Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3) (14 page)

Uaigneas
was already turning around, heading south once more. They could see two large islands close by, both with high cliff walls against which the waves were breaking in furious white spray—they’d been blown even farther south despite their attempts to make headway north. Wisps of darkness were fraying the edges of the clouds lining the clear space around the ship, promising that the storm would return in a stripe or less. A ring fort perched on the promontory of the larger of the islands, and a wind-torn banner fluttered there: green and gold—so these were islands owned by Tuath Infochla. “Can we reach them?” Sevei asked.

Jenna shrugged. “Only the Mother knows. At least we might be able to put one of them between us and the storm waves.” She stood away from Máister Kirwan, glaring up at the sky. “You see, Sevei?” she said. “What does it matter if you hold Lámh Shábhála? The world is still stronger than you are. Nothing is permanent. Nothing. Even the walls of the White Keep will fall one day. Nothing lasts—nothing we create.” She glanced at Sevei’s hand, still holding Dillon’s. “And certainly nothing we feel.” Jenna grimaced, her eyes closing as she clutched at her soaked clóca. “I need that special tea, Mundy,” she said. “I need it now.”

“I’ll make it for you, Banrion,” Máister Kirwan told her. Jenna grunted and started walking toward the cabin, but Máister Kirwan lingered. “She’s not feeling well,” he told them, “and draining Lámh Shábhála this way is a strain and makes her feel vulnerable. She’ll be better once the mage-lights come again.”

“I know, Máister.”

He nodded. “You ought to get into some dry clothes—you wouldn’t want to catch a chill or worse.”

“I know that, too,” Sevei told him. “Despite what Gram says, death, at least, is permanent.” The words seemed to come to her without thinking.

Máister Kirwan’s mouth turned down under the beard and he cocked his head quizzically. “Why would you talk of death?”

Sevei shook her head. “I don’t know . . .” She looked at the sky again. The storm was clutching at the open sky with fingers of gray-black. A sense of dread had wrapped itself around her and yet she didn’t know why. She thought of her family: her mam, her da, Kayne, her brothers and sister, and the feeling of dread increased, yet no images came to her.

“I don’t know,” she said again. She let go of Dillon’s hand. “I should go change,” she said. “Why don’t you get your harp out and sing us something cheerful? We could all use that, I think.”

“HERE,” Isibéal said to Ennis. “Eat this.”

“What is it?”

“A treat,” Isibéal told him. She held out the small ball covered with honey and spices toward him. She held up another in her other hand. “See, I have one, also.” She placed it in her mouth, chewing the confection. It was perfect, the honey camouflaging the sharp, bitter taste of the nugget at the center. Ennis took the piece from her hand and put it in his own mouth.

“ ’S good,” he said, the words obscured by his chewing. He swallowed and she smiled. “Do you have more, Isibéal?”

“No, I’m afraid I only had those two. One for you, one for me.”

“Too bad Mam can’t have one.”

Isibéal forced herself to smile at that. “Aye, ’tis indeed. Ah, here’s your mam now. Shh, we’ll let the treat be our little secret, eh?” Ennis smiled at Isibéal as she moved to greet the Banrion, just stepping into Isibéal’s small chamber. Meriel stopped and looked at the table. “It looks wonderful,” she said. “And smells wonderful, also.”

“Thank you, Banrion.” Isibéal had spent the day preparing the meal and arranging her chambers. The keep’s kitchens had supplied her with fillets of plaice and white pollack from the cold waters of the Inner Sea and allowed Isibéal to prepare and cook the fish herself, though the cooks had watched her suspiciously and warily when she brought out the packet of spices. They’d wanted to know the names of each, and Isibéal had told them what they were and where they were from: Taisteal spices that had originated from Thall Mór-roinn, though the Taisteal had been planting small patches of the herbs in secret here and there through the Tuatha for decades. She’d also made a salad of sea campion, wildflowers, pepperroot and young stonecrop, tossing the leaves gently with oil she’d purchased from Asthora on her first visit to the herbalist’s shop. She allowed the cooks to prepare two vegetable dishes under her supervision—in Isibéal’s opinion, the cooks for the keep, like most cooks in the Tuatha, tended to boil everything into bland mush. There was cold soup and warm bread of specially milled flour, and for dessert a cake drizzled with molasses and berries. For drinking, she’d chosen a new mead, sweet and strong.

