The Long-Kept Secret of Argus Argen
Argus and Senan arrived just in time to see the Gardai descending on Glimt. There was a great deal of explaining to be done – particularly of the splashy evidence of the bonnacon’s triumph – but eventually the men and women were taken away in chains for medical treatment and jail, in that order.
After the embracing, and the explanations, Argus came to Anya’s room, a pot of mistflower serum and bandages in one hand and softest borometz cotton in the other. Gently, with the sharp eyes of a parent, he dressed her wounds.
‘This will hurt.’ He touched the serum to the places her young skin had been cut. ‘There are so many, Anya!’ There was outrage in his voice.
But Anya was not daunted. Pride – and, far stronger than pride, a kind of vivid certainty – had taken hold of her. ‘I know. It was a great battle!’
‘And you really fought him? Alone?’
‘Yes!’
‘Tell me again.’
And again, she told him, in eager detail, every move Darius had made, every countermove she had made, how it had felt like fire in the blood.
‘But how did you know what to do?’
‘I think … I had an instinct. I felt …’ And this time when Anya spoke, it was with a new, swift clarity.
‘I knew that they could take Teren, and that that would be the worst thing imaginable. It was like there was a terrible future in the room with me. And it made me so angry. And I knew, in that moment in the library, that if I tried, I could be the one to strike that future down: I could stop it, kill it, reverse it – I knew that I was bigger than it. Just in that moment. It didn’t last. Afterwards I felt like I might have a heart attack. ’
He smiled half a smile, though his eyes were sad. ‘That doesn’t surprise me.’
‘It doesn’t?’
‘No. I’ve known it for many months. I knew when you came running into my prison cell: when my own child rescued me from death.’
‘Knew what, Father?’
‘Your mother, Elfrieda Argen, was a rare woman. She wasn’t always easy, but she was always remarkable.
Elfrieda looked like you, in the hair and eyes.
She didn’t find castle life simple. Do you remember when you once spat at your grandfather the king?
She was very much the type to do the same. And her mother was a Berserker.’
Anya’s face was open with astonishment. ‘So I—’
‘You’re of Berserker kin.’
‘A Berserker? Like Nighthand?’ Ferocious joy was rising in her, but doubt held it at arm’s length. ‘I can’t be! I feel fear! I feel fear all the time! In the library, waiting with Teren, I thought I might die of it.’
‘Of course. Only true Berserkers do not feel fear. But in the way some inherit musicality, or speed, you have a touch of the warrior to you. How much, only you can decide.’
‘Me?’ The word rang through her like gold: a warrior.
‘I should have seen it when you were born. I’ve never met a more intense baby: you seemed to vibrate.
Your mother held you in her arms, and she told me: “She will have fury, and focus. We will teach her to crave justice, and to graft her focus with love, and together those gifts will be a weapon stronger than steel.” ’ He smiled.
‘She used to say, far more women had Berserker blood in them than knew of it. They just had not yet found the moment to unleash it.’
‘But why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because I didn’t want you to fight of course!
’ He took sudden hold of her shoulders, almost lifted her small frame up off her seat.
‘I wanted to keep you safe!’ Then he sighed.
He let her go, and stepped back to look at her.
‘But I have seen now, twice, that I cannot stop you. And if you are to fight I would rather you knew how.’
‘You’re going to teach me?’
Argus laughed. ‘You already have more skill in the tip of one of your fingers than I have in my whole body.’ He smiled.
‘I have told Nighthand. He is more delighted than I thought possible. He is insisting on teaching you to fight. And to cook. I said both options sounded perilous, but all things considered, I would rather he did the first.’