Chapter 17 #3
“éadha!” The voice came from behind her.
She twisted in her seat. It was Gry. He was in his Keeper boat, rowing toward her.
With the wind behind him, he caught her quickly, reaching out to catch her gunwale so the two boats knocked against each other.
His face was creased with worry. “éadha, what happened? Senan passed me on my way back to shore, and when there was no sign of your boat, I got worried.”
“Senan happened,” she managed. Gry’s face darkened; she realized she’d never seen him truly angry before, a muscle jumping in his tight jaw as he stared at her exhausted face. “Then the wind…” Her voice petered out.
“At home we call it the Dragon’s Dance,” said Gry, making a visible effort to speak calmly. “That hot, hard wind from the west you get in early autumn. The dragons love to ride it, but we humans need to be a bit more careful.”
He stood up in his own boat, balancing easily as it began rocking from side to side.
The sun was beginning to slip down behind Lambay, coloring the sky a flaming red.
All éadha could think was how solid Gry looked, the only real, solid thing in a landscape that wouldn’t stop moving around her, the waves heaving and the wind buffeting her while he stood with his legs braced, outlined against the darkening sky.
There was a blackness creeping in from the edge of her vision, and she was starting to sway in her seat, no longer able to keep herself upright.
“Hey, hey,” she heard Gry say, “stay with me.” He swung first one leg, then the other over into her coracle.
Now he was standing in front of her; his hand was under her chin, those bright eyes staring down at her as his own boat was quickly swept away by the wind and the waves.
And she was surprised by how soft his touch was.
“Whaddya doin’?” she said, dimly puzzled that he seemed to be in her boat now for some reason. It was too small, surely, for two of them.
“Getting you back to land.”
“ ’S my boat.”
“Yes, Ailm, it’s a lovely boat. How about, though, before the wind tips us both into the Fiadh sea, you stand up for me.
” He caught her under her arms and lifted her up.
She half slumped against his chest, her legs unable to take her weight.
She was, she realized, going to pass out from being drained, from dehydration and the heat exhaustion.
She felt vaguely ashamed; she wasn’t someone who keeled over like this.
Her head was pressed against his chest. He smelled, she thought fuzzily, of salt and sweat and, underneath that, the smoky tang of molash and incense.
He was so warm, too, the heat radiating through his thin training tunic, and she realized she was starting to shiver with delayed shock, as if somehow she had permission to let go now because he had her.
Someone had her. She had someone. Her eyes closed over from exhaustion, and without thinking she reached out toward him with her senses instead, as if to reassure herself he was still there.
And there, in front of her, like the dragon all those months ago, there he was, shining before her.
His light fierce, a core of bright iron running through him, and she felt her own power stir inside her in response: a singing rising inside her, something she could no more stop than the wind or the tide around her. A recognition; a finding.
“Ohhh,” she mumbled, her eyes still closed. “I see you now. You’re so bright. How are you so bright? How do you hold it in?”
“You’re rambling, Ailm,” Gry said, though she felt through his chest how his heart thudded as he said it before he lifted her gently away from him.
“Now, we’re going to shuffle around very stylishly and sit you down here, like so.
” And he rotated her carefully in the narrow space then slid her down so she came to rest on the bottom of the boat, between his legs, while he took her place in the rower’s seat.
Moving smoothly, he bent forward to take up the oars and began to row against the wind in the direction of Lambay, now little more than a dark shadow against the fading light.
As he did, he looked down at her. “Put your head between your knees and close your eyes. You’ve been drained, but your energy will regenerate in a little while. You just need to rest.”
éadha sat with her back slumped against the base of his seat, her head level with his thighs, blessedly out of the wind, sheltered from it by his body.
From nowhere a laugh bubbled up inside her.
Above her Gry said nothing, his lean torso bending forward over her head and stretching back in smooth strokes, cutting through the water.
After a little, lulled by the rhythm of his strokes and the slap of the waves against the boat, she drifted off to sleep.
When she woke, it was dark. For a moment she’d no idea where she was, then she realized her head was resting against Gry’s thigh, and there was a small stain on his pants where she’d drooled in her sleep.
She was instantly mortified; her eyes flashed upward to meet Gry’s.
He was sitting still, the oars in his hands, looking down at her, an expression she hadn’t seen before in his eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Nope,” said Gry. “No apologizing, you did nothing wrong.”
“I meant for drooling on you,” she said, nodding toward his thigh.
“Oh, well, yes, that you can apologize for. Though you were very cute.”
“I doubt it,” said éadha, flushing despite herself at the thought of Gry seeing her asleep and drooling. “How long was I out?”
“As long as you needed to be.” éadha drew in her legs, suddenly intensely aware of the fact she was sitting between his legs, of the warmth of his thigh where her head had rested until moments before and the heat radiating from the rest of his body, shielding her from the nighttime chill beyond her small cocoon.
But as she moved, the boat began to rock alarmingly, reminding her they were still out on the water.
Gry looked down at her, his voice amused. “I’m not sure where you’re planning to go, unless you want to sit on me?”
éadha subsided. He was right: there was nowhere else to go in the tiny boat. It’d been designed for one person and could barely hold the two of them. Gry bent forward, sliding the oars back into the water. “Don’t worry, it’s not far. I just wanted to let you sleep it out before we docked.”
“Thank you,” she said awkwardly. “For coming to find me.”
“What I don’t understand,” said Gry as he settled into a steady stroke, not looking down at her, “is why you were so worn out in the first place. With your gift you should be able to keep for Senan in your sleep, even if he is a vicious brute. But you’ve been exhausted for weeks. So come on, spill it. What’s going on?”
