Icefall (7 page)

That explained the mood. My little boyfriend? He still called Jed that sometimes, but only when he was very cross with him and wanted me to take some responsibility.

‘What's he done now?' I wiped my hands on a damp towel and glanced reluctantly at the half-gutted bird on the drainer. I hated this job but interrupting it was worse.

‘Same old,' said Seth.

I turned and threaded my cold fingers into his hair, warming them on his scalp. I felt a tiny shiver run across it.

‘Are you okay?' I asked him.

He nodded.

‘Just mad?'

He nodded again, rested his arms on my shoulders and kissed me, then laid his forehead against mine. ~
Not at you.

~
I know.

~
Caorann,
he said. ~
When did we get to fight so much?

Tears started to my eyes, heaven knows why. His arms closed round my shoulders and he buried his face in my neck. His melancholy was so physical it stung; I didn't even have to be in his head to feel it. It wasn't like him. It made me afraid.

‘We always fought,' I murmured into his hair.

‘Oh yeah.' He drew back, grinning his old laconic grin.

I smiled. ‘I'll talk to Jed, okay?'

‘Again.'

‘Uh-huh.' I kissed his nose. ‘Watch this.'

‘Watch what?'

‘This.'

I twisted in his arms to face my half-gutted pheasant. Its feathers lifted and ruffled, though there wasn't any breeze. Seth's hands were locked together round my waist, and now they tightened. I put my own hands over them—just to prove it wasn't a trick—and the pheasant's left claw lifted. Curled and uncurled.

Waved at Seth.

‘Stop that.' He was rigid behind me.

‘No. Look.' I laughed. The claw pointed at Seth, and waved again.

He shook my hands away, reached forward and slapped the moving claw to the work surface, hard. He held it down, as if afraid of it, but his other arm stayed tight around me.

‘Spoilsport,' I told him.

‘Finn, don't. You shouldn't do that.'

I angled my head round to kiss his jaw. ‘Don't be such an old woman.'

‘Don't be such a witch.' He lifted his hand, hesitantly, but the pheasant's claw stayed where it was, dead and still. He flicked it with a finger. ‘Clever, though.'

‘I know I am,' I said smugly.

‘So when did you start that?'

‘Been practising for a while. I'd a feeling I'd be able to. Leonie could, you know. I saw her at it, in her workshop.'

‘Why am I not surprised?' he muttered. He eyed Faramach, perched dozily on the windowsill with his black eyes half-closed, the old faker. ‘That creature's been mighty quiet. Does he help you?'

‘A bit.' I reached to tickle the bird's throat. ‘Not that I can get in his mind, but he gets in
mine.
I thought you'd be happy he doesn't talk so much any more. Why don't you like him?'

‘He's smarter than I am,' growled Seth.

‘My dear. Is that why you hate half the human race?'

‘Grr.' He nibbled my ear, a little too hard. ‘Know what bugs me? Branndair thinks he's human. Faramach knows he isn't, and he thinks he's better than everybody.'

I rolled my eyes. ‘Speaking of Branndair, you're going to have to do something before he gets shot. You know fine he's the Beast of Ben Vreckan.'

‘Aw, Finn, he barely eats. He's never touched a sheep and the deer need culling. What d'you want me to do? Put him in kennels?'

‘I'm just saying, that's all.' I sighed. ‘You're not even trying to settle here, Seth. You say we have to stay here; you're the one who made Rory go to school. You're the one who told him and Hannah they had to get lives. You've got to try and have one yourself.'

‘I go out,' he said sullenly. ‘I meet people.'

‘Have you ever met one you tried to
like
?'

‘No,' he mumbled.

‘My love, I rest my case. As for your bingeing, brawling blood brother—' Exasperated, I prised his hands off my waist. ‘Where is he, then?'

He only pointed at the TV room, but he had the grace to look shamefaced.

With a sigh, I went through to find Jed on the sofa. He hadn't taken off his jacket, but was staring unseeing at a morning quiz show, arms defiantly folded. I picked up the remote and clicked the screen blank, then sat down beside him.

