Warrior's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood) (24 page)

“It’s not the first time you’ve been struck with a complication in your plans,” Delia countered.

A case in point standing right in front of him, Lady Delia was the definition of complication and synonymous with trouble. Always had been. She was the unexploded shell, the burning fuse. One wrong move, and who knew what chaos would follow. It’s what made her so dangerous to enemies and friends alike.

“What happened to Calais?” he asked stupidly, drawing on a pair of breeches one slow leg at a time.

Lady Delia laughed. “Nothing, as far as I know. Why?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be there?”

“I was. Unfortunately, just before I embarked, I discovered certain people might be waiting for me; people I’d rather avoid. With London lost to me and the ports guarded, I had one remaining choice—dismal in the extreme, but I soldier on as cheerfully as I can.”

“Where
is
Estelle?”

“My tiresome crank of a sister was not happy to see me, but she couldn’t very well kick me out of my own home, much as she’d have liked to. Our uncle left the house to both of us; the sly, conniving bastard.”

“Let me guess, Ramsay convinced her you should stay.”

“Actually, that luscious slice of man cake is away from Marnwood at the moment. No idea when he’ll return. Probably why Estelle reluctantly agreed. If her husband had been here, I’d have been shown the door and given a boot besides.”

“She doesn’t trust you.”

“I said she was tiresome. I never said she was stupid.” Delia took a slow seductive turn about the room, letting her figure speak for itself, now and then casting him sidelong glances from lowered lashes. Her hand caressed the curve of the washbasin, slid provocatively along the chair rail, trailed with delicious eroticism along the headboard of the bed.

Had she always been so obvious, or was he seeing her differently now that he was comparing her to another woman; just as fierce and equally as bold? But Meeryn would never play for his attention. She was as bluntly candid as Delia was cleverly subtle. She
offered him painful honesty but expected no less from him in return. And perhaps that in part was what held him back; for real honesty brought with it an agony as excruciating as the pain the curse delivered.

“Doule is dead, as is his brother,” he said, ignoring her invitation. “The Ossine discovered them.”

Delia’s face dimmed. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“This fight is tearing the clans apart. Brother against brother. Father against son. I sometimes wonder if it’s worth it. Am I doing this for them . . . or me?”

She brushed the hair from his forehead, a slight frown marring her otherwise serene features. “You’re tired. Rest. Regroup. Enjoy Estelle’s dubious hospitality. You’ll see things better in the morning.”

They both heard the footsteps at the same moment. Their heads swiveled to the door in unison, their bodies tensed with the same anticipation. Delia was quicker. She leaned forward, offering him full view of both perfect breasts. Tipped his chin up and kissed him just as the door opened.

Meeryn stood on the threshold, mouth agape, gaze moving from shock to smolder in the blink of an eye.

Delia broke away with a cat-in-the-cream smile. “Did you need something, my dear?”

The heat off Meeryn’s body was enough to char bones to ashes, but her expression, once mastered, was bland as milk. “Nothing at all,” she answered in a voice calm as the eye of a hurricane.

Gray closed his eyes on a defeated sigh. Shit.

*  *  *

They had placed the makeshift pyre far from the house in an old wooded copse where weather-worn
trees twisted in the wind and the rocks pushed grasping fingers up toward a gray sky. The road wound far to the east, crossing the new bridge outside the village. Foot travelers never came this way. The wood was said to be haunted by the spirit of a dead child, though the only hostile ghoul stalking this afternoon was Badb, who sat atop a nearby tree preening her feathers and croaking criticisms like a persnickety schoolmarm.

Meeryn ignored the crow’s ugly chatter and concentrated on the two bodies laid out before her. She had no names to offer the ancestors. But she’d gathered up the few personal items she’d found in their pockets, and these she’d wrapped in scraps of silk and placed beside them.

Meeryn was no Ossine. What she did, she did from memory. She prayed that the Mother Goddess would understand if she made a small error or forgot bits of the funeral chant. First she traced the runes at head and foot, the sign of the Mother, the sign of Morderoth’s empty sky. Then, dipping her finger in a bowl of wood burnt down to ash, she drew the death sign on each forehead, the spirit sign on each chest, and the sign of the Gateway on each palm.

