A Rush of Wings, page 23
With trembling hands, Rowenna drew the first of the nettle shirts from her satchel and beckoned to Finn in his fledgling form. He stepped forward, stretching out his slender neck, and Rowenna slipped the shirt over his narrow head.
Next came Duncan, but Rowenna paused for a moment when Gawen and Liam stood facing her. She glanced down at the remaining shirts—one perfectly worked, the other misshapen and unfinished. And Rowenna knew what she ought to do.
She knew that of all the boys, the one who could best bear up under misfortune was Gawen MacArthur, her dark-hearted stray, who the wind had cast up on the shores of Neadeala like a gift. Her brothers had been kept safe and sheltered, first by Mairead, then by Rowenna herself. They’d felt grief, yes, but they did not know pain or suffering the way Gawen and Rowenna did. They had not yet wandered into darkness and learned to claw their own way back to the light.
It ought to be Gawen who was given the unfinished shirt, Rowenna knew. Yet standing in the square at the heart of Inverness, bleary-eyed from smoke and bound to a witch’s stake, with her hands still bloody and cracked from the work she’d undertaken, Rowenna found she could not give another inch. To once again hurt the boy the sea had given her was to hurt herself, and she could not bear to take one more agony upon her own shoulders, or to place it upon his.
So Rowenna gestured to both Gawen and Liam to come forward and made her choice. She slipped the finished shirt over Gawen MacArthur’s head. Liam bowed to her, his bill brushing the ground, and then Rowenna gave her eldest brother the worst and most uncertain of her work, woven of fear and a night in prison and skin stripped from her own pale hands.
A billow of fog surrounded the swans, bringing with it a gust of briny air—the clean, saltwater scent of the ocean, and the peat-and-grass aroma of Neadeala’s moors. From somewhere within the fog, Rowenna heard an anguished sound, and then the mist cleared and her breath caught and tears stung her eyes.
This time, she had not failed, or been found wanting.
Her brothers wore their human shapes once more, clad in nettle shirts. Gawen held up Liam, who stood half fainting. At his feet lay the severed wing of a swan, and with one hand Rowenna’s oldest brother clutched at his left arm—or rather, at what was left of it. It had been shorn off at the elbow, and blood rushed from the wound, drenching the shirt Rowenna had made.
In that moment, Rowenna wanted nothing more than to collapse onto the cobbles—to sob and shake over the good and ill that she had worked. But chains still bound her, and the crowd stood entirely silent around them. When Rowenna glanced frantically away from Liam to Torr Pendragon, she found a mire of emotions warring in the tyrant’s eyes.
Desire. Envy. Anger. Awe.
Rowenna knew she could not falter or give him the least advantage. So for the first time in Inverness, she wielded the last of her powers. No longer robbed of her voice, Rowenna Winthrop opened her mouth and spoke.
“I’m no witch,” Rowenna said, the words ringing clear and true across the square. “Since coming to Inverness, all I’ve ever done is work to undo a curse. Weeks ago, a monster dragged itself from the sea to harry the shores of the place I call home. It stole my mother’s skin, and turned my father against me. It rendered me voiceless, and forced me from my land, and tried to curse my brothers and myself to become wild beasts. But I tempered its work—not as well as I might have done, if I’d known better, but as best I could at the time. Since then, I’ve fought every day to free my family. I have bled and suffered to finish this task. And now that I’m free, I swear before all of you and before God himself—I stand here blameless of any crime.”
With Torr’s gaze fixed on her, Rowenna did not dare look at Liam, or entreat someone in the crowd to help. Instead, she kept her head high, her shoulders set, and refused to falter beneath the tyrant’s burning stare.
At last, Torr rose to his feet and, hands in his pockets, walked slowly across the square. The silence shattered as angry muttering rose from the gathered crowd. The tension in the air had turned to barely restrained hostility, and Rowenna knew that though she stood chained and unarmed, she was defenseless no longer.
As Torr approached, the Winthrop boys and Gawen backed away. While Rowenna spoke, Gawen had pulled off his belt and made a tourniquet of it for Liam’s arm. Finn stood staunchly by, small and pale, holding his own nettle shirt tightly to Liam’s terrible wound.
