Chapter 15 #2
Something like disappointment flashed across his face, then he turned away, his hands tightening on the reins as he urged his horse away from hers, back towards where his men lingered a few paces away.
Inexplicably, regret churned in her gut.
On a sudden impulse, she called after him.
“You are very pale still, Lord Locke. Perhaps we should make camp for the night so that you might rest.”
He swung around, frowning. “It is barely midday.”
“And you have the look of a corpse.”
“Subtlety is not your strong point, my lady.”
“I wasn’t trying to be subtle, Lord Locke. Merely honest, as you asked me to be.”
Eamon leaned forward in his saddle. “You do look a bit peaky,” he said in a pseudo-whisper.
“I still think you look an absolute legend,” Tadhg said stoutly, with an air of determined loyalty. “A fine thing, even if a smidge pale.”
“And thin.”
“And you’ve got a waxy look to your skin, now that I think about it, like –”
“Yes, thank you,” Locke cut in irritably. “That’s all very helpful.”
Eamon raised his hands in the air. “The lady has a point,” he said. “Perhaps you ought to rest a bit more, before – you know.”
“Seeing your father again,” said Tadhg with a commiserating glance. “Might want to be at your best for that, seeing how poorly your last meeting went.”
Rory’s brows arched. “What happened at their last meeting, pray tell?”
“Nasty business,” said Eamon with a shake of his head. “Lots of name calling.”
“Locke threw a chair,” Tadhg added.
“Smashed it right against the wall. Broke it into four pieces, neat as you please.”
“Then he kicked the wall,” Eamon reminisced fondly. “Smashed his toe good and proper. Swelled up something fierce, walked with a limp for at least a fortnight.”
Locke flung himself out of the saddle – rather petulantly, Rory couldn’t help but think, for a grown man of six-and-thirty. “The whole lot of you,” he said, flinging himself down in the grass and throwing his arm across his eyes, “can go straight to hell and stay there.”
“He always did get a bit nippy when he was feeling poorly,” Tadhg murmured to Rory as Eamon fussed over the prone body of her husband like a mother-hen, tucking his cloak in around him and laying the back of his hand against Locke’s forehead.
“Once when we were boys, he had a nasty pox for a fortnight, and there was no living with him.” Tadhg clucked his tongue, affectionately, and another odd pang seized Rory’s chest.
For all their teasing, they truly did seem to love him, this disgraced prince of theirs.
“I think you’re right though, my lady. He could use a rest. It was a nasty bite, with a nastier infection.” Tadhg’s gaze slid to her, suddenly piercing and shrewd. “Thank the gods you were there to help him fight off the beasts.”
It was a blatant challenge, no question about it, an overt daring for her to tell the truth about the true nature of Locke’s midnight assailant, but she merely smiled. “Indeed,” she said. “I do strive to be the most dutiful wife in all things, you know.”
Tadhg hmmed under his breath before moving to join Eamon by the stream, building a small fire to warm them during their respite, and across the way, Rory’s gaze met Finn’s, quizzical and concerned.
She understood it. A mere two days remained until the feast of Imbolc, and it had always been their plan to take their vengeance, to bring about the climactic fulfillment of their éraic on that particular date. Pausing now put that timeline at risk.
But he had looked so wan, Locke had, so thin and haggard, as he smiled at her, and it had burst out of her before she could think better of it, the suggestion that they pause their journey so that he might rest. It was nonsensical and foolhardy, to say the least – what care she if he arrived at their destination more corpse than man?
He’d soon enough be dead anyway, once she and Finn were finished with what they had come to do.
She hadn’t been able to stop herself though, not when she could feel it hovering in the air all around him, that ineffable ashen taste, the precursor to the everlasting sleep.
For all her death-bringing, she had ever kept vigil at one true deathbed in her life, and it had been all she had been able to think about, looking at Locke’s waxen, white-faced visage.
Her father’s sickbed — the day that had, without her knowing it, signaled the beginning of the end for her and Niall.
Their father, it seemed, was dying, and Rory wouldn’t have given a damn except that she knew how much it would upset Niall.
“The sweating sickness,” the healer murmured, his face drawn and tight after several long days and longer nights of tending to the sickbed of the king of Connacht.