Finally, calling on the ancestors to open the door between this world and the distant paradise where the souls of the dead
avaklos
would join their clan and kin forever after, she shoved the burning torch into the dry tinder stacked and arranged around the bodies. Flames licked up through the rickety platform and smoke curled like wraiths over the dead men.

This was the second time in a few days that she’d had to speed the dead through the Gateway, the second time in a few days she’d had to watch flames reach
for the sky, spirits rising with the thick choking black smoke. She prayed there would be no need for a third.

Badb flapped her great black wings, croaking her dismay.

“If all you’re going to do is squawk, do it elsewhere. I’m not interested.”

Badb gave one final harrumphing caw and took off from her perch to circle the smoke as it wafted up to be lost within the low clouds.

“I think you offended her.”

“I wasn’t talking to her.”

Gray approached to stand beside her, but she kept her eyes on the burning pyre, resin snapping, heat burning her face, sweat trickling down her rigid spine.

“I came to join you as witness to their passing.”

“Then more witnessing and less chattering.” She gripped her skirts, the fabric anchoring her in the present lest her memory wander back to the sickening give of flesh, the smell of blood and piss and loosened bowels, the rattle of the man’s dying breath.

“You did what you had to do, Meeryn. You took a life to save a life.”

“So I was told, but does that make it right?” she asked.

“It might help you sleep.”

“How do you know I’m not sleeping?”

“Because I still remember the first man I killed.”

“But the
avaklos
wasn’t my first. There was the man at the inn . . .”

“A kill from a distance is not the same. I don’t know why, but when you’re close enough to smell your enemy’s fear and feel his dying shudder, it becomes part of
you. He’s no longer an anonymous stranger. He’s real. His death is your death.”

She looked at him for the first time since he’d come. His face held a grim resignation, illness, injury, grief, and determination branded onto his features as once his clan mark had branded his back. “You said the more you kill, the easier it gets. That you learn not to care. That it’s all about survival. That’s what you said. But is that true? Or do you try to convince yourself of your indifference in order to feel better? Or to feel nothing at all?”

“I kill because I’ve been left with no choice. If I stay my hand, I run the risk of having another lifted against someone I care about. Someone I love.”

She’d accused him of disregarding the men who followed him, but perhaps the truth was that he cared too much . . . that he’d always cared too much. His grandfather had thought his compassion a weakness. Meeryn believed it just might be Gray’s greatest strength. If he let it be.

“You were prepared to murder those Ossine in the catacombs. Without hesitation. Without remorse.”

“Without hesitation, yes. But always with remorse,” he replied.

By now the pyre was engulfed, the bodies lost to the roaring conflagration, sparks floating and rising in the air, dancing on the steady breeze. Spirits called to a home lost at the beginning of time.

He drew an uneven breath, and she tensed, knowing what was coming. “Lady Delia enjoys tossing oil on a fire to see what happens.”

Her eyes stung and watered from the intense heat. They most certainly did not ache with unshed tears
for the sneaking rat bastard beside her. She wiped her face with the back of her hand. “Things burn. People get hurt. That’s what happens.”

“Or people finally start to see what’s been staring them in the face all along.”

He clasped her tear-streaked hand, and together they said farewell to warriors fallen in a war that had grown more violent and far more personal than Meeryn had ever imagined.

*  *  *

Marnwood’s drawing room was lovely, with pale green walls, white trim, rich elegant furniture and priceless works of art. A far cry from the rest of the house, which gave the impression of being one strong wind from collapse. All right, perhaps she exaggerated, but there was definitely a sense that money was scarce and the household diminished.

Their hostess, Lady Estelle Ramsay, ran the place with few servants and a forthright capability that brooked no nonsense. To look at her slender body and gentle face, one would never imagine she could harbor such pragmatic industriousness, but in the two days Meeryn had been in residence, she’d found Lady Estelle nailing down a loose floorboard in the dining room, bringing in the wash, and weeding the kitchen garden. Not exactly the duties of a gently bred earl’s daughter, but she undertook them without complaint and with a proficiency gained over many years.

