A Rush of Wings, page 10
Gawen hesitated.
“If you lie to me now, I’ll never forgive you.” Rowenna watched his throat work as he swallowed. Gawen’s gaze faltered, and he looked down.
“I want you to help me find my father,” he said. “The one rebel Torr Pendragon hasn’t killed outright yet. I’ve tried bribing guards, tried getting into the Inverness dungeons on false pretenses, but I can never sort out where he’s being kept. I need you and your craft for that. I’ve been failing at every turn, and it’s not something I can manage without help.”
Rowenna could see that the admission had cost him. Reaching out, she took one of his hands in her own, and a look of pure misery crossed the boy’s face.
“If I can get this curse sorted and learn to manage a little of my own power, I’ll help you,” Rowenna promised. “But there’s my own father to get back to as well—the work can’t take too long.”
“It won’t,” Gawen said swiftly. “Just one night’s use of your craft. That’s all I need.”
“Done,” Rowenna answered.
Gawen drew his hand away, and Rowenna retreated, settling herself into a patch of long grass growing against the church wall. Wind played wordlessly about, skittering here and there and making soft, comforting sounds. Cold stars burned across the spring sky, visible beyond the gaping holes in the church roof.
Rowenna had thought Gawen long asleep when his voice came out of the shadows again.
“You remind me of them, scold,” he said. “Perhaps you’ve not come into your power yet, but you’re just like they were. Full of spite and pride and fire.”
By the time Rowenna realized he must mean his mother and sister, who’d gone to the stake for their craft and their rebellion, Gawen had silently gotten up and slipped out into the night.
Chapter Eleven
In sleep, Rowenna found her dreaming self surrounded by fog and greeted by the voice of the sea. Waves bit cold at her ankles, and loose stones turned over treacherously beneath her feet.
Even before a gust of wind cleared the fog, Rowenna knew where she was. There was no mistaking the ghostly, metallic clank of rigging being moved by the breeze. She stood at the fishing harbor, where she’d fled Neadeala and last seen Cam. Waiting in the fog was the village’s fleet of yoals, the boats that kept the people of those parts alive and fed.
The mist scudded away, and the boats appeared around Rowenna, their masts like a small winter forest on that shore where no trees grew. The sails had been lowered and tied down overnight, and each boat safely drawn onto the shingle. But someone had been among the yoals.
From every mast hung a dead swan, pegged up by its neck and slit open from tail to throat. A mound of viscera lay on the decks beneath each one of them, but not a single seabird had appeared to take advantage of the unexpected feast. Instead, the boats stood lifeless, a strange timber-wrought graveyard marked by witch signs and speaking mutely of evil that now stalked those parts.
Because there was evil in this work that had been done—Rowenna could feel it, even in dream. Whatever her mother’s wards had been, with their sense of protection and care, this was the opposite. It gave her an impression of binding, and holding, and drowning. Of chains and hopelessness in a night with no end.
As Rowenna stood watching, a small group of villagers appeared at the head of the beach—fishermen, carrying their meals for the day in tin buckets. The comfortable sound of them talking among themselves cut off abruptly as they saw the boats and stopped short.
“What is this witchcraft?” one of the men muttered.
Cam turned to him slowly, and Rowenna could read a world of regret and pain on her father’s face. “Whatever it is, who’ll we blame? Who’ll we blame, now my Enna is gone?”
The villager spat. “She’s cursed us. Cursed us because you drove her out.”
Cam only shook his head and started for the boats. “If she has, we deserve it. I deserve it, for the things I said to her.”
Swinging himself into the Winthrop yoal, Cam wordlessly cut down the swan’s corpse. He tossed it out to sea and shoveled the pile of viscera after it. By the time he hauled in a bucket of seawater to rinse the hold, the rest of the fishermen had followed suit. But none of them spoke. They did the work silently, each alone with their thoughts and their suspicions.
Rowenna felt something ice cold touch her shoulder and turned to find Mairead at her back once more. A small smile turned up the corners of her mother’s sweet mouth, but when Mairead raised a hand, it was stained with blood to the wrist. Nevertheless, she pressed one finger to Rowenna’s lips and murmured to her.
