Nobody's Lady (29 page)

“No,” said Jaron, in denial. “He’s lying. You hear me?” He waved his sword away from me, pointing it across the crowd. “The lord just doesn’t want us to know the truth.”

I brought my heel down as hard as I could on his toes.

“Gargh!” He bounced back, trying to maintain a grip on me, his sword hand wobbling.

I kicked back again, aiming for his shin, twisting my leg around his to drag us both down. I fumbled, and he brought the sword toward me, but I squirmed away and eventually wound my leg through his, using my fall to take him with me.

I heard a man’s guttural scream from some distance away as I fell, but it was drowned out by the splash of the water, and then the thud of my head against the sediment. The roar of the movement in the water made everything else impossible to hear.

Everything else but the beat of the heart. I twisted free of Jaron, who flailed beside me, and set out for deeper waters, to the point where neither of us could stand up. My head throbbed, and my vision blurred. I was overwhelmed by the red. The burning, fiery red from the heart in the water. The thump of the heartbeat. The threat of drowning.

Time seemed to stop, and I reached out for it. I wanted that red to go away, and I tried willing back the violet light that had been more inviting. I floated in place close to the sediment, telling the orb I needed to go to the past.

And then, whether I imagined it or not, I heard my name whispered.
“Olivière.
”

The red bled into a dark violet.
Yes! Take me back. Let me undo this!

I reached out again, but it was gone, the red drowning out the violet once more, a pair of hands grabbing my wrists and tugging me upward.

I tried to scream, to shout “No!” But when I opened my mouth, I invited in the water. It tasted sour, like the scent of copper. I closed my mouth and kicked, feeling the pressure of the water in my chest.

“Olivière!” This time my name wasn’t so clear, but I felt a tugging at my wrists. I floated right up beside my captor.

My eyes were blurry, thanks to the water and my throbbing head. But he was dressed all in black, his pale face inches from mine.

I opened my mouth, “Ailill” spilling out across my tongue but sounding like only a gurgle of water. Why was he stopping me? I knew he hadn’t wanted me to use the pool, but couldn’t he see I had to? I wasn’t going to let this evening happen.

I panicked, throwing my head back, and Ailill kicked, bringing us back to the surface after what seemed like forever but couldn’t have been more than a moment.

We broke through the surface, and I vomited water. Ailill hugged me close to him, resting my chin over his shoulder and pounding on my back so I could throw up the rest of the water I’d swallowed. What should have been the quiet trickling of the cavern walls was filled with splashing and shouting. I couldn’t focus. I concentrated on breathing, on the way I felt so close to Ailill. I felt warm. Safe. Even though my head told me I was neither of those things.

I had barely started breathing again when Ailill dropped his hand and swam backward, dragging me with him. “No!” he barked. “Stay back.”

A mess of bodies slammed into us, almost knocking me under.

“Leave her alone!”

“Damn you!”

The words were halted between splashes and gasps of breath as two—no, three, four—men splashed through the water, a tumble of limbs.

“Just stop!”

A glint of red reflected off a gilded blade. The tip poked out from the water, driven upward with a powerful swimming kick. There was no way I could avoid it. I froze, telling myself to swim away, to duck under, anything.
Get out of the way!

But as my eyes fixated on the blade, liquid red wrapped around my legs like a rope of solid blood. All the shouting died in my ears, and I heard only the echoing heartbeat of the water below. I couldn’t move. The red of the pool had restrained me.
“O
livière
!”
It wasn’t calling me. It was angry with me.
Why? Because I’d tried to order it? Because of what I’d done the last time I went through it?
Whatever the reason, it would drown me, one way or the other.

“Olivi—gah!”

The tip of the blade shot up, stopping a hair’s breadth from the base of my throat, and I lurched away. The blade had come through Ailill’s chest, and now it dripped, dripped, dripped blood into the glowing red water.

