Dreamspinner (29 page)

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I don’t know what soldiers do.”

He shook his head. “I have never in my life raised a hand to a woman except to rescue a falling hair ornament. You might hedge all you like, if you like.”

“Hmmm,” she said, frowning. “Your mother must have been a well-bred lady.”

“Why do you say that?”

“She seems to have taught you decent manners, for your being a mere soldier.”

“She tried,” he agreed. He looked out over the sea. “And she loved the sea as well, I daresay. Water, streams, lakes, she was pleased by it all. But then rivers of—” He closed his mouth abruptly. “She fancied the sea, I daresay.”

She turned and looked at him. “How long ago did you lose her?”

He took a deep breath and dragged his hand through his hair before he bowed his head and slid her a look. “That answer will cost you dearly.”

Her first instinct was, as always, to say nothing. But the truth was, she lived and breathed still. She could tell him perhaps a bit about herself without revealing too much about anything that would bring a curse down on her head. She took her own deep breath. “Very well.”

“I’ll go first,” he said. “My mother died twenty years ago, though I vow it feels like yesterday.”

“How did she die?”

He was very still. “My father slew her and half my siblings. Time has done the rest of that terrible work, I suppose.”

She shut her mouth and put her hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

“I am too,” he agreed. He shook his head, then reached for her hand and drew it through his arm. “Let’s walk whilst you spew out the answers you owe me. You’ll be more comfortable that way, I’m sure.”

She was becoming, she had to admit, rather accustomed to his courtly manners. At least she thought they were courtly manners.
It was what a Hero from legend would have done, offering his companion his arm. All she knew for certain was that she never thought she would be accorded such a courtesy. She looked at him.

“I’m not sure you should worry about my comfort,” she managed, “not after that question.”

“But I do. And now that I’ve bared my soul, I think you should worry about my comfort and do the same.”

She watched the sand as they walked. It was almost impossible not to. Odd, though, how it almost looked as if there had been footprints there before theirs. She shrugged that aside and glanced at Rùnach.

“My parents sold me to a weaver’s guild when I was eight.”

His mouth fell open.
“What?”

“They came back to fetch me on my ten-and-fourth birthday, or so I thought,” she said. It was surprising how comforting the feel of someone walking next to her could be whilst relating details that she’d never voiced out loud before. “Instead, they had come to borrow against another seven years of my labor.”

“Were they that destitute, then?” he asked quietly.

She smiled, because it was in the past and she had taken to heart Mistress Muinear’s advice to never give her parents even the briefest moment of thought. It was enough that they had stolen her freedom for so long.

“I had thought so, though the fineness of my siblings’ clothing spoke otherwise.” She shrugged. “I have the feeling they simply wanted me out of the way, for their own reasons. And so another seven years passed, as years do, until I was a score-and-one and they came again—”

“Aisling,” he said, sounding stunned, “you needn’t go on.”

She shot him a look. “Weak-kneed?”

He smiled sadly. “Nay.”

She took a deep breath and let it out, ignoring that it felt as if it had shuddered out of her. “I will come of age at a score-and-eight, which is—” She paused and thought about it for a moment or two. “In another pair of months, unless I’m counting amiss. I had planned for the day, of course, because once I had attained my
majority, they could not sell me. I had been out for my afternoon of liberty when, to my surprise, I saw a richly dressed couple in the, ah, village coming out of a, um, pub, and realized to my horror that ’twas them.” She looked at him quickly. “My parents, that is. And there was only one reason they would have come to—” She had to take another deep breath. “There was only one reason they would be anywhere near where I was.”

“What did you do?”

“I ran.” She stopped and looked out over the sea. “I would do it again.”

“There is no shame in it,” he said quietly. “In running, that is.”

“Shame isn’t what I feel,” she said, pulling her hand away from him and rubbing her arms. “Terror, perhaps.” She frowned. “There are other things as well, but I’m not sure how to name them.” She looked at him then. “I think I would like to see my parents slaving away in a mine. What would you call that?”

“Justice,” he said dryly.

She smiled faintly. “Aye, perhaps.” She looked out over the sea. “Even with everything else, I don’t regret running, for it provided me with this.”

“It is beautiful,” he agreed.

She watched the water sweep up into a spot on the shore, some arbitrary place carved out of the sand by previous oceanic forays. She watched the water swirl, then reached out and traced above it in the air with her finger.

The water leapt up and began to spin under her hand like a wheel.

She continued to spin it, because the feel of the water under her hand pleased her. Then she turned it, because it pleased her more to have it look less like a plate and more like a flywheel. It occurred to her that she was spinning, but since it wasn’t a wooden wheel, she supposed it wouldn’t count. And since she certainly wasn’t dead, she let that thought continue on its way. Her head was full of the sharp tang of sea air, and she was at peace. She continued to spin the water idly when it would begin to slow…

And then she realized what she’d done.

“What,” said a garbled voice from next to her, “in the hell is
that
?”

Aisling closed her hand and pulled it close to her. The water fell to her feet, splashing her boots. She looked at Rùnach and felt his stillness become hers.

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

He started to say something, then cursed. He yanked her behind him and drew his sword.

She found herself in fog before she knew it was hard upon her. She heard Rùnach fighting with an unknown quantity of men, but that lasted perhaps less time than it might have if they all hadn’t been deafened by the sea rising up and roaring in a voice that had her sticking her fingers in her ears.

Only that wasn’t the sea.

