Before dawn, Deord had managed to talk Drustan into a state of reasonable quiet; to coax him indoors, put a blanket around his shoulders, and persuade him to drink a cup of water. In order to achieve this it had been necessary to promise a venture outside the walls, a brief flight into freedom. Alpin would be away hunting, and most of his men with him. It would be as safe as it ever was, providing they kept it short and adhered to their self-imposed rules. After that promise, Drustan had calmed considerably, to the extent that the birds came down from their hiding place high in a corner of the roof to perch close to the red-haired man once more. That was an infallible sign that the fit was over, for this time.
The sun was warm today. Deord had folded his robe neatly on the ground, set his staff down by it, and was rehearsing the preparatory moves for a particular form of unarmed combat he had learned from a bronze-skinned sailor in a southern port, long ago. Such exercise was essential to keep his body ready for action and to maintain sharpness of mind; in his job, one never knew when trouble might strike. He had taught Drustan the moves, and other skills too, for he knew how soon a man lost hope when he let his body become slack and weak in confinement. It was no wonder Drustan could move so quickly, fast enough to terrify his brother. It was unsurprising, given the strength in his limbs, that the prisoner could leap and grip the iron grille of the roof, then haul himself up toward it. Perhaps it had been an error, allowing Drustan to tune his body so effectively. When frustration made him crazy, the captive’s strength allowed him to damage himself all the more. As with all his decisions, Deord had weighed this one. Without the disciplines they practiced together, Drustan would have died from despair before he’d been shut away three summers. That was Deord’s considered opinion.
As for himself, there had been times, many times in the early days, when he had come close to walking out; to telling Alpin he could no longer do the job. After Breakstone he’d only been home once. He’d tried. A man had to try. But he just couldn’t do it. That time of darkness had leached something out of him, something a man needed to be a husband, a father, a brother. For a while he’d wandered. Then came Briar Wood and this strange, mercurial charge, and he’d never quite been able to take that step away. Drustan needed him and, to his surprise, he seemed to need Drustan. After the blood and death and despair of Breakstone Hollow, his duties here gave him something to prove. Quite what it was, he was not sure. Perhaps, that there could be compassion even in a place of shadow. Perhaps only that every captor need not lose his capacity for kindness, nor every prisoner his ability to hope.
Deord spun, kicked, blocked with an arm. Now the other way, ducking low, rolling, coming up with a twist to evade his imaginary opponent. Today he would not spar with Drustan, for it was Drustan’s time of freedom. The shackles lay on the ground beside the folded robe, the precisely coiled chain. Two birds perched side by side on an elder branch, watching as Deord rehearsed his graceful combat sequence. Of Drustan there was no sign at all. He would return. That was their understanding. The prisoner recognized the danger he posed to others. Before long, he would come back of his own will to the fetters and the darkness.
FAOLAN WAS NOT sure which of them saw the other first. He was leading his horse, going with extreme caution now he was back within sight of the high walls of Alpin’s fortress, for a number of men-at-arms still kept lookout there. His plan was to make use of a certain aperture he had discovered, a stone-lined drainage conduit that pierced the wall on the southern side. From there, he would do a little climbing to emerge, he hoped, above the iron-barred roof of the quarters Alpin’s brother shared with his special guard. After that he’d play it by ear and hope Deord didn’t spike him with a thrusting spear before he got the chance to identify himself. It was risky, but not too risky; Faolan was well practiced at weighing danger against opportunity.
For a moment, as he moved forward under rustling birches, the sun blinded him. He put up a hand to shield his eyes and saw it, a flash of movement in the clearing down the track and a sudden stillness as the other, in his turn, realized he was no longer alone. Three steps forward, and Faolan recognized the man who stood there in the sunny hollow between the trees: Deord, clad in serviceable loose trousers with his upper body naked, and a longbladed knife in his hand that had not been there a moment ago. Faolan continued to approach him but put up his hands, one still holding the horse’s reins, to show he meant no harm. The knife did not waver. The serene gaze held Faolan’s, the look of a man so sure of his own ability that he fears very little.