This was someone who knew what she wanted and went after it without worrying over repercussions. Apparently a trait she shared with her sister Lady Delia Swann, though this seemed to be all the sisters shared.

Estelle was tall and possessed an unfashionable athleticism, while Delia was petite and bore an ethereal vagueness. Estelle’s white-blond hair and freckled cheeks gave her the appearance of a hoydenish farm girl; Delia’s hair was golden as ripened barley and her pert face and creamy complexion gave her a sweet kittenish quality. And while Estelle was safely and happily married, Delia was little better than a demi-rep, her string of lovers as long as Meeryn’s arm. One would have been hard put to realize they were related, much less twins. Until they opened their mouths, that is. Then the constant bickering and inside sniping gave them away.

It made Meeryn almost happy she’d never had the dubious pleasure of a sibling.

This morning, Marnwood’s elegant drawing room with its pristine woodwork and fashionable air of dignified aristocracy had become a militaristic war room with a map spread on the rosewood table alongside a packet of correspondence. The sisters too had taken a battle footing, though it was hard to tell whether they were more interested in fighting the enemy or each other. They spent the time either glaring at each other, pointedly ignoring each other, or in overt argument.

Gray stood at a window with a view of the carriage drive, jaw taut, eyes hard. It was like watching Wellington at work as he guided the discussion with a no-nonsense attitude, skillfully moving the conversation along despite the squabbles. Now and then his eyes sought hers, and she was struck with the same skin-prickling anticipation she felt when the wind freshened with the scent of rain and low black-bellied clouds flickered with lightning as they pushed their way across the whitecapped sea. Something had
changed between them in the wood as they watched the flames grow and then die. Too early to tell where it might lead, too young not to be killed by an errant chill or a clumsy misstep.

“Has there been any word of Kelan and the boy?” Gray asked.

“Not yet, but he’s a competent soldier,” Estelle answered. “He’ll find his way through.”

Meeryn recalled her last sight of the earnest young enforcer and his broken charge. Gray’s lips pressed together, deep grooves biting into the edges of his mouth. No doubt he was remembering as well and giving the pair up for lost.

“I believe I heard our feathered Fey friend talk of searching for them,” Delia said with an airy wave of her hand. “At least she’s gone off somewhere and good riddance. She gives me the willies with those eyes that see right through you.”

“She’d have to scrub after such a probing of your filthy mind,” Estelle snapped.

“Have we heard from Lord Deane on Skye?” Gray asked, heading off another argument.

Even in the wilds of Cornwall, Meeryn had heard of the powerful Earl of Deane. It was said he had the ear of the Prince Regent himself, though his influence at court had been sorely tried by his marriage to an actress off the London stage. But not all Lord Deane’s power was based in wealth and patronage. He bore the blood of the Fey in his veins and the magic of their realm lay at his command. A valuable ally when their worlds teetered on the brink.

“As far as we know, he’s still in talks with the Amhas-draoi,” Estelle answered like the good aide-de-camp
she seemed to be. “Unfortunately, St. Leger’s recent visit to the fortress at Dunsgathaic didn’t exactly leave a good first impression. I believe irresponsible, dangerous, and devious scoundrel were the most commonly used words used to describe him.”

“He sounds positively delectable,” Delia purred. “I wonder how I let him slip through my fingers.” She tapped one manicured finger to her lips. “Perhaps there’s still hope.”

“He’s married.”

“Even better. They’re the easiest to seduce, my dear,” Delia said with a pointed look toward her sister.

Estelle glared but refused to rise to the bait. Smart woman. It was obvious Delia ached for a catfight. “Word from Lord Carteret’s holding in the north is that the clan leader is uninterested in pursuing a bid for Morieux’s throne. But he’s also uninterested in pushing out Dromon’s Ossine.”

Gray nodded. “Makes sense. He’s old and his son and heir is young, barely out of shortcoats. There’s nothing to gain and everything to lose should he back the wrong side in this. He’ll wait and watch and announce his loyalties to whomever comes out on top.”

“And then there’s . . . ah . . . the news from London”—Lady Estelle cleared her throat, clearly uncomfortable—“another murder of a shapechanger.”