The Black Prince: Part II (54 page)

“Denying her Cariad is like denying her Chilperic.”

“And your brother did not, as I recall, win his castle through conversation.”

“No.” Isla summed herself up. He had to understand. “He won it through trickery.”

Tristan turned.

“She can sense you. She cannot sense me.”

Tristan waited for her to continue.

“We know where she is.
I know where she is
. And she—she doesn’t know that I know. Or that Rowena is gone.” She chewed her lip, thinking how to frame her thoughts. “What if—what if I can convince her that I’ve grown tired of this life and convinced, at the same time, that my liberation lies in Maeve? With a woman on the throne who understands women’s grievances? What if—what if I can convince her to let me take Rowena’s place?”

“I can’t risk you.”

“She can’t kill me. At least, not easily.” Because of the bond. Because the strength that she gave Tristan, she also received in return. Her life force was tied to his. Let her use that for something more than eternal beauty. Let her use that for a true and meaningful good.

Let her life, and her sacrifices, be worth more than the love of a man.

“Isla….” Tristan trailed off.

Again, lightning flashed.

“If you love me, then you will let me do this.”

Thunder.

“But not alone.”

Isla breathed a sigh of relief. She was too focused on the task before her to feel her own terror; she thought, instead, only of the fact that this meant she could leave. Since the attack by Father Justin, what seemed like so long ago now, she’d known on some level that this moment would come. The moment when she had to, finally, face the evil dogging her steps.

It didn’t matter what form that evil took: Maeve, Cariad, Father Justin. Even her own father. Her sister. They were just faces on the same many-headed beast. Different faces, different voices. But the same mind. Face one and she faced them all. Defeat one and, she also knew on some level, she’d defeat them all.

She didn’t know where this understanding came from, but it was real.

She was as certain of that as she was of anything.

“You’re right. She can sense me. I believe that she can also, to some degree, sense you. But you’re right, too, that in this your own supposed ignorance is a shield.” Gliding over to her, across the floor, he placed his hands on her shoulders. “But she cannot sense Hart. Your blood, it sings in his veins also. Which should be a protection to you both.”

She nodded.

Within the hour, she was in the saddle. She and Hart left quietly, by the postern gate. He asked no questions, of either her or Tristan.

He understood, she thought, on some level what was afoot.

Or at least that something important was.

Something important enough to send them out, in secret, into the eye of a storm.

Isla wished that she’d had time to comfort Asher. Time to comfort Aveline, and for that matter Greta. Time to discover how Rudolph was and
where
he was. She’d been so disoriented after Rowena’s attack that she hadn’t been able to so much as offer a single condolence. Only stare at her sister’s cooling corpse before being led off to her own room.

She’d felt, since she’d fallen to the earth, like she’d been living in a dream.

Tristan was her everything. He had to understand that. But she was also not a coward.

She’d come to him in the first place because she’d wanted to save her family. Was willing to risk everything, even her own sanity, her own life, to do so. And now she’d come full circle. Riding into danger, not for love of a man but for love of a different sort. She wanted, more than anything, to end this night in his arms. To see the phantoms that had plagued it, and so many other nights, be banished by the morning sun. Together.

But if she took the coward’s path, then that moment would ever be a fantasy.

Even if she’d stayed in the castle, even if they’d done exactly that, together, she’d always know—no matter how hard she tried not to know—that she’d chosen what would make her happy over what was right. Just like her father had done.

She didn’t want to visit on Asher what had been visited on her. Her father hadn’t started out evil; hadn’t truly ever been evil, even at the very end. He’d been weak. There had never been, Isla had come to realize as an adult, a single moment when he’d adopted the lifestyle that came to define him. Rather, a series of choices—small choices, seemingly insignificant choices—had created a path. A path that had, eventually, led him into a kind of prison. A prison of the mind, from which there could be no escape. Even if he’d realized what had happened, it would have been too late.

And maybe he had realized, and maybe that was the source of his hatred.

A hatred of himself, turned outward.

Like a man constantly bailing out the rising water, so he didn’t drown.