‘It's been a while, Jed.' I tweaked his earlobe. ‘You can stop being a delinquent now.'

He didn't unfold his arms but after a moment he pressed his head apologetically into the hollow of my shoulder. I put an arm round him and we huddled in comfortable silence.

‘What did you do?' I asked at last. ‘Another fight?'

He licked his lips nervously.

‘See if
I
wasn't
me,
Finn. And if Iolaire wasn't Iolaire…'

‘I know.'

‘They'd have kicked our heads in. They might even have killed us. And they get the shit kicked out of them instead, because they deserved it. And who gets arrested? Us.'

‘I know.' I didn't know what else to say.

‘I didn't start it, Finn!'

‘Jed,' I said hesitantly. ‘You're not a Sithe. You can't get away with this stuff like they do. What happened to Iolaire?'

‘He stuck with me. He could have got away but he stayed.' Jed gave me a belligerent look. ‘So the polis kept us in the cells all night. Not the neds,
us.
Seth came down and talked us out of there, but Iolaire had to go straight to work. He'll probably get sacked. What are we supposed to do, just lie down and take it?'

‘Course not.' Though they were, of course. You weren't supposed to fight back. You were supposed to wait for the police, if they arrived before your skull crumpled. ‘Jed, I'm sure they won't take it further. They let you off with a caution last time.'

Silent, he looked back at the blank TV. There was a gash on his temple, held together with steri-strips, and a black smear of bruise under his left eye. Not much damage, then. Not to him.

I licked my lips. ‘It's worse this time?'

‘Much,' he said. He couldn't stifle a tiny smile.

‘Oh, God, Jed. You didn't actually—'

‘Course not,' he scoffed. ‘Assault to severe injury, the guy at the desk called it…'

‘
Jed—
'

‘They tried to kill us, Finn.'

I almost didn't dare say it, but I risked a smile. ‘People have tried to do that before.'

‘For being rebels. For being at war. Not for just being us.' He was the closest I'd seen him to tears since he was seventeen years old. ‘I need to be back where I belong, Finn. I need to be where I exist.'

‘We all do,' I reminded him.

‘You all have plenty of time. I don't.'

I said nothing. Nor did Jed, for a long time.

‘The polis won't let this one go. It was too serious, they won't forget. And when they find out I'm not who Seth says I am?'

It worried me too. ‘It'll be okay. Seth'll think of something. Just try and stay out of trouble, Jed, please.'

‘I'm born for trouble,' he said bitterly. ‘
That's
who I am.'

I nipped my tongue, suddenly angry. I took his fist, uncurled it, touched my fingers to the white scar that ran from the base of his thumb to his little finger. His blood-brother scar. ‘That's who you're like,' I said, running my finger hard along it. ‘Him and nobody else. And sometimes I could throttle the pair of you.'

Jed laughed. ‘I'd like to see you try, gorgeous.'

I linked my fingers with his and squeezed them. ‘Lay off the juice, Jed?'

‘I'll try.'

That was a lie and we both knew it. He drank for the same reason he got into brawls: that stupid death wish of his. Ironic, when he was doomed to die before the rest of us anyway, but perhaps that had something to do with it. He knew he'd go on into death alone, long before any of his friends. He knew he was going to get old, he was going to lose his strength and his beauty and his sense of humour before any of us looked thirty-five. Even his own brother, half-Sithe, would outlive him by centuries. Perhaps that knowledge would get to anyone after a while.

It was more than that, though. He hadn't been the same since he'd killed Nils Laszlo. He'd lived for that for so long,
too
long, and something changed in Jed the moment he did it.

Of course I'd been all but killed myself, on the same day, so I didn't see it happen. I only know that when I came back to the world, Jed was different. We were all too busy to deal with it, too busy fighting to stay alive, too certain we would all die anyway. And I'd been wrapped up in feeling sorry for myself, frantic with fear for Seth and sure I'd never see him again, that he'd die with his son far away from me.

By the time life was back to what passed for normal, the sickness had set into Jed's soul. It had set into his body, too, but he'd recovered from that. Just. He still had a gaunt look, his eye sockets more shadowed than ever since infection had ravaged his body from the arrow wound he took at the dun siege. Physically he'd recovered. Somewhere inside him, he never had.

