Embers (27 page)

But she could not speak.

The sound of the sea, and behind it the silence that could defeat the tongues of two kingdoms, beat against her ears.

She was there.
At first that made him believe he had not truly woken, that he was still trapped in the world of unquiet dreams.

He could sense her breathing, feel the soft fragile line of her body fitted against him. Her hair spilled over his skin like a deeper layer of darkness, smooth as Byzantine silk.

She was asleep.

The blackness was very thick, and then he became aware of flickering light, somewhere. Dim, but still enough to stab through his aching eyes when he turned his head towards it. That movement, so slight and insignificant, brought a pain that could make him scream. Years of merciless training stopped that The same training kicked what was left of his brain into action. But the scenes that it presented to him were chaotic, disjointed, the stuff of the nightmares that had held him in thrall for he knew not how long.

The only tangible fact that his mind could grasp was that Alina was with him, that she was whole and safe.

Mayhap.

He stared round at the blinding dark with its flittering fire edges. Nothing moved. There was such silence, the kind of silence that belonged only to somewhere vast when the deepest hours of the night claimed it for their own. Above the silence was the restless beat of the sea.

There was no one else near them. He knew that much by instinct. There was no danger in the room at all.

He closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, the pain was instant. But the darkness was no longer complete. It was fading before dim silver cloud light, the grey light that only existed in a Bernician dawn, clear, laced with the deep-seeking tendrils of coldness and the awareness of the wind and the ocean outside.

He knew where he was.

Alina's hand was tangled in his hair, her arm flung across his side. He drew breath and even that small movement brought sparks of fire behind his opened eyes. The small, almost imperceptible weight of her arm across his ribs was like lying under an iron band. Mayhap the ribs were cracked, not just bruised. But just like the gash in his arm, it had made no difference to him.

Because he had not been human.

He woke Alina.

"You are back."

She looked at the opaque frozen ice of his eyes.

Of all the things she could have said:
You are well, you are conscious, you are not dead
, or
thanks be to the saints
, she had chosen the worst.

He would know that she could see all that went beyond battle wounds: the fact that he had slipped into another world, another shape.

Why could she not have said,
If you had died, I would have, too. Because that is how much I love you
.

The ice eyes were impenetrable.

"You should not be here."

He pulled away from her, to sit up. To escape her touch. He did not know how hurt he was.

"Do not," she said frantically. "Wait." She slid across the bed with a speed that cared for nothing, out of it, reaching for the draught the king's physician had prepared.

Vervain.

"Just stay still. Take this." She turned, with a precious glass beaker in her hand. "Do not move."

He was lying quite still.

"What did you think I was going to do? Run amok and murder every inhabitant of the palace?"

He watched her with an expression she had never seen. She forced herself not to look away.

"Of course not. I just… The physician prepared a draught for you, the king's physician. He wanted me to give it to you as soon as you woke. It will heal…your body's hurts and help the pain."

He did not move.

"Will you not take it?"

"No."

"But you must." She could see, even in the thin dawn light spreading past the glow of the guttering candles, how the shadows clung round his eyes, the way the skin seemed stretched and thinner over the strong bones of his face.

"You must. Please."

"Is this where you ask me to do this for your sake?"

Her hand tightened on the glass with the memory of that night in the forest and her fear, and the first touch of his body. How she had yearned for him, despite their separation. He had taken her fear and released her from it. As he had released her from all the bonds of her past.

She looked at the price of that in his eyes.

"No. I will not ask such a thing of you again. Not for my sake."

The icy cold struck through her rumpled clothes. It had to be that which made her shake inside. Not the ice in his eyes. Because there was naught else she could expect, after what had happened.

What she wanted to do was to set him free of his bonds the way he had freed her. She wanted it to be over for him. But it was not. The nightmares still had their place inside the shadows of his eyes. Vervain slopped over the bedcovers.

She turned away.

"There is wine if you would rather have that." She found the silver-chased flask, picked up a pale green glass goblet decorated with blue tracery and poured. "It is Frankish." She turned back to the bed.

He took the glass out of her hand. The strong fingers bruised from the battle did not touch hers.

"There is food, too, if you could—"

"No."

The linen tied round his forearm and the strapping across his ribs caught the light.

She sat down on the wall bench. The cold in the room would kill her.

"King Cenred came to see you. They all came. The whole palace, I think. Modan. Your people—"
Not my father. Not Cunan
.

The words burning her mind forced their way out of her mouth. "I thought you would drown in the water."

"Aye."

That was all he said. No explanation and no denial. The coldness in the room was lethal.

"Why did you not drown?"

"It was not finished."

Her hands twisted. "And now it is?"

"Yes."

She looked round at the richly furnished bower, glowing in the firelight and the pearly dawn. It was not cold at all, not really, it was just her.

This was his place, everything, the English tapestries that hung on the walls, the English shapes of the carving on the cushioned wooden chair, the serpents etched in niello on the oil lamp, the Northumbrian air, all that was his: what he belonged to.

Give him your strength
. The vast palace seemed to breathe round them like the sound of the sea. This was like his home. He still had possession of his home. If it, in turn, possessed him and all his thoughts instead of loss and treachery, then perhaps, just perhaps, he might find the peace that should always have been his.

Lindwood. Named not only for the linden trees in its woodlands but also because it meant a warrior's shield.

She stood up. Her fingers traced the intricate curving lines carved into the bedpost. She tried to smile.

"The king will give you a victory feast, and rewards, as you should have. You will need extra horses to carry home all your honour— What is it? What is the matter?"

"Naught."

She stared at the strained mask of his face.

"Let me call the physician—" But his eyes stopped her.

