Embers (7 page)

She forced breath.

"I can recognize when I have made mistakes. I—" It was impossible to hold his gaze. She had to force the words out of her mouth.

"It was wrong, what I did, escaping with you. Being with you."

His eyes still burned. But differently. He watched her…differently. She thought he would speak. The hardness of his grip on her arms changed. But she could not have moved away from him. She did not have the strength. Her breath was coming in gut-wrenching gasps so that he must think she was ill. Mad. Both.

She got the last words out.

"I realized. So I went back where I belonged. To Hun."

She saw his eyes go totally blank. Lifeless. Black. It was terrifying. His eyes were not like that. They were gold. Gold never changed. It was imperishable.

"I made my decision," she said, through the rawness inside her chest. She could not breathe. "That was my choice."

His hands let her go and the shadows were not just around him. They were everywhere. She was falling.

Alina woke with her head wedged against his chest. She could not move because his arm, heavy, immobile, lay across her waist.

She should leave him be, after what she had said. She wanted to leave him. She wanted to crawl away into some black pit and never come out.

She raised her head.

There was something wrong with the light Pearl-grey. Cold. Not the golden, heavy warmth of late afternoon.

"Brand…"

He did not move. Nothing. She stared round wildly at the wrong shapes of the trees. They were not as she remembered. She could not hear the stream. She had no idea where she was. It was like trying to wake out of a nightmare and being unable to.

Her head twisted. Her arm sought instinctively for the now familiar shape of his body. Cool. Almost…cold. A scream, raw and with the power to tear, lodged itself in her throat. And then she felt it: the faint, soft edge of his breath against her cheek.

"Brand…"

But he still did not move. He was deeply, numbingly asleep.

He should not be so cold. She pulled the thickness of the cloaks that covered them tighter round him. There was a fire nearby. Still burning. Full consciousness hit her. The campfire. His men. They were there. Shadowy shapes moving in the half-light. Morning.

He must have brought her here from the glade. And she had not known, could not remember. She still had her nun's clothing and over that, the heavy cloaks. His.

He had taken her shoes off. Her feet were buried in his legs. The solidness of his body curved round hers. They lay, tangled like awakening lovers in the midst of his men.

"He is ill. Is he not?"

The familiar voice, low, sibilant with the sounds of Craig Phádraig, was right beside her.

"Cunan!" Hound. Her brother's breath touched her skin. She could not suppress her startled gasp and she saw the small reward that gave in the triumph of his smile.

She drew away, struggling to raise herself between the lissom heaviness of Brand's body and the tight aggressive barrier of her brother's.

Hellhound. The keen-boned face and the intensity of his eyes suited the name. Her father's unquestioning slave. In his person he managed to combine unbending loyalty with the ability to tear people's guts out when necessary. She swallowed. Her mouth felt as dry as wood shavings.

She sat back, putting a hand to her face, trying to disguise the shudder. She felt appalling. Her eyes burned and her bones ached from the hard ground, from yesterday's exhausting ride.

"Cunan, why are you—"

"How ill?'

The eager, knife-sharp eyes watched not her, but the sleeping form beside her, with an attention that was spine-chilling. The words
more ill than he knows, perhaps dangerously so
, died on her lips.

Cunan was her brother, as much so in her mind as Modan, even if he was not legitimate.

But he was her father's man. His loyalty to that did not include allowance for his sister's shameful and inappropriate attachment to a Northumbrian.

Past attachment.

She moved her hand, as though she would shield the sleeping face of the Northumbrian, as much as her own face, from Cunan's gaze.

"I have tended the wound. It will heal. There is a touch of fever, but that is as you would expect."

She shrugged, to emphasize the carelessness of her words. The movement made the cloak slip from her shoulder. The sharp gaze shifted.

"I am not sure that anything is quite as I expected."