A lump rose in éadha’s throat as the weariness of the last few weeks came rushing back.
She couldn’t lie to him, she thought, not after what he’d just done, but she couldn’t tell him the truth either.
Instead, she stared out ahead of her at the moon rising over the sea before saying, “I made a promise a long time ago. One of those promises you can’t break.
Keeping it is taking more out of me than I thought. ”
“Another promise? Besides promising not to channel Fodder? You don’t think you’re maybe making too many promises?”
“You’re one to talk,” said éadha, rousing herself as the memory of those last moments before she passed out came back to her.
The shining power she’d sensed in him. There was no way, she realized, that was only a Keeper’s gift.
She pushed away the thought of how her own power had responded to it.
“Earlier—I saw you. You let me see you, and it looks a lot like maybe you’ve been making hard promises too? ”
They’d almost reached the small jetty in front of First House that was used for docking the Keeper boats.
As they floated the last few feet, Gry said, “For your sake—and for my Family’s sake—I’m not sure that’s a question I should answer.
Once you’re told something, it’s hard to unknow it if you’re ever asked by people of power, and I’m not in the habit of putting people in danger.
I’ll answer a different question though.
Over the last two years I’ve watched my Channeller cousin change from a decent guy into a swaggering, entitled, selfish thug.
I’ve walked the streets of Erisen at night when all the nice Family boys and girls are tucked up in bed, and I’ve seen the dregs of Lambay’s channeling, cast off and left to rot on its streets.
And I’ve thought a lot about choice. That there’s an element of choice in what we let the Masters see and what we let them make of us.
I choose to do less harm. If that answers your question. ”
As he finished, éadha realized she wasn’t even surprised by what he’d just told her even without saying it out loud: that he was hiding a Channeller gift too. Nothing else made sense after the extraordinary power she’d sensed in him earlier.
Gry glanced at éadha with a challenging look in his eyes. “So, back to you, éadha of the many promises. Are you going to tell me what it is, this other promise you’ve made?”
éadha was silent for a moment. “In the spirit of not answering what we’re asked, I’ve a question for you instead,” she said. “Do you ever find it hard, giving it all up? Knowing you’ve a gift that’d make you the best of them all, and instead thugs like Senan get to abuse us?”
Gry leaned back in the boat and laughed up at the sky. “Senan’s the biggest moron on this island. Do you think for one second I’d let that idiot have any say in my life by basing my life choices on impressing him? Are you kidding me?”
éadha stared at him for a moment before an answering grin spread across her face, his words loosening something knotted and painful in her chest.
He looked back down at her. “I’m not saying it’s easy, especially not for you.
You’re not protected by a Family name like me.
But look, it’s a bunch of old men in a house on an island, desperate to validate their own lives by indoctrinating another generation of youngsters to make the same choices they made.
Why would I ever want their approval? It’s a gateway to wealth and power, but you have to sell your soul to get it. ”
They’d reached the dock. With a flick Gry tossed the mooring rope around the landing post. It was time to climb ashore, back onto the island.
Gry stood up behind her to catch the rope and secure it, and as the heat of his body pulled away from her, éadha felt suddenly bereft, as if something she hadn’t even realized was holding her up had been taken away.
To her left loomed the bulk of First Island, the lights of First House visible a short distance away, up the hill from the jetty.
A wave of dread hit her, as hard as the waves that’d slapped over her boat and almost drowned her earlier, at the thought of going back there to the lies, the humiliations, and the overwhelming cost of it all.
“We could just keep going, you know; row on to Erisen, go into hiding, try to find other people like us,” she said abruptly.
Gry stared at her, his expression still, before leaning forward and lashing the rope around the stern. He paused for a moment, his hands still on the rope, his back to her as he replied quietly, “Don’t get me wrong. You’re worth running away for. But I don’t think you mean it. Not yet.”
Without looking at her, he stepped across onto the dock, then turned and reached out a hand to pull her up after him.
Her legs were still shaky, but at least they could take her weight now, she thought as she stepped onto dry land.
Gry still had ahold of her hand, and with a small tug he pulled her forward so she half stumbled against his chest. His arms came around her, enfolding her, and she had to fight a sudden urge to wrap her arms around him in return.
Resting his chin on her head, he said, “This place, it forces terrible choices on us all. Fight the Masters and get sent for Fodder—or become one of them. Use or be used.” An edge of bitterness crept into his voice as he went on.
“Look at me, a nice Family boy who happens to know how bad this system is. But I’m still not prepared to be destitute, or on the run from the Masters, or end up as Fodder.
I might not be prepared to drain people’s life force, but I’m still staying in the system, keeping my Family name. ”
The pain in Gry’s voice as he said this broke éadha’s heart.
She knew what he wasn’t saying, that for him to openly defy the Masters would destroy not just him but his Family too.
It was, after all, the same awful compromise she’d made.
Making the choices that protected the people he loved while trying not to lose too much of himself.
Without thinking she leaned back a little in his arms and lifted a hand to touch his cheek gently, and she’d time to think how different he felt from Ionáin, the power she could feel underneath that warm skin.
Gry closed his eyes and breathed in at her touch.
“Don’t do this to yourself,” she whispered. “This is what love is. Making the hard choices, not the cleanest ones.”
They stood there for a moment, not saying anything, then Gry took a deep breath, dropped his arms, and stepped back, clearing his throat. “Speaking of hard choices,” he said, his normal dry humor coming back into his voice.
His arm across her shoulder, the two of them climbed together back up the hill toward the Keepers’ quad.