The Sea Thy Mistress (18 page)

Cathoair would say more, could he find the words. The wolf holds his tongue, raises his eyebrows, lets his eyes fill up with starlight. He sees the answering gleam touch the other’s gaze, recognizes in it the shadow of another presence like the stroke of a cold hand down his spine.
It was long ago,
the wolf thinks,
and the world was a very different place.

“You had no call to speak to her like that.”

The wolf rolls his shoulders in a shrug, advancing. “It is what she understands. For now. Best for her—and you, my brother—if you understand as well.”

Cathoair bends his knees, settles onto the balls of his feet. Fighting stance.
He never lacked for courage.
A bark of a laugh almost slips from the wolf.
Only sense.

“Why are you here?”

“I come here often, actually. Today, because your son asked me to. He’s safe. For now, although keeping unsavory company.”

A long, whip-edged silence. If Cathoair had his sword, she would be in his hand. The wolf hopes, lightly, that the experience will educate him.

“Yes,” the Cathoair says at last. “You.”

“And a girl who is not what she seems. But we will address that.” The wolf walks toward Cathoair, brushing past him—he shudders—to take the hand of the bronze statue before the brightening window frame. The wolf bends over her outreached hand and kisses her fingertips.

“Grace,” he wishes her, then turns back to the one who had been her lover, as the wolf himself had wished to be.

“It wasn’t Muire who came to you,” the wolf says. Candid. Blunt.

Cathoair’s reply is a river of venom: “I see you’ve been talking to Selene.”

The wolf nods. “I do that. On occasion.”

“Get out,” says Cathoair.

“What happened between us was a long time ago.”

The wolf steps close enough to press the other einherjar to action, already anticipating what will follow.

Cathoair spins and kicks out, an untelegraphed motion that strikes the wolf across the chest. Not a pulled blow. A true one. The wolf feels ribs snap, draws breath in pain. Does not show it. This time he does not hesitate. This time, he strikes with the strength of einherjar.

The beautiful boy may make an angel after all. He’s bent, but he’s not broken yet.

“Killer,” Cathoair says, grounding his foot and continuing the motion of the side kick with a straight right across the body. The explosive force of the words backs his swing; his voice is lumpy with hate and fear. “Rapist.”

The wolf thinks Cathoair might even be a match, with more maturity. He’s fiercer than she was.

But not today.
The wolf catches the crosspunch in his clawed right hand and stops it in midair. The power of the blow cracks his wrist bones: a compression fracture. It will heal.

He clenches his fist until the bones in Cathoair’s hand creak, drawing Cathoair close when he gasps with pain. A chipped bone shifts in the wolf’s wrist. The wolf allows a smile to brush across his face, acknowledging and dismissing the pain as he might a messenger bearing needed but unwelcome news. His other hand drops on Cathoair’s shoulder, driving Cathoair down to one knee on the pale stone floor. Cathoair has the strength to resist, something the wolf never permits him to realize.

“Just like last time,” the wolf murmurs. “You’ll never be able to stand against me until you understand what you are.”

He leans over Cathoair, his felted woolen cloak falling forward to enfold them both. Bending down, he breathes across the other’s face, hand still heavy on the place where Cathoair’s neck runs into his shoulder. Cathoair trembles, but raises his face to the wolf’s, eyes coldly defiant and full of savage light.

The wolf sees also the way Cathoair’s lips half-part at the taste of Mingan’s breath, and the fury that follows that weakness. The wolf feels no mirth, but—for the effect—forces himself to chuckle. “I am leaving. As you request. We will speak again.”

Striving for the appearance of ease, he hurls Cathoair back, not quite against the stone bench standing before the mosaic-glass doors. The wolf spins on his toes and stalks toward the door.

Cathoair catches himself in a crouch. He would lunge after the wolf did the wolf not glance back.

He smiles a cold, starlit smile and watches it freeze his rival. “You must learn to command the Imogen, little brother,” he says. “If you do not, she will eat you.”

He lets the smile fade, turns, and opens the door on the ascending sun.

*   *   *

Selene watched Mingan stride up the little hill to the chapel. She reached out and draped her arm around Cathmar’s shoulder, turning him back toward the warhorse. The stallion raised one head from the dense grass and blew hay-scented breath across her face and Cathmar’s.

“I don’t want to go back home,” Cathmar said, bringing her up short.

She looked over at him. He was taller than she was now, and showed promise of matching his father’s height. She angled her ears forward. “I’m not an expert on human parent-child relationships,” she said, “but I understand the teenage years are supposed to be like this.”

