Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2) (22 page)

Another laugh. “Trust is fine, but it needs to be displayed in gold.”

Meriel heard the jingle of mórceints being dumped from a purse. “That’s the amount we agreed upon,” Doyle said. “And a bit more, which no one in your clan but yourself need know about.”

“Aye, you may be young, but someone has taught you well, Tiarna,” said the man who must have been Nico. “It’s good doing business with you.” The mórceints rang again, as if Nico were hefting them in his hand.

“Then it’s done. She should be nearly—” A flap was flung aside on the tent, and more light flooded in, causing Meriel to blink and take in a breath in surprise. Three men were silhouetted against the glare. “Ah, she is awake.” The flap dropped back down and the trio stared down at her. Two of them Meriel recognized: Doyle and Thady. The third was a large, older man with long, braided gray hair and an impossible shock of dark beard that went halfway down his barrel chest. He was dressed in leather breeches and skins that, from the smell of them, had been imperfectly cured; a bone-handled knife hung prominently from a belt around his waist. He also wore colorfully painted wooden beads in the braids of his hair, and Meriel had seen similar beads in the hair of the Taisteal clan that had recently been in Dún Kiil.

So this was a Taisteal encampment and Nico was the Clannhri, the head of the clan. The realization made Meriel shiver: the Taisteal rarely came to Inish Thuaidh, since they weren’t a sailing people, but she had heard tales of them: wanderers, selling pots and pans and anything else that might have a value, even orphaned children if the rumors could be trusted. Thady crouched down beside her. “Meriel, I hope you—” he started to say.

She spat at him. The globule landed on his cheek as he belatedly scrambled away. He brushed at his cheek, his face flushed. Nico gave a roaring laugh; Doyle might have smiled, Meriel’s head pounded madly with the effort and motion. Thady lifted his hand, but Doyle caught it before he could strike. “Touch her, MacCoughlin,” Doyle said, his deep-set eyes flaring, “and any arrangement you and I have is over.”

The rage in Thady’s face slowly subsided. He pulled his hand away from Doyle and wiped his cheek again, standing up. “You’ll wait outside,” Doyle told him. Thady hesitated and Doyle lifted his chin. “Outside,” he said again, his voice deceptively quiet. Thady grimaced and obeyed, with a final scowl in Meriel’s direction.

“I never liked you,” he said to her before he left. “You’re a spoiled, coddled bitch.”

Doyle sighed as the tent flap closed behind Thady. He crouched down near Meriel—but, she noted, not so near that she could easily spit on him. “I can understand your defiance, Meriel,” he said. “But in your place, I’d be considering what’s best for me right now. You saw how poor Thady reacted, and I won’t be here the next time if you try it with Nico or one of his clan. I wouldn’t blame Thady too much. He wanted something very badly and the price of getting it was to befriend and betray a person who stood in the way. Most of us would make the same bargain. Your mam did; in fact, there are several people dead, including my da, because of that. And her own mam and mine—your great-mam—was half-mad for the rest of her life as a result.” Meriel could see an inner pain cross the young man’s face. “You would have loved Maeve, and she you, if you’d ever had the chance to meet her. I would have enjoyed taking you to her. But that’s no longer possible—your mam saw to that. Maeve should never have had to bear the suffering your mam caused her. Can you imagine the grief of having to light the pyre of the man you love while his child is still suckling at your breast?”

“My mam only did what she was forced to do. She said Padraic Mac Ard would have killed her otherwise.”

Doyle rocked on his heels. “That’s what she’d tell you, aye. That’s the same excuse she gave the Comhairle for her fingal, too, and they all nodded their heads and forgave her and even made her Banrion. It’s hard to argue with the person who wields the power of Lámh Shábhála. But talk to the ones here in the Tuatha, the ones who knew her at the start of the Filleadh—the ones whose relatives and friends she killed. Their opinion of your mam is quite different.”

Doyle sighed and stood up. He stared down at her, almost sympathetically. “Nico and his clan will watch after you. If you don’t give them cause, they won’t harm you.”

“Why are you doing this?”

