Holder of Lightning (24 page)

“No,” Jenna answered. “And they won’t marry me against my will. I won’t allow it.”

Sinna laughed at that, her voice husky. “Then you do live in a different age. In my time, you were fortunate if you married for love. I was lucky enough to have loved once: my dear, poor Ailen, who gave me this.” She lifted the cloch, and at the same time, Jenna felt Lámh Shábhála pulse on her own chest, as if the cloch remembered the touch. “But the second time . . . Well, a Holder is a political prize, and Teádor Mac Ard was Rí.”

It gave Jenna a strange satisfaction to learn that Sinna hadn’t fallen in love with Teádor, as Padraic had told them, that it had only been a marriage of convenience. “You were the Holder of Lámh Shábhála. How could they make you marry him?”

Sinna shrugged. “I suppose they couldn’t, not if I utterly refused. But a Holder who is a woman must also know how to play the game, if she wishes to stay the Holder. A Banrion is a powerful thing, too, and to be both Holder and Banrion . . .” Sinna smiled. “Teádor and I found love elsewhere, but we were well suited to be Rí and Banrion. What we had wasn’t love, but we understood each other well enough, and for the most part we both wanted the same things. That was enough. And when my daughter was old enough, we used her to strengthen an alliance.” She sighed and smiled inwardly, then her gaze focused on Jenna, who saw that one eye was cloudy and white with a cataract. “Why did you call me back, First Holder? What is it you wanted to ask me? Ask, and let this ghost go back to sleep.”

Jenna flipped away the bed quilts. Suppressing a shiver as the cold air touched her, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and walked to where the old woman stood. “I’m First, as you said. And the other clochs na thintrí aren’t yet opened. I want . . . I want to know what will happen when Lámh Shábhála is full and wakes the other stones.”

“No one has told you?”

“They hint, but they don’t say. Or perhaps they truly don’t know,” Jenna answered. “I’ve even talked to the Ald here. He says he doesn’t know—it’s been so long since the mage-lights came that the knowledge is lost.”

Sinna sighed. Her hand lifted as if she were about to touch Jenna, then dropped back. “So they do use you,” she said. Her voice was soft. “Your time isn’t so much different, then. I wasn’t a First, Daughter. When I held Lámh Sháb hála, the clochs had been active for generations and generations, nearly all the way back to when the first Daoine came to this land. I can’t help you with that . . .” She stopped, turning slightly from Jenna and holding her hands out to the image of the fire, as if warming them. “Tell me, did I give the cloch to Bryth, or did someone else take it?”

“No,” Jenna answered. “Bryth was the next Holder, and her son after that, your grandson.”

Sinna nodded, firelight reflecting on her wrinkled skin and over the coarse gray hair. “That’s good to know,” she said. “It’s a comfort, even though I’ll forget as soon as you release me. I’m going to Tuath Infochla in a fortnight to meet her, and I intend to pass it to her then. So it seems I manage to do so.”

“Another Mac Ard would like to hold Lámh Shábhála now,” Jenna said, and with that Sinna turned back to her. “Ahh . . .” she breathed. “So the line continues.”

“Not Bryth’s,” Jenna told her. “Your son’s. Slevin.”

Her face changed with that, as if she’d tasted sour fruit. “Slevin,” she said, and the word sounded harsh and bitter.

“Strange how distant we can become from our own children . . .” She stopped. “Jenna, do you feel that?”

“What?”

Sinna turned, her half-blind eyes peering toward the south window of the room. “Perhaps I can teach you something after all. See with the cloch, Jenna. Imagine . . . imagine that your skin is alive with its power, that it’s like a shell around you, expanding, and you can feel everything that it touches, can see the shape of it as the power within you wraps around it. Can you do that?”

“Aye . . .” Jenna breathed. “I can.” Perhaps it was be cause Lámh Shábhala remembered Sinna’s touch, perhaps it was because Sinna’s mind and hers were open to each other, but Jenna could feel her presence expand, filling the room so that in her mind she could see everything in it as clearly as if it were day. She let it expand farther, moving her awareness outward.

And stopped with a gasp.

“Aye,” Sinna said. “Even the dead can feel that threat.”

Outside, on the wall, a dark form crept upward in the night, hands already on the balcony and death lurking in his heart. The intruder pulled himself silently over the rail—with her eyes, Jenna saw nothing but the closed doors leading to the balcony, shut against the night and the cold air. But with the cloch, she saw the man crouch, then stand, and she saw the small crossbow in his hand and the quarrel smeared with brown poison.

