The Last Stitch (The Chronicles of Eirie: 2) (25 page)

Chapter Forty Five

Phelim had led Severine to a shadowed corner where there was a door in a flowered panel and through which he propelled her. Here in the secret subfusc of an anteroom, lit only by one gold candelabra on a table, he could have given in to the fierce and rigid dark that consumed him. He could have ripped the emerald gown from the lithe body and taken the woman with cruel delight.

Instead, his hand wafted and she stilled into the kind of frozen mesmer his brother had not long ago used on the same woman. Her eyes stared ahead, spar
kling with desire, her lips opened slightly as if she had been going to beg him to take her. Her hands stayed in the action of holding him in the dance as he slipped from her grasp. Her breath came in sharp spurts, her breasts rising and falling and the tiny, gold strung emeralds in her hair tripped and trembled. As he stepped away from her, he noticed the gold jewelry on the middle finger of her left hand and reached out.

‘Leave it!’

He spun around as Luther stood with his back to the panelled door. In his hand he held a knife by its point and with a low grunt, the assassin flicked his wrist to send the weapon flying through the air.

The dark stranger in front of Luther laughed, the sound curling fingers around his spine and sending the hair on the back of his neck into a rigour of attention. He tried to move but found the bottom half of his body frozen, anchored to the ground as if he had sprouted giant roots.

The knife glissaded to a halt, pirouetting so that its sparkling lethal
point faced Luther. ‘What are you?’ he shouted, his voice cracking. ‘What have you done to me?

‘I am your most evil thought, your most callous action,’ Phelim turned his back and walked to the wall to lean against i
t. ‘I am your doom.’

Slowly, inexorably, the knife moved toward Luther. In his half-mesmer, he could see it coming and screamed at his fate.

Phelim swiped his hand in the air and the hysterical yowls cut short. ‘What you will receive in a moment,’ Phelim drawled, ‘you are due. For the death of a Raji and for the rape of a woman.’

The panel door had clicked open as Phelim spoke Adelina slid through, gasping as she heard the words, her hands coming to her mouth. Gallivant held her tight. ‘Say nothing, mistress. This is how Fate would have it.’

The knife moved effortlessly, free of obstacle or force, no sound, just remorselessly gliding closer until the point pierced the silk damask of Luther’s tailcoat. Severine stared into some sexually charged distance as her henchman writhed, his eyeballs almost popping from the ugly head.

Despite the smooth passage betraying little force, in fact the pressure of the weapon was overwhelming and the point began to gouge, Luther frothing at the mouth, hysterically silent, insensible. A stain spread like an inkblot on his shirt as the knife moved inward.

‘Halt.’ A voice shouted and the sound leavened the horrendous tension. ‘Halt now.’

The knife stalled
, its haft quivering as if unsure whether it should proceed or return the way it had come. Luther slumped over himself in a bloody faint.

‘What do you think to do?’ Footsteps emerged from the shadows at the far end of the anteroom. Jasper grabbed the haft and pulled the gory blade away from Luther’s chest, the candlelight catching on the beaten silver handle, small prisms dancing across the walls as it was laid on the table
, tiny drops of blood pooling on the polished surface.

‘Jasper!’ Adelina fled from Gallivant’s gasp and threw herself into the healer’s arms. ‘Oh, Jasper!’

He held her as she wept, looking over her shoulder at the dark man against the wall whose shadow now lay behind him and whose eyes were filled with sadness for the woman with the copper hair and for himself at the road he had just walked.

‘Hush now, Adelina. You must be strong.’ Jasper stood her at arm’s length and looked into her eyes. ‘Your time is almost come you know, and then it will all be over and you can give yourself up to the child you grow.’ He stepped forward then, untying her mask and letting it drop to the floor where his booted toe flicked it to the side, kissing her forehead like a benediction and turning to the man against the wall.

‘Well, Phelim. That is certainly something I hadn’t forseen. What has driven you to such malign behaviour, hmm?’

‘You know me?’ Phelim’s voice almost pleaded, as if he hardly knew himself.

‘Indeed.’ Jasper’s eyes betrayed nothing. He wafted his hand and Severine came to life, her eyes searching for Phelim, her lips smiling as she spotted him. Oblivious to anyone else, she tossed a tendril of hair back from her forehead in a gesture of invitation.

‘You have seduced her well, Phelim. She has no idea who or what she is. Did you kiss her. A proper kiss?’

Phelim’s gaze dropped.

‘Ah! I see you did,’ continued Jasper.
‘She will die, you know. Oh, but of course you know. It is why you did it. Well then, tell me, did you think to avenge the Faeran or our lovely friend here?’

