The Last Quarrel (The Complete Edition) (21 page)

“Of course not!” his father chuckled. “Just until you have filled three ships. That should be enough for now. The Duchess will send word if she needs more.”

Cavan swallowed the bile that was rising up his throat. Again he was being sent out to do his father’s dirty work. He felt Swane’s mocking eyes on him and could not stay quiet any longer.

“Is this all part of your plan?” he asked his brother bitterly.

“What are you gabbling on about?” his father growled.

“Swane’s behind all this. The mystery witches, the non-existent selkies. This is all him, I know it!” Cavan spat.

“You have lost your mind, brother,” Swane said disdainfully.

“Are you telling me you think Swane has set all this up to bring favor on himself?” Aidan asked.

“That’s exactly what I am saying. And I will prove it. I will show the country that you are behind it all. The nobles will not stand for being forced to pay even more tax to stop fake selkies, while the Guilds will riot over the way you are pretending it is witches loose in the city. No doubt you will soon tell the Guilds that stopping the witches is going to take gold and lots of it –”

The blow came out of nowhere, knocking Cavan to the ground.

“You will not be doing anything of the sort,” his father snarled, eyes bulging as he looked down at Cavan. “I will not be having the Guilds and the nobles in an uproar because of your stupid hatred of your brother!”

Cavan felt his swollen lip and wiped away the blood oozing from where it had been rammed back into his teeth.

“Be thankful that’s all the blood you will see today,” his father said coldly. “If I hear you have been spreading nonsense about your brother to anyone, let alone the Guilds and nobles, I’ll have you hanging by your balls from my tower, Crown Prince or not. I can always name Swane as my heir.”

Cavan wiped his mouth clear and levered himself to his feet, wiping the hatred from his face as well. “May I take this map to plan where I need to begin?”

His father looked at him carefully for a moment, then nodded abruptly. “That’s better. Take the map and plan. But begin at first light tomorrow.”

“Yes, Father,” Cavan bowed his head so he didn’t have to see his brother’s gloating face. Only the thought that his servants were even now prying into every secret corner of Swane’s rooms allowed him to keep his face still as he stood and walked away.

“Where do we start, highness?” Niall asked, looking over the map.

“I don’t care,” Cavan replied, bending close and making little marks on the chart with a quill.

“I’m sorry, highness, but what are we doing then?” Niall asked.

Cavan looked up and smiled, although that made his swollen lip crack. He cursed and sucked down the blood oozing out of it. “I’m trying to remember where the children were snatched from. Swane took the record we made of our talks with their parents but I read it often enough to remember many of the street names. Have a close look at the map and tell me what you remember. They don’t have to be exact; I just want to get an idea of where most of the disappearances took place.”

“Highness, is this wise?” Niall asked nervously. “We have placed spies in your brother’s rooms but he has already shown he is willing to invade
your
rooms. What if he sees this? We could be planning to set up a trap and walk into one ourselves.”

Cavan pointed wordlessly towards the door. A pair of his new guards stood there, arms folded, swords by their sides.

“I know, highness. But if your brother wants something, he will get it. I have been around this castle long enough to know that,” Niall whispered.

Cavan paused then made one more mark on the map. “That’s all the ones I remember. Are there any you recall?”

Niall sighed. “I have given my advice, highness, it is up to you to listen to me.” He hesitated then pointed to a spot in the west, the richer areas, where the Guildsman’s daughter had gone missing. “That is the only other one, highness.”

Cavan straightened up and looked at the map. There seemed to be no pattern at all, just a random scattering of marks. He had expected more to be in the poorer quarters but that was not true. They were all over the city. “Well, so much for this revealing where they are hunting,” he sighed. “We might as well have scattered ink drops over this map. But perhaps our little crew of spies might be able to add something to it. Imagine if Swane has a similar map, with his own marks on it!”

“I cannot see your brother leaving all his secrets lying out for our men to find,” Niall warned.

“He will not expect servants to do anything more than bow and scrape to him,” Cavan said dismissively. “We might even have enough to take to my father by tonight!”

Niall’s silence was far more eloquent than anything his manservant could say and Cavan nodded slowly. After the way his father had reacted in the throne room, King Aidan was not going to be delighted to be handed evidence Swane was behind all this. But perhaps he could be
persuaded
to put an end to it. If Cavan agreed to keep silent in exchange for Swane being locked up and his revolting plans brought to an end, that was good enough. And then, when he was King, there could be a reckoning. Cavan allowed himself to luxuriate in that thought for a moment.