“You see,” Sinna said softly. “Lámh Shábhála can do more than throw lightnings. Watch; let me use the cloch . . .”

One of the balcony doors swung open, and a night-wrapped form slipped in with a breath of cold wind. At the same time, Jenna felt the stone around her neck respond as the ghost of Sinna moved forward, her body changing as Lámh Shábhála’s energy surged through her, her shape suddenly that of Jenna herself, young and brown-haired, the torc gleaming around her neck. “You!” Sinna shouted, and the intruder turned, firing the crossbow in the same motion. The quarrel went through Sinna’s chest, burying itself in the plaster behind her. Sinna laughed, and she was herself again, an old woman. Behind the dark wrapping of the assassin’s head, his eyes were wide, and he looked from the ghost of Sinna to Jenna, standing near the bed. A knife flashed in his hand, but before he could move, Jenna felt Sinna’s mind close over her own and—like a skilled teacher’s hand guiding a student’s—she let energy burst forward from the cloch, shaping the force as it flew, and the assassin was picked up as if in a giant’s hand and slammed against the wall, grunting in pain and shock. A wisp of the cloch’s power ripped the cloth from his head, so that Jenna could see his face.

“Do you recognize him?” Sinna asked.

Jenna shook her head—his features were those of a stranger.

“Then he was hired, and he has a name to tell you.” The man was struggling, trying to push away from the wall and move, but Jenna held him easily. “There, you have him,” Sinna said, and Jenna felt Sinna’s mind leave hers.

“I’ll tell you nothing,” the man grated out, writhing in the grip of the cloch. His gaze kept slipping from Jenna to the ghostly image of Sinna.

“No?” Sinna said. “Tighten the power around him, Jenna. Go on. Squeeze him, Jenna. Make him feel you.”

Jenna did as Sinna instructed, imagining the tendrils of Lámh Shábhála’s energy snaking around him, pulling tight like a noose. The man grimaced, the lines around his eyes and forehead deepening, and he spat defiantly.

“Good. I like defiance,” Sinna said. “It increases the pleasure when he finally gasps out the name we want. I wonder if he’s ever felt his ribs crack inside him, snapping like a dry branch into a dozen knives of bone. I wonder if he’ll whimper like a kicked dog when the eyes pop from his skull, or scream as his ballocks are crushed and ruined.”

Sinna/Jenna yanked at the cords of energy, pulling them tighter still. The man moaned, and Jenna glanced at Sinna. “I can’t—” she began, appalled, but with the shift of attention, the assassin momentarily pulled away from his invisible bonds. Before Jenna could respond, the knife still in his hand moved. With a cry, he plunged it into his own chest. Blood welled around the wound, and flecks of red foamed at his lips. He wailed, his eyes rolled upward.

He fell. The wind from the balcony brought the fetid smell of piss and bowels.

Sinna sniffed. “Not a common assassin, then, but a loyal and devoted retainer, to kill himself rather than talk,” she said. Her voice sounded eerily emotionless. “I would guess that someone’s becoming impatient.”

Jenna gaped in horror at the foul corpse on the floor. “Would you have done that, what you told him you would do?”

Sinna laughed. “If he had come to me, in my time, rather than to you? Aye, I would have done that and more to stay alive. I
have
done it. And so will you, Daughter, if you want to remain the Holder.”

“No, I won’t,” Jenna said, the denial automatic. Sinna only smiled.

“Jenna!”
Maeve’s voice called from outside the room, and she heard footsteps pounding toward her. Jenna pulled the torc from her neck, and Sinna vanished as Maeve and Mac Ard rushed in, Mac Ard with his sword drawn. He stopped at the doorway, gazing at the crumpled body of the assassin. He hurried over to the man as Maeve went to Jenna. He prodded the assassin’s body with the tip of his sword, then knelt and pressed his fingertips against the neck just under the jaw, grimacing at the smell. She saw him glance at the small crossbow on the floor near him. “Dead,” he said, rising again. “And by his own hand, it would seem. Jenna, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she answered, trying to keep her voice from trembling. Her arm ached, burning cold, and there was ice in the pit of her stomach, making her want to vomit, but she forced it down, forced herself to stand erect and pretend that she was calm. Later, she could allow herself to cry at the remembered fear and the death. Later, she could run to the andúilleaf and its relief. But not now . . .