She was knocked off her feet before she could identify what was sweeping down from the sky over them, roaring to deafen the sea itself. She lay on her back, winded, with Rùnach half sprawled over her, and gaped at the beast that flew low over them, the gems on his breast blinding her, his roaring deafening her, the fire spewing suddenly from his gaping jaws coming close to singeing her. Screams suddenly filled the air, but they were not her screams, nor were they Rùnach’s.

And then there was silence save the sound of the sea.

She felt for Rùnach frantically, because he hadn’t moved, then realized he was still breathing. He was sopping wet from the waves, but then again, so was she. He was gasping, but then again, she was as well.

“What in the bloody hell was that?” she wheezed.

He laughed. “A dragon. And
bloody
isn’t a ladylike term.”

She had help to her feet, then she was again pulled behind Rùnach as he walked forward to see what was left of those who had apparently had nefarious intentions.

There was no one there.

“Bloody hell,” he breathed.

She looked around his shoulder, then up at him. “I don’t think that’s a ladylike term.”

“I’m not a lady.”

“Well, even
I
could tell that.” She watched him resheath his sword, then didn’t argue when he took her hand and pulled her away from the sea.

“We’ll come back,” he said. “With a guard,” he added, not entirely under his breath.

She couldn’t imagine why anyone would find either of them important enough to assault more than one random time, but she wasn’t going to argue. She sloshed along with Rùnach at something of a run. By the time they’d reached the gates of the university, she was breathless and terrified. She stopped him.

“We didn’t just see that.”

He shook his head. “Of course not. Dragons are mythical beasts.”

She looked at him seriously. “Have you ever seen a dragon?”

“Aye, just now.”

She thought she just might have to sit down soon. She laughed a little, because she couldn’t help herself. She looked at him. “I’m beginning to think I have been misled about several things.”

He took her by the hand and pulled her along through the gate. “Let’s go dry off and have supper. I’m sure Lord Nicholas has a tome or two he would let you have. You can decide then for yourself what the truth is.”

“I think I might have learned enough about dragons for the day.”

He smiled. “I imagine you have.”

“I also think I need some way to protect myself besides hiding behind you.”

“I’ll think on it and let you know. After supper.”

“Thank you, Rùnach.”

“You’re welcome, Aisling.”

She walked with him, feeling rather sandy, sodden, and overwhelmed. She felt a little bit as if she weren’t exactly part of the world any longer. She had told a man she hardly knew details about her life she had never told anyone else. She had pulled water up out of the sea and turned it into a flywheel, then set it spinning.

And she had just seen a dragon.

She supposed that changed everything.

R
ùnach paced through the passageways of Lismòr well before dawn. It might have had to do with the fact that he hadn’t slept much, if any, or it might have had to do with the fact that he’d been overtaken the afternoon before by a handful of ruffians he hadn’t noticed coming and it had taken a bloody dragon—his uncle, he assumed—to swoop down out of the sky and rescue his sorry arse.

Or it might have been that an unmagical, indentured weaver from an obscure village she refused to name had drawn up a handful of seawater and turned it into a wheel that she’d set to spinning as easily as if it had been made of wood.

He ran bodily into the lord of Lismòr before he realized his uncle was standing there watching him pace around the perimeter of the inner courtyard. Rùnach blew out his breath.

“Forgive me, Your Grace.”

Nicholas only put his hand on Rùnach’s shoulder. “I have a hot fire and warm cider in my solar.”

“I suppose that is an improvement over a hot fire on the strand yesterday,” Rùnach said sourly, “a fire that fair singed the backside off my trousers.”

Nicholas shrugged, smiling unrepentantly. “An interesting tale then, I’m sure. Why don’t you join me in comfort and tell me of it?”

Rùnach went with him, but knew there was no point in relating a tale his uncle had had the starring role in. He’d heard all manner of reports in his youth about Nicholas, of course, beginning and ending with the fact that Nicholas had been, in his own youth, a notorious shapechanger, no shape too humble or too complicated for him to don. Perhaps he had little cause to exercise what Rùnach was sure was a prodigious talent, save for the opportunity to rescue the odd relative now and again. Rùnach couldn’t say he blamed him for seizing the opportunity when it presented itself.

He followed Nicholas into his solar, made himself comfortable on that lovely sofa, and happily accepted a cup of cider. He sipped, then looked at his aunt’s husband.

“You have an excellent cook, though that seems a pedestrian thing to call him.”

“He prefers it thus,” Nicholas said with a smile. “That sort of underestimation leads to cries of surprise and delight upon the tasting of his fare, which cries are truly the lifeblood of his art. Now, tell me what you think of the choice Ruith made about your father?”

Rùnach would have choked, but he had learned very quickly in Nicholas’s presence to not be at ease whilst partaking of anything liquid. It was surely the only thing that saved the man’s carpets at present. Rùnach coughed discreetly, sipped, swallowed, then set his cup aside.

“To lock him in a little hovel in the middle of Shettlestoune where his life will be nothing but scratching a meager existence from his pitiful garden?” he asked. He shrugged. “’Tis fitting. I can only assume Ruith dug him another well for water after he’d tossed all my sire’s magic down the first one and sealed it shut.”

“I don’t think he merely sealed it shut,” Nicholas remarked.

“Nay, Your Majesty, he used a Cothromaichian spell of essence changing and turned all my father’s power into solid rock. Which, I suppose, is how it will remain for the rest of eternity unless someone with those spells and the power to use them changes everything back to what it was and gifts my father’s magic back to him, but even then it wouldn’t be quite the same, would it?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Nicholas said primly, “not possessing those spells myself.”

Rùnach laughed a little in spite of himself. “My lord Nicholas, I daresay you have magic enough to terrify the masters at Buidseachd just with what you already know.”