The Irish Warrior Part 43

The soldier's gaze snapped from Senna.

"Why are you still standing there like a dolt? Round up the men."

Senna saw a telltale flicker shudder cross the veteran warrior's face. It was nothing of note, a flash by his lips, a tightening along his jaw. He turned to his men-at-arms, who were lined up along the walls.

"You heard what your lord said. Double the watches, everyone on half rations. Mac and Conally, round up the men from the rabble out front."

A slow groan rose from the war-wasted men, some of whom were only here on castle duty from their own lords, a service that was due to end for some of them within a dawn.

At the sound, Balffe turned back with a blank and utterly terrifying look. "You want for me to convince you?"

The men scattered. Wood-soled boots cracked stone as they barreled up the stairs out of the hall. Angry echoes bounced back into the hall as the soldiers pa.s.sed along the long, dank corridors to the barracks.

Rardove turned to Senna. "And now, what shall I do with you?" he said, his tone contemplative.

"Do with me, my lord?" The interchange with Balffe had given her just enough time to gather her wits, and she needed them all to carry her next words into the air. "Why, you shall marry me."

Rardove's attention narrowed in on her like an archer's. "I somehow doubt you will say 'I will' in front of a priest."

"I somehow doubt you would have a priest who much cared. But I shall come willing enough."

"You will?"

"Aye."

Rardove's hand shot out and gripped her shoulder. The pain had begun. "Willing? You lie," he spat. "That is as big a lie as the other."

Cold drops of fear slid down the back of her throat like medicine. "Aye, I lied. But we both knew that, did we not? I am a dyer. As skilled as my mother was."

"You are like her in every manner," he snarled, then reached into his tunic and slammed something into her chest. She toppled backward a few steps, gripping what he pressed there.

The missing pages. He'd found them.

Indeed, she found herself thinking-some rational, orderly part of her mind was still in working order- she found herself thinking-some rational, orderly part of her mind was still in working order-no more concerns on how to proceed. We know just what to do.

She pushed back her shoulders and said in a clear voice, "I will make you the dyes."

He burst out laughing. "I know exactly what you will do, Senna. When, and how."

"Do you?" She met his gaze. "Tell me, do you want them explosive or"-she paused for effect-"camouflaging?"

His face underwent a series of small metamorphoses, from startled, to impressed, to furious, to...desirous. She seized the moment.

"You call off this war, and I will make you the dyes."

His breathing, made unsteady by her admission, slowed. "I cannot. It has gone out of my hands."

"Retrieve it back into them," she said coldly. "Tell the king the dyes are only legend. A lie." She looked down at the pages in her hand. His tongue flicked over his lips as she smoothed them. She perused them briefly before looking up. "I do not want King Edward to know of this. Do you?"

His eyes were slightly distant as they met hers. He looked in the beginning throes of madness. Or pa.s.sion.

"I do not want anyone to know," he agreed hoa.r.s.ely.

She lowered her voice to match his. "No. 'Twill be our little secret. Tell Wogan, the governor. Send word to King Edward." She looked down at the manual languidly, ran one finger slowly over it. "Call them off, and I'll stay here with you. Willingly."

His eyes narrowed. "Why?" He might be pure evil, but he was pure cunning evil. Incipient madness-or l.u.s.t-had been overtaken by scheming. "You do not want me to have the dyes."

She had to find a way to bind him to her more than Edward. More than his hatred. She took another intuitive step in the dark.

"This is what we do, the women in my family, is it not?" she murmured. "We start as de Valerys, but we end with you. I know my mother was here, with you." She took a step closer. Desire swept over his face, slackening his jaw. He nodded as if in a trance. "And now, 'tis I."

"You are mine," he said thickly. He shoved his hand through her hair, dragging her head back. "Your mother is dead."

"I know." She fought off the urge to mark him, to carve up his face. Ten years ago it had gone like this, and she hadn't known how to defend herself. The knife on the marriage bedstead had been a stroke of luck. Now, she knew very well how to defend herself. And she couldn't do it.

If she killed Rardove, if news went out that he was dead, King Edward's men would crawl over the castle like fleas on a straw tick, and they would find the pages. They would find her. And they would find someone who, given time, could decipher the deadly recipe of the Wishmes. Then Ireland would fall, Scotland would fall, and Finian would have ropes tied about his wrists and ankles.

