive you loving him, even forgive you not telling me, but that these men should die so that you can love a prince—” He broke off while he could still master his emotions. Memories flashed before him: the tin cross, the shattered leg, the soldiers’ struggling to save a man already dead.

“Please,” she whispered, “please hear me, Elisha. I never intended any of this. It’s true, all that you’ve said. I met him months ago, in the duke’s own court. He didn’t like the lady in any case, and when we got to talking, I, well, he…”

Rolling his head to the side, Elisha watched her. She bit her lip, brushing away what might have been tears, or merely raindrops. “You can’t think he’ll marry you, Brigit. He’s a prince. He is as far beyond a country lady as—” Elisha laughed, “—as you are beyond me, and further.”

“He will,” she shot back, her head jerking up. “He will marry me, he has sworn it, but we must go slowly, we mustn’t make it seem as if…” she trailed off, indicating the battlefield with a backward look.

“As if he started a war for you?” As he studied the line of her cheek and the glimmer of her eye, he thought he himself might have done it. He would start a war for her, if he thought he could win some day. If the countless men who died meant no more to him than so many cattle. Then, he knew he was wrong: he could never have done this. He had been too close to death for any man’s life to mean so little.

She held a palm over her mouth, nodding slightly. “I never intended any of this. I didn’t understand, when we began, and now it’s too late to take back the things that have been said. It’s not about him and Duke Randall’s daughter, not any more. And neither of us knows how to stop it.”

“I know how! ‘Excuse me, Your Majesty, I lied! I claimed that girl was a whore just so I could marry someone who really is.’” Elisha stared at Brigit, wanting to hurt her, wanting to matter more to her than he ever possibly could.

Trembling, she kept her face lowered, one palm still at her mouth, her other hand gripped in her skirts.

Looking away, Elisha studied the guards, who still took no notice. Some
magic defended them, muting their words and hiding her from watchful eyes. “Does he know what you are?” Elisha asked dully.

“Of course he does. Don’t you see?” A pleading note edged her voice. “Suppose I marry him, we take up his estates, we live as respected nobility, and then I can reveal that I am a witch. Don’t you see what that could mean for all our people? Not just for me, but for any of us. What if they never burn another witch, Elisha? You say that all these men have died for us, for me—what if their deaths enable our people to be freed? Imagine greeting another magus on the street, speaking openly about yourselves, offering your services to those in need without fear of the fire. Earth and sky, Elisha, the vision is so sweet sometimes it tastes like honey on my lips.”

Drawn by the sound of her voice, Elisha saw her green-eyed gaze searching some far distant place, an image only she could see of the world she longed to bring about. “I have no such dreams, Brigit. I’m just a barber sick to death of saving men only to see them dead for such a war.”

“Just a barber? You most certainly are not.” Her gaze snapped back to him with a piercing intensity. “What happened to those arrows, Elisha? Did you see them fall? Oh, I’ve heard that Jesus took the field today, turning back the killing for his faithful flock in this righteous war.”

“There’s nothing righteous about it!” He pulled forward, felt the strain in his arms and slumped back again.

“So what happened to the arrows? If Jesus wasn’t there, who was?” Her lovely lips curled into a smile. “I wish you could go to the river tonight, Elisha. The water is abuzz—how was it done? How can so many objects be transported at the same time, or were they destroyed? And could any magus alive have done such a thing? Who has done it? ‘Is it you?’ ‘Is it you?’” She turned one way and another, miming the astonishment, then stared directly at him. “Is it you?”

He dropped his gaze, the breath catching in his throat. She must be exaggerating; there was nothing so complicated in what he had done. Just the first law, the only one he understood. Anyone could have done it, in fact.

“It
was
you,” she breathed. Brigit inched forward, her knee pressing against his as she spoke. “How did you do it?”

“The rain,” he said simply. “I reached into the rain, just the way you’d reach into the river.”

“But the arrows?”

“I touched them as they passed, the raindrops were my contact.” He frowned. “I thought they were alike, the fall of arrows, the fall of the rain.”

“Affinity,” she laughed, catching her hands together like a girl. “You applied the first law to raindrops and arrows? My goodness, Elisha, how did you think of it?”

“I didn’t think,” he snapped, her glee denying all he had just lived through. “I had to stop the arrows killing one more man. I didn’t think, I just did it.”

In wonder, she clasped his face in her hands. “Oh, Elisha, you have no idea how special you are.”