“I’ve tried everything I can, Niall, and I will continue to do what I can for him, but you need to prepare yourself – the king may very well be dying. ”
Niall’s eyes were wide and glassy, chest heaving, so, despite secretly rejoicing at the news that the man she had long hated and despised with every fiber of her being would soon be no more, Rory reached out and slipped her fingers in his.
“It’s all right, donkey,” she said quietly. “Be strong now.”
Her brother swallowed, his straw-colored head bobbing up and down.
They were children no longer, having turned seventeen this past Imbolc, but Niall had not changed much from that slim, bright-eyed boy she had first come to know all those years ago.
He was still skinny, still slight of build and a head shorter than most of the men he commanded in his father’s sept, but Rory knew it only bothered him.
Everyone in Soghain, from the king their father all the way down to the lowliest chambermaids and stableboys, loved Niall, saw past that unimpressive frame to the generous heart and quick mind that lay beneath it.
He would be a much greater king, Rory thought, not for the first time, than their father had ever been, and everyone but Niall knew it.
That, of course, was the problem.
“Surely there must be something,” Niall said urgently, his palm slick with sweat against hers. “Some obscure remedy, some herb or another that you might try to break the fever and –”
“I am sure that Ailin has tried everything that he can, Niall.” The healer shot her a grateful, if somewhat nervous, look, but she ignored him.
She had grown accustomed enough to such glances, equally mixed with fear and curiosity, on the part of her father’s subjects over the past ten years, or else, if not accustomed to them, at least grown wise enough not to care.
It helped, knowing that if she ever grew tired of garnering such looks, she could end them all without so much as lifting a finger.
She had toyed with the idea one or twice – at most half-a-dozen – times over the past few years, and hadn’t acted upon it a single time, which really wasn't much to be commended.
She'd only refrained for Niall's sake. He was the only thing these days that kept her from embracing the wild and whirling darkness that begged so fiercely to be released from within her soul.
Niall’s hand pulled free of hers, jolting her from her reverie, and she looked up to see him striding towards the window, bracing both of his hands against the sill, head resting against the stone wall as his chest heaved, in and out.
The healer had left, and they were alone.
“Niall,” she said. “You have always known this day would come, when it would be time for you to take the throne from your father and rule as king. You have trained for this day, prepared for it –”
“I’m not ready.” She blinked at the raggedness in his voice, his eyes squeezed shut as he spoke. “Medb’s bull, Rory, I’m seventeen – I’m only a boy!”
“You’re a prince, Niall, the prince of Connacht. This is what you were born to do, what you were always meant to be –”
“No.” He spun around at that, blue eyes wild, face taut with urgency. “No. This is not what I was born to do – but I think it might be what you were.”
She burst out laughing, scornful and loud. “Are you mad? Me – the bastard-born daughter of Pól ó Flannagáin. The cursed bastard-born daughter, at that! Och, sure now, the people’d be welcoming me with open arms and glad hearts as queen.”
Niall ignored her, as he usually did whenever she mocked him, which was often, she had to admit.
“You have the magic of the Mórrígan,” he said fiercely.
“A goddess far older and more powerful than any other of the Tuatha Dé Danann, a being that is said to have existed long before éire itself ever rose from the sea. Can you imagine it, what a queen you would be? How mighty, how unconquerable Connacht would be – how powerful éire itself would be, if you laid claim to the throne, if you were named High Queen, as in the days of old?”
“Don’t be a donkey, Niall, I –”
“Sláine mac Dela, Sírna Sáeglach.” He ticked the names off of his fingers as he spoke, licking at his lips. “Niall Noígíallach –”
“That’s your namesake, you muppet, not mine. You go rule all éire, because I have no desire to do so.”
“Rory.” He stepped forward, hands wrapping around her elbows. “Think about it. What if – what if the Lia Fáil roared for you, Rory? After all this time, hundreds of centuries, what if we again were a single realm, united?”
“None of the provinces would even want that, Niall. You’ve heard your father’s rants about MacMurchada, the Leinster king, about what a pompous, selfish, two-faced arse he is. He would never cede to another’s rule – never.”
“You don't know that! This is our father's dream, you know. It always has been. He told me, years ago, a little while after you came to live with us here in Soghain that he hoped that –” Niall stopped, biting down on his lip as he winced, and Rory tensed.
“He hoped what?”
“Nothing.” Niall’s hands fell away from her arms to rub at his skinny biceps. “He’s dying anyway. It doesn’t matter.”