She was suddenly aware that her wimple had been lost somewhere. That her hair streamed over the shoulders exposed by the rumpled cloak. That before her brother's face she had spent the night in the arms of the man she had abandoned her lawful betrothed for. The man she had wanted above all others as her lover.

She fought down the consciousness of where she was, the heat that rose in her mind. She lifted her head. Perhaps it had not been such an ill placement after all, to be here in the middle of the ring of Brand's men. Nothing could have happened without them knowing, without Cunan the Hound knowing.

Even if they did not realize how much cause her supposed lover had to hate her.

She simply stared at him, with the practice of nineteen and a half years spent living in a court that had been more dangerous to her than to an illegitimate offspring:

"There are many things that are not as we might expect," she said. "Sometimes we have to adapt to them."

"But not at the expense of the duty we owe to the land that gave us birth. If that means aught to you?"

Duty.

It had been beaten into her head from birth that she must put duty first. She had tried with all that was in her to do what was right. She had agreed to the marriage arranged by her uncle and her father. Because it would forge an alliance that might pacify Northumbria.

For the first time in her life her father had been pleased with her.

Then she had found out what Hun was. A savage, a ruthless man who would encourage his king to dispossess or murder anyone who got in his way. Hun was the useful retainer who carried out such tasks for ambition and policy, for reward. For the enjoyment of cruelty.

Her uncle and her father must have been aware of that unstoppable savagery. They had known exactly what they were asking. They had not known that in the end, she would not do it.

That had been both her choice and her doom. And then Brand had come, like light out of the dark. But the light had not survived. It was impossible in mis world.

"My duty means exactly as much as it should mean." Such fine words. They hissed through the still air. But they were hollow. She had failed in every kind of duty. To her land, her king and her family.

To the foreign Northumbrian warrior who had given up everything for her.

She turned away, so that she would not see the dissatisfied eyes, the face so like her father's. So that she would no longer hear the tongue of Pictland. Bright gold eyes were narrowed on her face.

He had heard.

When had he woken? When she had spoken of her duty, whispering in Celtic with Cunan the Hound?

She told herself it could not matter. Brand already knew she was a traitor.

"What a delight you are in the mornings, lady.

Never at a loss. But I am afraid we cannot linger here. However you charm your companions."

He had heard everything. She knew it. She only wondered that Cunan did not know. She saw her brother's eyes sharpen in anger. But it was only at the obvious dismissal. There seemed no consciousness of the deeper meaning in the English words. The hidden warning to him and to her. But then Brand was wearing his wantonly reckless face, the one that hid all the ruthless intelligence inside.

He was smiling at Cunan.

"I know how eager my lady is to journey on to Bamburgh and her brother. The same eagerness must be yours, of course."

"What else?"

The smile was returned, with a hint of secrets withheld, a knowledge superior to the other man's. And then she realized. It had not occurred to Cunan that Brand spoke Pictish.

She was the only one who knew. The knowledge was there like a weapon in her hand. But like every weapon she had ever held either with, or against Brand, it was two-edged. If she gave that knowledge to her brother, Brand would know who had betrayed him.

She got up, fighting life into stiffened limbs. She wished to appear to busy herself getting ready, so that she could do what she really wanted: watch Brand and how he moved, every word he spoke and every gesture he made.

The camp was struck. Fast. Brand's men moved with a disciplined efficiency that should have pierced warnings through Cunan's devious head. The only thing Brand stopped to do without the slightest care for time was to make her eat, more than she wanted to. But it was either swallow the food herself or be force-fed.

Nothing faltered. Nothing went wrong. They rode as fast as they had yesterday, nay, faster, with scouts and in complete silence. They had passed the border into Mercia, the wide kingdom that lay between Wes-sex and Northumbria. Enemy to both.

She used the only time of respite to seethe herbs for her patient, feverfew, woundwort and blackberry leaves. Pointless gesture. It would not be enough. They both knew it.

She rode and watched and waited for him to succumb. So did Cunan.

She had had time to make her plans.

