Chapter 5
The next morning, Lord Halverton’s coach arrived to collect her.
Aoife had packed a small bag with her most precious things: a few of her mother’s books, the pine marten her grandfather had carved when she was a baby, her one spare set of clothes, and select herbs and tinctures for healing.
Cormac’s bracelet sat snug around her wrist.
A rap at the door. Aoife’s father opened it to a young soldier with golden eyes. Behind him stood another, older figure, his face turned away, watching the street instead of her. The braiding at his shoulder marked him as a man of rank.
Behind them, Lord Halverton’s coach. The door never opened, but she knew he was inside.
Aoife gathered her siblings close. “I have to go away for a bit,” she told them. “I’ll write when I can.”
They didn’t understand. “When will you be back?”
Aoife swallowed hard. She couldn’t promise anything. Couldn’t even answer. So she pulled them both in, and they clung to her. Tears wet her shoulder. Her father stood behind them, silent. As she rose, he stepped forward and wrapped her in a brief, fierce hug.
“I want you to have this,” she said, holding the dagger her father had made out to Eoin. His eyes went wide.
Maire’s eyes filled with tears. “Are you dying?”
“What? No.”
“Then why aren’t you taking it with you?” Eoin asked accusingly.
“I don’t think I’ll be allowed it. That’s all,” she assured them. “You’ll put it to good use, right?”
Eoin nodded.
Her father gestured for her to join him in the corner. “His lordship is going to expect you to be polite and dutiful. You remember your place and things will go a lot more smoothly for you.”
Aoife had spent her life watching her father capitulate to men like Lord Halverton.
Men who would order a sabre and on collection insist they had requested a straight-bladed sword.
Men who would require metal work completed in half the time it ought to take.
Men who expected to get their own way and never to hear a word to the contrary.
Her father had perfected the art of dealing with lords.
“I will,” she said.
Her father pulled her in, wrapping her up in a fierce hug. A few times she thought he might say something, but he didn’t. When they pulled apart, he looked her in the eyes and nodded before walking away. She didn’t need his words.
When she stepped outside, half the village was there, watching the coach at her door. She searched for Cormac but didn’t see him. She wasn’t surprised, but she was disappointed.
The older soldier moved forward to take her bag. She recognised him at once: the grey-eyed man who had stood watching when the soldiers cleared the square two days before.
As he fell into step beside her, she asked, “What’s your name?”
He looked startled. “Wiren.”
He opened the carriage door for her. “Thank you, Wiren.”
He still looked shocked as he shut the door behind her.
Inside, the air was thick with the scent of leather and polish. Lord Halverton smiled faintly. “I am pleased you made the right choice.”
His gaze fell on her clothes. “You can change as soon as we reach the house. From now on, you will need to look the part.”
“What part is that?” Aoife asked.
“My wife, of course.”
Aoife shuddered. “Your wife?”
Halverton smiled charmingly. “Not right away. You will need a few improvements. Your manners and your accent, for a start. And we will need to put meat on your bones. You will be quite the lady when I am done.”
“A lady?”
“Are you going to echo everything I say?”
“Sorry, my lord. This is all quite a change.”
“You will adapt.” He leant closer, reaching a hand up and tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “You are beautiful.”
He was waiting for her to speak. “Thank you, my lord.”
He put a hand under her chin, tilting her head to the side, examining her like a bug under a spyglass. His finger traced the small scar that ran from the bottom of her ear, under her hair.
“How did this happen?”
“Crow attack,” Aoife said. “I disturbed its nest.”
“That was foolish.” He smiled as he said it, stroking the scar again, leaving behind a chill where his finger brushed her skin.
“I was only a child.”
“I imagine you learnt your lesson.”
Aoife didn’t know what to say. “Yes, my lord.”
Halverton’s fingers lingered a moment longer. He sat back with a sigh. “Tell me, why did you offer to take your father’s place?”
“My Lord?”
“I want to understand you better.”
Aoife thought for a moment. How best to say it? “I have two younger siblings. They need their father.”
“Hmm. Your family is important to you.”
It wasn’t a question, but she answered anyway. “They are.”
“After you have settled in, I might allow them to visit.”
“That would be very gracious of you, my lord.” Was she overdoing the number of times she’d said ‘my lord’? Halverton seemed pleased.
They’d left the village behind as they passed through empty fields. She risked a question. “My lord,” she said carefully, “do you know what caused the crop failures?”
He looked out of the window. “Poor farming practices.”
The answer startled her. They had farmed the same land, the same crops, for generations. Why would it fail now?
“Is there nothing to be done to save the harvest?”
He looked at her intently now. “You take an interest in farming practises?”
“I take an interest in feeding my people.”
He looked at her appraisingly before answering. “Unfortunately not. It is too late in the season. Several fields have been resown with feldgrain, which may produce before winter.”
“If they don’t?”
“Then we shall all be in trouble.”
She looked out of the window. How far could she push her luck?
“You’re still shipping food to the empire.”
“I am.” His tone was sharper now. She knew to tread carefully.
“I was wondering if it wouldn’t be a good idea to keep more back.”
“No, it would not. I was sent here to oversee this county and make sure it sends the empire its dues. I would not be doing my job if I stopped sending what is owed.”
Aoife wasn’t sure in what way they could owe anything to the empire, but she could tell from his tone the conversation was over.
