Icefall (44 page)

It really was over, thought Rory. He'd kept the promise he made the day he claimed Kate, a stupid fourteen-year-old boy who barely knew what he was promising. And Finn had kept whatever promise she'd made his father.
Over,
he thought.

Except that the other Veil, the one Kate had wanted him to open, the one he stroked fondly beneath his fingertips? It felt frailer than ever, a rotten skein of silk that would blow away in the next puff of wind like an abandoned cobweb.

 

Finn

Did I feel any remorse for what I did to the Wolf? Honestly? No. Regret for what it did to me, that's all. I knew the ability had only come to me with a visceral soul-deep hatred. But there was a saving grace: if it had been only about hate, only about me, I'd have been able to do it before, when I could have saved myself from him. What I did to the Wolf had to do with love, too. And it was saving the life of someone I loved, not just punishing his tormentor. That's what I told myself when I lay awake in the small hours, lost and scared of myself and very, very small beneath the skyful of stars.

Besides, every time I looked at the wounds on Seth's body, the patch that hid his eyeless socket? I wished the Wolf alive again, so I could kill him again the same way, and again.

‘How okay are you?' Seth asked me, on the first night we could be alone together, the first Grian would let him out of his sight. We lay on our sides, facing each other. His fingers touched my face, combed through my hair, stroked my neck, like he never wanted to stop touching me, ever. That was fine by me.

We watched each other for a while, letting our minds mingle. ‘Don't,' he said abruptly, pulling away when I intruded too deeply in his memories.

‘I'm not keeping you out.' I stroked his hair.

‘That's different.' His thumb traced my temple, my cheekbone, my lips.

‘That game of Kilrevin's,' I said. ‘He didn't really understand, did he? I'd have done anything to stop them going back to you.'

He took my face in his hands and pressed his forehead to mine. It felt light and fierce all at once as his mind caressed mine. ‘Same here.' His lips curved in a smile.

I tried to touch his mind again, but he blocked me abruptly. ‘Don't. No, don't try to See. It hurt, but it'll hurt me more if you feel it.'

‘Don't keep me out. Seth, don't. I know what he did to you.'

‘Please, Finn. Later. Not now. Wait till it's faded. Because it will fade, it will.'

His harsh breathing quietened again, and we lay very still for a while. Thoughts skittered across my mind:
No. I never did forget. I never did lose him. I always knew him. She was nothing.

I sighed and said: ‘Was that Nils Laszlo? With Conal?'

He laughed. ‘Life's full of surprises, isn't it?'

‘Death too,' I said. ‘I wish Conal would change that shirt.'

Seth gave me his old lopsided half-grin. ‘I think he will, now. Shut up about laundry, woman. I love you.' He kissed me.

It was what I would have sold my soul for, back in Kate's cells: one more kiss. Just as well I hadn't been offered the option. In some ways Kate had a very limited imagination. In others …

He felt my shudder. ‘What?' he said, drawing his forefinger lightly from my temple to my jaw.

‘Nothing. I love you.'

‘I love you too.
What?
'

I touched one of the ugly gashes in his flesh. Then another, and another.

I didn't meet his eye. I kept running my fingers over every place where the knife had sawn and twisted in the body I loved more than my own, the body that could give and take so much pleasure, the body they'd all but torn to pieces.

He blocked very well. But when he let his guard slip even for an instant, I could feel how deep the blade had gone. They'd done it with such precision, letting him bleed and beg and
live
. In my head I could feel the echo of his screams and howls like a physical force.

I said, ‘Why are you not dead?'

I knew I wouldn't like the answer but I had to ask. I had a responsibility to him. I'd bound myself to him and that meant certain things.

He sighed, closing his fingers round mine. Then he laughed dryly. Oh, he could laugh at anything. I loved him for it and it infuriated me beyond reason.

‘Okay,' he said. ‘It was that healer of Kate's. Who ought to be struck off, in my opinion.'

I stared at him. I didn't laugh. I was too busy fighting nausea. ‘He will be.'

Seth knew what I meant. His thumb caressed my cheekbone and he was silent for a long time, reading my eyes.

