The Sea Thy Mistress (22 page)

Cathmar was examining her face, and she wondered if he saw anything mysterious in her smile. Not that it mattered, really. One way or another.

“What did he say?” Persistent lad.

She made a show of thinking. “I suspect he’d be happy if you came to see him, once in a while,” she said. “I think he wants to try to be what he’s supposed to be, Cath.”

Cathmar snorted. “Sure.”

Mardoll ran her tongue across her teeth. “Actually,” she said, “you could give him a chance.”

She set out along the road and he strode along beside her, leading the red mare.

“Do you remember,” Mardoll said after a little while, “when you talked about making waelcyrge? Einherjar?”

“Yes, of course.” They passed under an apple tree, heavy with green fruit. Hornets buzzed around a few early windfalls.

“How would that work?”

He turned, grinned down at her, and started to explain things she already knew.

She admired the way the sun highlighted his face. Young. But there were advantages to that.

*   *   *

Sunset, and the Imogen comes to him as she always does, but he is not waiting for her.

He is
always
waiting for her. Where else would he be? No matter. She can find him. Anywhere.

She follows his scent—which is not his scent, exactly, but the way his passage touched the air—down across the beach, and by the verge of the water. Past the little hill with the white building on it.

Down among the bones of ancient dead things.

She think he’s sleeping at first, which worries her. Which gives her pause, worry not being what she is intended for. But then she sees that his eyes are open, and his relaxation is that of despair.

The tide comes on. It rolls between the bones lower down the beach, smoothing the furrowed sand as one might smooth a child’s hair. If one had a child.

Her Lord sits watching the sea come in.

Sand cakes his clothing and his skin, his hair. And oh, his pain is sweet. Sweet, and deep.

The Imogen smells a woman on his skin, a scent so ancient she’s almost forgotten it. That woman has wounded him more deeply than ever the Imogen does. There are weals on his wrists, welts on his legs, bruises on his body.

She helps him home.

The scent of blood and sorrow rouses the Imogen’s appetites. The marks are the least of his suffering.

No matter.

She heals all wounds. Given time.

She is mercy. She is solace.

In her house, there is an end to pain.

*   *   *

Borje picked his way down the bluff from the chapel. He remembered who the pale-haired woman was, all right. She was hard to forget. Her and her sneaky questions about angels living there.

He liked Cahey. Liked the kid even more.

Knew what somebody with a ring through his nose looked like, too.

The cottage was dark, and Borje didn’t bother to bring the lights up. He keyed his ’screen on and said Aethelred’s name, waiting to be connected.

The link went through almost immediately. The old priest held his small ’screen close to his face. Behind him, Borje glimpsed the figure of a woman whose hair made a halo around her in the firelight. “Borje,” Aethelred said through the static on the portable. “Problem?”

“I think so,” the bull replied, digging behind one ear with a bifurcated forehoof. “There’s a woman here. Not here, I mean—she was with Cahey and Cathmar.”

Aethelred nodded encouragement.

“And I’ve seen her before. I recognized her smell. But she looked different. And she was doing things … well. I think you should hurry. I think you should send Selene.”

“All right, Borje. I’ll do that.”

“Right away,” Borje said.

“Right away,” Aethelred agreed. Behind him, the woman was already picking up her pack.

50 A.R.
On the Twenty-second Day of Autumn

A warm rain streaked the windowpane. Selene turned away from it, knuckling the corners of her eyes. “I heard from Aethelred,” she said to the silver-eyed figure who had come up behind her. She had caught his scent, which wreathed him like a second cloak, but even she didn’t hear him move.

She felt as if his pale eyes peeled her open.

He was already nodding when she said, “It’s not good news.”

“With age,” he answered, “you may come to accept that it never is.”

“I hope not. That seems like a hard kind of acceptance.”

“We’re a hard kind of creature.” He tilted his head slightly and examined her face. “Tell me the bad news, then.”

She sighed and arched her back, twisting. “Borje,” she said, and then interrupted herself. “It’s like some grown-up game of pass-the-message. Borje saw something that made him unhappy. He called Aethelred, and Aethelred … well.”

Falling back a stride or two, Mingan fetched up against the edge of the scarred, massive cherrywood table that dominated their living space. He perched, supporting his weight on one booted foot while swinging the other idly back and forth as if his anticipation were too great to hold himself still.

Well,
Selene thought,
if he’s going to tell you he’s going to tell you, and if he’s not he’s not.
“What do you know about this Mardoll person?”

One corner of his thin lips twitched upward. “Lovely, clever Selene,” he said. “Not nearly so much as I want to know. But enough.”

“And you won’t share it with me.”

“Dare not,” he said. “For you are young yet, and not grown into your ruthlessness.”

She came toward him, feeling her tail begin to lash. Her ears stayed up, however: although frustrated, she was also curious. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Reaching out, he let the back of a gloved hand trail down her arm, ruffling the fur and laying it flat. She shivered. “Do you trust me?” he asked her.

Enough to go limp in your arms as a kitten,
she thought. But what she said was, “Not entirely.”

A little purring sound as he caught his breath, looking at her. She held her gaze steady on his, one wild equal to another.

“Good.” His smile trembled a little, but held. “Never entirely. Because there are things I place before you, my love, and if you are wise you will also examine your priorities.”

“Things. Yourself?” His scent itched. She wrinkled her nose. Her tail stilled as she examined the thought.