Rardove's vile lips were by her ear, breathing into her hair. "And I swear, Senna, I will kill you, too, if you do not craft the Wishme dyes for me."

She gathered every sc.r.a.p of reason and sense from the cold, trembling corner of her petrified mind, and drew herself up. "I will work on the dyes this night," she said, putting a hand on his chest. "In the morning, come to me."

In the morning, she would kill him.

Or he would kill her.

But really, it couldn't go on like this.

Twilight poured through the high, narrow windows of the empty great hall, creating a mingling of firelight and pale purple light, illuminating the spinning, dancing dust motes into an unearthly glow. Blue-black. Much like the Wishmes.

Pentony should know. He'd seen the color they made. And not the sample that was hundreds of years old. He'd watched a fresh batch be born, hatched by Senna's mother.

Sooth, he'd helped pound out mollusk sh.e.l.ls himself, when the baron was out hunting one afternoon and Pentony had not yet fully adapted to the groaning silences of Rardove Keep.

Elisabeth de Valery had been like fresh air when she arrived, twenty years ago. She'd chatted and laughed in that winsome, unique dialect of hers, some melding of Scots and mid-England French-and her hair practically glowed red, and she'd cared not a whit for Rardove's rage or the gloomy Irish winters, which is probably why, when she'd handed him a mortar that dreary afternoon, Pentony simply took it and started pounding.

It is probably also why, when it became needful, a year later, he helped her escape.

And it is certainly why, when she entrusted him with the last copy of the dye manual, he did as she bid.

He'd sent it, along with a small sample of the dyed fabric, to her husband, de Valery. 'He'll either receive me or the secrets,' she'd said to him, smiling. Pentony knew which he would have chosen.

Then, the night she fled, she handed him a clutch of parchment sheets, scribbled over with her mad, beautiful sketches. For my daughter, on her wedding day. Just in case, For my daughter, on her wedding day. Just in case, she'd whispered, and this time her smiles were covered in tears. she'd whispered, and this time her smiles were covered in tears.

Then she slipped out the gates and ran for her life.

Ten years later, Pentony had followed up on that final request. He had sent the parchment sheets to her daughter. Under cover of darkness and packaged to appear a gift from an 'unknown' Scottish grandfather, on her betrothal eve, Senna de Valery, at fifteen, became the possessor of the last secret of the Wishmes. The only person who could create the beautiful weapons.

Right now, Pentony knew two things with absolute certainty: Rardove would never call off this war-probably couldn't now-and Senna was a dead woman.

Just like her mother.

He stood a moment longer in his vantage point of shadows lurking at the corners of the hall, then stepped out and hurried across the room.

Chapter 57.

The night dragged itself out without incident, the only remarkable thing about it being the armies encamped around the baron's keep. Tents and small fires lighted the plain before the castle, dark things disturbed now and then by shouts of male laughter.

To the west, on the abbey's hummocks and streaming down their sides for miles, camped the Irish. Pitched battle was not the usual state of affairs in Ireland, but then, the threat was not a usual one.

As midnight became a distant memory, Rardove sat in the great hall, slumped on a bench before the low trough fire. He drummed long, thin fingers on his stained breeches, drunk and incredulous. The events of the day were forcing upon him a self-examination he hadn't experienced since he exploded inside his first wench, thrusting and quivering, leaving him spent and sure that this this was what he wanted from the world above all else. was what he wanted from the world above all else.

He swallowed a bolt of wine, staring straight ahead. His entire world had crumbled. Everything he ever wanted had become a curse or been destroyed. Elisabeth, his only true love: gone, and in a sudden blaze of heartache that had never stopped thudding, even twenty years later.

How could she have preferred Gerald de Valery over him? For a short time, he thought he'd won that battle. She'd come to him, had she not? He'd secured these Irish lands, at great risk to himself, for her. her. She'd wanted dyes, and he'd got her the most legendary ones around. And, eventually, she came. Left de Valery for him. She'd wanted dyes, and he'd got her the most legendary ones around. And, eventually, she came. Left de Valery for him.

Having her close was all he'd wanted from living. Listening to her, watching her move. And for one blessed year, he'd had his dream.

Then she fled. Dead on the Irish marches.

G.o.d, how he missed her. The bite was as sharp as the morning he realized she was gone. With the recipe. She hadn't wanted him after all.