‘Stay human, Finn.'

‘Part of being human,' I said, ‘is not letting them get away with it.'

‘
Them.
' He tilted his eyebrow. ‘The ones who forgot how to be human?'

‘Yes. Them. You know as well as I do there's a line.'

‘Sure. I worry for you, that's all.'

‘After what I did to Kilrevin?'

‘After what you had to do.' He took my fingers and kissed them.

‘You'll have to keep a close eye on me, then.' I let my thumb brush his lip. ‘Don't go wandering off again. Getting in trouble.'

‘I don't plan to.' He smiled and wriggled closer, but I shivered as I wrapped my arms round him. He felt it and hugged me tighter. I hadn't meant to shiver; it was only that someone had said those words to me before, and the memory niggled at the back of my skull.
I don't plan to, toots. I don't plan to die.

‘We've seen the worst, haven't we?' I whispered, as his body stirred against me and I stroked his familiar scarred back. Kate had failed spectacularly. I ached for him. I longed for him. I wanted my mind tangled up in his as he moved inside me, but I had to ask first. ‘It'll never be so bad again?'

He kissed my lower lip. ‘I will never let anything bad happen to you again.'

‘You can't promise me
that
.'

‘Caorann. Love of my heart.' He ran his hands across my breasts, my ribcage, my hips, my thighs. ‘You're mine and you always were. I was with you. You know I was. You were with me.'

I felt hot tears on my face and I didn't care. He was right. Even sorcery and a rowanwood cell couldn't keep us apart, and I should have remembered that all along.

He trailed kisses along my neck, my shoulder. Gently he lifted me to him, and a short while later I lost my mind, or maybe it only got so mixed up in his that we both lost track of ourselves. When we came back to reality, as we had to, he rolled onto his back and pulled me against him, his arms locked tight around me.

~
Caorann,
he said.

‘Oh, God, Seth. I can't exist without you. I can't. It terrifies me.
Murlainn.
'

‘Love of my soul.' He pressed his lips to my forehead. ‘Forget what happens next.'

‘We're mortal. We're so mortal. I could not
stand to lose you.
'

‘I know. Sh. Listen, we've lost friends, but we're luckier than they were and we should do them the honour of knowing it. We're happy, we're safe, we're together. This is the best life can be.' Closing his eye he smiled and held me tighter. ‘How long do you think we can make it last?'

We got our answer, two years later to the day.

 

Finn

Damn, but I loved this room. I felt like I'd loved it all my life, like I'd been Seth's all my life instead of a few short years. I lay watching moon shadows on the machair through the open casement, hearing the distant hiss and tumble of waves on the sand. How many times had I lain and watched that scene, listened to the sounds of our world and our home? And every time it was different. Every time.

Seth's face was pressed to my back: I could feel his breath against my shoulder blade. I reached back to thread my hand into his hair.

‘Four hundred years,' he whispered. ‘Finn. Why did I have to wait so long for you?'

‘Sh. I'm here now, that's all.'

‘The gods are unfair.' He kissed my spine.

‘You're an atheist,' I reminded him.

‘Mm-hm,' he mumbled. ‘Four hundred years…'

‘C'mon,' I laughed softly. ‘You haven't been celibate.'

I tried to wriggle round to face him, but he held me still.

‘Don't mock me,' he whispered. ‘Not tonight.'

I paused, traced his unseen face with my fingers. I frowned at the wall.

‘All right.'

‘Sleep,' he said.

I did.

*   *   *

I loved waking up before Seth. It didn't happen often: he'd always been an early riser and anyway, since the war two years earlier, his nights were disturbed again. It was getting better. He didn't yell and thrash in his sleep so much; he didn't wake up screaming every night. He fell asleep faster in my arms. He didn't feel he had to lie there clutching me till dawn, terrified some night terror would take me away.

So on the rare occasions when I woke before him, I'd just lie there and look at him and wonder how in heaven's name I'd have gone on existing without him. The damage done by the Wolf hadn't healed so well as his older wounds but it had healed after a fashion. The healer had at least done a professional job: one reason I'd let him impale himself on his own sword. While I watched, obviously.