“Never that,” he answered. The slightest shake of his head. “Never over thee. But we serve, Selene. Never forget for a moment that we serve, and that she whom you serve must hold, always, primacy.”

“I’ve been that road before,” she said. “You may recall, I left it.”

He tilted his head and smiled, a silent wolf-laugh. “Is it different when you choose it?”

She shrugged, unable to still the flicker of her tail. More evidence of her irritation. “And that’s why you won’t tell me what you’re up to?”

One long, thoughtful breath and then another before he answered. She looked down at the narrow wooden floorboards, over at the rain falling behind the yellow and gray curtains.

“If you knew,” he said at last, “you would have to do something. And what you would do—as naturally to you as breathing, what you could not prevent yourself from doing—would cost me things from which I am not prepared to be parted.”

“Ah.” It was easier to keep the irritation out of her tone than she expected. Especially when she stole his trick and counted breaths before she spoke, half humorous, half edged. “So it’s all about you.”

He chuckled and stood as she turned and drifted away. She didn’t drift far, however, and then his hands were on her shoulders and he bent, rubbing his face against the fur on the back of her neck. Despite herself, a purr rumbled up her throat, although her left ear swiveled backwards in irritation.

“It’s been about me all along,” he said.

She leaned back against him, lulled by the murmur against her neck, although his words should have disturbed her.

“Have you ever doubted that it’s about me, Selene? You know what I am. I am the hour of the wolf; I am the new moon in the old moon’s arms. I am the death that makes fertile ground.”

He turned her, gently, softly, and drew her into his arms. “I am a trickster and a liar, my love, and you will trust me because you must, because the other course is folly.”

She stepped back away from him then. “I must do nothing, Wolf. I must do nothing, except serve the one who saved us.” She raised her chin and met his gaze squarely, saw him smile that she was unafraid.

He seemed to listen to a following silence before he chuckled. “It is a lucky wolf indeed who has two such unflinching allies as yourself and my steed to treat with him.”

She was distracted for a moment wondering what the valraven had said to him; before she recovered herself he bent down to kiss her throat where the fur was thin and the blood ran close, letting her feel his white, sharp teeth. She might have stepped back—but he caught her offguard, heedless when her claws curled reflexively into his shoulders, laying flesh open almost down to the bone.

“Mingan,” she hissed, blood scorching her fingers, soaking her fur, showering the wooden floor.

“ ’Twill heal,” he answered against her skin, and it did.

50 A.R.
On the Twenty-fifth Day of Autumn

Poor boy. And such a handsome one, too.
The goddess watched him, blindfolded on his own hearth-rug, trying not to fight the lengths of twisted cloth she’d bound him with. Sweat beaded his naked skin, although the fireplace was cold and she hadn’t even touched him, yet. She stood, watching, fingering her necklace. He reminded her of someone she knew once. Just as beautiful. Just as doomed.

She shook her head.
Pity will not help you, Heythe.
It was necessary. This one would not surrender. He would need to be removed, even if the lies rankled. Even if she found him very brave, to face destruction, shame and old clotted terrors so selflessly, for the sake of another.

His face turned as if he sought her, despite the darkness that enfolded him. She witnessed his passion and his fear.

My enemy loved this one.

Loves this one.

Surely she will not let him continue to suffer so. Angry though he may have made her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, too softly for him to hear. She was a goddess. Had been, anyway, would be again if she could pay the prices she had to pay. She could look at anything.

Bitter prices, but if the cost was too dear … well. There were always others who
would
pay it. And so she would break this angel, force his mistress’ hand. Make the Bearer of Burdens intervene on his behalf and that of his son. She saw blood on his mouth, looked away. Looked back.

She had been worshipped as a goddess. She could look at anything. And regret had never stopped her before. The Grey Wolf’s sire wouldn’t have cringed at rape or deception.

Heythe bent down beside him, let her breath touch his ear. He groaned and tried to pull away, but the scarves held him tight.

“Shhhhh. No whimpering.” She paused, thoughtful, watching the tears leak down his cheeks, darkening the fabric of the blindfold. “Well, you can scream if you have to.”

For a little while, he didn’t.

*   *   *

He expected it to hurt. Braced for it, was ready. Pain could have been an anchor in the sea that tossed him. Cahey was accustomed to pain.

He
knew
how to take a
beating.

He was blinded, restrained. There was nothing to concentrate on, nothing but the delicacy of her touch, languid fingers stroking and gripping and sliding.…

Light, if only there were pain. He strained against the ties, bruising his wrists. It wasn’t enough.

It doesn’t matter what she does to me. It doesn’t matter, because soon none of this will have ever happened.

He bit back another little moan, and heard her chuckle. “Good boy,” she murmured. “I know. It’s hard, isn’t it? You want to hate this, but your body
needs
it so much.”

The blindfold felt wet against his face. He realized he was weeping. He wasn’t really there, though—he was far away, and long ago.

I will not scream. I will not give him the fucking satisfaction of admitting he’s hurt me.

Except this didn’t hurt, and it wasn’t
him;
it was
her
. Couldn’t. Couldn’t be made to feel anything but
good,
no matter how he tried. Inside, the edgy shard of Mingan’s soul that rode him stirred, stretched, awakened—as it seemed to, in her presence. He felt the Wolf’s presence—thoughts and emotions both wild, searing and coldly restrained—like a fist clenched in his hair.