Betrayals (Cainsville Book 4) (32 page)

“Not if you’re the subject of one of those deals.”

“Which you can’t really regret, under the circumstances.”

“Um, mother turned murderer? Father in jail twenty years for crimes he didn’t commit? Yeah, I can regret it.”

“Despite the fact your adopted family gave you every advantage? Love plus money? It doesn’t get better than that.”

“My birth parents might disagree. And if they hadn’t done the deal? I wouldn’t be Matilda, which would have saved me a whole lotta grief.”

“Grief, perhaps. Excitement, definitely. Your life, Liv, will be nothing if not interesting.
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Also, there is no guarantee that a disability would have lessened the interest in you as Matilda.” He turned to Gabriel.
“You
recognize the sacrifice her parents made to provide her with the life she has. Imperfect but wondrous.”

“And dangerous,” Gabriel said. “I could live without that part.”

“Without that, her life would not be nearly as much fun for her. Cŵn Annwn live for the adrenaline rush. We all do, in our way.”

“Which takes us back on topic,” I said. “Cŵn Annwn and deals.”

He waved at the bookshelf. “I suppose you’d like that route. It gets the adrenaline racing more than dry explanation.” He glanced at Gabriel. “Liv prefers a life fully lived. Fully experienced. That’s the lesson she’s teaching you, and I’m glad to see you’re such an apt pupil.” When Gabriel gave him a look of complete incomprehension, Patrick only sighed and waved his hand. “As long as you take the lessons to heart, you don’t need to recite them. Do I dare ask if
you
want to read one of my books?”

“What?” Gabriel’s composure and formality fell away in almost comical surprise.

“That would be a no,” Patrick said. “Liv dives in. You still need to test the waters. Ah well, it’s a start.”

Patrick handed me a book that was newer than most on the shelf. I’ve done enough work with Victorian original texts to recognize the binding style. It was a cloth cover, embossed in gold, simpler than many of the books I’ve worked with, with only a Celtic moon on the front.

It felt oddly light for the size. When I opened the cover, I saw why. Entire sheaves of pages were missing and others were burned, as if someone had set fire to the book.

“It’s in rough shape,” Patrick said. “That’s the problem with handwritten texts. I can’t just run out and replace it. That is one of a kind.”

I flipped through it. The pages that had been removed had been done so surgically. Even on some undamaged ones, entire paragraphs had been blacked out.

“Redacted material?” I said.

“Apparently.”

I lifted the book to examine it more closely. “It was intentionally mutilated, then.”

“So it seems. My theory is that the owners really would have liked to destroy it before it got into the wrong hands, but they couldn’t quite bring themselves to obliterate decades of work. The fire damage suggests one owner even got so far as to toss it into the fire before changing his mind.”

“Dark, arcane knowledge?” I said. “Unfit for the hands of fae or mortal?”

Patrick chuckled. “I wish. No, the contents are much more prosaic.”

Before he could continue, I began skimming, picking up what Welsh I knew. Two words, repeated many times, made it very clear what this was.

“It’s a history of the Cŵn Annwn,” I said.

“Yes.”

Patrick sat beside me, nudging Gabriel away, which was rather like nudging a stone block. He got a cool look for his efforts and, with a sigh, Patrick pulled up the ottoman and perched on it instead. Then he reached over and flipped through pages while the book lay on my lap.

“It appears that around the turn of the last century a Huntsman decided to compile a history of their kind. This is his life’s work. You’ll see it’s all in a single hand, the ink changing and …” He turned to the back, where at least twenty pages were blank. “Continued right up until his death.”

“Why the mutilation?” I said.

“Fae consider themselves a secretive lot, but …” He waved at his library. “Obviously that doesn’t apply to our books. It’s arrogance, really. We presume we can write what we like, and if any mortal finds it, he’ll think it a work of fiction. The
Cŵn Annwn are far more careful. The thought that someone outside their community would find such a book …” He gave a mock shudder.

“So a Huntsman wrote it, and his pack found it after his death. They cut out and redacted the most sensitive information but couldn’t bring themselves to destroy his life’s efforts. Dare I ask how you got hold of it?”

He smiled. “You can ask. I won’t tell. And I would very much prefer that Ioan didn’t discover I have it.”

“Of course not. Once he got it, I’d never see it again.”

“Smart girl. All right, then, the information is a bit fragmented, particularly the parts on deals.” He turned to near the back of the book, where a section had been almost entirely redacted.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “I’m surprised they didn’t just cut this out completely.”

“Mmm, I can understand their reluctance. In matters of business—as in law—it is helpful to be able to refer to a precedent. For our purposes, it’s good that they left the pages in, because while the words are covered, they still exist. You’ll notice jumps and jolts, but you should be able to get the general picture. You’ll want to start here …”

He pointed partway down the page. I began to read, translating the general gist of the text that remained.

The rest of the paragraph had been redacted. The next one started …

At last, the ink swam and I braced myself for it to open, and when it did, I tumbled through into a forest.

A
man crouched by a well-worn path. His clothing suggested a Celtic clansman, but my knowledge of such things is pretty much limited to movies and novels.

As he crouched there, breathing hard, I picked up the thunder of hooves. Then the bay of hounds, so loud the man stumbled back, and he grabbed a tree trunk, as if needing to hold tight to keep from running for his life. His breath came ragged and loud, his face a pale mask of panic. Fire blazed through the trees, the baying of the hounds softer, the pounding of hooves hard enough to shake the earth. A man raced past, tearing down the path like the hounds of hell were on his heels. Which they were.