A thick silence settled over them, and she traced the knots of leather in her bracelet as the fields rolled by.
They rode through the grand gates of the estate, the coach wheels crunching over gravel.
The drive curved along the edge of the woodland, where the light fell in thin lines between the trees.
Aoife caught sight of a dark figure between the trunks, a giant shadow that seemed to be watching them, but when she looked again, there was nothing there.
Instead of driving up to the house, the coach veered around the side towards a series of ornate gardens.
The gardens were immaculate, the lawns trimmed, every border precise.
Someone, or more likely several someones, spent hours here each day tending them.
Aoife recognised none of the plants. They were useless things, purely decorative.
No food, no medicine, only colour and vanity.
To her mind, it was a waste of good earth.
They passed a garrison of soldiers running drills, thirty or more; she didn’t have time to count, but she could pick out the captain, his uniform distinctive even at this distance. Halverton watched them with pride.
“I helped select and train them myself,” he said. “You might be surprised to find they are mostly Morran men.”
“Indeed, my lord,” she said, for want of anything better to say. Did he really think she couldn’t recognise the Morran men among the ranks?
“I find the locals are more likely to listen to their own kind, and the tenants can’t hide behind their native tongue.”
Aoife said nothing.
The coach stopped, Wiren opened the door and Lord Halverton led her down a gravel path to the edge of the garden, where an ancient tree hunched against the clipped hedges.
Early autumn had dulled its leaves to a tired green.
Hard little berries clustered along the low branches, turning from green to blood-red.
Gnarled roots spread wide into the soil, thick as knuckles as it guarded the entrance to the Otherworld.
“I hate this tree,” Halverton said. “I have tried to have it removed several times, but I can not find a single man who will do it.”
Aoife said nothing. She wasn’t surprised he’d found no one willing to fell it. To cut down a hawthorn was to invite ruin and death upon one’s family.
Halverton turned to her. “I am grateful now that it still stands,” he said. “It means you can make your oath here.”
The words unsettled her. “My oath?”
“Yes.” His tone was smooth. “An oath to the Sheedar. You are to swear that you shall never leave here.”
She stared at him. “But you don’t believe in the Sheedar.”
“That does not matter,” he said easily. “I know you do.”
He gestured impatiently. “Go on, then. How does this work?”
She hesitated. When he’d said she would never leave, she’d thought he meant she would never leave him, not that she’d be a prisoner on this patch of earth for the rest of her life.
He smiled. “We will have to consider the wording. You don’t need to stay on the estate forever.”
Relief flooded Aoife.
“Only until you fall in love with me.”
Dread flooded back as fast.
“I have great ambitions, Eva. I’m going to be Viceroy someday. So, you see, I have no intention of keeping you prisoner here.”
Aoife’s stomach turned.
“I can give you everything a woman could dream of,” Halverton took a step closer. “And the sooner you realise that, the sooner you can see your family again.”
Aoife kept her eyes down, thinking. She couldn’t make this oath, not the way he wanted her to. There was no way she was ever going to fall in love with him.
Relief flooded her; she was being stupid. There was no way he spoke even a single word of Morrish, she could say whatever she liked.
“Very well,” she conceded, stepping forward and placing one hand on the bark of the tree. “Nim fior tauram ced—”
Lord Halverton’s voice cut through sharply. “In words I understand. An actual language, not your gibberish.”
The insult burned. She bit back her response.
“You want me to make an oath to the Sheedar in Eldrossi?” she asked, astonished.
“Yes,” he replied firmly.
It was a slim hope, but perhaps the Sheedar wouldn’t accept the oath if she made it in the wrong language. She thought for a moment longer before she spoke.
“I will not quit these grounds until I give my heart to one who abides here.”
She looked at Lord Halverton, and he nodded, satisfied. “Now the blood.” He said.
Aoife had been hoping against hope that he didn’t know about that. A thought took hold before she could name it. She leant in and pricked her finger on a thorn. The sting lingered, and she applied pressure as she spoke to Lord Halverton.
“You need to do it, too.”
“Why?”
“So the Sheedar know who I’m making the oath to.”
Halverton stepped forward and pricked his thumb on a thorn. The drop of blood shone brightly in the autumn sun for a moment and vanished.
A subtle pulse moved through the air. As the oath took hold, her chest constricted, tighter and tighter. For several seconds she couldn’t expand her lungs to breathe. Her hope that they might not accept an oath made in Eldrossi was dashed.
As quickly as it came, the pressure released. Aoife took a relieved lungful of air. Halverton bent at the waist, coughing.
“You felt it too?” she asked.
“I swallowed a fly.” Halverton said, straightening. How much proof did the Eldrossi need before they would believe?
As they returned to the carriage, her heart was leaden, the tightness in her chest lingered.
The Sheedar would make her keep that promise.
They were sneaky and tricksy, and in every way they knew, they would keep her from leaving this estate.
The flogging would have ended. This would not.
She could only hope it wouldn’t all be in vain.
They climbed into the coach, and Halverton gave the order to go.
The house rose pale and cold against the hill, stone built to impress rather than welcome. The double staircase swept to large wooden doors, each step perfect in symmetry.
Wiren returned her bag to her as he helped her descend from the carriage.
She climbed the stairs. The oak doors studded with iron opened into shadow. Beyond, the entrance hall was vast and echoing; her footsteps sharp on marble tiles.
The doors closed behind her with a deep, final thud.