Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2) (16 page)

“No, Máister.” That was easy for Meriel to imagine. Her da would be disappointed and quietly sad, but her mam’s reaction . . . well, that wasn’t anything Meriel would care to endure. Meriel felt the fist slowly release its grip on her intestines: at least it seemed that Máister Kirwan was going to say nothing about this. But never to see Dhegli again, never to swim with him again, wasn’t something she would accept.

“I’m sorry, Máister,” Meriel said. It was easy enough to sound contrite—the tremble in her voice and the shimmering in her eyes were both genuine, even if the sentiment was not.

“You should be,” Máister Kirwan answered sternly. He rose from the chair, going to the door. “You’ll go immediately and join An-tUasal MacCoughlin and Bráthair O’Therreagh at the midden. Perhaps you’ll remember the stench the next time you’re tempted to take a late night stroll.” Meriel opened her mouth to protest, then shut it again at the look Máister Kirwan gave her. He opened the door. “That’s all, Bantiarna MacEagan.”

Meriel grimaced. She rose from the chair with a sigh, bowing her head to Siúr Meagher and the Máister, then walked out into the cold corridor. A trio of acolytes approached, heading for class and looking curiously at her before they noticed the Máister and scurried quickly past. The door shut firmly behind her.

Meriel did something she hadn’t done in years: she stuck out her tongue at the wooden planks. The gesture did little to make her feel better.

Máister Kirwan sighed, his hand still on the door handle. “Obviously I need to replace Siúr O’hAllmhurain as ward of the Women’s Wing, since she’s failed in that capacity. Actually, it’s
my
failing in choosing her and I’ll tell her so. And I need to find a quick replacement.”

“I’ll do it,” Siúr Meagher said, then raised her eyebrows as she slowly clenched and unclenched her left hand on her lap, grimacing at the stubborn ache in her knuckles. “That is what you were going to ask me, isn’t it?”

“Aye, it is. Thank you, Alexia.” He nodded toward her hand. “And thank you for this morning. I know your hands have been bothering you.”

“It’s fine,” she told him. “The joints are stiff in the morning, that’s all.” She put her right hand over her left. “Siúr O’hAllmhurain’s going to blame Meriel for this; she’s not one to keep a grudge secret, or not to act on it in some way.”

“Actions have consequences. If Meriel hasn’t learned that already, it’s time she started. I just hope the consequences aren’t . . . well . . .” He ran a hand over his skull from forehead to crown, as if brushing back the hair that once had been there. “I’m going to have to send the Banrion a report on this,” he said. “Jenna’s
not
going to be happy.”

“You can’t lock the girl in a closet for her whole life, Mundy,” Siúr Meagher told him. “This is an issue we have with
all
the acolytes. How many their ages are already married, already well into their adult lives? They come here at the most difficult time in their lives and we ask them to give up everything their peers have. They
will
find ways to listen to their emotions.”

“I know that, Alexia. But that won’t matter if someone needs to be blamed, and I’m the one who’s ultimately responsible for looking after her. I wish it were something as simple as a youthful infatuation, but it’s not—not when it’s the daughter of the Banrion and First Holder we’re talking about. It was bad enough that she was flirting with the MacCoughlin boy, but that was relatively harmless and easy enough to watch. The Saimhóir ...”

“Even Lámh Shábhála can’t stop her from growing up. She’s going to fall in—and out—of love, Mundy; she’s going to fight against the restraints we ‘old folks’ put on her. That’s what happens at her age. It’s part of the reason the Banrion sent her here. Banrion MacEagan knows you and trusts you, Mundy. She’ll understand.”

“I hope so,” Máister Kirwan answered. He managed a wan grin. “But even if she does, it doesn’t make things any easier. After talking with Jenna, I was most worried about attacks from the outside, and that’s what we’ve been watching for. Now I wonder if we weren’t looking the wrong way for the danger.”

T
HE MIDDEN was a malodorous, room-sized hole in the keep into which all the kitchen scraps were dropped. In addition, two latrines also deposited their visitors’ aromatic leavings into the space. The midden was cleaned out twice a year, spring and fall, and the black, rich compost from it mixed into the soil of the fields behind the keep.

It was the dirtiest, nastiest work Meriel had ever done.

Bráthair O’Therreagh, who also taught the slow magics to the fourth- and fifth-year acolytes, didn’t seem to be bothered by the horrendous stench that wafted out from the refuse heap. He fingered a small leather bag corded around his neck, and handed two similar pouches to Meriel and Thady. “Weed of sticklebur, sage, and mint,” he said, “with a spell of enhancement on it. I don’t smell a thing, myself. A good thing I made a few extra, eh?” To Meriel, the charms only seemed to make the air around her sickly sweet—the overpowering mint made her nearly as nauseous as the odor of corruption wafting from the midden. Wooden-bladed shovels were placed in their hands. “Máister Kirwan suggested that the two of you start inside; shovel the muck out the door, and the others will load it into the carts. When we have the carts filled, we’ll take it out to the fields and spread it. The faster everyone works, the sooner we’re done. Go on, now . . .”

There were six other acolytes working with them—four boys, two girls, all second- and third-years and none of them anyone Meriel knew well—each with one of Bráthair O’Therreagh’s bags around his or her neck. They didn’t look any happier to be there than Meriel; she wondered what they’d done to get this nasty duty. “I’ll need to burn these clothes and bury the boots afterward,” Meriel muttered as they stepped through the door into the darkness of the midden.