The man himself wore armor—a helmet and leather breastplate. He had a sword in hand, but he didn’t stop to use it. As he tore past us, the hounds pursued, and I swore sparks flew as their paws struck the earth. They passed, and the man beside me threw himself toward the path, using the tree as leverage to launch himself there.

That’s when I saw the Hunt. The true Hunt. Black steeds bore down on us, red-eyed and fire-maned. Dark-cloaked men rode on their backs. Or I must presume they were men—their hoods were drawn up and all I could see were red glinting eyes.

The clansman dropped to the path and covered his head and shouted, “Mercy, lords of the Otherworld. Mercy!”

The soldier long past us shrieked and the hounds snarled, and I knew from that sound that they’d caught their prey. The horses whinnied, and the riders reined them in.

The scene stuttered, like a film caught in the projector. And I glimpsed a house, a modern house, so briefly that I could tell nothing more about it. A house and a voice, and then I was back in the forest, shaking my head and remembering what Patrick said, that there might be fits and starts from the book’s mutilation. When I looked up, the front rider had brought his steed to the cowering man.

“You are not our prey tonight,” he said, his voice a sonorous boom from the depths of that hood. I was pretty sure he—like the cowering man—didn’t speak modern English, but as usual, that’s what I heard. “Go home, and tell no one of what you have seen, lest the Hunt come for you next.”

“I-I wish to speak to you. I have waited for you.”

“You interrupt our hunt
intentionally
?”

“I beg pardon, my lord. It was the only way to gain your attention, and the hounds have taken their prey, so I hope the imposition is not too grievous.”

“You hope wrongly. I can tell you come from a family of cunning men, which explains how you know of us, and perhaps you think that excuses you, but that knowledge is the very reason why you
have
no excuse. You have impeded—”

“And I will pay the price, whatever it may be. But I beseech you, my lords, to hear me out. My wife has been taken by the Romans. She is forced to serve in their kitchens, and from what I have heard …” He swallowed. “That is not all she is forced to do.”

The Huntsman shifted on his horse, the beast dancing in place as he let out a sound not unlike a hound’s growl. “The
Romans are a plague on this soil.” He gestured to where the hounds snarled in the distance. “We took one of their damned soldiers tonight. He’d come upon a dryad in the woods, and when she could not escape, he took his time with her and has now paid. This is still our land.”

“Yes, my lords. Yet as long as the Romans remain, we are subject to their tyranny. Freeing my wife would be difficult enough, but if she escapes, she brings down the wrath of the eagles on our heads. I need another solution. A magical one.”

“To free your wife in such a way that her captors do not realize she’s gone,” the Huntsman mused. “Presumably also freeing others from your village, which will require more than simple fae compulsion. An interesting proposition.”

“In return, I will do whatever you ask of me.”

There was a silence so long the man began to plead, but the Huntsman raised his hand. “Would you murder Romans?”

“Gladly.”

“Murder them in a way that you might find repulsive? There was a tribal camp a half day’s ride from here. A dozen women and children forced to flee their homeland. While their men were away, four Romans struck. They raped, and they slaughtered, and there is nothing we can do about it, no victim having fae blood. We would like the perpetrators killed in a way that will teach others that the women and children of this land are not their playthings.”

“Yes, my lords. I will do as you …”

The scene flickered again. I was in a bedroom, looking out from behind bars. The bars of a crib. I remembered the cribs in the abandoned asylum, but this was a child’s bedroom, sparking some deep memory—

“Got a deal for you,” a man’s voice said.

I shot back through time, landing this time in a tavern thick with smoke and stinking of fish and cheap whiskey and
unwashed bodies. Three men sat at a corner table. They were not dressed finely, but they were clean and well groomed, and they held themselves apart with an air of fastidiousness, like travelers who’ve wandered into the wrong part of town in search of a drink. A few men circled, as if thinking they might be easy marks, but cold looks from the trio sent them scuttling off. All except this one, who stood beside their table.

“I have a deal for the Huntsmen,” the man said.

The oldest of the three lifted cool green eyes to the man. “And you think this is the way to bring it to us?”

“I thought it better than accosting you in an alley.”

“We would prefer not to be accosted at all. Particularly when we are enjoying our ale. And hunting.”

The man cast a careful glance around the bar.

“Ah, yes,” the Huntsman murmured. “Perhaps that would explain why you found us here. Did you think we would frequent such an establishment by choice?”

“I do not question the ways of the fair folk.”

The Huntsman’s lip curled. “We are not fair folk. Now, before you insult us further, may I suggest you wait outside until we are done our ale and our other business, and then we may speak to you.”

The man pulled out the fourth chair and sat. “No need. I’ll be quick about it. My family used to be
mhacasamhail.
We no longer follow the ways. Too little profit in it.”

“The vocation of the
mhacasamhail
is not about profit, no more than that of the Cŵn Annwn. It is mutual service and—”

“I think there’s a better alliance to be made. With you and your lot. I have heard that you will offer deals. We hunt the men that you cannot, send their blighted souls to purgatory, and you pay well for the deed.”

“Pay?”

“Usually in favors, but I don’t want favors. Twenty guineas a head. You provide the names; I’ll do the rest. No need to tell me what they done to deserve it.” He winked. “I trust you.”