Jed should have died. Coming back to his native otherworld had saved him, because the Sithe needed no antibiotics and had none. The unsettling thing was that Jed knew it, and had known it at the time, but if he hadn't been driven back here, he'd never have come. He'd
rather
have died. He'd have kept quiet till it was too late. And I still wasn't sure why, only that it coincided with the killing of Laszlo.

But we'd come here, and he'd lived, and now it was being here that ailed him. He was more than homesick, he was heartsick, and that was what was killing him.

And that was what I told Seth, and that was why he lost his temper, and it turned into one more pointless, victorless fight.

*   *   *

It ended the way it always did, which is why neither of us ever won an argument. It ended in exhausted stalemate, with the pair of us entangled on the rug in front of the sputtering gas fire, the wind sighing and whining in the blocked-up chimney behind it. The day had darkened to a last twilight; the curtains hadn't been closed, but the laurels were thick outside the window and the small room was in dusk but for the glow of the hissing fire. A chair was jammed hard against the door handle.

Propping himself up on one elbow, Seth stroked my hair behind my ear. His fingers traced the line of my ear, every kink and curl of flesh, sending small currents through my body all over again. I pushed his hand away: I needed to talk intelligibly and I wanted him capable of the same. Thwarted, he drew back. I saw the smouldering glow of his eyes, like silver embers, but then he smiled.

‘Three people have tried to get into this room,' he said.

‘Did they? I didn't notice.' I gave him a contented smirk.

He laughed.

I ran my hand across his shoulder. Scars and muscle and blood and flesh and sinew. I pulled him back down so I could inhale his scent. He gave a confused murmur as his body stirred against me.

Love of my heart, love of my soul, love of my body. All I needed. Suddenly I was furiously resentful of his unhappiness.

‘Well?'

He combed his fingers obsessively through my hair, slid his hand down to my breast. ‘Well what?'

Desire collided with rage, and I shoved him back from me once more. ‘Did I make you feel alive?'

‘Finn?'

My voice hardened, I couldn't help it. ‘Did I? Was it half as big a thrill as killing?'

‘Listen to me, Finn…'

‘Go on. I need to know.'

‘What difference does it make?' His voice had a coldness now too. ‘We're bound.'

Sitting up I tried to slap him, but he curled swiftly upright and caught my wrist. He pulled my clenched fist to his mouth and kissed it brusquely. ‘This is what you signed up for. We both did.'

‘If you signed up for anything you signed up to stay at my side!'

‘You know that isn't true.'

I wanted to weep with anger and frustration. ‘You want a war? You want to die? Why not just go back and die in your own home with us at your side?'

‘This isn't about the rest of you. It's about nobody but me, understand?'

‘Nobody but you? There's no such thing any more! You selfish
tosser.
You're bound to me! You're as good as bound to your whole bloody clann!'

His eyes were just aflame now. ‘I'd rather die with my soul intact. But it isn't, it isn't in one sodding piece any more, and I need to keep what's left, and fighting's part of who I am, and it keeps the scraps of what's left of me burning, and I have to do it somewhere. And I don't know why she hasn't killed me yet but if I go back to that other place she'll take the rest of my soul and there'll be nothing left of me and
you KNOW ALL THIS.
'

I took a breath, gathered the scraps of my lost temper. I couldn't speak, because he was right. But the way he spoke about
that other place
reminded me of no-one so much as my mother.

‘You think Conal would go back?' he hissed now. ‘You think he'd have the guts to fight her? My dun is held by
Lammyr
! I can't lead my people to certain death because your boyfriend's homesick. But you think maybe Conal would do that for Jed?' He struck his chest viciously. ‘My brother nearly lost his soul to her once, but he never came half as close as
this
.'

Oh, the lowness of the blow. I'd never say that name that hung between us, but he would throw it at me.

I glared at him. ‘You're as bad as Jed. You're as homesick as he is. It's so terrible you'll go to a stranger's war just to take your mind off it. And because you're
bored!
Where's the sense in that?'