“What do you want here?” Deord asked as Faolan halted beside the staff and folded clothing. “Is the hunt returned so quickly?”
“Alpin’s still out there in pursuit of boar,” Faolan said, looping the horse’s reins around the branch of a bush. “The only one who came back is me, and I’ll rejoin them as soon as I may. Sooner than I planned; you’ve saved me a crawl through fetid water and a spot of wall-scaling. You can put the knife down.” As he said this, Faolan pushed his hair back and turned a little so the other man could see the tiny star-shaped tattoo behind his right ear, twin to the mark Deord himself bore in the same place.
Deord lowered the knife and stuck it in his belt. He reached for the robe. “I spotted that already,” he said. “Looked for it, once I saw the way you carried yourself and a certain expression in the eyes. When were you in?”
“Long ago. I was young. You?”
“Not long before I came here; eight years ago. Must have been after your time. You’ve done me no favors today. What if Alpin sees you’re gone and sends a party after you?”
Faolan regarded him calmly. “Why would that concern you?” he asked. “A man can take a walk in the woods on his day off, can’t he, without a need to keep looking over his shoulder?”
“You don’t know the half of it,” said Deord. “Quick now; I’ve no desire at all for you to be here, but it seems you’ve come back to speak to me. Or to Drustan. What is it you want?”
“I won’t place you in danger. Breakstone men are bound to aid one another. What you can give me, I will repay in kind if I can. I want information. My questions concern your master, Alpin of Briar Wood. I need to establish whether he is a man of his word.”
“Master? That’s not a term I use, bard.”
“My name is Faolan.”
Deord’s eyes narrowed. “I know that. And you’re a Gael: the same breed as those who man that living hell we’ve both experienced. Indeed, you’ve a strong look of one or two individuals whose throats will be neatly slit if ever I get the chance to come near them again. That bothers me, Faolan. And it interests me that you’ve come here as a court musician. If those hands ever employed a length of gut, I think it more likely it was to strangle an enemy than to produce fair music.”
“My talents are various,” Faolan said. “As for my lineage, it’s irrelevant. My only allegiance is to the man who pays me, and currently that man is Bridei, King of Fortriu. You said you were in a hurry. Was I wrong about days off?”
Deord gave a grim smile. “I don’t have those. There’s nobody to take my place.”
“I see.” Faolan’s glance moved to the discarded shackles, the neatly stowed chain. “You don’t have them, but your prisoner does?”
“I know what I’m doing,” Deord said. “He’s not far off and will return in time. That’s if you haven’t drawn half of Alpin’s men back after you. Our chieftain has his eye on you, Gael. You must have seen it.”
“I have. I will attempt to divert that gaze tonight by presenting my bardic credentials.”
Deord smiled. This time he appeared genuinely amused. “That’ll make for an interesting suppertime. Tell me, where does the lady fit into this?”
Faolan felt a scowl come onto his face despite his best effort to suppress it. “She is exactly what she seems,” he said. “And I’m the one with urgent questions here. No doubt you know of the treaty on whose strength this marriage depends. I trust I have your word that you will not speak of o
ur conversation to others? In particular, to Alpin himself?”
“You have my word. The codes of Breakstone are binding.”
Faolan acknowledged this with a nod. He was getting an increasingly odd sensation, as if the grove around them had eyes that were fixed intently on himself. One might dismiss the local tales of witches, monsters, and evil charms. Nonetheless, there was no doubt Briar Wood was an unsettling place. He would be glad to be gone. “It’s my job to ascertain for Bridei that Alpin will adhere to the terms.”
“He agreed to it, didn’t he?”
Faolan did not respond.
