Bloodstone (27 page)

Flailing his free arm, Jed whacked me hard on the ear as he tore a fistful of my hair. I snarled in stupid superficial pain, then twisted his hand high and savagely behind him, doubling him
over. I made sure it hurt so much, he couldn’t speak. I had no wish to hear anything he had to say.

Not that I cared if he hated me. After all, I knew what was coming. I wanted him to hate me.

The baby gazed down in astonishment as Conal held it high and stared into its eyes. It laughed at Conal’s new joke and kicked in delight. Jed kicked too, lashing a foot savagely back at my
shin, but I dodged with ease and twisted his arm further till he gasped in pain.

Conal lowered the child gently to the ground. It lunged forward to hug his knees, and Conal raked trembling fingers through the fine blond hair. ‘He’s hiding it.’ Conal was
dead-eyed and pale. ‘Gods, Seth. Eighteen months old and he’s hiding it.’

I swore too, much more profanely, then laughed, freeing Jed to stumble forward and snatch up his brother.

‘So, Conal. The old witch’s prophecy wasn’t literal. Did your sainted mother consider that at all?’

‘You know she didn’t,’ said Conal bitterly. ‘I did; you did; but we were upstart boys and she was ancient and wise, wasn’t she? Stones, spells, witchcraft, that was
all she cared about. Oh, no full-mortal would have it in them to save
us
. Questioning her was heresy.’ His gaze was tormented. ‘She laughed in my face, Seth. And went back to
her fecking rocks.’

I looked away. I didn’t want to see his defeat, his humiliation.

Sionnach gave a long, hissing sigh, rubbing his healed arm. ‘The child isn’t full-mortal, though.’ He glanced at Jed, eyebrows arched. ‘Is he?’

‘I don’t know what you’re on about. Leave him alone!’

‘Too late,’ I murmured, sick at heart. ‘Too late for that.’

Eili’s laughter was horrible, with all the warmth of an ice floe. ‘Four centuries, Cù Chaorach! Four hundred years you’ve gone away from me to the other side, and you
might as well have stayed by me, for your precious Stone wasn’t even born for most of it!’

‘Eili.’ Conal’s voice was as cold as hers. ‘Shut up.’

‘No, but just think,’ she went on, her smile tight and intent. She had the look of someone ripping the scab off an awful wound. ‘Your own child could have taught him
swordplay.’

Conal didn’t even look at her, but the glare he turned on Jed was terrible. ‘Where did he come from?’ His mad rage was terrifying, even if it was mostly at himself. ‘Who
was his father?’

‘I don’t know!’ yelled Jed. ‘I doubt my bloody mother knew!’

‘
There must have been someone
!’

Jed opened his mouth and shut it again.

Part of him, the part that was all about self-preservation, recoiled from contradicting Conal. But I sensed something else inside him: a stirring knowledge, like something horrible rising up
from dark water. It rippled on the surface of his mind. Something he knew, something he’d forgotten for a long, long time.

Oh, hell.

‘We’re close to Kilchoran,’ I blurted. ‘It’s protected, Cù Chaorach.’

‘True,’ said Torc, visibly grateful for a distraction. ‘They can’t come near us there. Keep what you have to say to one another till then.’ He eyed Eili long and
hard. ‘And there’s some things that should never be said at all.’

I could see what Torc could not: the gleam of tears tracking down her cheek. But her fingers smoothed them lightly away, and drew a mask of angular hardness back across her face.

We rode on; we had no choice. We rode through birch and rowan and a deepening darkness, our horses so close their flanks were almost touching. The miles melted into each other, and time blurred;
we were in shock, I suppose. Conal and I were ten yards ahead of the rest when we halted.

The low bothy of Kilchoran was just discernible among the rowans. Sionnach held the plank door open as Torc took the baby gently from Jed and carried him inside. I knew I couldn’t join
them; not yet. Conal walked on into the copse of ghostly trees that clung to the nearby rocks, and he expected me to follow. I knew that. Oh, what I would have given to defy him.