“What happened here?”

Jenna pointed to the open door to the balcony, then to the quarrel embedded in the wall. “He climbed up from outside and shot that at me, but . . .” She paused, considering her words. She pulled away from her mam’s embrace. “I knew he was coming,” she said, more strongly, “and I swept the bolt aside with the cloch, then held him. He killed himself rather than be captured; if I’d suspected he would do that, I would have stopped him, but I was too late. No doubt he didn’t want me to know who hired him.” She watched Mac Ard’s face carefully as she spoke—
certainly it wasn’t Padraic, not after all he’s done. He’s had a hundred better opportunities if he wanted them . . .
Yet she watched. Mac Ard was frowning and serious, but she had seen him speaking with the Rí and knew that he could keep his thoughts hidden from his face. She couldn’t stop the paranoia from creeping back into her mind.
He could easily tell an assassin where and when to find me.

“You ‘knew he was coming’?” he said, his head tilted, one eyebrow raised.

“Lámh Shábhála can do more than throw lightnings,” she stated:
Sinna’s words . . .
His eyes narrowed at that; his mouth tightened under the dark beard and he turned away from her. He went to the quarrel and pulled it from the wall, sniffing at the substance daubed over the point. “Aye, ’tis poisoned,” Jenna told him.

There was anger and fury in Mac Ard’s face, but Jenna didn’t know if it was at the attempt, or at the failure of it. “The garrison will comb the grounds, and those on watch tonight will be punished for allowing this to happen,” he said. “I’m sorry, Jenna. I will have gardai sent here immediately. This won’t happen again.”

How convenient that would be . . . to have his own people around me all the time.
“Thank you, Tiarna, but I don’t need gardai,” Jenna said firmly.

“Jenna—” Maeve began, but Jenna shook her head.

“No, Mam, Tiarna,” she insisted. “Get rid of . . . that.” She pointed at the body. “Call the servants in to clean up the mess. But no gardai. I don’t need them.” She lifted Lámh Shábhála. “Not while I hold this.”

20

Love and Weapons

“S
O far,”Jennasaid,“theytellmethattheythinkthe assassin was sent from Connachta.”

“Jenna . . .” Coelin’s arm went around her shoulders at that. For a moment, Jenna tensed, then she relaxed into the embrace, moving closer to him as they walked slowly along the garden path. The planted array in the keep’s outer courtyard rustled dry and dead in the winter cold, and a chill wind blew in off the lough, tossing gray clouds quickly across the sky and shaking occasional spatters of rain from them.

Coelin had arrived early for the feast celebrating the win ter solstice, the Festival of Láfuacht, to be held that night. Aoife had come running into Jenna’s apartment, bursting with the news that the “handsome harper” was in the keep and asking about her, and Jenna had sent Aoife to fetch him. Jenna could feel the warmth of Coelin’s body along her side, and it felt comfortable and right. She knew there were eyes watching them, and that tongues would be clucking about the Holder and a lowly entertainer (and no doubt saying how “common blood will tell”), but she didn’t care. “You sound as if you don’t believe them,” Coelin said.

“I don’t,” Jenna said firmly. “What good would it do for Connachta to have me killed here, where someone else would simply become the Holder? That makes no sense unless the assassin himself was to be the new Holder, yet he wasn’t from the Riocha families.”

“But how else could someone from Tuath Connachta get the stone? You said none of the Riocha from Tuath Connachta are here. If that assassin was so loyal that he’d kill himself rather than be caught alive, he might be loyal enough to take the cloch to his employer without keeping it himself.”

“Maybe. That’s what Tiarna Mac Ard said, too.” Jenna shivered as the wind shook water from the bare branches of the trees. “I don’t think so. I think he was hired by someone here.”

“Who?” Coelin asked.

“I don’t know. But I’ll find out.”

“Finding out could be dangerous.”

“Not finding out is more dangerous, Coelin.” She stopped, moving so that they stood face to face, his arm still encircling her shoulder. His face seemed bewildered and innocent with all she had told him, and she knew that she would have looked the same a few months ago, thrown without warning into this situation where agendas were veiled and hidden, and the stakes of the game so high. Looking at him, she saw reflected back just how much she had changed in the intervening months.
He is a harper, and nothing more—right now singing is enough for him and all that he thinks about. If he has ambition, ’tis to be a Songmaster like Curragh, who plucked him away from a life of servitude.