Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (43 page)

“Oh, that feels good,” moaned Peter, as the
water ran down him, turning into a rust colored muddy mess at
his feet. He reached out and turned the water on hotter, ducking
his head under the flow and leaning against the wall with both
hands. I stood there unsure of what to do while Ethan showered at
the next head, watching us at the same time. I’d forgotten how
muscular Ethan was until then and I had to remind myself that he’d
only put a night into his body instead of years of work in the gym.
Not that he didn’t deserve the physique he held—I could see the
power the little blond man held in his aura now—but at least I
didn’t have to feel inferior on that front, too. I could
rationalize it away.

“Come on, Peter, you need to wash up so you
can eat,” I prompted. Ethan finished scrubbing up and was nudging
me to swap places with him. Peter took the wash cloth and soap from
me and I moved over and washed the stink and sweat off hurriedly.
By the time I’d rinsed and shut the water off, Peter was moving
more steadily and with more energy. Not perfectly, mind, but
better. I padded back out into the main room to get towels,
spotting four clean green silk uniforms sitting on the bench behind
the table. Brownies, gotta love’m.

Kieran was escorting Cahill and Florian to
the door, but MacNamara still stood in the center of the room,
still smiling broadly. Wrapping a towel around my waist, I went
back into the showers. Peter was sitting on the shelf soaping his
legs thoroughly. Ethan helped him stand and rinse when he was done.
Then we toweled him off and started the slow trip back to the main
room.

“I’ll have to get hurt more often, to get
pampered like this,” said Peter, gaining some strength in his
voice, smiling some.

“Nah, Seth’ll kill me if I let this happen
again,” said Ethan.

“So the chicks are running the hen house,
now?” asked MacNamara with raised eyebrows, turning to Kieran who
was heading for the showers.

“You saw him today. Wouldn’t you tread
lightly around him?” Kieran asked, chortling as he tested the
water.

“Speaking of, you lied to me, Mr. McClure,”
MacNamara said to me. The anger in his voice wasn’t real or if it
was it was hidden well behind the smile and gleam in his eyes.

“Huh?” I said, poking my head through shirt I
was putting on. “I haven’t lied to you.” Well, I hadn’t lied to
anyone that I was aware of. I think.

“I asked you if you had the Black Hand’s
swords, Mr. McClure,” said MacNamara, pitching his voice high on my
name.

“Oh, no, sir,” I said, remembering the
conversation now. “You asked me if I took the weapons from the
burning corpses of the Black Hand assassins. I most certainly did
not, nor could I have survived an attack by them. They were given
to me after the elven bindings were removed.”

“How does one remove elven bindings from
elven weapons?” MacNamara said with a touch of sarcasm.

“The weapons aren’t elven,” I said, “So I
would be unqualified to answer that question, sir.”

That surprised him. “Really? Most
interesting,” he said. “That would explain why they chose that
particular method, then.” His smile was back.

“We thought so,” Kieran called from the
shower. He apparently didn’t have the same difficulty hearing over
there that I had.

“So how are you hiding them?” he asked. “I
saw no evidence of an oubliette, though I must admit I see little
evidence of any of you.”

“I’ve disappeared, too?” asked Peter, a smile
starting to turn the corners of his mouth up. “Cool! Is that
why…?”

“Yes. Now get dressed,” said Ethan, tossing
him his uniform. Peter started dressing with more exuberance. He
stumbled a bit when he stood to pull his pants up, but Ethan caught
him.

“May I see one,” MacNamara asked me.

“See what?” I asked.

“One of the swords? May I see one?” he asked
again.

That didn’t seem unreasonable. I asked the
Day Sword if it minded being shown off, with its scabbard, to
MacNamara, mainly because I felt the Night sword would be dangerous
in the hands of the elf. It didn’t object, so I shifted it to my
right hand, holding it out for MacNamara to take.

He gasped when it appeared. “How are you
doing that?” he asked, accepting the Sword gingerly.

“Nifty little trick, isn’t it?” remarked
Kieran, moving next to Ethan while drying his hair brusquely with a
towel. The comment was intended to tell me to say nothing. All it
actually did was remind me that Kieran was built like Fort
Knox.

“Indeed,” agreed MacNamara, glancing
longingly down the scabbard. “I did not see it coming at all. Tell
me, what is to stop me from merely leaving now with the blade?”

