4. Brennen #2
I recoil at the sound of her name, so wrong coming from the Cutter’s cold mouth.
“Murdered, along with five others. Her family. Am I correct?” She reaches out to pet Athair’s spiked crown, her hand so small compared to the beast’s head, and a deep rumble leaves his chest as he nuzzles against her.
My jaw ticks at the levity of her tone when talking about the death of the woman I love, but I remain silent.
There is no reason to speak. Cailleach knows the answer, and she is no stranger to death.
She’s the one who sealed their fates, though I do not blame her.
She may have cut their threads, but it wasn’t her hands that ended their lives.
It’s not even the Measurer’s fault. She may measure out our lives, but that is when the cause of death isn’t at the hands of another human.
It is the one thing out of her control—murder.
The thread simply would have floated to Cailleach’s hands at the time her life was ending, and she would have had no choice but to sever it.
“Yes,” I say, adrenaline coursing through my blood.
“Tell me about how they died,” the Cutter demands, her voice morphing into stone.
I stiffen, my heart racing as my mind fights to keep up with her line of questioning. It takes me a second to process her command—that she wishes for me to relive their deaths.
Athair stands when I don’t immediately answer. He lowers his head, smoke curling from his nostrils.
I grit my teeth as the magical hooks tug again.
“It happened in the night. Her family was found dead inside their home, but Marsaili… She tried to flee. I was on my way to report to my post. I was to be gone for two months. I’d waited till the last possible moment, because she hadn’t wanted me to go.
” I swallow down the memory of Marsaili asking me to stay a little longer.
We'd only been betrothed mere weeks, and she hadn't been ready for me to leave yet.
If only I’d listened.
“I was just over the hill when I felt it. A tug in my chest, demanding I turn back. I couldnae explain it, but I had no choice but to listen. She’d tried to get to me, I think.
” It takes every bit of my training to keep my voice detached, but my blood runs hot.
“I found her lying in the grass outside her burning house, her throat torn open. She took her last breath in my arms. I was too late to save her, or the rest of her family.”
“Who murdered them?” she asks, and for a moment, I hesitate. My throat burns, and my lips feel sluggish. But the hooks tug again, and I realize resisting is futile. She will force me to say it one way or another.
The name I’ve refused to utter since I buried Marsaili.
I fight to push down the fury rising up my throat, but the taste of it already coats my tongue.
“The Bean-Nighe.” My voice comes out as almost a growl.
“Yes.” Cailleach leans forward. “The Washwoman.”
The name strikes like a spear through my chest, and I know with sudden clarity why I was called here today.
Fire surges through my blood. Ban-dia a’ Bhàis is keeping her promise.
“Has she escaped again?” I ask.
“No,” Cailleach snaps. Athair crouches, but she places a hand on his snout, calming him.
She takes a deep breath. “Though I do see why that would be your concern, seeing as it was during the first, and only” —she throws the word at me like a dart— “time she escaped that she killed your precious Marsaili. Tell me. What do you know of her punishment?”
I want to hurl my dagger at her. To tell her to have respect when she speaks Marsaili’s name, but I bite my tongue.
“She was bound to the River of Death after taking a life you had marked to die over a century ago—a friend who betrayed her. She saw a friend’s clothes she was planning to kill in the river and removed them so the death could be at her own hands.
She interfered with fate and murdered both her friend and her lover, outside of your will.
She defied you, so you cursed her to wash the clothing of the dead forever, cleaning their sins and allowing souls passage into the afterlife. ”
The Cutter’s eyes sparkle. “A unique punishment, don't you think? I’m rather proud of it.”
I close my hands into fists to keep them from shaking.
“May I truly speak freely?” I ask, my voice tight.
Athair’s head swings toward me, and for a moment, I’m certain Cailleach will lift her finger, and I’ll be nothing but a smoking heap of ash, but she pats the dragon’s nose, nodding.
