Dreamspinner (12 page)

“Which is why you put her in with me.”

“Of course,” Weger said without hesitation. “I can hardly vouch for the honor of the rabble that comes through my gates. The worst of the worst, some of them, though I will admit your sister lent an air of distinction to the place. I don’t know what that slip of a thing is to you, but you’d best keep her close.”

“I don’t know her,” Rùnach said frankly. “I paid her passage from Istaur because I saw she’d been robbed, then found her following me this morning from Sgioba. I then simply stood back and watched as she paved my way to your luxurious porch here.”

Weger huffed out something that might have been akin to a laugh. “Aye, she certainly did. I wonder what she thinks she’ll have now she’s inside my gates?”

“I have no idea,” Rùnach said, “though she seems powerfully interested in talking to you.”

“I shudder to think why. Perhaps you would do me the very great favor of finding out sooner rather than later so I can send her quickly on her way. There is something about her eyes that bothers me.” He started to speak, then shook his head. “She sees too much. That spells trouble, to my mind.”

Rùnach had to agree. “I’ll do what I can, but I daresay she’s too innocent to be trouble. She almost fainted when she saw Gobhann for the first time.”

Weger smiled a self-satisfied smile. “
Everyone
almost faints when they see Gobhann for the first time.”

“I didn’t.”

“Aye, well,” Weger said, frowning suddenly, “you’re obviously the exception. Sturdy stock in your lineage and all that. I’m sure you’ll be wishing you had fainted at some point, but I’ll leave that as a pleasure to be savoured later. Now, before I release you to your very luxurious accommodations, answer me this: what are you here for?”

“Sword skill.”

“So is everyone else. What are
you
here for?”

“Strength,” Rùnach said, suppressing viciously the urge to shift.

“Along with a dozen other weak-kneed men. Come, Rùnach, you can do better than that. What has driven you from wherever you’ve been keeping yourself for the past score of years—ah, I remember, it was Buidseachd.” He looked at Rùnach piercingly. “Why are you here?”

Rùnach decided there was no reason to not be honest. “I couldn’t hide anymore,” he admitted. “And I don’t want a place on the world’s stage, not any longer. A simple soldier’s life is what I aspire to.”

“We don’t create simple soldiers here,” Weger said mildly, “though what you do with your training after you leave is your
business.” He held Master Odo’s sword out to Rùnach, hilt first. “You can trot down the stairs and give that back to Odo before you retire.” He started to walk away, then turned back. “Just so you know, there’s a cell beneath your palatial chamber that houses the gift I was sent. A guest, you might term him.”

Rùnach lifted an eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware you kept guests.”

“We keep all kinds of rabble here,” Weger said, nodding significantly. “He torments his jailors by singing Nerochian pub ditties whilst having absolutely no sense of pitch or timing.” He smirked. “Thought you with your fine tastes might enjoy that.”

“How kind of you.”

He slid Rùnach a look. “Didn’t think I’d make your time here pleasant, did you?”

“I thought it would merely be the swordplay to test me.”

Weger rubbed his hands together enthusiastically. “Nay, lad, we’re here to mold the entire man. Just consider it my contribution to the betterment of the world.” He looked at Rùnach, chuckled in a way that wasn’t at all pleasant, then walked off. “Best go see to that sword, then your valet.”

Rùnach suspected that might be wise.

B
y the time he’d delivered Odo’s sword to him and run back up the steps, he was wishing desperately for nothing more than peace, quiet, and any flat surface upon which to collapse. He paused outside the door to his chamber and listened to things that echoed in the passageway. First was indeed some off-key warbling sung with great enthusiasm. Rùnach wished that the hoarseness indicated the winding down of the evening’s entertainment, though he didn’t dare hope for it overmuch.

The other sound was something that, had he been in a different locale, he would have thought might indicate weeping.

He pushed open the door—cursing Weger for not having taken the trouble to install a lock—and found his chamber companion doubled up on the floor. She wasn’t weeping, she was gasping in what looked to be absolute agony. He shut the door behind him
and wished for the ability to make werelight. All he could do was peer at her by the light of a vile tallow candle.

“What is it?”

She remained doubled over on the floor, but managed to look up at him. “I must speak to Weger,” she gasped. “Quickly.”

“I think what you must be doing quickly is holding your head over a bucket,” he said. “What befell you?”

She pushed herself into a sitting position. She was absolutely grey in the face, which startled him all the more. “Nothing,” she said hoarsely. “Help me up.”

He reached down and took her hand to pull her to her feet but only succeeded in pulling her over. He squatted down in front of her. “I don’t think you’re going anywhere, er, what is your name?”

“Aisling,” she managed.

Well, that was definitely not a lad’s name, but he wasn’t going to tell her that as he imagined she wasn’t going to be interested in his opinion. Judging by the rapidity with which she clapped her hand over her mouth, he suspected she wasn’t going to be interested in much at all for the next little bit.

He managed to find a bucket and get it close enough to her to be of use before she started heaving. It was violent enough that he put his hand over his own belly protectively. Supper had been disgusting, but not vomit-inducing. He knelt on the floor next to her and patted her back sympathetically, though that didn’t seem to help her much. He realized almost immediately that a single bucket was simply not going to be enough.

“I’ll return,” he said, jumping to his feet.

She put her hands over her face and groaned. Answer enough, he supposed.

By the time he’d hied himself off to the kitchens and run back up to his chamber, Aisling was sprawled on the stone, trying to claw her way toward the door. Rùnach set the buckets down and helped her back to her knees only to find she was, as he had thought, not at all finished with her business.

