All the Windwracked Stars (The Edda of Burdens) (33 page)

It was terrible, but Aethelred smiled anyway. It had to be a
professional skill. “Thank you for bringing him home,” he said.

“Sorry it took so long,” she said, and waited for him to tell her where to go. As she had suspected he would, he gestured her toward the door to the private room Astrid had introduced her to. But as she walked past him, he laid a hand on her arm.

“You’re too old for him,” he said.

She looked him in the eye. “Light. Does everybody know?”

“I haven’t told anyone. And I wasn’t sure until just now. You’ve gotten unused to people, haven’t you, Menglad Brightwing?”

“I have been a long time alone.” She reached out lightly with the hand he had been touching, and pressed the fingers to the chromed side of Aethelred’s face. “And you’re wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“Cathoair knows. He figured it out. And I’m not Menglad. She was my sister, and she’s dead. I’ve always been Muire, and you haven’t heard my name because it isn’t in the histories.”

He pressed his own hand over hers; warmth and comfort returned. The bowed and rebowed serpent flashed in the collar of his shirt. Muire couldn’t regard it without irony. “Why not?”

“Because I was the historian.”

A
strid, Selene, and Cathoair waited for Muire in the dusty storage room. Selene curled patently asleep on a bench, Astrid had thrust her boots up on the rickety table, and Cathoair paced a winding path around the clutter. The two awake both looked up at Muire when she entered, and with a gasp that caught like a bubble behind her breastbone, Muire saw the shimmer of silver across Cathoair’s eyes.

“Strifbjorn?”

He flinched, and hard, wincing like a cat who’s had water flicked in its face. And then looked her in the eye and frowned and said, “
What
about bears?” while Astrid stared thoughtfully.

“Never mind,” Muire answered, and made sure the door latched. “The Wolf—”

“It’s in the note,” Cathoair said. On her bench, Selene yawned elaborately. Muire did not think unmans slept.

“Tell me in your own words, again.” She dragged a chair around, Selene and Cathoair both wincing at the noise, and perched on the very edge the better to listen while he went over it in detail. Which he did, restless, hands describing complicated arcs, somehow entranced and enraged by his own story.

When he was done, Muire leaned forward without standing, and looked from Cathoair to Selene. “Is she telling the truth?”

“Yes.” Without even a trace of hesitation. “I believe her.”

“All right,” Muire said, thinking of finding herself here, again, and arrayed beside these ancient allies and enemies.
There are seen hands and unseen hands. And nothing
ever
changes.
“You’re in. What are we going to do about it?”

With her eyes, she tried to ask Cathoair
How are you?
And though he met her stare and quirked head directly, his expression was like a mannequin’s.

Muire. Before you make any decisions. There is one more angel you should include in your councils.

Cristokos.

We are underway.

Who’s in charge of this operation?
But Muire cleared her throat, and explained. “So there’s another coming.”

“His name?” Selene asked. The first words she’d spoken since Muire entered the room.

“Cristokos.”

“Oh.” Selene’s ears went up, her whiskers forward. “It will be good to see him. I’m glad he isn’t dead.”

“You know him?”

“There are only a few hundred of us,” she said. And Muire nodded, remembering how it had been before the Last Day. She had, indeed, known every one who died on that battlefield, and many on both sides had been friends.

“All right,” she said. She didn’t know if she would sleep any more than Selene did. She had not, since the second time the wolf kissed her, and she hadn’t missed it. “Then I think we should get some rest, all of us.”

Cathoair stood up. “I’m going to find Muire and Selene a place to rest,” he said. Which was all the hint Muire needed that he didn’t expect to be sleeping with her. And then he turned to Astrid and said, “Would you ask Aethelred to put me on the card for tomorrow?”

“Cahey—”

“Look,” he said. “I’m not hurt. My leg’s fine. I have honestly never felt better. And I need the fight.”

Astrid frowned at him for a painful ten seconds before glancing at Muire for support. Muire almost shook her head; that easily, and she was co-opted into the Cathoair Preservation League. Astrid didn’t trust him to take care of himself, but she certainly trusted his judgment when it came to people. Muire caught the glance, lobbed it back, and smiled.

