Embers (12 page)

"Because they wanted to hang me?"

He moved back, just slightly, control there, cloaking the fire beneath.

"No. I did not hate it."

She stared at the huge, shadowed shape. How could he not hate it? The way he must hate her.

"But how did you survive it? Knowing that your life meant so little that it could be gone at any moment?"

The gold eyes glittered in reflected firelight.

"That is how I did survive it—by the moment. How does one survive anything?" His voice was fathoms dark and full of twisting shadows like the air.

"Besides, nothing is permanent. Sorrow and joy follow each other as hunger follows the feast Even life is only lent."

That was what all the English believed in their hearts, but the way he said it made her own heart ache inside her chest.

"So many people have wanted to kill me over the years." The truth of that sent shivers coursing across her skin. So many—Osred, Hun and now Hun's brother outside these walls. And—
her
brother?

Kin ties…

She heard the tormented movement of a body that must ache both with physical pain and all the fires of fury. But when he spoke, his voice was lighter, the darkness pushed aside.

"At least the Britons of Strath-Clòta had a valid reason for wanting my life. In those days I was constrained to take my turn at representing the late King Osred. That would be enough to make anyone feel like hanging me."

The sudden lightness held a glimpse of what she longed for. The subtle paths of a mind that understood all the noble and dishonourable, selfless and selfish reasons that compelled people to act as they did. It was that understanding that had made her cast her fate into his hands without the slightest reserve.

It was that understanding she had to defeat now.

"I was so happy as a child at Strath-Clòta. I—" She paused. The truth had to be used sparingly now. She took a breath that swallowed the child's feelings.

"But unlike my mother, I knew where my destiny should lie. I would be a peace weaver. I would do all that I could for my father and my uncle and for Pictland. I would make a success where my mother had failed. I would have…" She could not think of a word that could fit with the monstrous image of Hun. She took a breath that almost choked her. "I would have wealth and security and…power."

The air froze. There was not a sound. She might have been the only person in the room, but she was not. She could feel him. She could feel him move closer. Without a sound.

"Is that what you wanted from Hun? Power?"

The thread of truth was broken. She held herself just as still as him.

"That is exactly what I wanted from Hun. That was what he could give me. I know that I temporarily lost sight of it when I was with you, and believe me, there is nothing I regret more deeply than that…" Her hands bunched themselves into fists. The remains of her nails dug against her palms.

"But in the end I came to my senses. In the end I suppose we both had to. I went back to Hun and all was well."

"All was well?"

His rough-smooth voice was the deepest whisper in the dark. Something felt with more senses than just hearing. He was so close that the loose, newly-washed fall of his hair brushed her throat, soft as the touch of an angel's wing. And over her, the shadow of his shape.

Her skin shivered.

"Was it so?"

The shadow of his form overwhelmed her and her mind was spinning out of control with her need for him. The hunger of the body, the hunger for completion he had taught her here in this room was tearing through flesh.

He was not hers. He could never be. She forced deadly words out into the breathlessly charged darkness of their shared bed.

"Yes, it was so." No need to try and make her voice harsh. It sounded like the croaking of the horn-beaked raven after battle. "All was well with Hun and with me and at last I was doing my duty to my father's land. And I would have my place in the world. Until you came. Just like last time. Only until you came."

The shadow above her gathered itself, changed shape. Cold air against her throat where there should have been the falling softness of his hair. But behind that coldness was the ice heat of him. She knew the anger was there, deep inside him. She knew all of its causes and she could only guess at its power.

If he had been Hun he would have killed her for what she had done. She thought his body was stronger than Hun's. She knew it was. She had touched it too intimately. She had learned the beginnings of its power. The rest was a matter of instinct.

Of course there were other ways for men to take their revenge. She had wanted him before, when he had held her in his arms. Her body had shown him. But now there could be only hate in his heart.

Only hate. His body above her blocked out the light.

She thought of her father and her mother, and the blackness was tearing its way into her mind—

"Then sleep well, this time, Alina. You will need strength."

"What… Where are you going…"

There was air above her. Emptiness. Emptiness that would kill her soul.

"We leave for Bamburgh in five days. Tell your brother, the Strathclyde Hound. He needs to be ready. So do you."

Her clothes were gone.

Alina blinked in the half-light The dark shapes spread out before the fire to dry after her unhandy attempt at washing were not there.

She sat up. The thick coverings of Brand's bed pooled round her and the cold struck her skin. She hugged her arms protectively around herself. But there was no one to see.

She slept alone.

She had scarce seen Brand for the last three days. She did not know where he was or what he did.

She stared at the space where the tattered shapes of her tunic and undergown should be and then she saw it.
Them
. A pair of saddlebags draped over the foot of her bed.

Her skin shivered with an awareness beyond cold. Recognition. Even though it was scarce light. Even though the fine leather bags with the silver buckles had had their existence in another life.

They were hers.

They held all the things she had taken with her on her mad flight from Hun. Her only possessions. She scrambled across the bed and ripped open the buckles. An expanse of fine, deep blue linen trimmed with silk ribbons spilled out. She stared at it. It shimmered in a mixture of dawn light and firelight from the hearth.

It was beautiful. It had made her look beautiful. Or so…people had said.

So she had kept it, her fine and costly dress, even though it was totally impractical for a dangerous journey into exile. It had been the first thing Brand had seen her in.

He had looked at her and the heat in his eyes had scorched inside her. No one had ever looked at her like that before. No one ever would again.

She buried her face in its soft folds. The silk from Byzantium was like cool gossamer against her face.

Why was it there? Why had he kept everything that was hers? Everything that she had been unable to take with her when she had fled from him into the south?

She delved deeper. It was all there: cloak and gowns, stockings and underlinen and even, unexpected blessing from heaven, a pair of shoes that would fit.