“A
ilill
!” I grabbed his upper arms, struggling to keep him from sinking. The squeeze of the red light on my legs faded, for what good it did now. I had to kick to stay afloat, but I was panicked. I couldn’t let him move, not with the blade still struck through his chest.

Struck through his chest from behind, just like Elric had been when I led the rebellion to stop the men of the old village. And then I’d decided that I was a fool for playing at battle. That I never wanted to see bloodshed again.

Ailill’s lips oozed with blood, but he tried to smile. It wasn’t a cruel smile. No, it was the most genuine smile I’d ever seen across his face. “I love … when you say … my name.” He spat out a river of blood, his head lurching forward.

“A
ilill
!” I screamed again, not sure what to do. Lift him off the blade? Swim to the sediment?
What can I do? How can I save him?
“No, no, no, no, you can’t—”

Though I clenched his arms so hard I might have left bruises, his body collapsed, leaving me holding nothing but black leather.

“N
o
!” I shouted again, but he was gone. Vanished into death. The very last death.

And behind where he’d been, still clutching the hilt of the blade that dripped red with blood, was Jurij, his mouth agape.

“Y
ou
!” I screamed. “How could you? How could … ” I swam forward, screaming nonsense, ignoring the blade that hung limply from Jurij’s grip. I pounded my fists into the water, one hand still clutching Ailill’s jerkin.

Jurij pulled the blade out of my path and then tossed it, letting it succumb to the heartbeat of the water. He swam backward, holding his hands out to stop my approach. “Noll, wait! Noll, listen! I didn’t mean to.”

“You didn’t mean to? You were swinging around a weapon, and you didn’t
mean
to?” I reached him, snarling, and tried to clobber him, but I faltered when I hiccupped and choked on the flowing streams of tears. I could barely keep myself afloat. “Who were you
trying
to kill then,
me
?”

Jurij swam backward out of my reach, the coward, and I just got my second wind to surge after him when Darwyn and Tayton appeared on either side of me, holding me in place.

“Calm down, Noll!” shouted Darwyn, but he got a splash of water from my foot in his face.

“Let’s get to the sediment,” said Tayton. He leaned his head back to avoid another flurry of kicks. “Noll,
Noll
. Let’s go.”

“No!” I said, determined to dive back under, but they overpowered me. I reached out toward the red glow, willing it to turn violet, but it refused. It burned.

You are not welcome here.
The echoing voice in my mind was so harsh, so final, I knew at once that my last chance to go back to the past was beyond me. There would be no undoing this night, no matter how hard I tried. It was like Ailill’s death was final not just for him, but for all hope of miracles.

The water surged like a great gust of wind shot through it, and I flew back, hearing screams echo throughout the cavern. When hands grabbed my arms again, I stopped resisting and was dragged out of the water toward the sediment.

“What was that?” Alvilda’s voice rang out.

The surge calmed into ripples behind me. But my heart sank. If I dove in, the pool would send me right back out. But maybe once I got clear of all of these people, I could try. And try. As many times as necessary.

You’re a fool. Father and Ailill are gone, and all your power to stop it is gone with them.

As soon as I broke free of the blood-stained water, Mother and—to my surprise—Elfriede swooped in on either side of me, wrapping me in their embraces.

“Oh, Noll!” Mother rubbed my head and cradled me, her tears falling onto my forehead. “Noll, I was so worried.”

I pushed her away, and fury that shouldn’t have been directed at her must have been plain on my face. She nodded at Elfriede, and they gave me space. I pounded the sediment as they moved back and stared at the jerkin in my raw and bleeding fist.

“Where are they?” I stood on wobbly legs, gently shoving Elfriede when she swooped in to help me stand. “Jaron! Jurij!”

I blinked, clearing the drops of water that still clung to my lashes and ignoring the pain that throbbed at the back of my head. I looked around, trying to bring the many—too many—figures into focus. And then I noticed the piles of white clothing in a half circle around the length of the pool’s sediment.