Rardove had had to kill her, of course. Track her down and strangle her before she made it to the s.h.i.+p. He'd had no choice. He could not let her escape with the recipe.

But in the end, she'd had no recipe. He'd found nothing on her person, nor back at the castle. No coded instructions, no written clues on how to re-create the fabulous, dangerous dyes she, the last of the dye-witches, had crafted for him.

And now he had the daughter. She sat in a chamber above him, around a sweep of stony stairs, driving him mad. She was a living, breathing problem. A woman he couldn't possibly contain. She was nothing like her gentle, loving mother, except in looks and the capacity for treachery.

Except...she said she could make the dyes.

But in some dim, honest corner of his mind, Rardove knew even this would not a.s.suage the awful, pounding pain in his heart.

His hands rose to cup the sides of his head, as if to ensure the insides did not spill out. The room was a melding of chalky light and bulky shadows. His pointed fingertips almost touched over the crown of his head as he bent under the pain.

That night, the winds blew chill and the stars sparkled brightly. On the hills with his men, Finian called for music. The king stood a few yards away, back in the shadows, silent. On the eager green turf the musicians worked their craft. Thoughtful looks were etched on their granite faces as the music spilled out, harvested from centuries of brave deeds done by men now rotting in their graves.

Finian stood at the edge, a moment of stillness amid weeks of action, and the realizations crowded in thick.

All these years, what every Irishman knew was that The O'Fail had an expansive belief in Finian O'Melaghlin. Endless, enduring. But perhaps, after all, it had its limitations.

Or rather, perhaps it reckoned on his his limitations. limitations.

Finian could wield any weapon, fight any war, carry any negotiation through to its unforeseeable end. He could make his mates laugh and his women swoon. He could sing a pa.s.sing tune, lift bricks of peat, and he alone could provide the necessary leaders.h.i.+p to guide the tuatha tuatha to safety and prosperity again. He had everything a king and councilor and warrior required. to safety and prosperity again. He had everything a king and councilor and warrior required.

He had not, though, believed he had what Senna required.

And mayhap the king had known that all along. Mayhap 'twas part of what he he believed in. Counted on. That Finian was flawed. believed in. Counted on. That Finian was flawed.

Senna saw him not as a warrior, not a potential king, but as a man full. And perhaps it would would do. Perhaps he did have it in him. do. Perhaps he did have it in him.

So he stood at the edge of the circle of warriors and stared across the windswept land, intent on a rescue.

Perilous and foolish, it mattered naught. He would claim Senna come high waves of protest from all the sh.o.r.es of his life.

In Rardove's chamber, bent over the long trestle counter, as she'd been for the last ten hours, Senna lifted her head. Every move she made, lifting and moving, measuring and boiling, was like a taste of her mother.

She felt like a wraith, a ghostly shadow of her own past, right down to how she pushed the hair off her brow with her inner forearm, the only part of her arm not stained with dye. Just like her mother.

The missing pages were laid out beside her, utterly, awfully comprehensible. Her mother had indeed been a weapons-mistress. A consummate one. And Senna understood the coded language as if she were reading a ledger. Such things were were in the blood. in the blood.

In front of her lay a small fragment of wool. Her wool. Her special crafted wool, from sheep that her mother had begun breeding twenty-two years ago, woven in the intricate pattern that had seemed simply complicated, not meaningful. Now it was dyed with the Wishmes.

It s.h.i.+mmered and guttered light and the absence of light as she lifted it between the tips of two fingers and held it in the air. You'd hardly know it was there.

It hadn't taken years after all.

Her eyes started filling with tears. Oh, she was filled with such awfulness. And such goodness. Like in her womb right now. That was goodness.

She'd not thought it possible. The ravages of a night of "wedded bliss" had resulted in three physicks concluding she was barren.

Finian brought her back to life.

She sat on the floor, settled her spine against the wall and pulled a lantern closer. Sliding out its horn covering, light blazed forth, spilling pale yellow light in a wedge. Her lap, the side of her leg and her low boot were illuminated. That's all she needed.

She would destroy the pages, for certes. But first, she planned to study them one last time, commit the entire thing to memory. Every image, sketch, word would be etched in her mind.

She was really very very good with doc.u.ments. good with doc.u.ments.

After, she would burn the pages.

Then she would escape. Because Senna had no intention of dying here.