When Torr reached Rowenna, shouts rose up from the waiting crowd, and several dozen of the Highlanders surged forward. Torr’s guards hurried to stop them, but neither Rowenna nor Torr himself paid the chaos any mind.
They kept their eyes fixed on each other, and for the first time in Torr’s presence, Rowenna felt not a twinge of fear. Instead, a rush of triumph washed over her as he dropped to one knee.
“A miracle,” Torr called out. “God be praised.”
The hostility of the crowd melted away as they broke into a riotous cheer. But Rowenna stood with tears pricking at her eyes. Her desires had not changed—she did not want to be a miracle or a saint, nor yet a devil or a witch. She knew herself to encompass all those things, while remaining unbound by them, and she wished only for the freedom to be herself alone—not darkness or light, but something in between. A girl with power, who could wield it as she saw fit, rather than as others would have her do.
* * *
So it was that Rowenna and her brothers, along with Elspeth and Gawen, were all bundled onto the wagon that had brought the girls to the square. There were no shackles this time, though mounted guards surrounded them. Rowenna sat with Liam’s head on her lap and her heart in pieces. No sooner had they managed to get her eldest brother into the wagon than he’d lost consciousness, and the sight of his gray face tore at Rowenna.
But though hot tears scalded down her face, Rowenna was also watching. She saw how Torr rode on ahead, in company with several guards. Circumstances might have changed, but the fact that Elspeth and Gawen had conspired to kill Torr remained. Two of their number were rebels and would-be assassins. Rowenna knew that though she was farther from death now than she had been at the stake, none of them were any closer to freedom.
At the castle proper, they were hurried into the main hall, where Torr stood waiting, flanked by guards and with a stranger at his side.
“This is my physician,” Torr said, gesturing to the stranger. “He’ll see to your brother.”
Several guards had Liam on a canvas stretcher, and Rowenna cringed at the sight of him. There was so much blood. Too much blood. She could do nothing but nod her head in agreement.
“Wait,” Rowenna begged as the physician and the guards began to file away. “Where are you taking him? I want to know where he’ll be.”
“Safe is where he’ll be,” Torr answered tersely.
“I don’t want him left alone.” Rowenna glanced from Liam to the rest of her brothers and back again, caught between them. “There should be someone with him.”
Before anyone of the Winthrop boys could speak, Elspeth stepped forward.
“I’ll go,” she said, pressing a kiss to Rowenna’s cheek. “I’ll look after him, swan maiden. I swear to you, I won’t leave his side.”
Rowenna nodded, unable to speak past the tightening in her throat, and Elspeth followed the stretcher and the physician out of the great hall.
“If you’ll follow me,” Torr said, the words coming out clipped and angry as he led the rest of them to the castle’s main stair.
They traveled up, past mazes of corridors and more rooms than Rowenna thought it possible for a building to hold. At last Torr stopped in a quiet and abandoned hallway, far from the busyness of the castle’s more populated areas.
Rowenna shivered. It was a good place to tuck away people who were meant to be forgotten, and who, once forgotten, could be got rid of.
One of the guards bent over a lock, opening the door to an enormous and windowless room fitted with several cots. A single lamp burned on a small table, casting long shadows across the stone walls. Perhaps the room was aboveground, but it was no less a prison cell than the one Rowenna had spent her last night in.
Finn stepped anxiously inside at a muttered word from the guard. Duncan followed with reluctance, but Gawen balked on the threshold, seeing that Rowenna had not yet gone in. They had not spoken since his father’s death, and Rowenna could not bear to look him in the eye.
“We go nowhere without her,” Gawen said flatly.
Torr let out a weighty sigh. “You’re not in a position to give orders, boy.”
He gestured to one of the guards, who pulled a short, thick cudgel from his belt and stepped forward.
“Stop, please,” Rowenna begged. She moved away from Torr and took Gawen’s face in her hands. He still smelled of river water, and of wool and unbleached linen. The feel of his skin and the warmth of his nearness centered her, lending her strength she sorely needed. And when her gaze met his, she found no bitterness or accusation there.
