Lady of Weeds, page 29
part #2 of Lady Series
Carys met those bright eyes—saw the curving smile—and couldn’t help saying in a very fair counterfeit of Enfys’ irritable tones, “Aren’t you out practising yet?”
That made Eurion gurgle in surprised laughter. “No,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you to wake up.”
“I believe I’m not late,” she said, in slight asperity.
“No,” said Eurion, with an amused warmth that made her cheeks slightly pink. “You’re quite early, I think, Lady.”
Carys sighed. “Eurion—”
“Yes, Lady?” His voice was innocent, but he tilted his head as he looked at her, and Carys saw the glow of laughter in his eyes.
Without meaning to, she remembered the warmth of his lips nudged against her own, her hand rising to touch her neck where it still seemed to prickle with his touch. She took that hand away again as soon as she realised, and stood up beside the bed.
Eurion would have to go today.
“I’m sorry,” she said directly. “I made a mistake last night. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“You didn’t do it,” Eurion pointed out. “I did.”
“I shouldn’t have allowed it, then.”
“I wondered how you’d try to excuse it away,” said Eurion. He sounded slightly triumphant, as though had had guessed exactly right. “I thought you’d try it this way.”
“You’ll have to leave today.”
“This time I’ll really go,” Eurion said. “Enfys will probably come to fetch me if I don’t go, anyway.”
“That’s not what I meant,” began Carys, but Eurion, lithe and light, had leapt to his feet and was already out the door. She wasn’t sure if he did so because he didn’t understand her aright, or because he did.
She tried again when she was outside with the cart and Eurion at his practise, but when she opened her mouth to tell him he would need to leave today, taking with him all his things, Eurion spoke first.
Turning naturally in his drill, he asked, “Lady, do you think you could cut my hair this evening? Only it’s got the gold ends and I don’t think it looks very nice.”
“I’ll not cut your hair!” said Carys in exasperation. How was it so impossible to tell him he must go?
“Oh, but Lady! Enfys says she’ll cut it all off if she does it, and even if you like that I don’t think it will suit me to have it that short, and—”
Carys, in despair, left him talking and went off toward the rocky shore. It wasn’t yet raining, but it wouldn’t be long before it began again; the wind already buffeted her as she walked, and she could hear the roar of the sea above the sound of the wind in her ears. It would be a busy morning for her—there would be lashings of drifting seaweed to gather from the very edges of the rocky shore itself instead of merely from the pools.
Perhaps she would even be too busy to think.
That hope proved to be entirely unfounded, much to Carys’ bemusement. For all her sorrows in life, the seashore had always been a place where she could forget everything in the coldness and movement of the work. The harshness of the weather and the danger of the seashore didn’t lend itself to wandering thoughts, and Carys had been able to freeze those lingering, sorrowful thoughts into the back of her mind as well.
Yet today as the wind wailed in her ears, she seemed instead to hear Eurion’s voice in the quietness of the cottage last night: “If you don’t stop me, I’ll kiss you again.”
And though the wind grew cold and rain sprinkled against her cheeks, still her face felt warm under the memory of how she had not just allowed that kiss, but had returned it. Still more vigorously, Carys snatched up the seaweed from the water’s edge, expending energy that would have better been kept for later and venturing closer to the water than was wise in her gathering.
She was recalled to better sense by the distant, floating roundness of seal-shaped selkies riding the huge waves far away, and retreated back to the sand-line with the last of her seaweed. Carys bundled it rather grimly, wondering which of the two was really the most unsettling: the selkies and their casual play with death, or Eurion and his unaccountable fondness for her.
No, the most unsettling thing was certainly her own response to that fondness: it had grown in the dark and now seemed to have roots everywhere even as it flowered above, distressingly clear to be seen. That was the thing she needed to fix—her response.
A wistful little thought at the bottom of her mind, tugging from her heart, asked why something should need to be done about it, and for a single moment, Carys faltered. With her back to the sea and her eyes toward the shore, it almost seemed that it was possible to let that dangerous little thought grow and expand the way it wished to do. The grumble of the storm pushed at her from all sides, but the sandy shore was before her, and the glow of the village was warm above her through the early dark of the storm.
Was it really necessary to squash those feelings?
Then Carys heard the mocking call of the first selkie above the howl of the wind, an invitation to her to join them on the rocky shore, and ruthlessly squashed down the budding hope before it could grow larger.
The bluster of the storm grew colder around her as she drew closer to the cottage, and Carys thought she could still hear the call of the selkies on the wind, pursuing her. That was nothing very unusual for a stormy week. The particular magic that kept the selkies coming to the shore also threaded through every part of the beach, not just the rocky shore, and on a stormy day it seemed to filter through the very sand.
Perhaps it really did.
When Carys rounded the last dune that hid her cottage from sight, she thought at first that the movement around it was the movement of the nearby trees in the high wind. Then she heard the sound of male voices, and she saw that once again, there was someone outside her cottage who should not have been there—and that this time, there was more than one. It hadn’t struck Carys until she saw their swords and felt a chill of certain fear, that she hadn’t been at all afraid of Joon Ha, though he had also worn a sword.
