Bloodstone (41 page)

‘Let that be the first thing you see when you wake up,’ he said as he ripped the indigo shirt roughly from Seth’s back.

It was. Finn was too afraid to interfere, too afraid of Eili changing her mind. It was hours later when Seth’s eyes blinked twice and then opened. He didn’t
flinch, gave no sign at all, only gazed at Conal’s cold peaceful face a metre from his own.

A shadow fell across the dead face and the living one, but Seth didn’t look up. ‘Thank you, Eili.’

‘Don’t mention it.’ Her eyes were concealed behind the sunglasses Conal had brought her, a fierce cold winter sun glinting on the lenses. ‘You’re
mine to kill, not hers.’

A smile twitched his mouth. ‘Understood.’

She nodded and walked away.

Seth’s eyes met Finn’s across the two corpses. She’d never been so glad to look at him. Hour after hour she’d tried not to see Conal’s wounds;
instead she’d stared at his blue bitten nails and wept in silence. Branndair had stretched himself against Seth, and Liath lay at Conal’s feet, her amber eyes bereft, but Jed had
withdrawn hours ago to the far side of the hollow, hugging Rory and staring out empty-eyed across the valley. Finn understood he couldn’t sit by Conal and Torc, not with the baby, but nor
could she leave Conal. Somebody had to sit with him, besides a wolf. Somebody had to sit with Seth, too. For when he woke up. For when he opened his eyes.

Seth stretched out a hand, wincing. ‘Here.’

She scrambled across the slope to him, taking the emerald splinter from his hand.

‘Do me a favour,’ he said. ‘Get rid of it. Give it to somebody who needs it.’

Grabbing a snowy boulder, he dragged himself into a sitting position. Branndair rose, stretched and slumped close against him once more, and Seth put his arms fiercely around
the wolf’s neck. The skin of his naked torso was almost as blue as his brother’s. If it hadn’t been for Branndair’s warmth he would have frozen to death, and Eili and
Sionnach would have done nothing to stop it. Finn remembered what Leonie had told her: the Sithe were cruel, vicious, cold.
Watch yourself, Finn. Don’t let cold iron into your soul. Stay
human.

Right now, winter seemed to be sinking into her bone marrow. Well, it didn’t have to. She was going to stay human if it killed her. She smiled at Seth. ‘I’m
glad you’re okay.’

‘You’re in a minority.’ He gave her a rueful grin as he fought the chattering of his teeth. ‘But I’m with you.’

Eili be damned. Finn opened Conal’s pack, pulled out his spare jumper and thrust it at Seth. He took it, gripping it against his chest till his shivers began to subside.
‘I don’t want you to think, Finn...’ he said, and hesitated. ‘Don’t start thinking well of me, or anything. There was a moment back there... I didn’t know which
way I was going to go.’

‘I know that.’ She looked into his eyes. ‘I do know that.’

‘You do?’ He clutched the jumper as if reluctant to take it away from his skin. ‘Okay.’

‘How did you get away?’

‘Oh.’ He laughed. ‘A load of mumbo-jumbo and a Lammyr. They won’t be following. It takes a lot of time and effort to clean a curse that’s sealed
with a Lammyr head. That’s what I love about superstitious faeries.’

‘Don’t you think you’re a bit cynical?’ Finn said. ‘With your lifestyle and everything?’

‘Ah, if I wasn’t I wouldn’t be me, would I?’ He winked. ‘And that would be a shame. Besides, you should have seen their faces. They
couldn’t believe I’d done it, couldn’t believe I’d bring such anathema on myself. What’s the use of that? To be frozen useless by a few words and a piece of dead
flesh?’ He lifted Conal’s jumper and stared at it.

She didn’t know what
anathema
was, but already she didn’t like the sound of it. ‘Are you sure they’re not right?’

Seth pretended not to hear her. ‘Now.’ Grunting with the effort, he stood and pulled the jumper awkwardly on. She was never to know if the pain on his hard face
was down to the holes in his back, or to the smell of Conal that still clung to the dark wool and that had almost made her cry herself.

‘Sionnach,’ he said. ‘Give me my brother.’

Sionnach’s head snapped up and after looking to Eili for permission, he came across the hollow to lift Conal with incredible gentleness. As he passed him into
Seth’s waiting arms, Finn could see he was tempted to thrust the body hard, just for the jolt to Seth’s wounded back. But he resisted, maybe for the sake of Conal’s
dignity.

She had no idea how Seth struggled up the hill with the dead weight of his taller brother but he did, right up to the cracked and worn rocks at its summit, the wolves flanking
him and Sionnach and Eili behind, carrying Torc. They laid the two corpses together on the rocks.

Clutching Rory, Jed looked from one to the other as they turned and started down the hill. ‘Aren’t you going to...’ His voice shook. ‘Burn
them?’

Sionnach bristled as if he’d suggested something obscene. ‘Not when there’s time to do it properly. At least Murlainn bought us
that
,’ he
added contemptuously.

‘You’re going to leave them there?’ Jed stared at the three older Sithe.

Finn was staying close by Seth, one of them now, accepting everything he said without so much as a question, let alone a snappy remark.
There’s a turn-up for the
books
, thought Jed, but he couldn’t find it in him to be angry with her. Seth was the only family she had left here. And he wasn’t even family, really. She was as much an orphan as
Jed now.

‘We don’t like the smell of burning flesh, Jed.’ Seth turned to limp down the hill. ‘The ground’s frozen, even if I wanted to feed them to the
worms. They’ll go to the foxes and the wildcats and the ravens and the buzzards. And I’ll stay with them till they’re stripped bare, and when I retrieve their scattered bones
I’ll make a barrow for them. That’s my job, and this one I
will
do.’ He stared at Eili.