“Hush, saltwater girl.”
* * *
It was dark still. Something tasted of iron, and Gawen MacArthur crouched over Rowenna in the shadows.
“You were talking,” he said quietly. “Something about blood and earth and seawater. Do you dream, scold?”
“Aye.” Rowenna sat up. “I do.”
“Will you tell me what about?”
Rowenna peered at the moon, which hung low over the church’s west end. She could not speak of what she saw in her sleep—it filled her with slow horror even to think of what she was shown.
“About home” was all she could offer.
But when Rowenna got to her feet, Gawen was up and at her side in a moment.
“What’s that? Have you hurt yourself?” he pressed. Rowenna looked at him in bewilderment, until he raised a hand and held one finger to her mouth.
It came away slick with blood.
Rowenna felt as if she might choke. So she scrubbed at her mouth with one sleeve and forced rising panic away, striding across the sanctuary of the ruined church.
“Get up,” Rowenna snapped at her brothers, still sleeping in the dark. Dawn was perhaps an hour away, but if their time in human form was waning, as Mairead had suggested, she’d have to speak to them early if she wished to speak to them at all.
Liam rose at once, a question written across his face. Finn yawned and stretched, trying valiantly to wake after so little sleep. But Duncan only grunted sulkily and rolled over.
Rowenna nudged him with her foot. “Duncan, don’t be like this.”
“Go away, Enna,” he muttered.
“Finn’s behaving himself better than you are, and he’s a child,” Rowenna pointed out. “We’re going to Inverness, and I want to get moving. There’s someone in the city who might be able to help with the curse.”
“Then go ahead. I won’t stop you.”
“Duncan!” Frustration set the edges of Rowenna’s words to fraying. “I’m trying to help you all. Could you at least pretend to cooperate?”
Duncan sat up suddenly, his face flushed and unhappy. “God in heaven, Enna, do I have to say it right out? I don’t want to be awake for the change. It feels like living death, being made less. Being made small, and stupid, and wild.”
Rowenna pressed a hand to her mouth. Liam said nothing, but as she glanced his way, she could see it in him, too. Weariness and pained resignation over what was to come. Finn sniffed, and there were tears shining in his eyes, though he tried to hide them.
“I’m sorry,” Rowenna breathed. “I hadn’t realized it was as bad as all that.”
“Well, it is.” Duncan glared up at Rowenna, and a sharp pang of fear shot through her, at the thought that perhaps the easiness and camaraderie that existed between them was now ruined forever. “Whether you meant it to be or not, that’s the way of it.”
“I’ll leave you, then,” Rowenna said, stumbling over her words in her haste. “I don’t want to make things worse.”
But as she hurried out of the church, the heartbreaking scent of peat and woodsmoke enfolded her as the wind surged up around them. She couldn’t help but look back, and for an instant, her gaze met Duncan’s. Then she shut her eyes tight, because she could not bear to see the dread in him as the wind grew louder and resolved into wingbeats.
When she looked again, there were only swans where her brothers had been, and the sky had not yet grown gray with the first hint of dawn.
* * *
Gawen in his black swan guise rejoined them as they left the church and started down the road to Inverness. It irked Rowenna that she could not mutter curses to express her displeasure with the entire situation—traipsing down a strange road in her nightgown and a stolen pullover, with a gaggle of swans trailing along behind her. She tried pressing her lips together in a thin, tight line. She tried scowling. None of it helped.
Slowly the landscape changed. The moors gave way to farmland. An occasional crofter passed by but chose not to offer a greeting after seeing the dark look on Rowenna’s face. The wind, seeming bent on putting Rowenna in better spirits, played about constantly, rustling the grasses on the verge and ruffling the swans’ feathers. It chuckled about Rowenna’s ankles and purred as it brushed her face.
Carry on, carry on, our love, our light. Carry on, carry on, our saltwater girl.
With a shake of her head, Rowenna did as the wind bid her.
