Wet clothing was always a problem. No matter that we’d lived opposite each other in the lockup for a whole year, and seen such horrors that a naked body had no more power to shock either of us. The fact was, we weren’t in there now, and some things didn’t feel right. After that first night, when I’d called Grim up to the campfire and made him strip so he wouldn’t perish from cold, he’d never taken his clothes off in front of me. He’d always go and do it somewhere out of sight, and if there was nothing dry to put on he’d make sure he was well covered with blankets. As for me, if I had to change I’d simply ask him to turn his back. It was a small enough thing, and I wondered sometimes why we bothered, after everything. Shyness? Shame? Could have been a bit of both, or something else. It went along with not using those names for each other, Slut, Bonehead, when everyone else had. Back then, it had marked out a kind of alliance. It had said that even when you’d seen a person scorned and beaten and degraded, you could still show them courtesy.
I didn’t say any of this to Grim, of course. He understood it in his own way, without needing my words to complicate things. There was an enforced closeness about travelling together, one of the reasons I’d have rather been on my own. Courtesy and respect, and a bunch of other things, kept us on opposite sides of the fire even when we were shivering under our blankets. It stopped us from asking each other about the time before that place, and what had led us there. Family, friends, home: none of those. A lot of the time we said nothing at all.
We ate our meal hunched over the fire. The wettest items of clothing we draped over sticks and bushes. The rest we wore, along with the blankets. My joints ached. I longed for a hot bath. But, fey as he was, Conmael wasn’t the kind of being who could be summoned when you wanted him and asked for three wishes. More likely he’d be the one doing the summoning.
About the meal, the less said the better.
‘It’s hot,’ I said, curling my fingers around the cup. ‘That’s something.’
‘Mm-hm.’ Grim had almost finished his share. He was a big man, and always hungry. It made me wonder how he’d managed in that place, where we’d learned to be grateful for watery gruel. How he’d stayed so strong. Strong enough to get three of us out, and then himself.
‘Be good if we don’t need to stop too much from here on,’ I said. ‘We must have enough coppers now to buy our food if we can’t catch it along the way.’
‘Mm-hm.’ A silence. Then, ‘We’d be wanting to keep some set by,’ Grim said, staring into the fire.
This statement bothered me for several reasons. ‘Why do you say that?’ I asked.
‘We’ll be needing things when we get there. You’ll want healers’ supplies. And a lot more, if this cottage is in a bad state of repair. Enough to get us on our feet.’
That this made good sense didn’t make it any less troubling. It wasn’t just his easy use of ‘we’. It was the assumption that the two of us might have some kind of life together after we reached Winterfalls. The implication that, in some capacity, Grim would be staying. I thought of things I could say, brutally true things, and discarded them one by one. He’d asked me for help, that night in the woods. He’d said he had nowhere else to go. If I didn’t want seven years to become eight, I had to be careful.
‘That makes it all the more important to get on quickly,’ I said. ‘If Conmael thinks I can set up as a healer at Winterfalls, then I suppose I can, one way or another. Maybe this prince what’s-his-name will dispense some largesse. Though that’s doubtful. I imagine there’s a court physician for him and his nobles, and my job will be tending to the folk the prince’s healer thinks himself too good for.’
Grim gave me a look, but said nothing.
‘What?’ I snapped.
‘Got a low opinion of yourself.’
‘Did I say that?’
‘Didn’t have to.’ He drew breath. ‘You don’t want to start believing those things, you know. What they used to say, in that place. The names. The . . .’
I waited.
‘It’s all lies. You know that. But when they keep on saying it, over and over, when they make you say it yourself, when they . . . It’s hard not to believe it. It’s hard not to think you’re the lowest of the low. For some of us, maybe it wasn’t lies, maybe it was the truth. But it was never true for you.’
For a bit, I couldn’t think of anything to say.
‘Sorry,’ said Grim. ‘Shouldn’t have talked about it.’
