Holder of Lightning (33 page)

“Explain what? Is that your child Ellia’s carrying? Tell me now—is it?” Coelin started to shake his head, started to speak, and Jenna lifted the cloch. “Don’t you dare lie to me again, Coelin, or I swear it’s the last words you’ll ever speak.”

Coelin gulped and hung his head. “Aye,” he said, his voice a whisper. “ ’Tis mine.” Then his head came up, and his green eyes gazed at her imploringly. “But, Jenna, I love
you . . .
”

“Shut up!”
Jenna screamed at him. Light flared from her fisted hand, and shadows moved over the buildings around them. Someone shouted in alarm, and the curious crowd that had begun to gather around the encounter suddenly vanished. “No! Don’t you
dare
say it. Who arranged this, Coelin? None of this was an accident, was it? Who made certain I’d find you, who told you to seduce me?” When Coelin said nothing, Jenna stamped her foot, the light flaring yet brighter. “Tell me!”

“Tiarna Mac Ard,” Coelin sputtered. “He . . . he sent word that I should come here, said that you needed someone familiar, that I could help him help you . . .” He stopped. His hands lifted toward Jenna, then went to his sides. “Jenna, I didn’t mean . . .”

She wanted to kill him. She wanted to hear Coelin scream in agony as the lightnings tore him apart. She wanted him to feel the pain and hurt that was coursing through her now. Her hand trembled around Lámh Sháb hála but she held back the energy that wanted to surge outward. “Did you marry her?” she asked.

A nod. “Aye. When Tara realized that Ellia was with child, she came to me. What else was I to do, Jenna? At that time, I thought you were dead, and your mam and Tiarna Mac Ard, too.”

“Do you tell Ellia you love her, too? Did you come to her after you’d been with me and snuggle down alongside her and give her the same words you give me?”

“Jenna—”

She spat at his feet. “I never want to see you again,” she told him. “If I do, I swear to you that I’ll use Lámh Sháb hála to strike you down. Stand before me again, and I will leave Ellia a widow and your child fatherless. Go, Coelin. Go and find some way to tell Ellia about this. Maybe she’ll keep you; maybe she’ll even find the love in her to forgive you.” She lifted her chin, her eyes narrowing. “But I won’t,” she told him. “I never will, and I am your enemy from this moment. Do you understand me, Coelin?”

He nodded, mute. He looked as if he were about to speak again, but Jenna tightened her fist around the cloch, and—wide-eyed—he turned and fled, walking then running back the way he’d come. Her breath fast and painful in her chest, Jenna relaxed her grip on Lámh Shábhála, and the stone’s brilliance faded.

The street around them was empty and silent except for the ragged sound of her breath. “Come,” she told the maids. “It’s time we returned to the keep.” They started down the lane toward where the carriage waited. As they walked, a man stepped out from between two houses and stood in the narrow street, barring their way. One of the chambermaids screamed at the sudden confrontation, but the man ignored her. One arm was in a sling, and he no longer seemed quite as dangerous. He looked at Jenna.

“Now you know,” he said. “I’m sorry, Jenna.”

“You could have told me, O’Deoradháin. Or did you get a perverse pleasure out of knowing I’d be humiliated?”

His head moved slowly in denial. “I took no pleasure in it, Holder. I would have preferred to tell you myself, but you wouldn’t have believed me,” he answered. “You know that, if you look inside.”

She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of a response. Her head was pounding, her arm ached, and there was a fury inside burning to be unleashed. “Fine. Now get out of my way. I’m going back to the keep.”

“Holder . . .” He held out his hands, as if in supplication. “This isn’t the way. You’re angry, and you have reason to be. But you don’t know the cloch well enough yet. There are too many people there, too many to confront.”

Jenna coughed a single, bitter chuckle. “I thought you told me to go back and use the cloch.”

“Not the way you’re thinking of using it right now.” He gestured to the tower of the keep, which could be seen rising above the rooftops. “I wanted you to know that the Riocha up there can’t be trusted, that’s all. I wanted you to use the cloch to see the truth in them.”

“And you can teach me how to do that.”

“Aye.” He said it firmly. “I can. Come with me. Come with me now.”

Her pulse pounded against the sides of her skull like a hammer; her arm seemed to be sculpted from ice. She couldn’t think. She needed to get home. Needed to get andúilleaf. Needed to think. Needed to find a way to vent this rage before it consumed her entirely.