Doyle smiled. “I think you can figure that out. Good luck to you, Meriel. I wish we could have met under better circumstances. I want you to know that I don’t hold any of your mam’s actions against you. I have no animosity toward you at all.”

She spat at him because it was all she could think to do or say in defiance, but the moisture darkened the carpet a fingertip away from the toe of his boot. Doyle raised an eyebrow as Nico chuckled. “Take excellent care of her,” Doyle said to the man. “With what I’ve paid you, she’s worth more than anything else in your wagons. You will remember that or you’ll pay me back more dearly than you’d like. I think you understand me, Clannhri.”

Nico snorted. “You can trust the word of Clan Dranaghi.”

“I’m sure I can,” Doyle replied. He looked down again at Meriel. She held his gaze, glaring back at him and after a moment, he lifted the flap of the tent and went through into the sunlight.

Nico said nothing for a long time, rummaging about in the tent. Meriel heard Doyle and Thady talking, then the sound of horses riding off. Other sounds came to her: the noise and clatter of a busy encampment. Nico came back over and sat on a stool near her, his fingers prowling his beard as he stared at her as if appraising a piece of merchandise. He seemed pleased enough.

“Where am I?” Meriel asked the man.

“A well-schooled woman-child like you, she would know about maps and where things are and eventually would figure it out anyway,” he answered, as if talking to himself. Then he nodded. “What does that matter? I will tell you, then. You are near the west coast of Tuath Infochla. Do you know the village Kirina?” Meriel tried to remember all the maps she’d seen in Dún Kiil and at the White Keep. She couldn’t see that name in those memories, and slowly shook her head. “No? So you don’t know the maps that well. Too bad. Well, we came from Kirina a few days ago.”

“What day is it?”

“By Daoine reckoning, it’s the twenty-first day of Wideleaf.”

Two days . . . You have no memories of the last two days, not since the dragon struck you on the beach . . .
Nico must have guessed her thoughts, for he stirred. “The tiarna, he said that they used a slow magic to keep you sleeping because it was easier that way. He said that the other tiarna, the one you spat on, claimed you were a changeling and that you would throw yourself into the ocean, become a seal, and escape. Your uncle—he seems young to be your mam’s brother, does he not? He’s more like your twin than your uncle—told me that we should watch you carefully around the loughs and rivers for the same reason. And we will.” He smiled at her. “As the young tiarna said, you’re valuable to us.”

Two days
. . . At the thought, her body asserted itself. “I need . . .” Meriel wriggled in her bonds.

“What do you need?” Meriel could feel the blush on her face, and Nico lifted his chin. “Oh,” he said, standing up. He went to the tent flap. “Sevei!” he called. “Come here.”

A woman stepped into the tent a few moments later. She was small and slight, her head coming only to the middle of Nico’s beard-obscured chest, but the face that stared at Meriel showed a woman in her twenties. Her eyes and long unbound hair seemed preternaturally black in the dimness of the tent. “Our guest needs to relieve herself,” Nico said, and the woman’s hands went to her hips.

“You’re not making me her nursemaid, Nico.” Her voice was a rich contralto. “I don’t want to be responsible for her. You took her in; you watch her.”

“I’m making you her guardian for the time being, Cousin,” he answered. “As Clannhri here. Unless you’ve decided to challenge that.”

Sevei glared at the man. Then, hands still on hips, she sighed. “Get your carcass out of here, then,” she told him. Nico sniffed, rubbed his beard, and left the tent. Sevei stood over Meriel, scowling. “Here are the facts,” she told her. “I’m faster and stronger than you and even if Nico doesn’t want you permanently hurt, that still leaves me a number of options you’ll find sufficiently painful. Give me trouble and I’ll give it back to you doubled. Do you understand that?”

Meriel nodded.

“Good,” Sevei said. “Then we’ll be fine. Stay still; I’m going to cut these ropes.” A knife flashed in Sevei’s left hand—bone-handled, long and curved, and well-honed and oiled—though Meriel wasn’t sure where it had come from: the unsheathing had been sudden and fast. One quick slash cut the ropes binding her ankles; another, the leather wound about her wrists. “Don’t try to stand yet,” Sevei said. “Rub your limbs and get the blood flowing again.”