But it was out of my hands now. Everything was.

The moon was pale and cold, its light unforgiving.

What a coincidence.

Conal was outlined in starlight, the silver pinpricks of his eyelight frightening in his shadowed face. I walked closer and faced him. Oh, those bright, hard, pitiless eyes, heated by a spark of
love: the worn, hard-bitten love of centuries. Maybe it was the last dying spark.

He drew back his hand and struck me brutally on the side of the face.

My head snapped sideways with the blow. I staggered, but I didn’t fall.

‘Tell me,’ he said quietly.

Shaking my head slightly, I lifted it to face Conal again, but I didn’t retaliate. We stared at one another in silence for a very long moment. No point keeping anything back. A muscle
twitched beneath his hollow eyes, but he said nothing of what he saw. Nothing. He didn’t have to.

‘And now,’ he hissed, ‘tell Jed.’

‘Naturally.’

Was that my voice? I didn’t recognise it: so cold and hard and don’t-give-a-damn. I stared my brother full in the face, searching his eyes till he was forced to avert them. He swore
again, rubbed a hand down his face.

‘Seth.’ Hesitantly he extended a hand towards me.

All I did was look at it.

Conal jerked his head upwards to throw a curse at the night sky. He turned, and walked away from me, back towards the bothy. The black horse fell in at his back, its shark’s eye swivelling
towards me as it passed.

Then he and the horse were gone.

‘Kate’s known this for a long time. She’ll be coming for your brother.’

Jed stared at Sionnach’s kind, scarred face. ‘She can’t have him.’

I laughed bitterly. ‘It won’t be up to you, Cuilean. That’s one thing you can be sure of.’

From outside, Kilchoran looked like nothing more than a down-at-heel barn. Inside it was one stone walled space with soaring rafters and a worn timber floor. We all lay wakeful but for the baby,
who slept soundly in a nest of blankets. The only light came from the far end, where birch logs burned in a vast stone fireplace. In the flickering shadows, no-one’s face was readable any
more.

‘We have to cover good ground tomorrow,’ said Conal. ‘I barely trust this place for one night.’

‘It’s fine here,’ soothed Torc. ‘We’ll start early, ride hard all day.’

‘Don’t waste energy worrying, Cù Chaorach,’ said Sionnach. ‘Kilchoran’s safe. Get some sleep.’

Jed said nothing, only crouched, hugging his knees and gnawing his knuckles. I knew he was paying attention, though. I knew he was waiting only for his chance to run. I didn’t blame him.
Poor bastard. He didn’t know he hadn’t a chance; he didn’t know what was going to happen.

He had to hate me very thoroughly. I had to be sure of that.

‘Be ready to leave an hour before dawn,’ said Conal, and the discussion, such as it was, was over. Rising, he buckled his sheathed sword onto his back, then reached down and took
Eili’s hand. She rose to her feet without a glance at him. Wordlessly Conal opened the barred wooden door and she preceded him into the night and the darkness.

Left behind, Liath whimpered, but all human conversation died. Sionnach and Torc turned over on their makeshift beds and settled to sleep. Branndair lay close to me, but it was Liath’s
skull I caressed, and my gaze lingered on the door through which Conal and Eili had disappeared.

‘You’ve this to look forward to, Cuilean,’ I murmured. ‘Ah, women. All the fun of falling out is in the making up. And I should think it’ll take them a
very
long time to make this one up.’

Wincing slightly, I touched my left eyebrow, feeling the crust of blood forming on the cut. The flesh around my eye was already swelling; it was going to be a beauty. Everyone in the bothy had
conspicuously avoided mentioning the state of my face, but Jed, watching me, shook his head slowly. I grinned.

‘You can’t make us out at all, can you, Cuilean?’ Casually I leaned across to Sionnach and found his left temple with my fingertips. It was like a bolt of dull electricity
leaving my hand, making me momentarily unsteady. But only a moment; that was all it ever took.