“And scrub off the top layer of your skin with that gritty brown soap of Siúr O’Flagherty’s,” Thady responded, “the one that leaves your skin looking like it’s been boiled.” He plunged his shovel into the mountain of black filth in front of them, the blade entering with a wet
kchunk.
He flung the heap of refuse back through the door. (“Eewwww,” someone groaned outside. “That’s
nasty
. . .”) “I’m sorry, Meriel,” he said. “I really am. I didn’t intend this. I hope you know that.”

Meriel plunged her own shovel in and sent another sopping bladeful through the door. At least very little light filtered into the midden—she couldn’t see much of what was squelching under her feet. “I doubt it would have made much difference. It wasn’t you at all. Even if you hadn’t followed me, Máister Kirwan would still have been waiting for me. You just happened to get caught in the same trap.” She tried to rekindle the irritation she’d felt toward Thady in Máister Kirwan’s chambers, but it was gone, buried under the filthy reality in front of her. “Why
did
you follow me, really?” she asked.

A scrape of shovel blade on stones: another load of foul matter went through the door. “It was stupid.”

“I
know
that,” Meriel answered. “But why?”

She heard him take a long breath. “Because . . .” he began, then stopped again. “I’ll bet Faoil told you the only reason I’m interested in you is because of your name.”

“She’s suggested it,” Meriel answered. “Is it true?”

They continued to shovel silently for several breaths. “You weren’t what I expected when I heard the Banrion’s daughter was coming here,” Thady said finally.

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t know. Someone haughty and cold, I guess, all full of her own importance. Someone who acted above
all
the rest of us—after all, your mam holds Lámh Shábhála, and she may pass it on to you sometime. I can’t imagine holding that much power. I never
will
hold that much power, or possibly any at all. I’ll be lucky to have a clochmion.”

He lapsed again into silence except for a grunt as he heaved another mound of black filth from the midden. Meriel waited. “My da’s just a minor céili giallnai,” he continued after a time. “About the only person here with less nobility in his ancestry is that strange Bráthair Geraghty, who’s a total tuathánach. My da fought at Dún Kiil, though, when your mam stood in the storm of mage-lights and called the stone creatures to defeat the Rí Ard’s army. He says it’s different in Dún Kiil now than it was before, better then when old Rí MacBrádaigh was alive. Better for the céili giallnai and the tuathánach. He says that it’s because of your mam since until she married Tiarna MacEagan she was barely Riocha herself, and she remembers how those of royal blood treated her then. I think you’re the same, that way. I watched you, like everyone has, from the first day you came. You don’t act like you’re any different than any other first-year; in fact, you’re quieter than most even though everyone’s always so damned polite and interested around you because of your name, even the Bráthairs and Siúrs, sometimes. You even talked to me those times I came up and spoke first. But even though you don’t seem all high and mighty, you also don’t let them push you about. It’s like you know who you are and you’re satisfied with that, and it doesn’t matter what the others think or say.”

“Most of the others don’t follow me around at night, though.” She couldn’t see his embarrassment in the midden’s twilight, but she could feel it.

“That was stupid. I already said so.”

“And you still haven’t said why you did it.”

“I’m not sure I really know. It just seemed the right thing to do at the time. I thought . . . I thought if I seemed to accidentally come across you outside, I might get to talk to you and know you a little. I’m not—” He stopped.

“You’re not what?”

She saw him shrug, leaning on his shovel. “I’m attractive enough. I know that. But I also know that’s not anything special. I’ve seen the girls who are willing enough to look at me but who won’t talk to me because my family’s not important enough. I’m hardly the best student here, but even if I were, I’d never hold a Cloch Mór—and I’ve heard that the mage-test is... well,
harder
for some students than others, that the final examination isn’t as hard for Riocha as for people like me.”

For a moment, she felt something tug at her, deep inside—a different feeling than what she experienced when she was with Dhegli, but yet . . . Meriel plunged her shovel into the pile in front of her. She felt confused: in her heart, she’d already given up Lucan—where he’d once been, thoughts of Dhegli filled her. But still . . .

“You’re attractive enough,” she repeated, as if musing. “Tell me, Thady MacCoughlin, since you were down at the beach when I finished . . . swimming . . . do you happen to know what
I
look like?”

Meriel saw the flash of his teeth even as he looked down at the blade of his shovel. “It was dark there.”

“But could you see well enough?”

Again, the quick, hesitant smile. Thady nodded. “Oh, aye,” he said, in a voice that was almost reverential in tone. “I could indeed. And ’twas worth the trouble it’s gotten me, too.”

Meriel tossed the load of sludge. Somehow, it managed to miss the open doorway and splatter mostly over Thady. “Oops,” Meriel said.

She tried not to grin too widely.

Only the stony tip of Mt. Inish was still sunlit when they finished. The rest of the mountainside was already shrouded in the purple shadows of evening and the folds of the valleys below were hidden in full darkness. Meriel was covered in filth, her palms and fingers were blistered and sore, and she was exhausted. With the rest of Bráthair O’Therreagh’s group, she staggered back to the White Keep from the fields, pushing the stained planks of the cart they’d used to haul the stinking mounds of compost. The charm around her neck seemed to have lost its potency; the stench surrounded them. “All right, then,” Bráthair O’Therreagh said after they’d pushed the cart back into its shed. “The boys may come with me. Siúr O’hAllmhurain will take the girls. Go on now . . .”