“You’re asking me if he’s a liar? Me, a hired guard? You’ll have seen how seldom I mingle. I’ve scarcely had the opportunity to find out if the fellow prefers meat to cheese, let alone be privy to his political leanings. How can I judge such a thing?”
“Maybe you can’t. But what about Drustan? A brother has a pretty good idea of his brother’s mind; his trustworthiness, his ambitions, what matters to him. Doesn’t Alpin visit Drustan every evening after supper? Surely that’s provided you with some clues?”
“My job’s security,” Deord said. “What’s between them is their own business.”
Faolan sighed. “Unfortunate,” he murmured. “If you’d had some answers, I could have left here speedily, and given myself a better chance of getting back to the hunting party before they notice I’m gone. I’ve no desire to attract undue attention, for reasons I’m sure you will understand, hired guard though you are. But it seems I’ll have to wait here until your prisoner comes back. If he comes back. I want to hear what he can tell me about the chieftain of Briar Wood.”
Deord was a man whose expression and stance were ever a model of control, even in those moments when he was called to action. Now, for the first time since Faolan had appeared, he looked uneasy. “You can’t stay here,” he said. “How long since you came to Briar Wood? Getting on for two turnings of the moon, by my calculations. Long enough for a man of your caliber to get Alpin’s mettle. You’re a fool to think your absence today won’t be noticed. You’ll be a suicidal fool if you stay away any longer than you must.”
“How inconvenient, then, that your charge is not here; that his shackles have so fortuitously been loosed on the very day his brother is absent from home.”
“I hope you’re not threatening us, bard.” Deord’s tone was very quiet. “The lady’s already tried that method of extracting information from me and I didn’t much care for it. Tell tales to Alpin as to where you found us today and you’ll be breaching the Breakstone code. I don’t think you’d want to do that.”
Faolan had heard none of it past a certain point. “What did you say about the lady?” He heard the edge in his own voice. “How could she—?”
“Did a bit of her own spying,” Deord said. “I thought she’d have told you, that’s if ladies and their bards are as close as folk say. Still, Alpin’s a jealous man. Don’t clench your fists, Gael; I have your measure. The two of you should keep out of Drustan’s life. She’s stirred him up enough already, made him restless and unpredictable. Don’t you step in and make things worse. Now I want you to go.”
“When?” demanded Faolan. “When was Ana spying? Where did she go? You’re saying she met the prisoner? What did she ask you?” By all that was holy, how could he have missed this?
“She acquired a key to our quarters not long after the two of you first arrived. She came out here early one morning. She saw me and she saw Drustan. I ensured few words were exchanged. I relieved the lady of the key and told her not to return, for her own sake as much as anything. I’m certain Alpin never knew.”
Faolan listened, mute. There was movement around the clearing: birds were coming in to settle on the bending boughs of elders, in the crowns of elms, not a flock that belonged together but many birds of different kinds. As he watched, a tiny wren darted across to make a neat landing beside the two others that had remained still on their branch near Deord: a crossbill and a hooded crow. Faolan’s horse was restless, twitching its ears, moving its feet in the undergrowth. Above them in the branches of a young oak wider wings moved, and a swathe of tawny plumage blazed momentarily in the sunlight. A hawk, its eyes piercing bright, now rested there, staring down at them. The smaller birds seemed oddly oblivious to the danger. Faolan felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck.
“Her visit disturbed Drustan greatly,” Deord was saying. “His moods are volatile. It distressed him. I don’t want him upset again. You can’t talk to him. I gave the lady what information I could, the second time.”
“Second time,” echoed Faolan. “When was this?”
“A while back, not long after she met him. She threatened to expose our secret if I didn’t give her the full story. She was shocked that Alpin would condemn his brother to a lifelong incarceration. Women have soft hearts. They don’t understand such matters.”
“Ana threatened you? That can’t be true.”