Phelim shifted his body away from the wall, a spark flaring and quickly growing to a conflagration. ‘Why would I do it for the Faeran? What is Faeran but a place of malicious mayhem? I would do nothing for the place or the people, so help me!’ His voice was as he had never heard it, flaming with burning sentiments of hatred and disgust. ‘I did it for Adelina and her babe and for the babe’s father. That...’ he flicked his gaze towards Severine, ‘woman treated the Stitcher with unspeakable cruelty and has allowed monstrous things to happen, so it was what she was due. Cruelty rewarded.’ As he spoke, Severine had moved on her soft dancing slippers to his side and now she wound her hands around his neck. He reached up and grabbed her wrists and tugged at her, flinging her away with force so that she tripped and fell to the floor.

‘And of course this is how a gentleman behaves, isn’t it?’ Jasper walked toward Severine. ‘You condemn Faeran, my boy, and yet you
are
one and have found the subtle weapons of such great help, have you not?’ His voice castigated and he raised Severine to her feet and then waved his hand. The habitual ice of the Goti Range filled her eyes and her face collapsed as she stared at the elderly man in front of her, spotting Adelina and the others. Her hastily hoisted sang-froid cracked completely as she stared at the bloody body of Luther and her hands clasped knot-tight as she spoke through clenched teeth. ‘You!’

‘Did you dream about me, Severine? Is that how you kn
ow me?’ Jasper smiled. ‘Into the ballroom, I think.’ His hand movements as they mesmered were subtle, barely there, almost as if he lazily swatted a fly. Such a gentle action to presage what followed it.

A whirling angry breeze filled the anteroom, biting at the flames of the candelabra, tearing at the stumpwork robe and the tails of the men’s coats. The cursed woman and the limp body of her man disappeared as Jasper walked to the doors. Turning he spoke, not unkindly.
‘Adelina,
muirnin
, it is time. And you too, Phelim.’

Chapter Forty Six

The crowd circled like wolves around prey. Eyes glittered from the cavities of expressionless masks and a hum of anger began to rise around the ballroom as the interlopers were plac
ed in the center of the eldritch space.

Severine stood imprisoned in a half-mesmer, and Luther lay on the floor, a bloody heap f
olded in as if he were a babe. Jasper stared at the two with expressionless eyes, bending to place a finger on Luther’s neck. ‘He lives. By a thread.’ Anyone listening could be excused for thinking that he cared little one way or the other, his tone so neutral.

‘
Ná
!’ The angered buzz was cleft apart by a cry and a willowy, black- clad woman with a pale visage and blood-red lips swooped in front of Jasper to harangue the accused.

‘Thy murderous bitch.
’ She spat the words at Severine, turning to Luther with the fires of hell sparking in her eyes. Such hatred began to spread further through the crowd, agitated whispers rising and falling. ‘And thee!’ Maeve kicked at the asassin’s crumpled body and before she could be stopped, she bent towards the assassin, raising a stiletto that she struck with force into the rounded back that lay facing her.

‘Maeve!’ Jasper shouted and hastened toward her but she stared him down, fury filling the air as she drew herself up taller, hissing vituperative.

‘Too late.’ She kicked Luther with her toe and he rolled back, blood trickling from the thick lips. ‘The length of a dance tune and he will be gone. And what right dost thou have to stop Maeve anyway? Thou art only a healer, not the Lady Aine.’

Jasper’s face darkened. The white hair had been clipped close to the fine hea
d and the fine brow had lines of anger ploughed deep into the surface. ‘It is I who shall control this Court of Judgement and it is I who says it must be Adelina who exacts redress and now you have taken from her that which was her right. How did you enter Faeran?’

‘How did murderer enter?’ She kicked Luther again. ‘Maeve followed him because she knew if she had waited for Stitcher to take revenge, she w
ould have waited for eternity. Never trust mortals.’ She flashed a look at Adelina, ut then her gaze slid to Severine. ‘But look,’ she pointed her finger. ‘That one still stands. Let Stitcher have her. Carcass on floor killed my sister and was mine. Maeve repaid debt.’ Without another word, she sliced through the agitated crowd as if she were a cleaver and walked to the massive open windows overlooking the Canal. Shape-changing, her dark as night wings spread and she flew away into the star-lit sky.

The crowd in that sumptuous room seethed, Maeve’s violent rebellion having goaded them like the smell of blood to dracules. Adelina shrank against the hob. Until now, her eyes had barely left Jasper’s face, loath to confront Severine or Luther, even Maeve. But now her timorous gaze swept the crowd and she trembled.

From their toes to their chins, this room was the very picture of gorgeous indulgence. Satin gown, silk hose, muscular thigh, daint
y waist and daring décolletage - all enhanced with flashing gem and jewel. But from collarbone to coils of curls, images of purgatory prevailed.