Meriel did as she said, grimacing as ankles and wrists first tingled, then burned. When the sensation finally passed, she pushed herself up, standing shakily. “It’s not your moon time, is it?” Sevei asked. “If it is, I’ll get some blood cloths . . .” Meriel shook her head; Sevei nodded toward the tent flap. “Outside, then,” she said tersely. “And move slowly.”

Slow was all Meriel could manage on legs that were still tingling and numb. The sunlight forced her to shade her eyes, half-closing them against the glare as she glanced around. The Taisteal encampment was like the one she’d seen a few months ago in Dún Kiil, possibly even the same one: a collection of wagons and tents huddled together alongside the rutted, wandering path of a road. The air carried the faint scent of the sea, but they were far enough away that the ocean wasn’t visible. Across the road, Meriel could see the green-and-brown spines of mountains lumbering into the distance; behind her, very close, was a forest dominated by old oak trees growing thick and close. There were a dozen or more people moving about, all of them dressed similarly. Meriel assumed they were all part of the clan. Some of them stared at her openly before turning back to their tasks.

There was no town or village within sight and no one on the road. Wherever they were, it was desolate.

“This way,” Sevei prodded, pointing toward the forest. “And don’t think of running into
that
forest. It’s bad enough here at the edges.” When Meriel glanced back at her quizzically, the woman laughed. “You
are
naive, aren’t you? That’s Foraois Coill, one of the Old Forests. Nothing in there but Bunús Muintir, beasts out of myth and legend, and death. I won’t even follow you if you run that way—all I’d find is your bones.”

There was no glimpse of amusement on Sevei’s face; if she was teasing Meriel, it was impossible to tell. But the name . . . Foraois Coill . . . Meriel knew
that
name—she’d seen it on the maps, knew its boundaries. And Nico had mentioned Kirina: she was willing to bet that village was on the coast of the Westering Sea. And if she could get there: the scale of Bradán an Chumhacht throbbed in her mind, and Dhegli’s face swam in her mind, far away . . .

They’d walked just past the first trees. “This one’ll do,” Sevei said. “It looks like it needs watering. And if you need to do more . . .” She tossed a trowel at Meriel’s feet. “Bury it so we don’t have dire wolves or worse prowling around tonight. I’ll wait here.”

Meriel went behind the tree. As she relieved the pressure on her bladder, she stared into the forest. Farther in, it was as shadowed as twilight with the occasional beam of sunlight only making the surrounding air look darker, and the ground under the oaks was brambled and green with ferns and brush. If someone was lying on the ground, you’d have to step on them to find them.

I won’t even follow you if you run that way
. . . All Meriel needed to do was lose Sevei and she could move along the fringe of the forest to the west and the sea—she doubted that they were more than five miles from the shore, not with the briny odor so strong in the air. There might not be another better opportunity—with Doyle’s warning about Meriel’s changeling ability, the Taisteal would undoubtedly move inland from here.

Meriel ran.

She’d gone perhaps five strides when she heard the crash of running footfalls behind her and felt Sevei’s hands grip her shoulders. The woman pulled backward, and at the same time Sevei’s leg swept around Meriel’s ankles and took her down hard onto the carpet of fallen leaves. Sevei landed on top of her, Meriel’s breath going out with an audible
uumph!
as Sevei’s elbow dug into her stomach. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, and Sevei’s hand grabbed her wrists and pinned them high above her head. The woman’s face was very close to hers, her body fully on top of Meriel’s and her legs wrapped around Meriel’s. She smiled strangely. “I rather like this position,” she said. “Don’t you?”

Meriel struggled, trying to get the woman off her but Sevei only tightened her hold. Meriel cursed, and Sevei put a finger to Meriel’s lips with her free hand. “Spit on me or try to bite, and I just might have to do something you wouldn’t like at all. Now, I’m going to let you go, and you’re going to sit up slowly and not try that again, or I’ll have to tell Nico what happened, and he won’t be happy at all. And you won’t be, either. He can’t hurt you, but that doesn’t mean he can’t treat you like an animal he’s afraid will run off. We’ve had children given to us before and we know how to keep them until they’re sold. How would you like to be collared and hobbled for the rest of your time here?”