"What of your father?"

Her hands tightened on the carved wood until the chiselled edges dug into her flesh. She raised her head. Her eyes met the frozen waste of his and her voice took on the shape of the only weapon it had left, the bright-steel edge of irony she had learned from Brand.

"They are holding a mass for his deliverance tomorrow. King Cenred will be there. The king wants to give thanks that his ally was saved from the traitor Goadel who tried to kill him when he refused to aid the rebellion. It is a very good tale and everyone pretends to believe it. If you were well enough, they would ask you to go."

"I will go."

"What? How can you say that?"

"Because I would not have all that has happened be for naught."

"Oh, it will not be for naught. My father always survives. Cenred will let him go back to Pictland because it is too difficult to do otherwise. Because he wants to keep the peace treaty with Nechtan while he sorts out his own kingdom. Maol of the Picts will win. He can do nothing else."

"Not exactly. He is not going to try forcing Nechtan's hand again in a hurry."

"You do not know what he is."

"Alina, he has paid. The man nearly died."

She kept her gaze on the linen strapping, the bruised hands.

"So did you. He acted on his own choice, you did not."

"My decisions are my own. Always. Besides, I did not die."

Yes, you did. lean see it in your eyes. He made you do something you loathed and it haunts you with the power of hell-craft, Hell's power.

"Where is he?"

"Maol? I know not, neither do I care." The wood scraped against her hand.

"You have not spoken to him at all?"

"I have naught to say."

The cold, fiercely-wrought face turned stone hard.

"Find him. Bring him here."

"
What
?" How could he ask that? How could he expect that of her? How could he not know what was in her thoughts? "Nay, that I will not."

"Then I will."

He moved, making her cry out with all the suppressed fear and bitterness in her heart.

"You cannot—"

The deep hidden currents below the ice in his eyes were suddenly and shockingly visible.

"Nay. That word no longer has meaning. It is no longer possible to say what I cannot do."

She turned, eyes blind, heart blind with the rage inside her. She wrenched open the door, blundered against someone coming in. He caught her, hands clutching at her flailing arms. She saw the bright gold ring with the stag-shaped device of the house of Nechtan, hands as bruised and cut as Brand's.

"You bastard."

"Daughter—"

"Do not call me that. Not after what you have done. I am no child of yours."

"No. Perhaps you are not."

The hands set her on her feet. It was the restraint of that gesture as much as the words that got through the wall of her fury.

"What…what do you mean?"

"That I know not whether you are of my getting or no. Is that something your mother did not tell you among the many things she said?"

The world shifted out of shape. She took a step backwards, then another, all the way back across the room until her spinejarred against the wall. She stared at the arrogant, familiar, brown-bearded face. Her father.

"I do not believe you." She looked away, turned her head, primitive instinct, toward the one source of comfort there had ever been in her life.

Brand knew. Even though she had not. She could see it in the edge of pity that lapped at the coldness of his eyes. If he knew, then it was true. But he had no way of knowing.

Unless he had only guessed. The way he could see through people's inmost hearts to all the things about themselves they were too afraid to show. The things he must see in her face now.

"Alina."

His voice. His fierce body, heavy with muscle, the stuff of remembered dreams, moving across the bed in a tangle of finely woven wool and linen. He would come to her. He would touch her, and if she had his touch then somehow all would be well.

But the outstretched hand did not come to her. It reached across the small table to pour wine for her out of the silver-chased flask.

"I will do that." A broad hand with the Pictish emblem snaked forward to land on the flask. She had not even heard her father, Maol of the Picts, move.

The air in the bower suddenly seemed to vibrate, tingling with the primitive challenge that flared with the speed of lightning between men.

She had seen enough of such sudden volatile confrontations in her father's hall. Always, before, her father had stopped them, not begun them. Because for all his bullying, he was never reckless. Except when her mother—a small strangled sound escaped her throat. Both men turned.

It was Brand's hand that withdrew.

The sound of the rich wine filling the costly glass was like the clear running water of the stream.

"Take it," said her father.

"No."

"Alina! You will take it. You will drink it," shouted Maol of the Picts, blustering in his accustomed way, browbeating everyone to his will. "You will listen." The harsh voice choked on something. "Please."

The wine burned her throat, but nothing scorched through her mind like that single unfamiliar word. She turned her head, watching the stranger who had said it pace up and down the bower, awkwardly because of yesterday's stiffening hurts. His fault. Her mind screamed it. But she still watched him.

Yet now he had her attention and he knew it, he said nothing. The pacing stopped in a swirl of decorated wool.

"It was her fault," began Maol, dropping into Celtic. "My wife betrayed me, the—"

"Nay. Remember to whom you speak, and why." The same language, lightened by the tones of Strath-Clota and tinged with Bernician, cut off the word. The voice held as much cracking ice as the blank-gold eyes. The challenge that had been there before stretched the air until it was unbreathable. Maol stepped backwards like someone who had taken a body blow.

"Tell me." Her voice hardly found substance in the dangerously thin air. "Tell me whether I am your child."

"I do not know." The air split.

Someone was holding her hand. She was still sitting on the bench and nothing had changed, not really. Things were just as they had always been. It was only that she had not understood their shapes before.

She blinked away the humiliating dark spots that had formed before her eyes. Weakness because she was so weary.

The heaviness of the hand curved around hers.

"Brand…" The thick gold ring engraved with the stag's mask bit into her skin. Not Brand's hand. Of course not. Brand's warmth was gone. She had no right to it.

"Alina."

She looked at her father's hand. No, not her father's. Probably. No one quite knew. Maol's hand. She did not know what to call him.

"Finish the wine."