Hawkish, mawkish masks surrounded her, row on row, leering and sneering until her heart almost jumped from her chest. So cowed was she under their intense scrutiny, she didn’t realize Jasper shouted above the ruckus.

‘SILENCE!’ His sharp tones rattled the chandeliers. ‘Silence!’ The noise lessened, still angry, but Jasper could speak without shouting and chose to lower his tones further, the better to reel in the quiet as if it were a fish on a line. ‘I would say the mortal - Luther, son of Maud - has been weighed and measured and found utterly wanting. His time is short. Our attention must by necessity turn to her.’ He pointed at Severine. ‘Consummate evil.’ He advanced upon Severine who neither cowered nor paled, her upper body rigid with fury, her lower body rooted to some Faeran substrata. ‘Let me list her crimes.’ Jasper walked in front of the crowd. He stood tall, thinner than Adelina remembered and she closed her eyes as she listened to the list that read like a memorium.

‘She has most willingly, deviously and cruelly killed Gertus Goblinus.
She murdered Elriade and,’ his voice trembled faintly, ‘Liam of the Færan maliciously with the ancient Soul Stealer.’

The crowd roared, as if some ghastly final doom had been revealed.

‘AND,’ Jasper shouted, his voice quelling the rowdy mob. ‘And, there have been many mortal deaths, not least her own husband and the Raji, Khatoun.’ He walked in a circle addressing his peers, holding the unruly crowd in the palm of his hand with subtle pressure. ‘Some months ago the mortal Adelina, imprisoned by the offender, grieving for her lover and for her friend Liam, made a promise to Maeve Swan Maid that she would avenge the deaths of Liam and Elriade of the Faeran and in so doing would avenge herself for the death of her betrothed, Khatoun.’ He had reached the point of the circle where he could turn and face Adelina. The hob supported her, Phelim stepping to her other side. ‘Ah!’ Jasper spoke in a quieter, more solicitous voice. ‘Such valiant supporters - a hob and a Faeran.’ He looked directly at Adelina. ‘The hour is come. What is your choice of revenge?’

The eager crowd pressed closer.

Adelina found hands clutching her own and the hob’s voice whisperi
ng, ‘She deserves what’s coming.’ From Phelim’s side, his voice… not the one she wanted to hear. ‘Adelina,’ he said. ‘Be strong,
muirnin
. She is finished whatever happens.’

She slipped her hands from her friends’ grasp an
d placed them folded and mother-like on the mound of her belly. Her child moved and in that moment, she knew what she must do and she quailed neither from the responsibility nor the need. But even so, she mused, so easy for Others. They truly know nothing.
Severine’s Fate may even now be weaving her shroud, but I wonder, I wonder if they know what
my
Destiny is doing. Is it measuring my baby and I for similar coverings?
Her child kicked her hands.
Huh little babe - what do you think these Others shall do when they learn I must reneg on my promise? For I must.
Momentarily she shivered as ghosts of present, past and future stalked her. The tiny berries on the gown trembled and the crystal dewdrops on the splendidly embroidered spider-webs flashed.

Get it over with, get it over
. ‘It’s true,’ she responded softly. ‘I am to seek revenge.’

‘Louder,
’ Others shouted, words like splinters.

‘It’s true,’ she called back. ‘I promised. But a loved one became deathly ill and I bargained with the Lady Aine.’

‘And?’ Jasper cast a look at the fractious crowd.

‘She saved my loved one and I am in the Lady’s debt. I must forgo all hatred and revenge. It is what I vowed.’

The crowd began to push and hustle and she heard Phelim and the hob warn them back.

‘SILENCE!’ J
asper turned toward her, a vengeful tone in his voice. ‘Adelina, how could you? She killed Liam. Aine child, she killed the father of your babe.’

‘I know
!’ Adelina stamped her foot. ‘I know. And I hate her. I could have slit her throat weeks ago. But what does it achieve by killing her or him? Momentary relief and nothing else.’ She could barely look at Luther, remembering the callous battering. ‘It’s not going to bring anyone back. Not Others nor my babe’s father. So tell me,’ she turned bravely around the circle, unabashed. ‘What does it really achieve?’

‘Satisfaction,
’ someone yelled from the crowd. ‘Complete satisfaction.’

‘But not for me,
’ Adelina bravely riposted. ‘I am unlike you...’

‘Mewling mortal.
’

‘Yes.
A mortal Traveller. We live by legal mores, by codes.’
Your code is dubious at best, fulsome cruel and I will not sink to your level.
She held herself tall and could feel the baby kicking gently, what passed for applause.

‘Then you are a fool,’ t
he same voice jeered back followed by hollers of acclamation. Snarling dissent filled the room on a rising tide of volume.