And she’d prepared the two pieces of honeyed confection: one for herself, and one—for reasons she could not even explain to herself because it went against both her judgment and her true employer’s orders—for Ennis. The piece for Ennis had slightly different ingredients than the one Isibéal herself ate.
It’s because he’s so much like Adimu. Too much like him . . .

She’d draped the chamber, attached to Ennis’ rooms by a back stairs, with blue cloth—“That’s Fiodóir’s color,” she told Ennis, “because he lives in the sky”—and made the air fragrant with pots of burning incense. She’d laced circles of pine branches in the center of the table with butterwort and sundew flowers as decoration. Each of the plates held a single stalk of lady’s bedstraw as accent. Isibéal had been pleased with the look herself—she could imagine that a Taisteal table at festival time might look like this, back in the homeland, though she’d never been there herself. “Please, sit,” she told the Banrion Ard, gesturing to the chair at one end of the table.

“I wish Owaine and our other children could be here for this,” Meriel said as she sat.

“I do also,” Isibéal responded, “and I’m sure Ennis feels the same way, don’t you?”

“I do, Mam,” Ennis said energetically, bounding into his seat. “Can we eat now? It looks
so
good and I’m
so
hungry,” he said with exaggerated impatience, and both women laughed.

“We can eat now,” Isibéal told him. “Just make sure you leave room for the cake. And you, too, Banrion. On Fiodór’s Feast, you must eat the cake.”

“Oh, I will,” Ennis promised solemnly. Then, as Isibéal, sitting alongside him, placed some of the fish on his plate, he turned to his mam. “When are Da and Kayne going to be back? And what about Sevei and Gram? They should be here by now. What about Tara and Ionhar? Are they coming here, too?”

Meriel laughed again. “So many questions . . . Let’s see . . . I don’t know when your da and Kayne will be back, but it should be soon. And aye, Sevei and Gram are due here in a hand of days now, though you never know about the weather at sea. Tara and Ionhar won’t be here, though. Now, will you pass me that fish, Ennis—it smells delightful, Isibéal.”

Ennis reached for the plate and handed it to his mam. As she reached for it, he held it for a moment too long. “Mam, you’ll always be with me, won’t you?”

Meriel’s eyes widened slightly and Isibéal felt the breath catch in her throat. “Why, what a question, Ennis,” Meriel said. “I’ll always love you, aye, but as you grow older, you won’t
want
to be around me. You’ll go to fosterage, like your brothers and sisters, and probably to Inishfeirm like Sevei or maybe you’ll learn to command the gardai like Kayne, and you’ll be married and living somewhere else, in time—”

“No, Mam,” Ennis interrupted. “I mean, no matter where you are, will you think of me?”

Meriel took the dish from Ennis and placed a fillet of the plaice on her plate. Isibeal watched, her breath shallow. “Of course I will, Ennis. Always. I promise. No matter where I am.”

Ennis nodded quietly at that. “Good,” he said. He looked at Isibéal. “We can eat now,” he said.

“. . . I remember Fio . . . Fiodóir from when I . . . when Sevei . . . the old Sevei, I mean, not . . . my daughter . . .” Meriel stopped. Blinked. Her voice had become increasingly slurred over the last half a stripe. “. . . when I was . . . with the Taisteal,” she finished. “The God of Fate,” she said, and giggled. “Had too much . . . mead, I think.”

She looked at Ennis, curled up in one of the stuffed chairs in the corner of the room, asleep. “He must have been . . .” Her eyes seemed to roll upward, showing Isibéal the whites. Meriel started as if jerking from sleep. “I’m sleepy,” she said, her voice barely understandable.

Her eyes widened, her breathing became ragged. She collapsed sideways to the carpeted floor, dragging her plate down with her. The remnants of the meal spilled over the Banrion Ard’s clothing. For a moment, Isibéal held her breath, afraid that the noise would bring one of the hall gardai to the door, that they would open the door—in the keep, only the Banrion’s private chambers were allowed to be locked. But no one came. In the silence, she could hear the stuttering of rain starting to fall on the flagstones of the keep.