“Highness, we need to be on our way. Those poor families have to be on ships by tomorrow night,” Niall said delicately.

Cavan reluctantly tore himself away from a daydream of Swane being hauled out before a crowd and hanged. “I suppose so. Has my father sent over speeches for me?” he asked dully.

“Actually highness, not a one. You are free to say what you want.” Niall brightened.

Cavan closed his eyes, imagining the sea of despairing faces before him. “Come on, then,” he said, wanting to get it over and done with.

His worst fears were realised within the first turn of an hourglass. Eamon and his personal squad of men were there and were under orders to be polite and gentle with the people. His father’s captain Kelty and another thirty men had no such orders and were dragging men, women and children into the street.

No matter how many times Cavan told them that this was to protect their children, to give them a better life in the countryside, away from witches, he could tell they didn’t believe him, even though every house had some sort of iron around the doorways and windows, from a collection of rusty nails to some of the charms being sold in every market in Berry, to keep the witches away. Cavan knew the richer areas had even more impressive-looking iron charms, including ones being blessed and officially sold by the church. He felt that was almost as foul as what he was doing here.

One or two had tried to defy the orders and lock themselves in their small homes – but Kelty’s men smashed down doors and hurled them into the street, hitting and kicking them along the way. After that, word spread and the people grabbed what they could carry, men, women and children hunched over under the weight of their possessions, and headed towards the harbor.

“You will have a new life, a better life, I promise,” Cavan told them, the words tasting bitter in his mouth.

“How many more do we need?” Cavan asked Niall, who was making notes on parchment as each family was kicked out.

“We’re about halfway through,” the scribe said.

Cavan looked up at the sun. “I feel like I need to go and bathe after doing this for father –”

Kelty raced up. “Highness, you need to come and see this!”

Cavan looked at the grim-faced captain in shock. Kelty looked like the sort of man who would rip your throat out with his teeth if no weapon was close to hand. He was well over six feet tall, with huge shoulders, and made even more striking by his round, rough-hewn face. Yet his normal ruddy look of confidence had been replaced by something close to fear.

Cavan followed him to an unremarkable-looking little house, one in a street full of them.

“In there.” Kelty gestured.

Cavan was about to step in when Eamon and a pair of his guards arrived at the run.

“Us first, highness,” Eamon said, pushing past him, sword out.

“There’s nothing in there that will hurt you,” Kelty said.

“Let me be the judge of that,” Eamon fired back over his shoulder.

Cavan stepped over the threshold stone and followed Eamon in. Like all the houses around there, the ground floor was one big open room with a set of crude stairs leading up to bedrooms above, its most remarkable feature usually its fireplace. Not here.

There was little light getting in, but more than enough to see what waited inside. Five bodies, stretched out on the wooden floor in a circle, surrounded by the remains of candles, heads all pointing inwards. Something about the faces looked slightly familiar to Cavan and he inspected one, then another, recoiling in horror as he recognized them. They were the five servants he had sent into Swane’s rooms as spies. He straightened up, about to explode with anger, when Eamon grabbed his arm.

“Highness, don’t say a word. Not here and not in front of Kelty,” he said urgently. “We cannot be caught up in this.”

“But my brother –”

“It is a message from him, right enough. But we must be careful.”

Cavan bit back the bubbling fury that rose within him. Eamon was right. This was a deliberate message from Swane. So no doubt one or more of the guards with Kelty were in Swane’s employ. He had to react sensibly until his father could be brought in to see it.

“What in the name of holy Aroaril was going on here?” Cavan hissed.

“Aroaril had nothing to do with this,” Kelty said, pointing down at the bodies.

Black stains beneath each one showed how their blood had poured and pooled out from a jagged wound just below the ribcage. It looked as though their bodies had been forced open. From the agonized expressions on the dead faces, it was obvious it had not been a quick death.

“What manner of death is this? Why kill a man so?” Cavan asked.
I told them the worst that would happen was they might get a flogging. How could I have been so wrong?

“I thought they had gutted them, so had one of my men look inside. When he stopped throwing up his breakfast, he told me the guts are all there but the hearts have been cut out.”

“Where are they?” Cavan demanded. “What would they do with them?”

Eamon pointed towards the remains of the fire. “I’m not sure but I would say they are in there.”

