Chapter 29
I woke the next morning under a shroud of foreboding.
I’d still not heard even a whisper from Kielty.
I had no idea if my note had found him, if he and his group would be coming tomorrow.
Maybe he’d thought it safer not to reply.
Or perhaps, I brooded as I pulled on some breeches, the day itself would come and go and Rexim would decide he was better off without me.
I’d risen early again, planning to go down to the cove, then remembered with a lurch that I’d agreed to meet Llir.
My chest felt heavy as I tugged on Rhianne’s clothes.
I never normally paid much attention to my appearance, but now I found myself in front of my cracked mirror, peering blearily at my bird’s-nest hair.
I dragged a brush through it, braided it, fiddled with it.
I half wished I had Vercha’s powders from the ball.
Then I frowned, flicked my gaze down to the washstand, knowing that how I looked hardly mattered.
Tomorrow, if the Cage had heeded my message, they’d descend on the island. And what then, for me?
By now, after what I’d witnessed of the Hundred, I felt queasy at the prospect of continuing to serve them.
Perhaps Kielty’s people could smuggle me out.
I could bargain Llir’s secret for a placement elsewhere, far enough away to be anonymous, to be out of Rexim’s reach…
Surely, with all their contacts, including at Arbenhaw, the Cage could wrangle something like that.
But if it turned out Rexim couldn’t be persuaded? What would the Cage do to the Shearwaters then?
I shivered. I had to admit to myself that the prospect of Catua or Llir coming to harm, or Rhianne or Mawre or even Tigo, unsettled me. My loyalties felt muddied, my allegiances blurred.
Fighting to wrestle down my unease, I straightened my bodice and hurried from my room.
The outer ward was cast in shadow, and the solid, leaden clouds above the battlements threatened rain.
The door to Llir’s ivy-clad tower was ajar, and when I pushed it open, I found him within, a few steps up the spiralling staircase, leaning his back and shoulders against the wall.
I noticed he’d made something of an effort, too. No sleep-ruffled hair, no velvety night-robe. He was dressed for the day in a black doublet and hose, brownish-gold locks swept back off his forehead.
I knew the normal thing to say would be “Good morning,” but I’d never seemed able to make small talk that wasn’t stilted. Greetings that tripped off the tongue for others always sounded somehow disingenuous from me. I’d long learned to default to silence instead.
He surveyed me for a moment in the dimness of the stairwell. After our run-in the day before, something new seemed to have settled between us. A private knowledge—an understanding—and it made my skin fizzle with a strange, awkward intimacy.
Eventually he came down the steps toward me. “I’ll lock us in,” he said, “so we’re not disturbed.” As he leaned past me, turned the key in the lock, the shadows gathered beneath his cheekbones. He turned and started back up the stairs.
As I followed, I found myself pondering just why he wanted—or even needed—to know this trick.
Since I’d been stationed on the island, he hadn’t seemed to have much trouble controlling his emotions.
I was thinking of Emment, of the contrast between the brothers: the elder’s chaotic whims; the younger’s inscrutability.
But how much of that had been the secret Llir was keeping?
I knew all too well that appearances could be deceiving. People had always claimed I was calm. At Arbenhaw the Instructors had praised my impassivity. Only Zennia had known the turmoil that bubbled beneath the mask.
A thin drizzle was falling as we emerged onto the roof. Llir walked to the center of the round stone space and turned to face me, his gaze assessing.
Lowering myself to the floor, I neatly crossed my legs. “It’s easier to sit at first,” I said. “It grounds you.”
He copied me, folding his long legs together.
I eyed him, trying to mask my discomfort. I felt supremely unsuited to this situation. I’d never, in all my eighteen years, taught anybody anything before.
“What are you feeling?” I asked. “Right now?”
He looked at me with a shade of suspicion. “Uncertainty, I suppose,” he said after a moment. I could almost sense the conflict within him: the curiosity he’d mentioned; the years of resentment butting against it.
“All right. Take that uncertainty,” I said. “Now, close your eyes.”
He closed them with a slight frown.
“Try to picture the uncertainty in your mind’s eye. As though it were in front of you. What does it look like?”
With his eyes firmly closed, I was at leisure to study him.
I took in his lithe frame, his rain-flecked features, the crease between his brows, his damp, now-curling hair.
I usually avoided looking too long at other people; it almost felt forbidden to be staring this way.
I watched his Adam’s apple bob upward as he swallowed, saw his tongue flick over his narrow lips before he spoke.
“It looks like…wings,” he said in a low voice. “Like hundreds and hundreds of fluttering wings.”
I blinked, surprised, pulled out of my reverie. “Wings,” I repeated, falling silent for a moment. It felt like knowledge I, of all people, shouldn’t have of him. “All right. Can—can you try to force them together? Into a group? Maybe a ball?”
His brows quirked together. “Yes, I suppose so.”
“Keep forcing them. As though you’re stuffing a load of birds into a—a sack.”
I felt foolish, but the ghost of a smile touched his face.
“Imagine clipping their wings. Or—or baking them into a pie, I don’t know.”
To my sudden, soaring delight, a single peal of laughter escaped him, echoing off the stone into the damp, chill air.
“Okay,” he said, eyes still closed. “Fine. I’m doing it.”
“Keep going,” I said, “until the wings aren’t flapping anymore, or until they’re all gone, wherever you’ve put them. When I do this, I picture a…a scarlet ball. Like lightning, or a fire. I squeeze it down to a pinprick.”
My neck was growing warmer as I spoke. Aside from Zennia, I’d never shared this with anyone.
Llir’s eyes snapped open. He held my stare.
“How do you feel now?” I asked with trepidation.
His shoulders had lowered; his frown had smoothed out. “Not…uncertain anymore,” he said, watching me.
“Then try it now,” I pressed him. “Speak.”
His chest rose and fell shallowly with his breaths. His eyes found the battlements, the clouds stretching out beyond.
“Circle us,” he murmured. It took only a few seconds. The air stirred, and a breeze wafted against my face.
“And you,” I said to the strengthening drizzle, which had turned our hair curly and soaked into our cloaks.
As we sat there cross-legged, facing each other, the breeze picked up, swirling in a vortex around us.
Flecks of dirt were whipped up with it, a few feathers left by perching gulls.
The rain reluctantly trailed after the wind, encircling us in a haze of fine droplets.
It spun faster, catching the edges of my clothes.
And then it came. The first genuine smile he’d given me. It was slow, spreading like dawn light over his features. It took me a second—I felt pinned, off-balance—but I flashed one back at him, my insides swooping.
But hot on its heels, that dread crept back in, the recollection of everything already set in motion. My anxiety flared like a white-hot flame.
Llir looked as though he was struggling, too.
His smile had faded, and an odd look crossed his face.
The wind died, sputtering out like a rushlight, and the rain once again encroached onto our heads.
I blinked water from my eyes and dropped my gaze.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, feeling my hair stick to my neck.
He shook his head, rolled his shoulders stiffly. “I need to focus more,” he said. “I lost it.”
“Positive emotions can spook it, too.”
He caught my eye. That strange look flashed again.
A moment later, he climbed to his feet. “Let’s go. We’re getting soaked up here.”
I hurried after him to the shelter of the doorway, where he held the door open for me to go first.
“Thank you for this,” he said as I passed him, and I paused, my elbow brushing his doublet.
“It’s nothing,” I said, glancing up at him. “Like I said, just a little trick.”
He was watching me, studying me, face etched with a small frown. Then he blinked and stepped back, and I slipped through the door, grateful to descend into the dimness.