“Cathoair,” she said, “I can pay it—”

“So can I.”
He
wouldn’t meet her gaze, the subtext clear in his avoidance. He might whore. He might do all sorts of things. But he wouldn’t put himself in that position to people he
liked
.

If but one aspect of Strifbjorn might survive, must it have
been the stubborn, stupid pride? “Even the end of the world couldn’t make you listen—”

But he cut her off with a slicing hand, and seemed—oh, please, Light, please—to have missed her damning slip. “I have to fight,” he said, slowly pushing his fists into his trousers. “Because I need to hit someone. And if I do it in the ring, I don’t have to do it the rest of the time.”

His voice came plainly, matter-of-fact. Muire felt her foot lifting before she even realized her body meant to drag her back a step. She put it down in the same spot she had lifted it from, but she knew her face was white and still. She opened her mouth and had nothing to say.

“The wolf—”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” He was looking at Astrid, not at her. “You made me go over it once. Once was enough, don’t you think?”

Sometimes, the best thing you could do was take the defeat and regroup. And some people were prone to moral cowardice. Muire had no idea how this would seem to another.

“All right,” Astrid said. “But you’re not fighting anyone but me. Deal?”

“Star,” he said, “I love you.”

C
ristokos reached the Ash & Thorn under cover of darkness the following night, seeming frightened. Muire did not blame him.

Kasimir had left the rat-mage off outside the city, and Cristokos had entered in the same manner as Muire and Cathoair. Muire and the valraven had agreed; he was not to dare the Defile until he was needed.

Aethelred took the robe-swathed rat-mage better than Muire expected, smuggling him in through the delivery hatch without comment. But then, his bar was into the late night rush, and his back room was already brimming with livestock and angels. And Muire was beginning to understand something about the burn-scarred old cyborg with the serpent medallion dangling against his chest, and the dozen or so street kids and hustlers that used his bar as a base of operations.

Aethelred was doing what he could.

Selene had returned with nightfall. She had risked a return to the Tower and—Muire devoutly hoped—a false report, so she would not seem to have become rogue, and she awaited them in the back room. After an affectionate greeting that seemed to involve a good deal of sniffing—though Muire averted her eyes from the details—Cristokos pushed his hood back from his long face with both hands and crouched in an unhappy lump on his chair. Muire brought him a bowl of wine, which he took in long fingers.

“The valley wine is better,” he pronounced, after dipping his nose in it. But he licked the droplets from his whiskers and drank, shivering.

Muire bit her lip softly. Yes, Cristokos’s wine
was
better. It was real grapes, for one thing, not tank-grown. And if he assigned its goodness to where those grapes grew, that was only part of the story.

But he was shivering as he drank, so Muire sat down across from him, and Selene stood behind his chair, her hands upturned, the backs resting on his shoulders. What was it, to go through life always aware that one’s very touch was a weapon?

Cristokos seemed to take comfort in it. His long, ropelike
tail curled tightly around one leg of his chair, as if clinging for security. “This one missed the city,” he admitted, in such a small voice that Muire winced.
City rat, country rat.

“I need your help.”

“This one ran away,” he said. Whatever happened to Muire’s face, it brought his ears forward, and Selene’s, too. He continued, “That one knew.”

“I knew,” she said, and gritted her teeth. “I ran away, too.”

He made a brushing-away gesture with his hand. “Moreaux are not that one’s people.”

“No.” She should have said,
I don’t mean that I ran away from your people.
She should have confessed.

Cathoair had asked, obliquely, never knowing how important it could be. What was an angel with nothing to serve?

“Are you ready to face the Technomancer again?”

“This one will never be ready,” he said, and finished the wine. “But this one will do what must be done.”

He seemed unwilling to lean out from under Selene’s touch to set the bowl down, so Muire took it from him, trying not to notice how his eyes closed with relief when her hand brushed his. Rats lived in tumultuous colonies, warm squabbling families and warm close-pressed bodies.

He had been as alone as Muire ever had, without the thin comfort of knowing why. Was it some punishment for opposing Heythe? Had they been meant to do other than they had done? Or was it just that the world was full of woe, and the world kept calling them back again?

“The stallion said you had news.”