Steele’s face jumped out at her with an unpleasant shock. She hadn’t seen him even at a distance for some time, and she had hoped he’d gone on to the next village.
Carys dropped the handles of her cart and left it where it was, but took out her seaweed staff. There was little good it could do against swords, but she had the distinct impression that Steele was not here today merely to threaten. It was a good thing that Eurion was in the village: at least he would be out of this danger.
She already felt the ache of cold wetness that could bring sickness if she stayed too long without being warmed by the fire, so she called above the whip of the wind, “What do you seek?”
They would need to be got rid of, and the fire would need to be prepared for Eurion’s return. He would be equally wet and cold, though Carys hoped fervently he wouldn’t be as quick to return to the cottage as she had been.
“Lady, there you are,” called Steele in return. “I hoped you might see us and return a little more expeditiously.”
In other words, he had been waiting for her. Carys stopped where the sweep of wet sand brought her to what would have been the front yard of her cottage if it had been fenced, and said, “There’s no view of the cottage from the sea. I saw you just now. What do you wish with me?”
“When I told you I was looking for something, you told me you had nothing to give me.”
“You weren’t specific,” Carys said, as the rain lessened around them. “If you had been so, perhaps I could have helped more.”
“I find myself doubting that, Lady.”
Eurion’s voice, hard and clear, asked, “What do you want with my Lady?”
Carys’ eyes flew to the path beside her, and saw with a pinch of dismay that Eurion was there, his sword naked in his hand.
“Perhaps you should mind your own business?” suggested one of the men with Steele.
“Perhaps,” said Steele, so softly that Carys almost didn’t hear him above the wind and rain, “perhaps it is his business.”
“Lady,” said Eurion to Carys, without taking his eyes off the men. “Please stay behind me. Not too close, though: I don’t want to hurt you.”
Carys, her seaweed hook firmly grasped in one hand, did so. Eurion no longer looked like the boy she had plucked from the waves, all fragility and uncertainty: now he looked lean and sharp and deadly, his sword unwavering. Whatever else she may fear, at least here she felt some hope that he could look after himself. Together, perhaps they could even avoid dying.
“There’s no need to be like that,” said Steele. To Carys’ surprise, he sheathed his sword and motioned to the others to do the same. “We’ll be going now, Lady. Perhaps you’ll regret not being more co-operative.”
“Perhaps,” said Carys. She kept her face to them as they passed by, and Eurion did the same with his sword as yet at the ready, shifting his feet to stay between the men and Carys.
When the men had vanished between the dunes, their faces set toward the village, Eurion let out his breath. “That was interesting, Lady.”
“Interesting?” Carys laughed a little, hearing her relief in the sound of it. “In what way?”
“I expected to have to fight. It’s interesting that they didn’t want to fight me.”
Carys couldn’t help smiling. “You think rumours of your prowess have spread?”
Eurion gave a spurt of laughter. “No, but Lady, why shouldn’t they fight me? It’s interesting, isn’t it?”
“Very,” said Carys, who had her own wonderings about that. She was rather certain that it was the first time Steele had laid eyes on Eurion here at the cottage or in the village. Did he know Eurion from elsewhere, perhaps? Enough to fear or otherwise need him intact? Come: we’d best bring the seaweed in.”
Eurion followed obediently, the sword still gripped in his hand, and Carys frowned down at it.
“Did you take that to visit Enfys?”
Eurion coughed a little. “I didn’t go to Enfys today. I was late—”
“You didn’t intend to go at all.”
“Well, no, Lady. I came out to do a little more drill while I waited for you to get home, and I heard them talking. I would have fetched Ma Yong Hwa, but you came back earlier than I thought.”
“Why would you fetch Ma Yong Hwa?”
“He was here to see me before,” said Eurion. “And he’s a quite a strong magic user, I think.”
“What did he want of you?”
“For me to see his wife, of course.” Eurion heaved a sigh. “This is very hard, Lady.”
“You can stay in the village with Enfys until the cottage is safe again,” Carys said. It would be the easiest way to get him out of danger. She could easily sleep nearer to the shore if she knew that Eurion was safe out of the cottage.
“I didn’t mean that,” he said, throwing his sword on top of the seaweed and lifting the handles of the cart.
Carys, rather nonplussed, realised that she hadn’t even attempted to take the cart, and asked to distract herself, “What did you mean?”
“All this makes it very difficult for me to talk about anything except the danger,” explained Eurion. “And I would rather be talking about what happened last night, Lady.”
“We’ve enough problems as it is,” Carys said, feeling warmth in her face.
“That’s what I mean, Lady,” said Eurion, but he was grinning at her. “So I’m going to be patient again; but only for a little while. That means you can cut my hair tonight and I won’t even try to kiss you.”
* * *
To Carys’ relief, by the time she began her walk to the rocky seashore the next morning, Eurion had been persuaded to seek out Ma Yong Hwa instead of accompanying her to the shore or guarding the house. She took the seal in its pouch from behind the brick while Eurion was out practising in the fitfully blowy morning outside the cottage, and tucked it into the pocket of her trousers, beneath her skirt. If Steele chose to come back and ransack her cottage, she would like to be prepared for as much. She hadn’t yet decided if Steele was after the seal or the missing prince, but she knew she disliked the thought of him getting his hands on the seal.