‘You can’t know that,’ I said, setting down my cup and holding my hands out to the fire. Why was it so hard to get warm? ‘You know nothing about me. I might be all those things they said.’
‘I do know.’
At least he hadn’t invited me to share my life story. If there was anything he and I had in common, it was the understanding that we wouldn’t trespass on that forbidden ground. ‘Your faith in me is without any basis in fact,’ I said.
‘Faith’s faith,’ said Grim.
It was too dark and cold to do anything but sleep, so we slept, or I did anyway. Grim wasn’t much of a sleeper. Freedom hadn’t changed that. In that place, he’d catnapped during the day, when the guards were elsewhere, though he’d always woken when they were coming. His uncanny awareness had alerted him even when he was asleep. At night we’d talked, sometimes, and when we weren’t talking he’d gone through his routine. I’d fallen asleep to the sound of him breathing hard as he performed some impossible exercise, and when I’d woken, whether it was morning or still night, he’d always been awake before me. Sometimes standing at the bars, as if he was waiting for me. Sometimes lying on his pallet staring at the roof. But never sleeping.
We’d become used to waking fast in there. Mostly, at night, they left us to ourselves. But sometimes Slammer would take it into his head to come in and stir us up, and it didn’t pay to get caught off guard. Times like that, Grim would shout to warn us and we’d scramble up and get to the back of our cells.
Still, I wasn’t expecting to be shaken rudely awake now, out in the middle of nowhere in a thunderstorm. I jumped up, but my mind was still half-trapped in the dream I’d been having, a bad one involving Mathuin of Laois.
‘What?’ I growled, clutching the blanket around me. Danu save us, it was cold!
‘Someone down there.’ Grim was almost swallowed up by the darkness. The fire was down to ash-coated coals; his knife caught the last of its light, gleaming in the shadows. ‘In the woods.’
My common sense fled. My mind filled with Mathuin, his men-at-arms, his thugs here to make an end of us and rob me of my last slim chance to see justice done.
‘Step out and show yourself!’ I shouted, before Grim grabbed me and clapped his big hand over my mouth. For a moment I fought him – a pointless exercise – and then a light appeared in the woods below our camping spot, and another, and a third, and it became plain that our visitors were not Mathuin’s folk but Conmael’s.
Grim let me go only to push me behind him. He planted his feet squarely, the knife ready in his hand.
‘Grim,’ I said. ‘They’re friends.’
‘Hah!’
‘Grim. Leave this to me.’ And when he still made no move, ‘Trust me. Please.’
He grunted, stuck the knife in his belt, folded his arms.
Conmael was coming up the rise. Behind him walked three others of his kind. All wore hooded cloaks, and each had the noble nose, broad brow and lustrous eyes typical of the fey. A person who had not encountered such folk before might perhaps think this an unusually handsome, if somewhat odd-looking, family of human brothers. Anyone who knew their lore, or who had lived close by a place where their kind dwelled – a cave, a hollow hill, an ancient forest, a mysterious lake isle – would recognise their true nature.
I stepped forward, trying to set aside the awareness that I was inadequately clad, tousled from sleep and freezing cold to boot. ‘Conmael,’ I s
aid, shivering despite my best efforts. ‘What brings you here in such inclement weather?’
‘A desire to make sure you do not drown where you sleep,’ he said smoothly. ‘The stream is rising fast. I wish you to reach your destination.’ His gaze went briefly to Grim, then returned to me. ‘No longer alone, I see?’
His manner set me on edge. I spoke through chattering teeth. ‘Last time we met you said you’d leave me to get on with things. What’s changed? I’m keeping my side of the agreement.’ Had I managed to miss a request for help somewhere along the way? Reduced my remaining chances to four and added another year to the sentence before I’d even reached Winterfalls? That would be cruel. But perhaps that was the game, with the term of the agreement always stretching just a little further than I could reach. Such a trick would be typical of the fey.
‘Speak up.’ Grim’s voice was a rumble of aggression.