‘Maybe,’ she would not be cowed. For the first time in an age she felt the old Adelina blossoming, the one who always had an opinion and would vent it readily. Oh Kholi, she thought, would you be angry? But she unpicked the thought from the fabric of her mind as quickly as she had unpicked unwanted stitches in the past. ‘In any event, it is what I choose to do and the way I choose to live.
That way I can live with myself.’

Jasper walked in a circle, driving the crowd back as he swished past. His movement
was enough to silence the room but what little of his own equanimity that was left trailed behind him like the remnants of a cloak. Adelina sensed such anger and disappointment rising from him - a foetid mist that pervaded each Other in the room and she knew with the anguished certainty of the condemned that her future was as short as the wick on the candle that flickered in front of her.

‘Adelina, bravely put and it may be what you would choose, and I
applaud your stand, but in fact you promised an Other before you made your pledge to the Lady. Simply put, you owe us before her.’

‘Jasper...’ she gasped.

‘I’m sorry,
muirnin
, it is the way of it.’

As Adelina turned to her friends, she heard Severine sneering
, a nasty whisper. ‘Poor poor Adelina.’

Something wholesome and kind in the Traveller’s soul snapped, a sharp
flick that she was sure all in the room could hear. The hatred and desperation of the last months flooded to her cold fingertips. The silk robe swished and crackled around her as she swept across to her nemesis and backhanded across one pale cheek and then the other with force that she had not known she possessed. ‘I don’t think so, Severine.’

‘Enough.
’ Jasper could see the crowd agitate, the slaps acting like meat to starved dogs. A matter of moments and they would take things into their own hands. ‘Adelina, your decision, otherwise I must cast sentence on you just as I cast sentence on her.’

‘I...’

‘JASPER.’ A voice filled with the timbre of desert men shouted from the farthest corner where doors opened to the balconies and the moon shone brightly and stars could be seen in a midnight sky. Rajeeb strode across the floor as if he walked on a moonbeam, his quaint slippers hardly murmuring. ‘May I enter the world of Faeran, my Lord?’ He petitioned Jasper, bowing over a hand that folded at his waist.

Jasper nodded
, waving a silencing finger at the room but there was hardly a need for it was many lifetimes since a djinn had been seen in Faeran and there existed a fascination amongst the Others as they stared and murmured.

‘Lady.’ Rajeeb acknowledged Adelina with a flick of his hand against his chest and forehead, ‘your last wish was for me to help Lhiannon.’

She nodded, hearing another Raji voice in another time. ‘When I found her, dear Lady, I could not help her.’ Adelina looked up at him, knowing what he would say and so wishing her babe was not attuned to her broken heart, to her realizations. Tears began to roll down the peach skin.

‘Hush now, beautiful one. She met her bane, it happens. But now, you see, you have one wish left and there is a way to use it.’
Black eyes met hazel and despite fresh grief, Adelina understood. She looked at the crowd of onlookers, at the expressionless masks covering unknown faces. Taking a breath, feeling a reassuring kick from her womb, she spoke clearly. ‘Then I wish for the djinns to exact punishment for the Others, Rajeeb.’

He nodded
as if he had expected such an answer and was prepared. ‘As you wish, lovely one.’

Severine
’s tones spiked the air. ‘I am not afraid of you,’ the woman hissed at Adelina and Rajeeb. Turning her eyes away, she threw a contemptuous glance around the ballroom. ‘Nor all of you! I have had all of Faeran running scared for months now with my ring. I bested you all! Two of you are gone because of my power.’

‘Power from thi
s?’ Jasper interrupted, he moved his hand. Severine’s arm came up unconsciously as she spat at him, shouting vituperative. The ring slid off her finger and floated to Jasper to spin lazily in front of him, the crowd gasping at the sight of the infamous icon - the only weapon in the world that could kill a Faeran. The noise of a sword, a spoken charm and the ring split, bursting into black and green flame to fall in a pile of smoking ashes at Jasper’s feet, the crowd applauding wildly.

‘Was that in your nightmare, Severine!
Did you see it? Is that how it happened?’ Jasper smiled most uncharmingly at her.

‘You can cheer,
’ she screamed. ‘But I have your most ancient and powerful charms hidden, charms which could demolish this world, Other and mortal. Hidden where you shall never find them. If you want them, if you value your world, you can
never
kill me.’

‘Do y
ou think so? Really? I think you talk of the Cantrips of Unlife, am I not correct?’ Jasper shook his head. ‘Ah my dear, you are truly delusional. You are only a mortal.’ He watched her wince at the bald truth of his words and talked over her as she went to argue with him. ‘You are not a changeling. You were not born in Faeran and left where you parents could find you. You are just a mortal. You have no power over us, none at all. We’ll find the charms never fear, and when we do they shall be destroyed as they should have been aeons ago.’