“Attempt to draw the blade,” I said,
shrugging at the question.

MacNamara grasped the hilt and the scabbard
and pulled. Nothing happened. He tried again, exerting greater
effort. Again, he was unable to pull the Sword free.

“Intriguing,” he murmured. “I see nothing
here that would lock the scabbard in place.”

I called to the Sword, opening my hand to
accept it, and it flew from MacNamara’s hand into mine then
disappeared into my cavern. I thanked the Sword for its
display.

“Or anything that would cause it to do that!”
exclaimed MacNamara, beaming at me. “I knew I made a good decision
allowing you four in. Nothing but amusement and excitement has
followed you.”

“This kind of excitement I could live
without,” I mumbled, slipping my shoes on.

“Live for a few thousand years and you might
disagree,” MacNamara said, dryly.

“There are some who have lived considerably
longer who would not,” said Ethan meeting MacNamara’s gaze without
flinching.

“Ethan,” Kieran said by way of a mild
reprimand. “Mind your manners.”

“Well, Ethan the Enigma,” said MacNamara,
“while we are on the subject of you, tell me, you call yourself an
apprentice, yet you stand beside your master employing abilities
far beyond even most human masters of schools.”

“There are many things to learn,” said Ethan,
evasively, his cherubic smile lighting his eyes brightly.

“From where do you hail? Your family?” asked
MacNamara, searching for clues. He knew he was being played. He was
an elf and they played these games all the time.

“This is my family, sir,” Ethan said,
smiling, spreading his hands out, palms up. “And I was ‘born’ in
Alabama.” I didn’t know where to look to not laugh, so I chose to
stare at the floor and went to the food table for something to eat
for Peter and me.

“So ‘McClure’ is your family name then?” he
asked.

“No, sir, I have no family name,” said
Ethan.

“Then what is your name?” asked MacNamara,
lounging back on the bench behind him. I think he was beginning to
enjoy the little game of cat and mouse with Ethan.

“Are you proposing a trade?” asked Ethan,
raising an eyebrow, his smile going crooked.

“Wouldn’t be fair,” I said as I carried the
plate back to Peter.

“And what makes you say that, young man?”
asked MacNamara, the bright orange of his eyes dominating the
blue.

“Then you would be getting something for
nothing,” I said without rancor. “You publicly announced your name
when you reinitialized your power to the fountain. It would not be
a fair trade.”

Anger streaked through him in bright orange,
the color of his eyes, braced in red and black. His body language
was calm, his power steady. He was definitely mad at me, but he
didn’t look like he was going to do anything about it.

“I’m sorry, I said something wrong?” I asked
the elf with concern.

“Is he truly this naïve, Ehran?” MacNamara
asked, turning suddenly and swiftly to Kieran.

MacNamara had a gift for asking people
questions as they pulled shirts over their heads. “Yes, your Grace,
he is only seventeen and unschooled on anything not of his
world.”

“Keep that knowledge within these walls,
boy,” MacNamara said to me, dryly, his eyes almost completely
orange. “My enmity can be as dangerous to those around you as to
you yourself.”

“When is our next competition, MacNamara?”
asked Kieran, his motive to draw the conversation away from the
confrontation was rather obvious and welcome.

“Not until tomorrow noon,” MacNamara said
casually. “There was a rash of self inflicted wounding after
the first scheduling and we had to move your team up to the final
event before we lost everyone. And we’ve lost part of the field to
your fires so it will take a little longer.”

“Self-inflicted wounding?” Kieran asked
incredulously.

“He tossed the two seconds of Faery over the
Arena walls,” he said to Kieran, waving a hand at me with
nonchalance.

“I thought that rather amusing, really,”
Kieran said, the smirk returning to his face as he started to
gather wet towels to the table we’d first laid Peter on.

Now that MacNamara’s attention was on Kieran,
his anger was fading, slowly, so slowly. I turned to Peter to get
him to eat. He was staring at his hand, upset by something. “Come
on, buddy, you need to eat something.”

“I lost it,” he whispered, looking at me with
panic on his face.

“Lost what?” I whispered back, confusion on
mine.