Conmael’s brows rose. ‘My conversation is not with you,’ he said, ‘but with your mistress. Shouts and blows may have won arguments for you in the past, fellow. They are pointless in the current situation.’
The flicker of anger already in me flared abruptly to a full-sized blaze. ‘Keep your remarks to yourself!’ I snarled, painfully aware that although the insult had been aimed at my companion, Grim was standing strong and quiet beside me while I raged. ‘If that’s the best you have to offer, we’ll be better off without your interference!’
Conmael gave an airy wave of the hand. ‘If that is your wish, of course. It merely occurred to me that the stormy weather might be slowing your journey and making it less comfortable than it need be. I provided only scant supplies for you. By now, surely you have need of further resources.’
I opened my mouth to tell him we were fine on our own, thank you, but Grim got in first.
‘Dry clothing for the lady. Fresh bread, a round of cheese. Two more blankets and a second knife. That should see us to Winterfalls.’
I was stunned into silence.
‘My offer was not made to you,’ said Conmael.
‘Consider Grim’s request my request,’ I snapped. ‘Provided there is no payment required in return, that is. I’m not talking about a handful of coppers here. No payment of any kind. My obligation to you is already heavy. I’d rather go cold and hungry than add to it.’
‘You’re sure that’s all you want? Bread, cheese, dry clothing and a blanket or two?’
‘And a knife,’ said Grim levelly.
‘And a knife, but perhaps not just yet,’ Conmael said, eyes still on me, ‘since your guard dog seems likely to plunge it into me the moment I turn my back.’
It seemed to me that under the circumstances Grim was doing a remarkable job of keeping his temper. ‘I’m willing to accept the offer of some necessities, Conmael,’ I said, hugging the blanket around me. ‘But I can’t believe you came out here in the rain just to ask us if we needed help. Your folk are surely capable of leaving us a basket of bread and cheese any time they’re so inclined.’
‘Your camp site will be flooded before dawn,’ said one of Conmael’s companions. ‘Unless you care to swim out, you should move.’ He held up the lantern he was carrying to reveal that the stream had risen significantly. Perhaps he was right about a flood, perhaps not. I had no wish to put it to the test.
Now I felt not only cold, tired and angry, but stupid as well. We’d made a foolish error. In the dark, with little knowledge of the terrain around us, we had no choice but to accept these folk’s help.
Conmael spared me the indignity of having to ask. ‘Strike camp,’ he said, ‘and we will lead you to a more suitable spot, dry and sheltered. The necessities you requested will be ready for you there.’ A carefully judged pause. ‘I did explain before that I wish to help you, Blackthorn. There is no need for every encounter to be a battle.’
‘It was your manner that made it so. I hope you and your friends will do me the courtesy of absenting yourselves while I get dressed.’
They set down their lanterns and faded back into the shadows. Within the space of two breaths I could not see them at all. It was deeply disconcerting: not just the suddenness, but the feeling they might still be there watching, only invisible. On the other hand, the spectacle of me or Grim unclothed was hardly going to cause any excitement.
‘I’ll hold up a blanket for you,’ Grim said now. It seemed he, too, suspected we were still under scrutiny. ‘Better be quick, it’s cold.’
We put on our damp clothes. We bundled up our supplies. As soon as we had our packs on our backs, Conmael and the others were there once more, raising the lanterns, lighting a path through the woods. Not the track we’d come in by, since it was already deep in water, but another that snaked up around the rocks, then curved down under the trees again. An unpleasant thought came to me: that we were being led far astray, into a realm beyond the human, and that there would be some kind of trick attached. Perhaps Conmael had decided seven years of tending to the aches and pains of my own kind and staying away from Mathuin would not be enough to teach me whatever it was he thought I still had to learn. Perhaps both I and hapless Grim, whose only crime had been to follow me when he wasn’t wanted, would now be condemned to ten years, fifty years, a hundred years in the world of the fey. A hundred years doing Conmael’s bidding. If it was anything like the tales, I’d be sent back into the human world the same age I was now, and find that not only was Mathuin dead and gone, but his grandchildren were too. So much for justice.