“Get out of my way, O’Deoradháin.” Jenna started walking toward him.

She intended to push him out of the way, not caring about his size or the knife at his belt, ready to blast him dead with the cloch if she needed to do so. But as she reached him, he stood aside and let her pass, the two maids scrambling quickly after her.

“Holder, this is madness!” he called after her. “Please don’t do this. Jenna, I can be your ally in this if you’ll let me.”

She didn’t answer.

27

Bridges Burned

H
ER fury had gone cold and flintlike before the carriage reached the keep. Through the headache, through the agony in her hand and arm, the events of the last few months kept roiling in her mind and she could make no sense of it. They were
all
trying to use her; they were
all
lying to her: the Rí Gabair, the Tainise Ríg, Mac Ard, the Connachtans, Tiarna Aheron, even O’Deoradháin by his own admission.

They all had their agendas. She could understand that, yet it left unanswered the question of who was actively trying to kill her. Why would Mac Ard try to assassinate her and at the same time send Coelin to her? In any case, he could have taken the cloch easily before she knew what she possessed. What would the Tanaise Ríg gain by her death when he be lieved he could have Lámh Shábhála for his use by marrying her? Would Rí Gabair be willing to risk the enmity of the Rí Ard and those of the other tuatha by killing her?

I’d take the stone from you if you gave it to me, aye. If you’d died the other day in my room, I’d have taken it then, too.
In that, certainly, O’Deoradháin was no different. Mac Ard might not strike against her, but Jenna had no doubt that her mam’s lover would race to pluck Lámh Shábhála from her neck if she fell. Or the Rí or the Tanaise Ríg or Aheron or any of the tiarna.

Yet both assassination attempts required that someone know the keep, that they know the details of the society behind the massive walls, that they know Jenna’s movements. Who had known her and the keep that well? Who would have had the connections and the money to hire an assassin, to buy the loyalty of the gardai?

Jenna’s next breath was a gasp as the carriage wheels struck the cobbled surface of Deer Creek Bridge. A suspicion started to grow, one that left her feeling breathless and sick. By the time Jenna stepped down at the High Gates with an admonition to her chambermaids (that she knew would be useless) to say nothing about what they had witnessed, she had already made a decision.
And after you’ve been there and returned to the keep,
use
the cloch,
O’Deoradháin had told her.

She would do that, then. She would do exactly that.

She hurried to her rooms.

“Jenna, what’s the mat—” her mam asked as she rushed into the apartment, but Jenna hurried to her bedroom and slammed the door shut. She locked it, then went to the door leading to the servants’ hall and locked that one as well.

Her mam knocked and called, but Jenna ignored her. She set water to boiling for the andúilleaf and dug under the clothes in her chest until she found the torc of Sinna. She placed it around her neck and let Lámh Shábhála open ...

. . . and there Sinna was again, the old woman with the plait of gray hair, dressed in her léine and clóca, the fireplace blazing with a remembered fire, the walls of the room overlaid with its older structure. Sinna turned as if surprised and Jenna opened her mind to her, letting her see what Jenna wished her to see. “Ah, Jenna,” Sinna said, her voice quavering with age, “so I’ve met you before.” A sad smile. “But of course I don’t remember. I’m just a ghost.”

“I need your help,” Jenna told the old woman.

“Of course you do. Isn’t that why we Holders always call back our predecessors? The dead can’t rest when the living desire an answer.” She sighed. “But your time will come, when
your
spirit won’t be allowed its peace, either. How can I help you, Jenna First Holder?”

“I have been told that Lámh Shábhála can see the truth in someone. Can that be done?”

Sinna’s gray head nodded. “Aye. With Lámh Shábhála that’s possible, though not with the other clochs na thintrí. If you know how to listen through the cloch, you can hear truth, though a person who holds another cloch can still hide truth from you. It’s better if you learn to trust your own judgments. There are all sorts of truths, and not all of them are worth knowing.”

“Show me.”

Sinna smiled sadly. “Listen to me first. Sometimes it’s not good to see the truth, Jenna. I can see anger and hurt and confusion in you already. Your thinking is clouded by that and by the potions you’re taking. Jenna, sometimes you will find that you’d rather not know all the things that could be revealed to you.” She gave a mocking, self-deprecating laugh. “I discovered that, too late.”

“Show me,” Jenna insisted.

“And what do you do when you discover the truth, Jenna?”