Sometimes I thought about things like that and wondered what happened to a sixteen-year-old girl who thought that was all she was. I wondered what she'd think of me now. Perhaps she'd walk away in disgust. Perhaps she'd run.

He'd lost some of his appetite for the Captaincy but that was okay, we commanded the clann together. Not that we always agreed: but if it wasn't much fun falling out, it was a lot more fun making up. Seth was more merciful than I was, and that caused a few rows. He said he'd been shown mercy as a traitor; I told him he hadn't, and reminded him how back then he'd never let me hear the end of it, all that stuff about taking it like a Sithe.

Well, between us we dispensed a kind of justice, the fairest we could manage. He'd banned floggings long ago (for all his finger-wagging lectures about tradition), but there were exiles, imprisonments, confiscations of property. Not for ordinary soldiers or captains, of course: fighting for a cause isn't a crime. Other things are, whether done in a cause or not. I won't pretend there weren't executions. War's war. I put a sword through four of them myself, and I made them watch my eyes while I did it. Even Cuthag didn't dare to look away.

As for the healer: well, Seth had begged for death, and the man had ignored him. So the healer had to die instead, but I gave him the honourable choice and he took it. I'd already dealt with the Wolf, of course, but I wish it had taken longer. I wish it had taken the three days he gave Seth. I wish it had taken three years.

Seth's body was damaged but it wasn't broken. It could still fight and run and love; oh, gods, could it love. His face was still beautiful despite the scars and the missing eye, or it was to me. It was calm as I watched him breathing that morning. No bad dreams. He was lying on his back and one arm was still around me, the other flung up above his head. His mutilated left hand: it didn't work well, but hey, he was right-handed.

I stroked his hair back from his face, careful not to wake him. There were strands of it across his forehead as usual, one lock long enough to touch the bridge of his nose. I smiled and lifted it delicately away, smoothing it back above his right ear, the one with the old missing bit at the top.

I blinked in the thin early light and looked harder. Either it had happened in the night or I just hadn't looked properly for a few days. Above that maimed ear, the black hairs were not all black. There were threads of grey, as if they'd been woven there in the night by some spiteful elf.

I stared for a long time, not wanting to see; then I looked at his face. His eye had opened to watch me, but he didn't move for a long time. Neither of us did.

Then his mind brushed against mine, very gently, and I began to cry.

He curled up, and pulled me down into his arms. ‘You noticed.'

I didn't answer. Couldn't.

‘We still have some time,' he said. ‘Don't be unhappy. Not yet.'

‘It felt like. Before, I mean. I thought it would be.' Tears blocked my throat. ‘It felt like forever.'

‘Nobody gets forever, Finn. And you know it happens quickly now.'

He was too calm. He'd been planning what to say to me. His heart had been breaking for days. Had I just not wanted to see?

Why?
I thought. He was young. Why would he die? The question everyone's always asked, all through the ages of time. The one you never get an answer for.

‘By the way,' he said lightly, ‘you've made me happy. Happier than I ever thought I'd get to be. I thought I'd better tell you that. In case I forget later.'

‘Oh, okay.' I managed to speak. ‘So long as—I mean, I thought for a moment you were going to leave. Now. Today.' I tried to laugh. Failed.

‘I don't want you to watch till the end. But I haven't got a battle to go in now.'

‘Well, damn.'

‘So I'll go to the Selkyr, okay? Like Leonie. So don't be obstreperous about that.'

‘Right, okay. Because you'd never do such a thing yourself. Try to stop someone going to the Selk—' My voice caught on the word, but I forced back my tears, because they weren't fair on him. ‘Just don't—don't sneak off like she did.'

‘I'd never do that. Never.'

And then it hit me, so hard. Maybe the word. Because
never
meant nothing. There wasn't a
never
any more, there wasn't a
forever.
There were a few prosaic, countable weeks. Not centuries. Not years. Weeks. Yet for all it meant nothing,
never
was a blade, a physical thing, slicing into my head and my heart. For a moment I couldn't breathe. I could only feel his skin, warm and alive. For perhaps a minute, it was all that kept
me
alive.