She dragged her sleeve across her mouth at one point, though that did nothing for the tears streaming down her face. He had no
doubt those weren’t tears from weeping, but from puking. He couldn’t blame her, actually. Just listening to her was about to make him ill.

“I must go,” she gasped. “I must speak—”

He shoved the bucket near her.

Time passed with miserable slowness.

By the time she was finished, so was he. He leaned back against the wall as she lay on the floor with her cheek against the stone.

“I need to…ask…”

He reached out and put his hand on her back. She was still breathing, which he supposed was all she could ask for at the moment. Rùnach waited, but she seemed to have forgotten she’d been speaking.

“Ask who what?” he said, finally.

She didn’t reply. The only sounds in the chamber were the faint echo of a very raunchy song that Rùnach remembered from an unauthorized visit to a seedy pub in Slighe he had made with his elder brother Keir on the occasion of his eighteenth birthday, and Aisling’s labored breathing.

She rose suddenly to her hands and knees and looked at him. He almost fell over in surprise. There was something about her eyes that was altogether unsettling. Otherworldly, to be more accurate. Otherworldly and unsettling—

“What…time?” she gasped.

“Almost midnight, I should think—wait, where do you think you’re possibly going like this?” he said incredulously.

“Weger.”

Rùnach would have pointed out that Weger had already likely gone to bed and wouldn’t be amenable to a visit, but he didn’t have time before she started to fall. He missed catching her just as he missed catching everything, in spite of all the work Miach and Ruith had done on his hands. He managed to get his hand between her face and the stone floor, but he wasn’t sure it had served her any. The pain of it almost sent him tumbling into the faint that the sight of Gobhann hadn’t quite managed.

He considered, then with more effort than he had to spare, managed
to get Aisling up and in bed. He emptied the buckets down the garderobe, walked back down the passageway, then stacked them outside the doorway. He hoped for her sake that she was finished with whatever was vexing her, but for all he knew, he would be nursemaiding her the whole of the night.

He entered the chamber to find her sprawled on the floor, still trying to get to the door. He squatted down to look at her.

“Aisling, this is madness. You must rest.”

She looked up at him, her pale eyes full of things he could not name. “Death.”

“What?” he said in surprise. “Whose?”

She reached up and clutched the front of his tunic. “Mine.”

He put his hand on her head and smoothed her hair away from her face before he thought better of it. “Why would your life be forfeit for anything, Aisling?”

“Before…midnight…”

Her fingers loosened and she slid back to the floor, though he managed to soften the ground beneath her face. It hurt just as much as it had the first time, but he ignored the pain. He shook his head, because what she was saying made absolutely no sense to him. She had admittedly been rather anxious to speak to Weger, but what did it matter if it were that day or the next?

He felt her forehead and found that she wasn’t warm. Well, there was only one thing to do and that was get her to bed and make certain she remained there. He managed it with an effort, then put both the cloak he’d given her earlier and a blanket over her.

He started to allow himself the luxury of wondering about her, then abruptly put a halt to it. He wanted to stay alive and well long enough to wrestle Weger’s mark from him now that he’d given him the bulk of his gold. Aisling had her own troubles, perhaps things that only she could see with those pale, clear eyes of hers.

He had the feeling he might regret finding out what those things were.

“A little house.”

He looked at her in surprise and realized she wasn’t
awake, though she was definitely murmuring something. Perhaps she was dreaming.

“No…doors,” she breathed.

“A house with no doors?” he said before he thought better of it. “And what good is that?”

She opened her eyes suddenly and looked at him. He jumped a little in surprise, but before he could wring any more details out of her, her eyelids closed and she slipped into senselessness.

He propped his sword up against the door so its clattering to the ground would waken him, then considered where he might most successfully pass the night. Not in front of her, for reasons that seemed obvious to him. The chamber was small enough that his options were very limited, but he chose to lie down with his head toward the door. Assuming no one plunged him into insensibility by shoving the door open, and Aisling managed to keep herself in bed, he might actually sleep peacefully for the rest of the night, what was left of it.

A house with no doors? It was a ridiculous thought, though he supposed he would have to admit that there were several places in Seanagarra where Sìle had neither locks nor doors. Then again, there were chambers there that were locked as if the innards would tempt the most skillful of lock pickers.

He yawned, then leaned up and blew out the candle before he stretched back out on the floor. If the poor gel was so anxious to see Weger, he would help her in the morning, the first chance he had.

And once she’d had her parley, he would help Weger see her out the front gates and concentrate on his own life.

A
isling woke.

Or at least she thought she woke. She opened her eyes, but the darkness was complete. She lay there, still, and gingerly felt the surface she was lying on. It wasn’t soft earth, nor was it rock, though it certainly felt as hard as the latter. She wondered if perhaps they had put her into some sort of chamber where they put all those who were dead until they could arrange something more suitable.

The thing that struck her as odd, however, was how much pain she felt. It was true she hadn’t considered death overmuch; she had been too determined to outlast the Guildmistress, win her freedom, and make a life for herself where she would never, ever need sit in front of a loom again. But she hadn’t imagined that abandoning her mortal frame would still leave her with such terrible aching in every joint.

She shifted and her body protested so violently, she couldn’t even manage to gasp. She felt as if she’d been sitting for days in
front of a loom, endlessly weaving until every muscle and sinew had been tormented past what any human could bear. She lay very still, hoping to calm her poor form, and allowed herself to consider something she could scarce credit as possibly being true.

Was she alive?

She rolled over—rather, she took several very long minutes to ease herself onto her side. The chamber was very dark, which was slightly unnerving, but she couldn’t hear any movement, which eased her just the slightest bit. Unless death was nothing but dark, cold, agony of body and mind…