She put them on.

She did not dress herself in the silk, but in a fine wool tunic of forest-green over a gown of paler green. It was warm, soft against her skin.

Without the slightest regret for the wimple, she fastened a delicate linen head rail round her hair with a ribbon of twisted coloured thread.

There was no such thing as a mirror in a monastery, but… She realized what he had done.

He had forced her to recreate the person she had been before she had abandoned him to ride south. Perhaps even the person she had been before she had met him. She began to shake.

"Will you come, lady?"

Duda, pounding on the door fit to wake the dead. She cast one wild glance around the room as though she might still find the protection of her plain nun's clothing.

She would have to go out looking like this.

She opened the door. Duda stared. Then he turned away.

She followed him into the courtyard.

Brand was waiting for her. His eyes, when they lighted on the ghost of what had been, held the fire that had called her blood across the painted torchlit hall at Bamburgh. But this time it could only be from anger, not desire. Her hand went instinctively to the frivolous scrap of veil around her head, drawing its edges closer, as though she could hide her face from him.

"Ready to go?"

He was striding towards her. Her gaze took in the fine riding boots, the swirling folds of the dark cloak pinned with gold and garnets at his left shoulder. The decorated scabbard swinging from his jewelled belt—

"You cannot," she shouted, straight across the cold-tinged dawn air that divided them. "You cannot mean to go now. Today." Was he mad? He was not well enough yet. He would kill himself—

Behind him were his men, one holding the bridle of the great black horse he rode, another leading the smaller grey that had been hers on the ride here. Farther back, she caught the gaudy flash of Cunan's chequered cloak.

"Change of plan. It seems to be upsetting people." The bright gold eyes flicked carelessly from her to the press of men and horses. Bright red crossed with blue caught the sun.

We leave for Bamburgh in five days. Tell your brother, the Strathclyde Hound. He needs to be ready.

Her own gaze, guilt-studied reflex that she could have killed herself for, flew to the bright slash of colour. The disturbing encounter with her half brother in the herb garden was stinging at the back of her mind. She shut it out.

"Well?"

She could feel her face lose its colour, go stiff. She tried to find the mask that had always served to hide what she felt. Practice had made it second nature for her to do that. Easy. But not with him.

"Come. We have a long way to go."

He extended a gloved hand and someone tossed him the reins of her mount. He closed the small distance between them, dragging the skittish horse behind as though it were no more substantial than a spider's web. His feet in their heavy boots struck the hard-packed earth of the courtyard with dangerous precision.

She waited until he was so close that what she said would belong to the two of them. She said the only piece of truth she had behind her mask. Even though there was little chance of her being heeded.

"I meant only that it is too soon for you to travel. Because of the wound. You could cause damage, make yourself ill again—"

"You were thinking of me?"

She kept her gaze on him. She refused to look at the chequered cloak. She did not know whether the mask was not in place, or whether it was too well fixed, but his eyes had hardened into ice.

"You should be thinking of your brother."

"What?"

She could see the gaudy cloak advancing towards them out of the press. She thought of the secrets in its wearer's head.

"Cunan…"

"Who? Oh, I am sorry. Did I not clarify which brother? I meant Modan."

Bastard.

Cunan kept walking towards them. He would hear.

"I hope you have replenished the medicine bag with herbs."

The sweet scent of horehound in the monastery garden…

Cunan with his dangerous thoughts and his dangerous whiplash strength. Cunan with his terrible vulnerability.

"Did your brother help you?"

Cunan's footsteps came to a stop. "It is as well she has someone who cares for her welfare. She needs her kin. We have discussed that, have we not, Alina?"

Some detached part of her brain, the part that made calculations, told her that it was just as well if Brand believed her false. It was what she was trying to achieve. That part of her brain made her smile, in the way that had lashed her father and uncle into fury.

"Aye."

Cunan's smile held an exactly equal measure of warmth.

"So did you ask him?"

"No."

"Why not?"

Her heart began beating out of time. She tried to widen the smile so that neither of them would guess what was inside her. But she thought her eyes must hold the wildness of something hunted. She could not bear it. "I will not."

"Then I will—" Whatever Cunan would do was obliterated in a blur of grey. Brand caught the reins before Cunan could be trampled to death.

"Sorry. The horse is restive. Can I help you up?"

"Cunan…" She stepped between. Because she never learned. The instant of stillness she created gave Cunan the chance he needed.

"Ask him," screamed her brother, rolling in the mud of the stable yard. "Ask him for the truth." He got as far as his knees. "Ask the Northumbrian whether it was me who found out where you were when everyone else had given you up for lost. Ask him whether that is true."

Not a word would come out of her mouth.

"It is true." Bright gold, achingly clear, locked with her gaze.

"I told you—" Cunan had gained his feet, mud streaking the garishly dyed cloak. "It was me who knew. It was me who spoke to the traveller whose arm you healed. It was me who guessed. He described you."

The goldsmith. The man with the broken arm she had helped the abbess to set. His gratitude…

"He could have been describing any woman whose charms had witched sense. But there is one thing you can never disguise." Cunan was reaching towards her, his face alight with triumph. "The man saw your useless hand."

She snatched her left hand away before her brother could touch it, before his fingers could grasp the ugliness of badly-healed bones and scarred flesh.

She stepped backwards. Only one step. It was quite controlled. The mask of cold indifference was in place. But even so, her head turned.

Not towards Cunan.

"Is that how it was?" Useless question. He had already told her it was true. Brand was not a person who lied.

"It is true. I have told you. I believed you were dead." The eyes clear as melted gold, just as hot, held her.

"Besides, Cunan's sources of information are impeccable. Your injured goldsmith was selling his wares to Goadel."