She made use of the instant when Duda closed up beside her mount and Cunan drifted ahead, drawn away from his eager watch on her by the greater eagerness with which he watched his true quarry.

She turned to the revolting collection of patched wool that housed Brand's companion and began on the stratagem that might have consequences beyond her control.

There were not many choices.

"You realize you will have to do something, do you not?"

Shaggy hair and a beard that seemed to be a refuge for the remains of last night's meal turned toward her. There had to be eyes in there somewhere. A mind?

"About what?"

She glanced ahead. Cunan's brightly coloured cloak caught the wind.

"Dwyn's bones," she hissed. "I have no time for games. You will need to have your plan worked out before Compline…" What did they call it in English? "Nightsong. Otherwise you, all of us, will be taking our orders in Pictish."

Something blinked. Perhaps there were eyes in there. She reserved her opinion on the brain.

"Well, that would not do any good. I do not speak Pictish."
There certainly was no brain
. "Of course, it would be all right for you. Looking forward to it?"

Choices.

This time, she could not tear her gaze away from her brother's unprotected back.

"It does not matter the smallest curse what I think. I am telling you what is going to happen—"

"Ah. You know, do you? Got it timed?"

She gritted her teeth. He probably thought, in his grubby Northumbrian head, that she had added the juice of deadly nightshade berries to the infusion of herbs she had given to Brand.

This was pointless. There was no more she could do. She spurred forward, after Cunan. But as her horse crested the rise, she saw it. What must be their destination: a little group of buildings inside high wooden walls. The unmistakable shape of a house of religion. The single bell suspended above the shingle roof rang out across the evening air.

It was a small monastery. They were allowed inside. It would have been a brave monk who had refused admittance to so many armed men. But when the doors of the refuge shut behind them was when the danger began.

Brand collapsed.

She had been waiting for it. She knew it would happen the moment sanctuary was reached because it was only force of will that had kept him going. Will and the responsibility for his men riding through the open lands of Mercia.

She also knew that there would be a small moment that was hers because the watchdogs would begin rending each other apart instantly. There was room for only one to command. She could not control that. There was only one course for her.

She slid through them, fell on her knees beside the body and flung herself on it, so that it would take the most unseemly show of force to drag her off.

This was her battle, fought on her terms. She would win it. The fire in her blood surged in the strength-giving recklessness that came only with total commitment to one course of action.

She raised her head.

"Father…" She fixed her gaze, a lethal mixture of helplessness and command, on the monk who appeared to have the most importance. "You must help me, please." She let all the emphasis fall on that small word,
me
.

"Lady!" He knelt beside her in the rushes. A gilded cross set with river pearls swung from a cord round his neck. She had not been mistaken. The abbot.

"Quickly. Help me with him. It is fever from a wound. Outlaws. We were attacked…" It would serve. Not one person in their party was going to admit who they really were or what they were doing.

She permitted a sob. It was not difficult. The abbot made distracted noises of comfort but she was pleased to see his hands on the patient, his gaze, were direct and competent. He might have the strength to take her side.

"Thank you." She breathed it.

Only then did she give in to the need to look at Brand. Like Duda and Cunan, she fought tactically.

His face terrified her. The paleness and the shadows round the eyes. She had thought she was prepared for this. She was not.

"Dear heart." It came out without any of the duplicity she had planned. She touched his face. It burned her hand. She thought he was gone, lost in the grip of the fever world, but then the thick-lashed eyes fluttered.

"Brand? It will be all right. There is help for you here that—"

The look in his eyes, one slight movement of his hand, cut that all off as irrelevant.

"Alina…"

She could scarce hear. All she could see was the terrible effort this took.

"Do not speak."

But the eyes held her: gold light, unquenchable. It was as though hurt and betrayal and bitterness no longer existed. It was the look that had passed between them and changed the world's shape for them. For her it had been stronger than the power of isolation, despair and the malice of two kingdoms. Still was.