Deord was gathering up the chain and shackles; he appeared ready to depart forthwith. “Nonetheless,” he said, “that is what she did, and I believed the threat real, or I would not have given her what she wanted. I do not know the lady as you do. Drustan told me she slept in your arms on the journey from Breaking Ford. Perhaps her threat was no more than a bluff.”
“Drustan told you … ?”
“Your secret is safe with us,” Deord said grimly. “Drustan sees what others cannot. You did what you needed to do; the nights are chill here in the north. We both have dangerous secrets, you and I, and now we are privy to each other’s. The codes of Breakstone bind us to mutual aid, but I won’t pass you information if it’s going to put Drustan at risk. I ask you to go now. Your own survival depends on it. So does mine, and his. If you get the opportunity, ask the lady to keep away. He dreams of her. That cannot help him.”
“How could he know—?”
“Go,” said Deord, his features suddenly forbidding. “Go now, Gael. Your presence here imperils all of us.”
That eldritch sense again, of eyes around the clearing, watching, waiting, tense with anticipation. Faolan realized he was holding his breath. He opened his mouth to speak, then flinched as, with a susurration of graceful wings, a sudden powerful dive, all beak and scythe-sharp talons, the hawk swooped down a handspan before his face. Faolan put up his hands involuntarily, shut his eyes and took a step back. The horse whinnied shrilly. When Faolan opened his eyes again there was a second man standing beside Deord. The hoodie and the crossbill sat unperturbed on their branch. The tiny wren he had seen before now darted up to settle in the wild auburn locks of the newcomer. Of the hawk there was no sign at all. Faolan sucked in a shaky breath, unsure if what had just occurred was a freak of his imagination, a piece of clever trickery, or something he had never believed possible: a manifestation of real magic. He was without words.
“Sit awhile, Drustan,” Deord said calmly. “Get your breath back. As you see, we have a visitor. He’s no threat to us. In fact, he was just leaving.” Then, turning to Faolan as the red-haired man subsided onto a fallen branch, long legs stretched out in front of him, “Best if you go. He’ll be weakened and confused awhile. He won’t be able to talk to you. This takes a lot out of him. As soon as he’s recovered we must go back. I ask you once more to leave. As a Breakstone man, you must understand how precious these times of liberty are for us, and what it would mean to lose them.” Deord bent to lay a hand on Drustan’s shoulder, to murmur reassuring words. The red-haired man was shivering, a fast, febrile vibration that coursed right through his body, but his eyes, when he raised his head and turned to look at Faolan, were piercingly bright and full of an intelligence that was almost frightening.
Faolan could not summon a single word. His mind was doing its best to explain what had occurred here, to put the pieces together in a way that allowed this to fit into his own model of the world. Memories came to him: Bridei’s charm of concealment, a spell summoned to get the two of them out of a fortress un
seen late at night; a chill visit to a place known as the Dark Mirror, and the very odd emergence of a small dog from deep water. This was not, in fact, his first encounter with forces beyond the readily explicable. But this went far beyond those lesser manifestations. Frenzy, crazy spells, fits of madness: those, he could understand. But a bird that became a man? That was the stuff of fanciful tales, ancient ballads of wonder and sorcery. He knew his share of those; in the lore of his birthplace there were accounts of princesses turned into swans, of a fair lady who was bewitched into a fly, of creatures that were part one thing, part another entirely. But this, this here, now, right before his eyes … One revelation was quite plain to him: whatever this was, it was not madness.
“I’ll wait,” he said, and crouched down beside the red-haired man. Drustan was making an effort to get his breathing under control and to work off cramps, stretching his limbs, moving his fingers, rolling his shoulders cautiously. Faolan had a momentary stab of sheer envy: what man has not dreamed of flight?
“You are her companion of the journey,” Drustan said. His voice was soft but compelling; it sounded to be under perfect control, though he continued working on his body, flexing arms and legs, easing his neck as a man does after vigorous exercise. “Her protector of the little campfires in the night. Part musician, part spy, part killer. You guarded her well.”