She wanted to come home to Tristan, and to Asher, but as a woman she was proud to be.

Hart spoke, finally. “Where are we going?”

The worst of the storm had passed, leaving in its wake a driving rain. Cloaks notwithstanding, they were both soaked. Hart, at least, had short hair. Isla knew that she looked like a drowned rat.

“The Crooked Hare.”

The streets were all but deserted. Sensible people were at home in their beds. Even Barghast’s criminal element was hiding.

Faintly though, in the distance, she heard the call of the city watch.

That single shout had been an encouraging reminder that someone else existed. At least in more than theory. For, as she rode down one street after another, torchlight reflecting brightly on the rain-slicked cobbles, she found it easy to believe that she and Hart were the only two people left. In Barghast or in the world.

There was no sound now but the clopping of hooves on stone and the beating of the rain on every surface.

Now. Now. Now was a strange concept. What did the past mean, if it no longer existed? How could there be a future, without it?

They arrived.

The Crooked Hare had been bustling in sunlight.

Now it was deserted.

Unnaturally so. Even accounting for the storm. The lamps at the gate were dark, and so were those on either side of the main entrance. Dismounting, Isla saw with some alarm that the door in fact stood open. Open and moving slightly back and forth in the wind, where the rest of Barghast was shuttered tight.

She exchanged a quick glance with Hart.

There appeared to be no light coming from the inside. And no light from the stables either. Hart motioned her to follow him and she did, toward the stables, leading Piper as he led Cedric. The horses’ hooves sounded unnaturally loud. Stopping, Hart pulled a torch from his saddlebags. He handed it to her. A thin wooden cone wrapped at the fat end with rags, it reeked of kerosene. He struck a flint. Isla started as the rags burst into flame. Which sputtered in the rain but did not go out.

Making the flint disappear, Hart took the torch back. He motioned for silence as he stepped into the greater gloom. His free hand, his sword hand, grasped the hilt of the massive blade at his side.

She saw quickly that there was no need for silence.

The few horses present gazed at them balefully, the light from the sputtering torch reflecting in their eyes. Isla doubted that anyone had fed them that night, or otherwise attended to their needs. For the young man who was, she suspected, the inn’s sole groom lay dead on the floor.

The inn’s sole groom and also, probably, the son of the innkeeper. That was usually the arrangement, in places like this. The Crooked Hare was well kept but its owners clearly weren’t rich. Not enough to hire on hands for work that they could do, themselves.

His eyes stared sightlessly at nothing. Isla shuddered, for a split second seeing Rowena’s face over his. The vision vanished, leaving her weak.

Hart didn’t ask her to leave. He knew her better than that. Instead he took Piper’s reins and tied her, along with Cedric, to one of the rails. They were leaving two fine horses alone and unprotected, but they both knew that any thief who sought this inn this night faced larger problems than a possible theft charge. And if whoever had done this escaped, using any horse, it would be because no one was left to stop them. In which case, neither Isla nor Hart would be in a position to care.

They’d be like the groom: beyond such things.

Turning, Hart led her back into the rain and toward the inn’s front door.

It wasn’t totally dark, in the common room, as it looked from the outside. A couple of the lamps still burned, those that hadn’t been broken. Flames still flickered in both fireplaces, although without tending they’d grown small. Just enough light to reveal that what had once been a place of communion was now an abattoir.

There weren’t enough bodies to account for the blood. It coated everything: the walls, the floor. The man closest to her lay with his hands outstretched on the table before him, his head turned to the side. His eyes, open like the groom’s, seemed silently accusing.

What had happened here?

And who was responsible?

There had clearly been no outcry, for none of the neighbors seemed the least bit suspicious. Isla had seen no slices of light from parted shutters, no goodwives out in the street searching for the source of a noise. And the city watch certainly hadn’t been summoned.

“I count six,” Hart said. “Seven, including the innkeeper. If that’s his foot, there, protruding from behind the bar.”