‘And I will guard their backs,’ she said stiffly.

Seth lifted his sword belt and buckled it across his back, his lips white as he fought not to flinch from the weight of his own weapon. ‘You will take Jed and Finn to
the dun,’ he said. ‘You’ll do it because I tell you to.’

‘If you follow us,’ said Sionnach, ‘the clann have the right to kill you, Murlainn.’

‘They may do, but at least they’ll do it quickly,’ Seth said coldly. ‘For now I will stay with Conal and Torc, I will guard their front and back, and
nothing but the wild things will come near them. When their bones are buried I will come to you, and when their wake is over we’ll all be done mourning.’

‘I will never be done!’ shouted Eili.

‘You will, to the world outside your head, just as I will.’ He stared into her angry eyes, and this time it was Eili who looked away. ‘Your head is your own.
Like mine.’

Snow came, burying the land, muffling every sound but the keen of the wind and driving across the moor like a vengeful white ghost. It had gone again, lying
only in hollowed patches, before Seth returned to the dun, gaunt and hard with hunger and cold and grief. Finn never did ask him about the weeks he stayed at Brokentor, and he never offered to tell
her.

I watched them all, the men and women of my clann. With my arms folded, they wouldn’t see my hands tremble. I’d fought with them, ridden with them, squabbled with
them; I’d danced and sung and got drunk with them in this hall. Some of them I’d loved. Now they might have to kill me.

No-one spoke. I felt unafraid, just listless and very, very tired. Maybe nothing could be worse than the long weeks at Brokentor. At least that was over. One day this would be, too.

There was no point protesting. It wasn’t up to me any more, and I wouldn’t even if I could. Eili stood to the side. Her eyes hadn’t left me since I’d ridden through the
gate of the dun and they’d disarmed me.

Grian seemed to be their spokesman now. He gave a sigh. ‘It’s Eili’s choice. Do you understand, Murlainn?

‘Yes,’ I said.

They all looked at her. It was her milking of the moment that told me I was not going to die. Death, she’d have pronounced on me quickly. She wanted to keep me in suspense, and
paradoxically that told me what I needed to know. I closed my eyes.

‘If it was for me alone,’ she said at last, all dignity and coolness, ‘I’d choose death. But it isn’t. He is the father of the... child. He is the Captain of this
dun.’ She smiled unpleasantly. ‘If he can take it back.’

I heard the exhalation of hundreds of breaths, but my own wasn’t one of them. I breathed deeply, quietly, trying to make sure my fingers wouldn’t tremble as I reached for
Conal’s now threadbare jumper and pulled it off over my head. I was determined to do that, at least, before they told me to. The constant acute ache in my crossbow scars was gone, and I
allowed myself a wry inner smile. Obviously Eili did not want anything to distract me from what lay ahead.

‘Murlainn,’ said Grian.

‘Grian,’ I said, tossing the jumper to him. ‘Get those two – newcomers – out of here.’

Grian blinked, a little shocked, as if he’d forgotten their existence. ‘Of course. Yes.’

Jed resisted, half-turning back to me, but it was Finn who cried out, ‘Seth?’

‘Go on, Finn,’ I said as two men came forward to flank me. ‘We’re just sorting something out. I’ll be along in a bit.’

Jed made an angry terrified sound, as if my words had reminded him of something else, but the two of them were half-led, half-pulled from the hall, and I shut my eyes, relieved, when the door
slammed on them. I turned away, put them deliberately out of my mind, and raised a block against the rest. That would not come down till it was over. Whatever else they did, they weren’t
going to beat their way into my mind. I could feel Orach trying to get into my head, desperate to take some of what was coming to me, but I shoved her away. Not even her.

Besides, I wouldn’t do it to her.

At the top end of the hall they were already swinging the straight pine trunk into place, suspended horizontally at shoulder height on the iron brackets. It hung precisely in the gap between the
walls of a huge arch that led to the anteroom beyond the hall, at the top of a shallow flight of three steps. A prominent, clear position; a good place for setting examples.

Feckers.

There was something about the simplicity of the thing that sent a shudder through me, and I looked only once, swiftly, at the dappling of brown spots concentrated in the central section of it.
At least the clann weren’t making a meal of it. None of them were enjoying this.

Well, except for one. Eili’s eyes were bright and hating.

Nothing for it. I walked to the pine trunk, hell-bent on keeping my limbs steady as I reached the last step. My throat was as dry as a dead leaf but they didn’t have to know that. The men
on either side of me took my wrists, and caught the lengths of cord thrown to them.

‘You don’t have to do that,’ I told Carraig, quietly and bitterly.

He swallowed and cast his eyes down for a moment. ‘I know, Murlainn.’

‘Then don’t tie me, Carraig,’ I growled. ‘I won’t fight. You know I won’t try to run.’

‘Murlainn. Please do this. You don’t have to but – ’

‘It stops you falling, Murlainn,’ interrupted Fearna in a soft voice. ‘Because otherwise you will. Whatever you think, however strong you are, you will fall. Carraig’s
right. Please.’

I hesitated, then nodded, and they looped the thin ropes round each wrist and tightened them. I closed my eyes as Carraig and Fearna stretched my arms against the timber. I’d ridden and
fought and drunk and laughed with both of them, and now, though each of them pulled the cords tight, they also clasped my fingers with their own. I was more grateful than I could say, but I said
nothing, suddenly afraid of weeping. I was not afraid of the pain, not yet, but I was terribly afraid I might weep with the bloody awful sadness of it all.