I stumbled, and Grim’s hand shot out to keep me from falling.
‘All right?’ he muttered.
‘I’ll cope. You?’
‘I’ll do. Wish I knew what the fellow was playing at.’
Conmael was walking up ahead of us. He did not turn, but his voice came clearly, for all the moaning of the trees in the wind and the relentless voice of the rain. ‘Blackthorn knows the nature of this game. Whether she chooses to share the details with you is her business.’
‘She told me.’ Grim’s voice was granite hard. ‘And it didn’t make a lot of sense.’
‘To you, maybe not.’
There was a silence as we climbed, then Grim said, ‘I understand why you would save Blackthorn. But why couldn’t you do it without killing the others? It wasn’t their fault she got shut up in there.’
Now Conmael did stop. He turned to face us, his high-boned features touched to gold by the lantern light. ‘You expect me to justify my actions to you?’
‘It’s a fair question,’ I said.
Conmael shrugged. ‘I had a purpose. I achieved that purpose. Perhaps, if someone had asked them, your fellow prisoners might have chosen a quick and painless demise over a longer stay in Mathuin’s custody.’
‘Quick? Painless?’ Grim’s words were like blows. ‘Didn’t wait around long enough to check, did you?’
‘You would prefer that I had left Blackthorn to Mathuin’s executioners? Don’t tell me that given the choice between her and the others you wouldn’t have chosen to save her.’
‘Stop it,’ I said, hating the look on Grim’s face. He hadn’t told me the whole story about that day, about what had happened after I got out. Something dark was in his eyes now; it was in the set of his jaw. ‘It’s past now. Just move on.’
‘Broke the whole place down, didn’t you?’ Grim wasn’t going to let this go. ‘If you could do that, why couldn’t you get her out without killing anyone else? If you’ve got magic, you should use it better.’
‘Grim. Walk on.’
‘Just saying.’
There was no crossing over to the Otherworld. There were no tricks, as far as I could tell, though I was hardly in an ideal state to detect them. Conmael and his companions led us to the edge of the forest, where the light from their lanterns revealed a shelter cunningly fashioned around the trunk of a massive oak. It was woven from branches and foliage, with a low opening well
screened from the weather. The neat space inside was carpeted with dry grass, and on this were set a cloth-covered basket that smelled of freshly baked bread, a pair of folded blankets, and two bags. Conmael hung his lantern from a low branch.
‘It will soon be day,’ he observed, glancing up at the sky. The storm was clearing, the rain was easing. A fresh westerly wind made the strange little hut seem altogether appealing, even if the place was somewhat inadequate to shelter the two of us, Grim being an unusually big man. ‘You will need more sleep before you move on. We will leave you now. Your supplies are here.’ Conmael gave Grim a fleeting glance. ‘All that you requested.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, making an effort. Winterfalls was still a fair distance away, judging by what we’d seen from up on the pass. I’d best keep my wretched tongue under control until we got there and sorted ourselves out. ‘When might I expect to see you again? It’s good to be warned if one’s about to drown. But I’m hoping you won’t make a habit of visiting in the middle of the night.’
‘When there is a need, you will see me,’ Conmael said.
‘My need or yours?’
He smiled. ‘Let us see how this unfolds. I bid you farewell. Travel safely.’ And just like that, he and his friends were gone.
The basket did indeed hold fresh bread and a round of cheese, as well as a flask of mead. The bags contained a change of clothing for me, and – somewhat surprisingly – another for Grim. There was also a knife, and, of course, the blankets.
‘Very nice,’ observed Grim, holding up a generously sized woollen tunic in a fetching shade of blue. ‘Doesn’t feel right to put them on, though. Or eat the food. You know those stories? Fey food that sets a geis on you, fey garments that burn your skin all away. That fellow, that friend of yours, I wouldn’t trust him an inch. Whatever he’s up to, it’s no good.’