They were all lucky, Isla thought abstractedly, that the inn hadn’t caught fire. The smell of spilled lamp oil was very strong. Almost as strong as the smell of blood.

“I’ve killed more men than this, at one time. But never so silently.”

Isla could only stare.

“This was not done by human means.”

She stole a quick glance at her brother. He looked tense. As tense as she’d ever seen him. She wondered if he knew more than he was letting on. He had a whole other life, and one that she knew nothing about. But his people hadn’t done this. As evil as the Chosen might be, or at least be considered, their crimes were nothing compared to those of men who claimed to be acting for good.

“We have to go upstairs.”

Hart hesitated, and then nodded.

He searched the common room thoroughly, while Isla stared at the carnage. And then he closed the inn’s front door and dropped the bar, sealing them off from the outside world. When he touched Isla on the elbow, she jumped.

She followed him to the base of the broad, sturdily built staircase.

And then up.

Thank the Gods there hadn’t been many guests. What there were, were dead. Most in their beds, suggesting to Isla that whatever had happened had happened recently. After the storm had started, certainly. And after a good half of the inn’s guests had retired, probably drifting off to sleep to the sounds of the storm and to their own thoughts of the next day’s business.

She couldn’t, she told herself, take time to mourn. Or more would die. Or whoever had done this—and she knew who’d done this—would seize on the opportunity of her guard falling to strike.

Hart drew his sword.

Isla knew, somehow, before she knew, where Cariad would be.

And Hart seemed to know, too, as they advanced together.

They rounded the corner. The final door in the hall was open. Just a crack, but light shone from within.

There was a scream. A sharp crack. And a baby’s cry.

Isla ran.

She found Cariad standing behind a table. A broad worktable, pitted and scarred. Fabric lay pooled on the floor, as though some sort of dress or other project in progress had been hastily pushed aside. A pincushion had landed near the fireplace. A pair of sewing shears also lay on the floor.

And so did a woman.

It must have been she that Isla heard, crying out. She was dead now, as dead as her husband and son. Blood pooled underneath her body. Most of it seemed to have come from her open mouth.

Cariad wasn’t paying attention. To the woman, to the state of her surroundings, or to Isla. Her attention was focused, entirely, on the child in her hands. A baby, not more than four moons old. Its—Isla couldn’t tell if she was looking at a boy or a girl—cry had subsided into a weak series of hiccoughs. It flailed its arms, tiny fingers opening and closing as they looked for something to grasp. Its feet, bound together in a swaddling sack, swayed back and forth.

And on Cariad’s face was a look of pure avarice.

“Amelie, I heard her called.” Cariad didn’t look up.

“Put her down.”

Cariad laughed. “I see you’ve brought your brother. How nice.” Her tone turned musing. Her eyes were still focused on Amelie and they were hard. “You know, I always thought you’d fuck him. Being so close. And looking so much like one another. Except for the hair, of course. People who look like one another tend to find each other attractive. Because everyone’s a narcissist, in the end.”

“What,” Isla hissed, “have you done?”

Finally, the witch looked up. “Done? Nothing.”

“Everyone here is dead.”

“Sweet child.” She laughed again. The sound was low and cold and sent a shiver down Isla’s spine. “Always with such an incisive wit, able to grasp even the most obscure of minutiae.”

“Stop this.”

Cariad’s gaze shifted to Hart. “Be silent.”

Amelie wailed again.

“Please,” Isla begged. “Let her go.”

Those stone-like eyes, back on hers again. In a flash. Pinning her like a striking snake. How had Isla ever thought that there was warmth in them?

“This child will give me what your husband won’t.”

“You can’t—”

“Especially now that, thanks to you, Maeve’s plan is foiled.”

Isla’s eyes widened.

“Oh, of course I know. You don’t think I’d send the little chit off without some means of tracking her, do you? She is—was—even stupider than you. But now that I have no means of gaining access to your husband’s stronghold, I doubt very much that Maeve will be willing to continue helping me. She’ll likely disappear again, seeing as how she now has neither a means of supplying her troops nor an heir to parade before them.