Intermittent clusters of buildings cropped up among the farmland—little groupings of farriers and tinsmiths and wheelwrights. Rowenna ducked her head when met with groups of the villagers, and when anyone drew too near, the swans stretched out their necks and hissed a warning, so she passed by unbothered. The land began to rise gradually upward. The road grew wider and more worn. At last, Rowenna crested a hill and stopped short at the sight that met her.
Spread out below and before them lay what could only be the city of Inverness. It sprang up on either side of a broad river, the water of which was a cold, indigo blue beneath the thin spring sun. There were houses and shops and pubs and workhouses all crammed together, more than Rowenna had ever imagined possible to see in one place. Ships with masts as tall as trees lay moored in the deep river, and a castle with high curtain walls crouched to the south of the city proper, guarding it all like a forbidding dragon. Even from the hilltop where she stood, Rowenna could smell the smoke and pitch and sewage, and hear the clatter of hammers and tongs and cart wheels.
Surely, if the cure for a curse could be found anywhere, it would be in such a place. Yet Rowenna stayed rooted to the spot. The sight of so many buildings and so many people unnerved her in a way she’d never felt before. She wished, fiercely, that her brothers and Gawen were not in their swan forms. That they were their tall, human selves, who would gather round her and make her forget her fear.
Gawen in his black swan shape carried on a few steps and looked back over his shoulder expectantly. When Rowenna made no move toward him, he returned and nibbled at the hem of her skirt. The rest of the swans huddled close about her, the tension between them forgotten now that they were in feathered form, and an infusion of new courage flooded Rowenna.
She wanted her family back, which meant there was work to be done. Without allowing herself a chance to falter again, Rowenna started down the hill.
The city was a labyrinth of overhanging buildings, the laneways filled with a miasma of overpowering and unpleasant smells. Rowenna wound down alleys and pushed through crowded squares, until at last she came to a busy riverside market, where vendors spread their stalls and carts along the quay and shouted raucously to anyone who passed by. Smells of fish and seaweed and spices choked the air, and Rowenna lost no time finding herself a small open space and settling down to watch. The swans surrounded her, and several of them tucked their heads beneath their wings.
She could not ask after Elspeth Crannach until night fell and her voice returned. Thinking of it, Rowenna pulled the medallion on its leather braid out from under the neck of her pullover and idly ran her thumb along the sigil’s silver edge. For now, at least, she could try to orient herself in this strange and overwhelming place.
Rowenna had never seen so many people from so many places. There was an odd boat in the river, with papery folding sails, crewed by black-haired men in silk and linen who unloaded crate after crate of spices and fruits while speaking to one another in a clipped language Rowenna could not understand. A man and a woman in brightly colored garments walked by, an intricate filigree of designs painted across the woman’s brown hands. They had a collared beast at their side like nothing Rowenna had ever heard of—larger than a mastiff, it was shaped like a cat, and its pelt shone ruddy orange in the winter light, riven with black stripes. The great beast pulled back its lips and snarled as its keepers passed by a moored ship with a figurehead like a dragon. The vessel was crewed by pale, tawny-haired folk who laughed loudly, all of them wearing furs and knife belts or swords.
Rowenna shook her head to clear it. None of this would be of help in breaking her curse, or in finding the woman she was searching for.
Instead, she turned her attention to the merchants and vendors along the quay, watching carefully. The fishmonger four carts down sold eels, but for the right price, and if the right words were spoken, had a selection of braided charms and small pocket wards hidden away. The herbwife across the quay kept calling out that her inventory was for the kitchen, just the kitchen, but Rowenna saw a woman with a sickly child approach her, and with a glance to the right and left, the herbwife bent and spoke a quick blessing into the child’s ear before pressing a vial into the mother’s hand.
Better, but still not quite enough.
With a sigh, Rowenna tucked a little of her knotted hair behind one ear and looked out at the river, which slipped silently past. She hadn’t expected that away from her home on the cliffs, she’d constantly miss the sound of the sea. It had been the backdrop to her whole life, and to be in a place where it did not undercut every sound and every thought felt like missing a limb, or some essential function of the mind.