“If you want peace, if you want me to let you rest, you’ll show me.” Another nod, accompanied by a sigh. “All right, then,” she said. “This is how I was taught to truth-see . . .”

“Banrion!”

Cianna turned as Jenna strode through the door to her chamber, two of the Banrion’s attendants skittering nervously alongside her. Cianna waved the maids away. “Jenna,” she said soothingly. “I’m glad to see you. There are rumors simply darting through the keep right now.”

Jenna ignored that. The andúilleaf made her want to sleep and the walls around her seemed slightly hazy, as if she walked in a mist. Her hand closed around the cloch, the sleeve of her léine falling down to show the scars of her arm. She forced herself to focus. “I need to ask you this, Banrion—do you know who sent the first assassin?” she asked. “Do you know who told Labras that he was to kill me?”

Cianna coughed. Her eyes widened as if she were shocked by the questions, and her gaze was on Jenna’s hand. “Of course not, Jenna. If I’d discovered that, I would have told you.”

The words sounded sincere and almost sad. But even through the andúilleaf fog, Jenna could hear the broken, hidden tones, the umber notes that Sinna had shown her to be the signature of a lie. Jenna struggled to control her own face, to keep her voice calm even though she wanted to cry out her anger. She hadn’t wanted her suspicions confirmed; she’d continued to hope that the certainty that had settled in the pit of her stomach since she’d spoken with O’Deoradháin was a sham—for if it was not, then she could no longer trust her own judgment. “Why would you ask, Jenna?” the Banrion continued. “You know that I would keep nothing like that from you. Who have you been talking with that filled your head with such notions?”

Jenna shrugged.
Focus
. . . “I overheard a most distressing conversation between two tiarna, and one of them was insisting that
you
were the one who hired the assassin.”

Jenna watched the Banrion’s face carefully as she gave her the fabrication. Cianna’s face took on an expression of shocked disbelief. Her hand went to the torc around her neck and she coughed in quick spasms. “Surely you don’t believe that, Jenna,” she gasped. “I would never have . . . No, my dear, that’s simply not true.”

Yet it was. Jenna could hear it. She knew it.

It was Cianna who would kill her to hold Lámh Shábhála.

“Who are these tiarna? I will have them brought here this instant to answer to me,” Cianna fumed. She rose from her chair, steadying herself as another coughing fit took her.

“No, you won’t,” Jenna told her.

For a moment, Cianna glared at Jenna. “You cannot take that tone with me—” she began, then seemed to catch herself. She smiled. “Jenna, I can see that you’re upset. Let me call for some refreshments . . .” She lifted her hand, reaching for the bell rope near her chair.

“No,” Jenna said again as she took Lámh Shábhála in her hand, allowing more of its energy to surge forth. Cianna started to cry out in alarm, but Jenna squeezed her right hand around the cloch, imagining the cloch’s energy closing itself around Cianna’s throat at the same time. The Banrion gave a choking gasp, her hands going to her neck as if to tear away invisible fingers. Her face went dark red, her mouth opened as she tried to draw in air. “There can be no more lies between us, Banrion,” Jenna told her. “Lámh Shábhála can hear the truth, and I know who sent the first assassin—when you knew that I would be in my room, when you thought I might be weak or distracted by trying to speak with the ghost of Sinna. After that attempt failed, after you came so close to being discovered, you were too frightened to try again until I stupidly played right into your hands by asking for your gardai. I can imagine you thought that incredibly convenient—kill me, kill O’Deorad háin, then blame my death on him while Labras brings you back your prize before anyone else has the chance to claim it. I can’t believe that I was so naive as to believe you afterward.”

Cianna’s face had gone purple. Through the anger and the haze of andúilleaf, Jenna realized that the woman was near unconsciousness and death. She relaxed her grip on the stone, and Cianna took a deep, rattling gasp of a breath. “Why did you want the cloch so badly, Banrion?” Jenna asked. “What made it so valuable to you that it was worth my life? Answer me, and I might let you live.”

“Kill me,” Cianna managed to grate out, her voice a harsh croak. “Go ahead. You’re no better than any of the rest of them. I’ve heard them, all along. ‘Poor Cianna. Such a weak, pathetic creature. She’s given the Rí all she could, and now she’s useless. It’s a shame she doesn’t die, so he could marry again.’ And you—do you think I couldn’t see the pity and disgust in your face? ‘Poor Cianna . . .’ Well, with the cloch, no one would be saying that.”