Isibéal rose from her chair. She stooped down alongside Meriel, listening. The woman’s breathing was labored and thin. As Isibéal touched Meriel’s neck, she felt the pulse there flutter and stop. Meriel’s eyes were open—she stared blindly at the woven fibers of the carpet and the scattered leaves of the salad. The goblet of mead, tipped over, dripped golden droplets in front of her nose.

“I’m sorry,” Isibéal whispered to her. “Go now to the Mother.” Reaching down, she closed Meriel’s eyes. She slipped her hand down farther until her fingers touched Treorai’s Heart on its chain of fine gold. The cloch, her employer had told her, was to remain behind. But she had already disobeyed him by leaving Ennis alive, for reasons she still didn’t entirely understand. She pulled hard at the chain and the clasp broke. She held the stone in her hand for a moment. She gasped at the touch, as the stone seemed to reach deep into her and she into it. Suddenly, she wanted the stone more than anything else, and she could not imagine anyone else having it.
So that’s what it feels like . . . Well, it’s mine now . . .
She placed it, reluctantly, in a pocket of her clóca, knowing she had to hurry now.

Straightening, Isibéal took a long breath. Going to Ennis, she picked up the child, cradling him in her arms. He stirred slightly, his eyelids fluttering.

“Mam?”

“Shh,” Isibéal told him. “Your mam’s asleep. It’s all right.”

Ennis’ eyes had already closed again. He nodded against Isibéal’s shoulder, his breath deepening, his legs dangling below her waist. He was heavier than she’d thought. She hurried away from the table in the outer chamber to the rear stairs. She’d placed a bag there, filled with a few essentials and a change of clothing. She set Ennis down long enough to place the bag around her shoulders, then took him again, swaddling him in a blanket pulled from the bed. She took a candle from the mantle, opened the door and hurried down the stairs in the warm yellow circle of light.

She figured she had another half-stripe at the most before someone would wonder where the Banrion Ard was and discover the murder. Isibéal would be doing well to be out of Dún Laoghaire before the alarm was raised. Even though her employer would try to protect her, she also knew that he wouldn’t hesitate to let her be killed to protect his own identity—and he had the power to have that happen, especially when he discovered how she’d disobeyed him with Ennis and now with the Heart.

She passed the next landing, which would lead out into the Banrion’s own chamber, and continued down. She heard footsteps ascending and the chatter of a few of the maidservants. She let them pass; they looked at her curiously but said little beyond a quick greeting. They patted the sleeping Ennis on the head and went on. Isibéal hurried down the stairs to the bottom, coming out of the keep into an interior courtyard. She pulled her cloak up against the rain, bringing the edge of the blanket over Ennis’ face.

Isibéal felt relief surge through her: she
would
get out of here. The stable hand she’d bribed was standing there holding the reins of a brown mare, his wet hair plastered to his skull. She handed him the rest of the coins she’d promised him; he grinned and weighed them in his hand, then helped her up, handing her the still-sleeping child. She’d told him that this was simply a kidnapping—that she was taking the child to hold him for ransom. Such things happened often enough among the Riocha. He knew nothing about the rest. Isibéal suspected that he wouldn’t live long enough to enjoy his bribe.

The stable hand backed away, still grinning, and Isibéal kicked the horse toward the bailey wall. She saw light play on the glossy hair of the mare; she looked up to see the first tendrils of the mage-lights curling under the clouds, the streaks of rain illuminated by them: even a storm could not keep away the mage-lights.

Early again tonight . . . that was a bad omen. There was little time. Very soon, too soon, someone would wonder why the Banrion Ard hadn’t come out to fill Treorai’s Heart. Worse, she could feel the pull of Treora ’s Heart in her own mind, yearning to be filled, and she could not afford to do that. Not now. And if the southern door was shut, if she had to try to talk her way past the gardai at the main gates and then ride all the way through Dún Laoghaire . . .