“What you gave me. I was holding it,” he
said, showing me his hand. There was the indentation in the palm of
his hand where the battery once sat, where he’d squeezed so tightly
and the Loa’s body weight as a goat-thing had rolled over him.

“Oh, that,” I said as the realization of what
he was worried about came to me. I smiled. “You haven’t lost it,
Peter. I’ll show you where it is later. Now, eat.”

“The fires are still burning?” asked Kieran,
chortling.

“Not your fault, not your fault,” said the
elf, pushing up from the bench. “The Little Miss caused the problem
when she reached in with a vain and misguided attempt to stop
herself from being flung from the Arena. She realized too late that
was not the heat of Summer she’d grabbed onto. Burned herself quite
nicely and stoked the fire. I shall have it cleared away by this
evening.”

He glanced around the room. We were all
finally showered and dressed. Peter was distractedly munching from
the plate on the bench between us.

“Are you all ready, now?” he asked. “I have
had Cahill and his entourage moved to quarters next to your own so
that you may see to Olivia McClure’s medical needs at your
discretion. Your obligations here end after the final battle
tomorrow and you can return to your charming point of origin.
Now…”

“Shall we go?” asked one of the proxies as
the other opened the door.

MacNamara took us through the hallways of the
Arena at a fairly brisk pace, keeping the proxies between us and
the conversation nonexistent. Peter was keeping up but it was
wearing him down. It looked like all he needed was a good meal and
sleep or vice versa, but I seemed to be the only one concerned at
the moment. I was about to ask for a pause in the trek when we
turned a corner and burst out into the sunlit aisles of the Arena.
Another two quick turns and one of the proxies was opening the gate
to our balcony for us.

“Until tomorrow,” said the second proxy to
Kieran as he stepped past the gate.

“Your grace,” said Kieran, nodding and
smiling to the smiling elf. MacNamara turned and walked gracefully
down the aisle, disappearing almost instantly into the crowd.
Kieran turned quickly and snaked an arm around Peter’s shoulders
just as he began to collapse in the aisle. I was alarmed and
aggravated with myself for not seeing it first. I was watching him,
after all.

“Let’s get Peter inside, shall we?” he said
quietly as he bent down and picked his legs up, too. He looked like
a rag doll in Kieran’s arms.

Shrank was on him as soon as he cleared the
doorway.

“Is he going to be all right, Lord?” he
squealed, following them as Kieran made his way to the sofa with
Peter. A pillow and blanket were waiting there already. Kieran sat
him upright on the sofa.

“He’ll be fine shortly, Shrank. He’s just
exhausted right now,” he said, lodging the pillow on one side to
keep Peter upright. “Esteleum?”

“Juice?” asked the pixie.

“Yes, please,” he said. The pixie flew off to
the kitchen with Ethan in tow. Peter picked his head up and looked
around the room, bleary-eyed. “Welcome back,” Kieran said. “You
should have listened to Seth and eaten more. Drink this.” He took a
small glass of something brown and thick from Ethan and handed it
to Peter. He took one sip then tried to push it away. Kieran
laughed heartily at the face he made. “All of it or I hold you down
and Seth pours a pitcher of it down your throat,” Kieran
threatened. Peter’s eyes went wide at the thought of that. He
downed the entire contents of the glass quickly, sputtering and
making gagging noises.

“That is nasty,” he croaked, handing the
glass back. Kieran chuckled, taking the glass and patting his thigh
affectionately.

“Yes, but very good for you,” Kieran said,
standing. “Shrank, would you see to dinner, please? I dare say we
all need something more filling than sandwiches.”

“Dinner should be arriving in a few moments,
Lord,” said the pixie, flying up to face Kieran. “I had to talk the
brownies out of pizza, though. I hope that is acceptable to
you.”

“Quite,” said Kieran, sitting on the couch
opposite Peter. “Seth, where is Peter’s battery?”

“I pulled it into his cavern while I was
talking with his subconscious,” I answered, sitting down on the
couch beside Peter.

“He says that so casually,” remarked Ethan,
plopping down beside Kieran.

“Show me,” said Peter to me, eagerly.

“No,” said Kieran, sharply. “Not yet. That
kind of energy manipulation should be done with a clear head and a
sound body. You have neither right now. Wait till morning. Trust me
on this, Peter. You will appreciate the experience more fully
then.”