Cavan stormed across to the huge fireplace and peered into it. There was still some warmth in the embers as well as a taint of burning flesh, which reminded him horribly of the Widow Eithne, making him jerk his head back. But not before he saw five charred lumps sitting in a wide pan above the fire.

“There are blood drips from the bodies to the fireplace,” Kelty confirmed. “They cut their hearts out and burned them up in that pan.”

“Why?” Cavan croaked.

Nobody answered him. In the corner, another of Kelty’s guardsmen was throwing up.

“We need to show this to my father,” Cavan said. “He will want to know what is going on in Berry.”

“We need to seal it all off. Nobody else should see it. If word gets out then we could have a panic on our hands,” Kelty said firmly. “Your father will not want that.”

“Why will there be a panic?” Cavan asked, his mind on how he could confront Swane over this.

“I don’t know if it is real or if they have just made it look like this, but I know what people will say – that this is Zorva worship,” Kelty said. “My old grandma used to scare us with stories of it.”

“He’s right,” Niall agreed. “There is much power in blood magic.”

“What could you do with it?” Cavan asked, thinking of how Swane was looking much better lately. It was quite the transformation: some might even say it was magical. And those men who had taken that child from under his nose. Might magic explain how a sword could just bounce off someone, as if he were made of wood?

“Almost anything you wanted,” Kelty said grimly. “That is the whole point of it. Aroaril grants his magic only to those who show themselves worthy, and it can only be used to do good. Zorva gives out power in exchange for sacrifice and you can do with it what you will.”

Cavan swallowed hard. The idea of Swane with unlimited power was horrifying. “We stop here. No more families kicked out of home. Captain Kelty, your men should secure this home. Put a whole squad on the front door and another on the back. I will go and get my father, as well as Archbishop Kynan and Wizard Finbar. They need to see this.”

“But first we should send men up to check upstairs. Remember, some of these men like to use the roofs,” Niall reminded him.

“You’re right,” Cavan agreed. “Kelty, make sure there is nobody else in this building, then station your men outside.”

“But standing outside, highness? That will draw attention to this home and that is the last thing your father will want,” Kelty said doubtful.

“I don’t want anything disturbed,” Cavan explained. “I want the Archbishop and Wizard to see it as we did. Besides, these men are not going anywhere.”
Besides, I don’t trust your men. I reckon a few of them are in my brother’s pocket and they will be the ones to make sure they are guarding inside. Given a little time alone with the bodies, they will make it seem as though my brother had nothing to do with this.
“But keep an eye on the rooftops anyway, just in case,” he said to Kelty, then, when the captain turned away, put his arm around Eamon.

“We’ve done it! We’ve got that bastard Swane now,” he hissed triumphantly.

It took time to hurry back to the castle, to find his father, Kynan and Finbar and persuade them to ride into the poor quarter to see five murdered men in a small home. Then more guards had to be mustered and a procession sent through the streets to clear the way for the King.

It was after midday when Cavan was back at the house, where a small crowd had gathered to see what was happening with the guards both out the front and back of the nondescript house.

“This had better be worth it,” Aidan growled as more people arrived every moment, drawn by the mass of armed, mounted men and, above all, by the King’s flag.

“Father, you will not want to see this. But you need to,” Cavan said, nodding to Kelty. “Captain, has anyone gone into the house since I left?”

“No, highness. We checked it was empty and then I have had a squad out front and out the back.” Kelty saluted.

Cavan smiled grimly. This would be the end of Swane. The only mystery was why his brother had been so stupid as to leave an obvious trail leading to his door? Still, it never made sense to look a gift horse in the mouth. Swane’s arrogance would be his undoing. He pulled the door open and gestured inside.

“See, Father?” he said.

Aidan pushed past him and stepped inside, Cavan a pace behind.

“Is this some kind of joke, boy? Because I am not laughing,” the King said harshly.

“Neither am I. This is the most serious thing I have seen …” Cavan said, then trailed off as he saw the bodies were gone. The wooden floor was still stained black with blood but the five were gone. He glanced over to the fire and saw the hearts were also gone. “Where are they?” he said stupidly.

“What do you mean, boy?” Aidan growled.

Cavan turned back to the door and dragged Kelty inside. “Captain, are you telling me you saw nobody, and heard nothing? Are you sure nobody could have come in over the rooftops?”

“On my life, I swear not,” Kelty said. “We know the child snatchers had been using rooftops, so I had men watching them the whole time. Nobody could have got in there, much less dragged away five bodies without us hearing or seeing it.”