Only fathomless grief and longing.
You’ve become the very last straw, his eyes seemed to say, an echo from the night he told her the whole truth. Losing you would be the thing that breaks me.
“I’ll be all right,” Rowenna murmured to Gawen. “We’ll all be all right—I promise you.”
Both of them knew it was a promise she couldn’t make in good faith; nevertheless, Rowenna spoke the words. They were a prayer and a petition—an attempt at speaking a better world into being, right there before the guards and Torr Pendragon. Gawen put his arms around Rowenna and held her close. She could hear his heart racing and feel his breath stirring her hair.
“It wasn’t your fault, scold,” he whispered. “I don’t blame you. I never will. And I forbid you to die, or come to harm. I need you to live.”
“That’s enough now.” Torr’s voice had an edge to it, and Rowenna pulled away from Gawen at once.
“Do as you’re told,” she bid her stray, knowing he might refuse a command from Torr Pendragon, but he would not refuse one from her.
This time, no threat was needed to get Gawen through the door and into the windowless room. He went, albeit slowly, and with a long look back at Rowenna. Then a guard slammed the door shut and slid a heavy iron bolt home.
At once Torr seemed easier. He leaned against the wall and tilted his head to the side as he watched Rowenna.
“Well then, witch. Now you’ve found your tongue, will you tell me your name?”
“I will not,” Rowenna answered. She stood straight and unrelenting, fury and fear singing through her veins after coming within an inch of burning. “Witch will do.”
“That was quite the display,” Torr said easily. “I think you’ve reminded the Highlanders that they’ve got a backbone, and a will of their own, and those are things I prefer for them to forget.”
Rowenna gave him a narrow look. “What use is a miracle, if no one sees it happen?”
A muscle twitched in Torr’s jaw. Once again, Rowenna caught the expression she’d seen in the square.
Desire and envy. Anger and awe.
“Aren’t you afraid?” Rowenna pressed. “You’ve seen what I can do, and the misery I can bear up under. Why not simply open the castle doors, and let me be on my way?”
As Torr smiled, something cold and unpleasant slithered down Rowenna’s spine.
“Little swan,” he said. “You haven’t been paying attention if you’ve not yet noticed what I do with things I fear.”
He raised a hand, and at the end of the corridor a guard slammed the heavy oak door shut. It cut off the tendril of wind that had been playing about Rowenna’s ankles and plunged them into darkness.
Rowenna flinched as a torch flared to life. Torr beckoned, and another guard came forward, bearing a burlap sack. The harsh sound of metal on metal echoed down the corridor as the guard drew two objects out of the sack.
A pair of gauntlets, made all of a piece and fused together to keep the wearer’s hands immobile.
And a scold’s bridle, crafted of rough metal and designed, with its iron spikes that fitted into the mouth, to still Rowenna’s tongue once more.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Torr Pendragon’s guards chained Rowenna to the menagerie wall and left her there. The customary crossbowmen were visible in a number of windows, and so she made no effort to free herself. The hours crawled slowly by as the sun traced its way to the western horizon, and in spite of the bridle and gauntlets, Rowenna dozed. Exhaustion and defeat pushed her into sleep, her very bones craving unconsciousness.
In dreams, she found her way home.
This time, Mairead stood on the rocky shingle of Neadeala’s harbor, under a starless night sky. Cold waves lapped at the beach and at the bodies Mairead had laid out along the shoreline.
There were six of them in total. With her heart in her throat, Rowenna scanned the bloodless faces, searching for Cam and praying she would not find him. Relief and guilt flooded through Rowenna when she found her father missing, and presumably still alive.
Rowenna watched as Mairead muttered something to the sea, her deepwater eyes gleaming in the low light. At the sound of Mairead’s voice, the waves surged higher against the shore, lifting the waiting bodies and bearing them away.
Wind twined itself in Mairead’s golden hair, sighing mournfully.