“No!” I screamed again, walking toward the nearest pile, shoving aside several people who tried to stop me, who let me go despite my weak pushes and faltering steps. I collapsed, laying Ailill’s black jerkin next to the white jacket.

I traced my fingers over both. Even though the black one was dark and wet, they had the same embroidery of roses and thorns. My fingers stopped on one of the white jacket’s blooms. On the black one, there was a hole framed in dark, dark blood.

“Where are they?” I snarled again, turning around to face the group. Master Tailor stood beside Alvilda, and between them Jaron sat cross-legged on the ground, his arms tied behind him with his own scabbard belt. Siofra stood off to the side with Luuk and Nissa, her arm around Jurij’s shoulders.

“Why?” I asked, leaping to my feet so ferociously I almost fell over. “Why did you kill him?” I didn’t know where to direct my anger, who was more to blame. But I stepped toward Jurij, passing by Jaron to beg for answers from the man I’d once loved more than anything.

He was reluctant to look at me, and Siofra let go of him to stand between us. “Now, Noll, you couldn’t see what was going on.”

I gripped the jerkin to my chest. “I don’t care! He killed him.”

Jurij’s head snapped up. “Is that such an awful thing? He was going to imprison us for life. And you said yourself you didn’t want to be with him before the curse broke, and he forced you to be with him anyway.”

“I was working on the imprisonment! And it wasn’t all his fault. You don’t understand!”

“Apparently not.” Jurij looked down. “I thought you loved
me
.”

“I told you—”

He waved a hand. “I know. You don’t. Not like that. Not anymore. Well, maybe I’m tired of loving where love isn’t wanted.”

“So you killed Ailill? Because I didn’t love you?”

He didn’t answer.

Siofra placed a hand on my shoulder. “He didn’t mean to, Noll. It was such a mess. They were all trying to get Jaron away from you. To rescue you. You weren’t coming up, and we were worried you’d hit your head.”

I choked. “But why did you bring your sword into the water?”

Jurij’s eyes narrowed. “I wasn’t thinking. I just saw a chance to save you. I dove in.”

I shook my head. “You launched up with the blade extended. Were you trying to kill me? Jaron?” I paused. “Why did all of you get swords at all? Who were you going to harm with them?”

Jurij clenched his jaw. The flames may have been gone, but his eyes burned with their own fire, glistening from the red glow of the pool. “The lord and his servants,” he answered after a moment’s hesitation. “If it came to that.”

He brushed past his mother and me, moving down the path to the entrance and disappearing into the darkness.

***

There was no sign of Jurij, the Tailors, or any of my friends. Everyone’s plan to calm me down by keeping me back in the cavern a while longer, while the lot of them ran away with their tails between their legs, seemed to have worked.

But they couldn’t hide from me forever. Not if they didn’t know there was a place beyond the mountains. Besides, they never got the answers they sacrificed so much to find.

And if some “they” watching us beyond the mountains wanted to punish people who knew about their existence, then that was fine with me. Ailill had told me the gold coin saved me, marked me as one fit for ruling. But I wasn’t imagining things when the red light in the pool held me paralyzed as the blade approached. I was done trying to protect them. I was done trying to protect myself.

As Marden and Roslyn broke through the last of the trees and bushes to the path that ran through the forest, I fingered my sash. The golden coin was still there.

“Noll?” asked Mother, her arm around my back. I took another step forward.

“His carriage is still here!” exclaimed Marden. “No horses, though.”

I froze.

Elfriede stopped at my side, reaching out a hand. “Noll—”

“I’ll be fine,” I said, waving her away. “Just leave me be.”

Elfriede looked hesitant, but Mother let me go and wove her arm through Elfriede’s, gently tugging her away. “Come see us when you’re ready, Noll. We have … mournings to arrange.”

They joined Roslyn and Marden on the path toward the village, leaving me beside the carriage. The first light of dawn trickled through the leaves above me.