“Are you saying five dead men just got up and walked away?” Aidan asked furiously.

“There is dark magic at work here. I know it. We should bring in Kynan and Finbar to tell us what they can find,” Cavan said desperately. He kept glancing around, wondering if he could perhaps see something that would explain this.

Aidan glared at him for a good ten heartbeats before finally nodding. “A blind man can tell that the floor is covered in blood but that means nothing by itself. We need proof, not wild accusations.”

Finbar and Kynan were brought in and allowed to prowl around the room, while Kelty’s men went upstairs and searched again.

Kelty’s search was over long before the Archbishop was finished.

“There are some signs of blood all through the house. But no bodies,” Kelty reported.

“And there is no way you could have missed anything?” Cavan insisted.

“It is possible to crawl along the roof and avoid being seen on the street below. But there is no way you could carry one body let alone five out of there without being seen. And we would have heard people moving around inside, as well,” Kelty insisted.

Aidan let out an exasperated sigh and Cavan felt his skin crawl at the sound, for he knew what usually followed it.

But the King did not get a chance to say anything, as Finbar and Kynan walked over at that point.

“There was dark magic used here. But we cannot tell what for, or what happened,” Kynan said ominously.

Aidan punched his fist into his other hand. “I will not have that in my land, let alone my capital,” he declared. “Where are the people who owned this house?”

“It was empty when we found it, your majesty,” Kelty said.

“And the houses to either side?”

“They have already been sent off to the ships bound for Lunster, Father,” Cavan said instantly. “I shall go and find them and question them.”

“We’ll be lucky to get any to admit they lived here,” Aidan said grimly. “They will hide and lie. No, this shows me I was right to order this place cleaned out and the people sent to Lunster. They have been harboring dark magic.”

“Father, it was not the people who lived here,” Cavan insisted.

“Then who was it?”

Cavan opened his mouth to declare it had to be his brother, for the dead men had been the five spies he had sent to look into his brother’s rooms. Then he realized what a mistake that would be and shut his mouth again.

“That’s right. We have no bodies and no proof to link it to anyone. But the people living around here might have seen or heard something. Kelty, find anyone who is left living on this street and question them. I want to know everything they do.”

Kelty saluted and hurried away.

Cavan braced himself for an explosion of his father’s anger but Aidan merely took his arm and led him over closer to the remains of the fire.

“You must be careful, my son,” he said. “I know you think you are fighting for Gaelland but you don’t know what we are up against with these Fearpriests.”

“You have read about them?” Cavan asked.

“More than that. I lived it. I was a boy the last time they found Zorva worshippers here and I have never forgotten it. It haunts me still. In many ways it changed my life. You still think that everyone wants to be good, if only they had the chance. I know otherwise. I saw children no older than I was with their hearts cut out, or skinned, wizards with the power of Finbar made to look like the merest apprentices. I swore then I would stamp it out wherever I found it. I know you think I am too harsh on women accused as witches. But if you had seen what I have, you would do the same.”

Cavan was both horrified and relieved. It was a terrible story but his father had never shared this with him before.

“I have men watching Swane. Trust me on this. But if he is worshipping Zorva we need to work together to stop him, understand?”

“But, Father –”

“You had a chance here to expose your brother. He taunted you and you reacted and he made you look like a fool. That cannot happen again. Can I trust you to help me protect this land?”

Cavan pulled himself up straighter. “Of course, Father.”

“Good. There is more going on here than you know. This land is balanced on a knife edge. When we act, it must be decisively. If your brother makes another mistake like this, we have to crush him, not let him get away with it. Are you willing to help me?”

Cavan could not keep the smile from his face. This was what he had longed for. His father was listening to him and Swane would be brought to justice. Despite all his father had done, he had never been able to rid himself of the compulsion to win Aidan’s acceptance. Finally it was coming. At that moment, he actually liked his father.

“Whatever you need, Father.”

“Good. So come and tell me anything and everything. No detail is too small. Once I know it all, I can act. Now, I shall shout at you and Swane will hear you are out of favor and he will laugh, thinking himself safe. We shall see what he does after then. Agreed?”

Cavan nodded enthusiastically and Aidan gave him a wink before exploding.

“Not a word from you!” the King screamed. “You have wasted my time here and let Zorva worshippers get away. You are going back to the castle because I cannot trust you to do anything else.”