Rowenna, it still sang, across the hills and cliffs of Neadeala. Come back, come home, return to us. Our love, our light, our dark-hearted girl.
Mairead looked up, and for a moment it seemed as if her luminous eyes fixed on Rowenna, seeing across the void between them. This time, she did not reach out to put her finger to Rowenna’s lips. Instead, she tossed her fair head, turned on one heel, and stalked back inland, toward the beleaguered cottages scattered along the coast.
Rowenna woke still in chains and with a mouthful of blood. The Highland wind shifted about the menagerie anxiously, muttering wordless things. Overhead, a thin silver moon had risen, and wisps of cloud scudded across its bright face. At the far end of the shadowy gravel yard, the fuath paced, its sinuous form moving from one side of the cage to the other. Familiarity had inured Rowenna to the fact that it was of a kind with the creature in her mother’s skin, and when she stirred, the fuath stopped dead.
Little fish, it said silently to her. You’re alive?
Aye, Rowenna answered. For now, at least.
She felt something from the creature—a vast ocean of relief.
Why did you not kill him? the fuath asked urgently. I overheard guards speaking. They said you had him within your power—that you could have ended him. That you had a chance.
Rowenna tilted her head back to rest against the wall, wincing as the scold’s bridle bit into the soft flesh of her mouth.
I killed someone else, Rowenna said. With my craft. The tyrant pushed me to, and I have the strength for it, but it felt like drowning. I’m afraid of the dark, beloved. Afraid of the deep. If it once gets into me, I will never be the same. It will be the death of who I am, and the birth of something dangerous. But I want to live as I am, fuath. God in heaven, I want to live.
You’re a fool, the fuath thought with unaccountable softness in its voice. The dark and the salt and the deep will give you such power as will make a legend out of you.
I don’t want it. Leaning forward, Rowenna spat. She let out a low groan, then leaned back again, gingerly resting her head against the menagerie wall. With no work to do, no urgent task burning at her, she felt every one of the manifold pains that plagued her body. So she sat in the dark and ached and wept, while the wind vainly tried to soothe her and the fuath set to pacing once more.
* * *
Midway through the following morning, Torr came to meet Rowenna as was his habit. Despite the lengths he’d gone to in attempting to render her harmless, he still arrived escorted by a contingent of guards, and his archers lurked at every window. The guards hung back as Torr crouched in front of Rowenna and peered at her.
“How was your night?” he asked coolly, as if she’d spent the time in one of the castle’s spare bedchambers. “I trust you mulled over your position here.”
Rowenna gave no answer. She fell back on the silence that she’d always relied on with him and worn like a protective cloak. He did not deserve her craft, and he did not deserve her voice.
“Here’s the heart of the matter,” Torr said. He dropped his head down farther, forcing Rowenna to meet his gaze. “You know I want to make use of your power. I’ve been more than straightforward about that. And yet you resist. I could make your life so easy, witch. All I ask from you is a few favors in return—a death now and again—and you will be unassailable. Your brothers will be safe. I could even find it in my heart to cut loose that Highland cur you’ve made a pet of, though he deserves no second chances from me.”
The wind rattled the gravel near them anxiously, and Torr’s eyes darted away from Rowenna’s for a moment. She shifted, and when he looked back, her dark gaze burned at his.
Even chained to the wall in iron gauntlets and a scold’s bridle, Rowenna saw the truth of things. Torr Pendragon was afraid of her. And he could not suffer the things he feared to walk free.
So he’d cage her, either with metal bars or threats or promises. However he did it, he’d see her bound and beholden, unable to get clear of him no matter how badly she wished to, or how hard she struggled.
“My physician’s seen to your brother. Liam Winthrop, he said his name is.” Torr’s voice was reasonable, coaxing even. “What’s left of his arm has been stitched up, and he’s resting easy. Better than easy, actually—he’ll have as much laudanum as he needs so long as he’s healing. And the youngest boy, Finn? We could make a courtier of him, or a diplomat. Whatever you prefer. I can find positions for Duncan, too, though he’d need a bit more polishing than the others, judging by the talk we had.”