“It’s market day today,” Carys reminded Eurion, as she left the house. “I’ll come to you: stay in the village after you’ve spoken to the Mas.”
“If it’s safe at the cottage, I’ll stay,” said Eurion.
It was promise enough: Carys went down to the seashore with a quickened step, feeling the first, icy flurries of rain scatter around her as she walked. Unsure of itself, the storm hung about the edges of her morning, tossing rain at her on the wind, then showing a faint warmth of pale sunlight for a few moments. As the morning drew on toward afternoon, the rain became more steady, though the wind still whipped about her in blasts that were sudden and unsustained, and Carys was grateful that she’d attended to the pools first. Otherwise, the push and pull of that wind might have seen her tumbling into the water.
She finished with her gathering a half hour before she heard the selkies begin to arrive, but when Carys began to bundle her seaweed, wiping salt and fresh water combined from her eyes, there was a steady pounding above the sound of the wind and rain.
Carys barely had time to recognise the sound as footfalls before Eurion dashed into view, his hair wild and wet, his eyes urgent.
“Clovis sent me,” he panted. “They found him but they haven’t killed him yet. We have to go, Lady.”
“Who have they found?” asked Carys sharply.
“Clovis’ brother!” Eurion said. “Quickly, Lady! They’ve come for us as well!”
She left her seaweed, left her cart, and ran. If Steele had returned, this time he would have returned with more people, she was sure.
“Which way did they come?” she called to Eurion, as they ran.
“The usual path!”
“Then we’ll take the longer way up,” she answered, and saved the rest of her breath for running.
Where the path split into three, Carys saw what she hadn’t been able to see from the beach: ahead, gathering around her cottage, were a score of men, well-armed and headed up by the recognisable figure of Steele, while to the left, two people sprinted down through the dunes from the direction of the pebbly cove in which she had threatened to drown Eurion. One of them was Ma Yong Hwa, hatless and far fleeter of foot than she would have expected from his tidy exterior, the other a younger man with golden hair tips and dark roots, just barely keeping up. Behind them, another ten or so men ran in pursuit, dogged and heavy in their armour.
Ma Yong Hwa must have seen Carys and Eurion, because his jagged, zig-zagging route suddenly gained direction, bringing the two fugitives down past Carys’ cottage under cover of the surrounding trees.
“Go ahead,” Carys said, nodding her head at the right-hand path that curled up and around the cliffs. “We’ll meet you at the village.”
“Not without you,” Eurion said shortly. “Besides, I have my sword and they have nothing.”
To Carys, waiting impatiently for Ma Yong Hwa and his companion, it seemed as though they must all be seen from the cottage. She said to Eurion, “Stay under cover of the dunes,” but it was a useless endeavour: even the men who had lost sight of Mr. Ma and his companion had now seen Carys and Eurion, their sudden change in direction direct evidence of it. Still, the two runners were well ahead of their pursuers when they tumbled down the nearest sand dune in a scattering of sand, and Carys didn’t despair of losing the more heavily armoured men.
Yong Hwa, panting, said, “Can you help? The village is…inaccessible and it was no longer safe where he was.”
“Neither is my cottage the safest of places,” Carys said, gesturing rather grimly. “As you can see.”
As she spoke, the pursuers from the beach spread through the trees around the cottage, meeting with those that milled about it, and a shout sounded as they were seen by the score of men there.
No use now trying to make it along the right-hand path: they would be caught before they were halfway to the village. Ma Yong Hwa and the boy who was no doubt his brother-in-law were already more than half spent.
“Well met, Mr. Ma,” called Steele, striding ahead of the others. “You and I have been playing a game together, I think.”
Beside Carys, Eurion drew in a breath and set his sword in the guard that Carys had become familiar with over the mornings. “Are they likely to kill us all, or take us prisoner?” he asked Yong Hwa.
One of the man’s brows went up. “If you don’t know, I’m quite sure I do not.” To Steele, he called, “The prince is of the opinion that the throne is not a game.”
“My own master isn’t inclined to think similarly,” said Steele. “It was good of you to bring both pieces of that game to me directly.”
Ma Yong Hwa’s other brow went up. “Was it?”
Carys glanced from Eurion to Clovis’ brother, trying to understand. There were undertones here that she couldn’t understand, though she thought she had a glimmer of an idea. Clovis Ma’s brother was certainly one part of what Steele had been looking for along the rocky shore.
But when Steele asked one of his men, “Is it him?” he looked directly at Eurion.
“It’s him,” the man said, though Carys thought he said it after the briefest pause. Then, with more certainty, he said, “It’s him.”
“Then we’ll take him with us as well. Mind his sword!”
“Never mind the sword!” the other said sharply, thrusting one hand forward as though to stop the movement of the wind toward himself. “Mind the magic!”
Ma Yong Hwa, stripping the gloves from hands that had forced something invisible and potent into being between them and the men, said, “That will hold them for a few moments, nothing more. Jessamy, don’t try to add to it.”