‘I wouldn’t want to,’ said Jed. Frowning, he watched me stand up and step over Sionnach, then crouch down to lay my hand on the back of Torc’s head.

‘That wasn’t your mother’s attitude.’ Reeling very slightly, getting my balance back, I sat back down beside him.

‘Shut up about my mum.’ Jed glared at me. ‘You don’t know her. Didn’t. Know her.’ He blinked hard.

‘Oh, but I knew her quite well. I was her lover for four years.’

Jed looked just like Eili had, when the Lammyr slammed its feet into her chest.

‘No. You weren’t.’

‘Yes. I was.’ I smiled.

Oh, yes, it was there.
I
was there, on the edge of Jed’s mind. The ripples were stirring again, a hideous shape hauling itself out of the dark water of his subconscious. He shut
his eyes, then snapped them open again. ‘I’d have known!’

‘You did know.’ I touched my cut eyebrow again, delicately. ‘You just didn’t take much notice of me. Remember?’

‘That’s not possible!’ Jed put a fist to his mouth from sudden nausea. ‘No. Yes. Yes. I saw you. I remember.’ The swirling murkiness was gone from his brain. The
memory was like crystal. He did remember.

‘No. No,
no
.’

Oh, yes, sunshine. Oh, yes.

He remembered me. I was there with Mila whenever he came home: my eyes on his mother, and my hands on her too. My hands on her waist, or touching her face, or trickling her long pale hair though
my fingers. I’d be there into the late nights, I’d be there when Jed woke in the morning.

Jed trembled violently. ‘I remember you leaving. I remember I wasn’t sorry to see you go.’

‘No, you weren’t,’ I said. Idly I fiddled with the rip in my t-shirt, examining my new scar. The blood was dry, a thin blackened ridge across my abdominals. ‘But your
mother and I understood each other. We were happy for a while.’

‘I don’t believe you!’

‘That’s your prerogative.’ I shrugged. ‘But that last day, as I left... you won’t remember me taking hold of the back of your neck. You were very surprised at the
time, but you won’t remember.’

Jed shook his head, wordless.

‘There was always a weird connection between us, you know. Our minds must be a good fit; I always knew my way around yours. I didn’t much like that, but I got used to it.’

‘If you’ve messed with my brain—’

‘Call it that if you want. That day, the day I left your mother, I found the Veil in your head and I pulled it back for you. I shifted your perceptions, that’s all. I hope
you’re grateful, because it wasn’t easy.’

‘Screw you. And screw your Veil.’

‘I expect it already is, practically speaking. Anyway, I had to obscure your memories to compensate. Rub myself out of them a bit more – even the parts of me you remembered. Fact is,
it was too easy to mess with your mind. I played with it so much, I think I’ve given you immunity. It’s very hard to affect your mind now. We still have the link, but I can’t do a
lot with it any more. Except know what’s going through that hot head of yours.’

‘How dare you.
How dare you
.’

‘I told you, you ought to be grateful. And you will be.’ I could feel my eyelight, almost burning my own pupils. A frost-burn: so very cold. ‘But I did pull the Veil aside for
you. It’s why you’ve been there for old Finny. You could see her better than other people do.’

‘You wouldn’t do that.’ Jed stared at me. ‘Why would you do that for Finn?’

‘I didn’t do it for Finn.’

‘What?’

‘I did it for someone who needed looking after. Oh, far more needy than Finn, believe it or not. You see, it was essential you paid him plenty of attention.’ I smiled innocently.
‘Even his own mother couldn’t quite make him out.’

‘Oh God. Oh. God.’ Jed’s voice when he spoke was barely audible. ‘So why didn’t you do it for her?’

‘Ah, too late. I got tired of walking in to find her looking for a vein. Tired of wiping blood off the wall before you got home, though I don’t know why I bothered, since
you’re not stupid. I wasn’t enough for her, but then you weren’t either, were you? The drugs were more important than either of us.’