He cackled, the sound coming harshly even to his own ears. “Does it matter? Tomorrow, I’ll be specially dead.”

“No,” said Brigit sharply. “I won’t let you die. I’ll come up with a plan, you’ll see. I will not let them have you.”

Twisting his head from her grasp, Elisha muttered, “Why bother?”

Gently, firmly, she guided him back. “Because I should have met you first.” Her green eyes flickered over his face and back to his gaze. “I should have met you first.”

Tears stung his eyes, and he longed to shut them, to blink away the pain, but he couldn’t bring himself to seal away the sight of her. Elisha bit his lip to stop it trembling.

She stroked her fingers down his eyebrow, across his cheek where the angel’s feather still warmed him, down to his jaw line, tilting his chin up gently toward her. Leaning forward, she kissed him, light and sweet, her eyes on his.

With a bitter smile, Elisha murmured, “Not yet, you said, that night. Not yet, and now it’s too late.”

“Trust me,” she hissed, both her hands again upon his face. “Trust me, Elisha, I will not let you die.”

Again, she inched forward, her legs widening to straddle his, her breasts nudging against his chest, her breath steaming in the chill rain.

“Don’t do this to me, Brigit,” he moaned.

“Don’t you want me to?” she whispered, her lips brushing his face. “I can help you feel nothing but joy.”

He swallowed hard. “Here, like this? How—”

“It’s a deflection,” she whispered. “They see nothing; they hear nothing.”

Her hands moved down his chest, avoiding the brand, slipping for a moment into the slit the duke’s man had made across his shirt, her touch tingling in a delicious wave through his stomach. There should have been pain, but her touch carried a desperate desire that urged his surrender, her eyes meeting his as the pain receded, her hands infusing him with wanting her. If it was a spell, he welcomed it, searching for anything that made the pain go away—for anything that brought her closer.

Then her hands continued down. The guards had taken his belt and pouch, so she slid up the hem of his shirt unhindered. Her breathing grew ever warmer. She found the tied cord at his waist, and the knot parted at her merest touch.

Brigit gathered her skirt high up to her hips. Somehow, she edged even closer to him, her thighs pressing hot over his. Her arms wrapped around him, then moved upward. Her hands took hold of the post above his head, high over his own bound hands. She pressed herself ever closer.

Elisha caught his breath. One cheek rubbing the rough wood, the other caressed by her exhalation. The heat of her burned through him, bound to the post, half expecting to feel the sweep of her wings.

Then Brigit opened herself to him, drawing him in.

She sighed against his face, her body warm and soft against his until there was no distance between them.

Contact.

A
fter she had left him,
repeating again her exhortation to trust her, Elisha knelt still in a kind of ecstasy. She would save him. The knowledge seemed as true as if it had already happened. Brigit had such power in her; she could come and go unseen, and yet her presence still enveloped him, as if she, too, touched the rain.

It fell now in soft sheets, soaking his long hair already damp with sweat. He parted his lips to the sky, drinking in the remembrance of her. That giddy weakness spread through his body, as if he had worked magic so great it would never let go of him. He lost feeling in his hands, and it didn’t matter. She would save him. Not now, she had said, they were too watchful by night, and her spell could divert attention for only so long. Only long enough to love him.

Elisha opened his eyes to the night, watching the clouds drift over the moon, patches of silver concealed and revealed like the gleam of her eye. He reveled in the sway of her hair against his face, overlaying the angel’s touch with a benediction of her own. Somewhere far distant inside himself, the iron yet burned his skin, and the weeping ache of the brand on his chest throbbed with every beat of his heart even as it slowed back to its proper pace.

To the east, by Duke Randall’s castle on its hill, pale blue seeped into the blackness of the sky. The stealthy hue crept onward, conquering the dark with a gray and growing steel. Steady rain doused the new pair of guards who huddled in their cloaks, arms crossed and feet stamping against the chill.

Shivering, Elisha summoned up the treasure of her warmth. With dawn,
his hope blossomed. There had been enough time, now, for Brigit to make her plan. He couldn’t guess what it might be, or when.

Footfalls brought his head down with a start, expecting to see her there.

Instead, a bulky man with a blank expression consulted briefly with the guards, then came forward. He wore dark leather, stained with darker patches. He walked up to Elisha, reached down a meaty hand and plucked up the bundle of his hair.