A startled trumpet and small flurry of feathers drew Rowenna’s attention back to her immediate surroundings with a snap. Gawen in his black swan form stood before her, neck outstretched, wings spread, hissing like a demon at half a dozen men in scarlet uniforms who were approaching from down the quay.
Anxiously Rowenna got up. She rubbed a finger at the silver medallion around her neck in a nervous gesture. The soldiers stopped a few feet away, and while Rowenna’s brothers had gathered uncertainly about her, Gawen still stood his ground, making a racket that drew the attention of anyone within earshot.
“Shut that creature up, girl, or we’ll snap its neck,” one of the men in uniform growled.
Immediately Rowenna stepped forward and lifted Gawen, who carried on hissing but did not struggle.
“Where did you get that?” the same man asked roughly, pointing to the medallion around Rowenna’s neck. “That’s the Crannach sigil, don’t you know?”
Rowenna nodded warily.
“What’s your name, girl?”
Shifting Gawen’s weight awkwardly to one arm, Rowenna gestured futilely at her lips.
The man in uniform sighed. His ash-blond hair was beginning to gray, and there was an air of confidence about him—as if he expected, at all times, to be obeyed.
“You’re coming with us,” the man said. “I’m Greaves, Torr Pendragon’s steward, and anyone bearing that symbol you’re wearing is to be brought to the castle.”
Rowenna’s anxiousness blossomed into full fear. But she could not outrun or resist six men, and now that Gawen had settled, the people milling about the pier were pointedly looking away, intent on not noticing what was unfolding before them. There was a bleak resignation in the air, as if such things happened often—the descent of soldiers and people being escorted away.
So, with her heart beating raggedly in her chest, Rowenna ducked her head in assent.
“Well that’s something at least,” Greaves said, the words sour. “The last lass we had to escort up the hill tried to slip us. She fell and split her head open in four different places—a terrible thing. Would hate to see the same fate befall someone else.”
Rowenna tightened her grip on the black swan. She wasn’t sure yet how much the boys understood in their bird forms, but Gawen had certainly caught the threat in Greaves’s voice and stiffened in her arms.
Don’t you dare, Rowenna thought at him sharply. Don’t you give them an excuse.
“Right. So long as you cooperate, there’s no need to bind your hands,” Greaves said. “Let’s be on our way, then.”
Flanked by three men in front and three behind, Rowenna did as she was told, the white swans that were her brothers following in their wake. As they marched through the city, the tight-packed buildings began to thin and the air to freshen. At last they stepped out into green, open parkland surrounding a forbidding gray castle, which stood on a hill overlooking the river. Jewel-bright peacocks strutted about the lawns, and little copses dotted the park. Greaves took a ring of heavy keys from his pocket and opened a door in the massive curtain wall.
“After you,” he said with exaggerated courtesy, and stepped aside to let Rowenna pass by first. That must mean there’d be no easy way for her to escape the curtain wall—he’d not have let her enter first if there was.
Rowenna’s fear bit deeper. Once inside these walls, would she ever come out again? She knew nothing about this place, or the people who lived in it, beyond the fact that Torr Pendragon was a tyrant her father had fought against and who’d slaughtered Gawen MacArthur’s family.
Seeing her hesitation, Greaves shrugged. “Or we can drag you in, whatever you wish. You’re a skittish thing, aren’t you?”
Steeling her nerves, Rowenna entered the castle proper.
They’d come up into a bustling side courtyard, full of merchants’ and grocers’ carts, where servants in livery or voluminous white aprons milled about, shouting to one another. A few nodded to Greaves as they passed by, but he did not deign to return the greeting.
After the kitchen court, they reached a stable yard, where exercise boys led sleek-coated horses about. Past the stables stood a tall box hedge, from behind which strange and unfamiliar noises rose.
“Pendragon’s menagerie is back there,” Greaves offered with grim satisfaction. “He likes to keep things in cages. Perhaps you’re to become one of them. Nearly there now—one more door.”