“Ill news.” His throat worked. “Something is happening in the valley.”

He startled, and Muire was halfway through turning to see
why when she realized that she was on her feet, fists clenched, and it was from her that he was flinching. “Sorry,” she said. She picked up his bowl, cupped it in her hand. “Thjierry is using the valley up.”

“Yes,” he said, and Muire’s hands whitened on the bowl.

“We led her there,” she said. “I am sorry.”

The rat-mage nodded as if he believed her, but it was Selene who spoke. “So we fight?”

“It seems she’s leaving us no options.” Muire looked down at the bowl in her hand and slowly relaxed her grip. A little harder and it would have shattered in her hand. “More wine, Cristokos?”

He nodded. Muire looked at Selene, whose nose scrunched in distaste. Very well, two bowls. Muire wanted alcohol herself.

When she emerged into the bar, it was the quiet between fights. Aethelred was engaged in making book, but he tore himself away when Muire caught his eyes. “All right, we won’t start until we have everybody—half a minute here. More wine?”

She slid the borrowed bowl for Cristokos across the counter, and with a bit of rummaging came up with her own. “Who’s next in the ring?”

“Cahey,” he said, and looked at her under the half-burnished ridge of his brows. “And Astrid. Tell me you tried to talk him out of this.”

Muire spread her hands.

“I know. Might as well argue with a battle shoggoth. It’s going where it’s going, and all you can do is get what’s breakable out of the way.”

Past the tips of her fingers, Muire said, “He’s good.” But what she meant was,
He’ll get hurt someday.

Blue and green neon rippled in reflected bands across chrome when Aethelred shook his head. His voice wasn’t low—even in a lull, the Ash & Thorn was hardly quiet—but nobody more than three feet away would have overheard for the noise. Another occupational proficiency. “That’s not what this is about.”

“No.” She picked up the bowls, but didn’t step away from the bar yet. “Why won’t he let me help him?”

“With
money
?”

“I have more than I will ever need.” Oddly offended. “I don’t want to
buy
him.”

“No, he only rents,” Aethelred said, which struck Muire as unfair. But then he continued, “He’s not for sale. You and I, we have to talk.
He
needs to talk to you, too.”

“Wish me luck—”

“No,” he said. “You know what? I’ll tell you. It’s—you know about his mom?”

“I know she’s dying.”

Aethelred puffed air between his teeth, cheekflesh pouching around his breath on the meaty side of his face. “Ask him, sometime, where he got the scar.”

“I did. A duel, he said.” Something cold and hard was accreting in the pit of Muire’s stomach.

“Well,” Aethelred answered, “That’s true, as far as it goes. But he’s got reasons not to let himself get beholden to people he cares about. And he cares about you, trust me on that one.”

“I’ll have to,” she said drily.

“He ever mention his father?”

Muire, the wine balanced in either hand like a statue of undecided Justice, waited him out. He stared at her unremittingly for several seconds, but she was more patient by centuries.
He turned his head and spat on the floor. “Should have killed the son of a bitch myself, saved Cahey the trouble.”

Muire drew one deep, painful breath. “I’ll do what I can.”

He slapped her on the shoulder lightly, like a man shaking off the news of an old friend’s death. “That’s you and me both,” he replied, and then: “Add it to your list—snakerot, Muire, I have to get back to these—”

Across the bar, Cathoair and Astrid were testing the ropes before climbing into the ring, and Aethelred’s would-be bettors were growing restless. “Go,” Muire said, and picked her way back to the access door. By the time she made it through the press, she heard a cheer. Tables near the wall had no view, and were mostly clear; she set the wine on one and stepped up on a stool for a look.

Astrid and Cathoair were still teasing, she thought. Playing. Cheerful. This wasn’t a serious fight yet, if it ever would be. But it was a good performance: as much fun to watch as it might have been to put on.

Astrid bounced off the ropes, where Cathoair had knocked her, and delivered a left-footed roundhouse to his chest. It staggered him, but he came back swinging while onlookers roared. Astrid sidestepped him, ferocious, laughing, fists and torso weaving like snakes. He grinned at her and whirled so as not to give her his flank, veins bulging in embossed relief across his lean, gleaming body.