I let out a shaky breath. “Why not death?” I ask, looking directly at Cailleach. “Why not end her life?”
The Fate presses her lips together for a moment before speaking, and when she does, her words are as curt as ever. “I will tell you, but only so that you understand the gravity of the danger she possesses.”
I nod. “Of course.”
Athair snorts, but Cailleach holds up a hand. “Death is the sentence she was originally given, agreed upon by all three of us. But,” she pauses, her fingers tightening on her throne as if speaking the words is causing her physical pain, “when I tried to sever her thread, it would not cut.”
Her confession steals the air from my lungs. I don't dare speak, afraid that any question I ask will spark an outburst of anger that will end in my own thread being severed. The Cutter hides her shame well, her chin high and her shoulders back, but it's there, hidden in the shadows of her face.
She waves a hand as if unbothered, but the lines bracketing her eyes say otherwise. “How is that possible? That’s what you want to know, isn’t it?”
I open my mouth, but no words form. It is what I want to know, but I certainly cannae ask when Athair is lowering his head to my level, his claws digging into the marble as if he’s about to launch forward to grab me by the throat.
She pets his neck, soothing him as if that will stop him from turning me to a pile of charred bones, and lowers her chin. “I gave him permission to speak freely.”
He huffs, smoke curling from his nose.
“Do you know why the thread refused to cut?” I ask, choosing my words carefully, and the queen's lips tip up in an approving smile.
“No,” she says.
“Is there a chance Measaire didnae measure her thread to end at that time?” I ask, my mind shifting through the possibilities.
“It would not have mattered, even if she hadn’t.
While I’m honor-bound to her measurements in most cases, the magic she uses in her duty is fluid and allows that measurement to change under certain circumstances.
It is about intention. If I believed you to be a threat to the kingdom, the laws between my sisters and me would not apply.
After what she did, I should have been able to end her life, and thus, that threat. ”
She sighs dramatically, as if putting on a show.
“Alas, none of us has been able to determine why her particular thread cannot be severed. It has not happened before, and it has not happened since.”
I nod, taking it all in. “She cannae be killed.” The words burn as they leave my throat. “So you put her where you can watch her.”
Cailleach’s answering smile is cruel. “Precisely. And for more than a hundred years, she did not cause any trouble. But as you know, she escaped, fleeing to your village where she went on a murderous rampage. She was caught and is now not only bound with magic to that shore, but physically as well. An endless punishment. One, possibly worse than death.”
“I see,” I nod, but something tickles at my brain, the beginnings of a thought I cannot fully form. The Fates: the Weaver, the Measurer, and the Cutter. The ones who create the verra fabric of the universe, and yet, the answer eludes them. The thought makes me uneasy.
“Why hide her?”
Cailleach tilts her head. “The villages around the river know of her, but are prohibited by magic to speak of her whereabouts once they leave. As is anyone who stumbles upon her. She is a ghost lurking in the dark. A cautionary tale. A warning to those who would choose to defy my sisters and me. A threat is far more poignant when it haunts your nightmares. When you don’t know where the monster hides, don't you think?”
I look back to the throne as another thread floats from above, black ash falling from Cailleach’s fingers.
“You're being reassigned to the River Bàsail,” she continues before I can answer.
I still, my breath freezing in my lungs. “The River… What?”
“The River Bàsail. That is where you will find her.” She meets my stare, her eyes boring into mine. “‘Chan eil thu air do dhìochuimhneachadh. Air mo bheatha, nì mi dìoghaltas dhut.’ Are those not your own words?”
The pledge I’ve made a hundred times as I stood on the cold ground in the clouds of Vengach floats from her mouth. The same one I turned into an unbreakable oath with Ban-dia a’ Bhàis’s blade.
My jaw opens in shock.
“Surely that isn’t surprise I see on your face. I am the Cutter. The most powerful of the Fates. There is nothing that happens in my kingdom I am not aware of.”