His eyes slid toward her, and then he walked away from her, shrugging her arm off. “Helpful,” he said. “ ‘Don’t worry. Your dad is supposed to be a jerk.’ ”

She bit back a hiss.
If this is what teenagers are like, I might not blame Cahey if he took up heavy drinking.

“Maybe it runs in the family,” she muttered under her breath, striding after Cathmar. She didn’t think he heard her, but it was hard to tell with human-type people. Their ears didn’t flicker.

He kept walking, and she followed.

50 A.R.
On the Twenty-third Day of Summer

Aithne stretched into her pack, turning to rest it on a sandstone outcrop. “Remind me again why we’re
walking
?”

Aethelred laughed at her. “Because it’s hard to trip across people with problems if you fly.”

She sighed and yawned, scratching under her eyepatch. Then she glanced up at the overcast and shook her head. “Might rain.”

He thought it might be time to bring up a topic he’d been considering. “Aithne?” He winced when he heard his own tone.

She let her hand drop to her side. “What?” He’d set her on edge, too, which he hadn’t meant to do.

“What do you think about taking a side trip. Visiting our mutual friend?” He, too, tilted his head back to study cloud formations that seethed like boiling laundry. He grinned to himself at Aithne’s understatement.

She leaned back against the boulder and sucked her lip. “Fuck. Aethelred…” She looked over at him, uncertainty in her eyes. “If I could have stood the pity for a second longer, old man, I would have gone with him when he moved out. It’s not like I was attached to the house.”

Aethelred glanced down, studied her profile—the scars, a pierced earring winking in her lobe. A hard crease indented her forehead between her brows, and he realized he’d never seen her cry in all the years they’d spent tromping the countryside together. He thought about Cahey’s scars, and doubted deeply that it had been his pity she was reacting to.

“It’s been a long time, you know. He’s not your ex-lover anymore; he’s not the man who saved your life. He’s just a guy you used to know. And I’m not getting any younger. I’d like to say good-bye.”

She blew a puff of air out her nose. “I never told you much about that, did I?”

“I know enough. I know Cahey.”

“Yeah, but … Hel, Priest, I never should have let him walk away like that.”

“You were in love with him?”

She shook her head, but he didn’t think she meant no. “I was … It was good he left. Or I would have started needing him, and I don’t want to need people that way. He’s … No. He
was
exactly what I needed, for about thirty seconds. Now, I don’t know. We’ve been traveling, you know? It’s not like I’ve had a lot of time for relationships.”

“Well,” Aethelred said, feeling suddenly very old. “I hear tell he’s not doing so well. Selene sent me a message on ’screen. Asked me to stop by. What say we walk in that direction?”

“He needs help?” Like she didn’t believe him. No, like she didn’t believe Cahey would accept the help even if he needed it.

She was probably right.

The freeloading old cat peered over her shoulder. Aethelred just nodded, keeping eye pressure on her until she turned around and met his gaze. “Selene thinks he may not make it out of whatever trouble he’s into.”

She grimaced and thought about it. Then, white-faced behind the freckles, she said, “Which way do we go?”

50 A.R.
On the Thirty-third Day of Summer

With a key too new to have scratches, Cathmar opened the door to Mardoll’s flat. To
their
flat. It still wasn’t a thought he was quite comfortable with. He glanced around, noticing that she’d rearranged the green plants on the improvised shelves again. The windows themselves were not original: she’d salvaged glass and frames from a variety of sources, using rough carpentry and layers of fabric tape to fit them to the frames. Cathmar set down a canvas bag containing six liters of indigo paint he meant to use to seal the cracks and cover the mismatches in Mardoll’s handiwork. The fabric creaked slightly as the weight came off it.

They were by the quiet side of the Naglfar’s sorcerously disrupted course, where it rose from its shattered bed to cross the campus of the University overhead, and morning and afternoon sun edged in under the University to paint the windows on the high floors in their building.

Cathmar picked his way around a pile of cushions that had slumped from the edge of a thick sitting mat onto the floor tiles. Dust motes hung in the slanted light that fell through the mismatched windowpanes. Mardoll was around somewhere, stirring up the air.

He called her name.

“In here,” she answered. He walked across green tiles into the kitchen. It was yellow, mostly: the paint on the cabinets was peeling. The windowframes in here were freshly painted, though, in vermillion and white, layers thick enough that they made the carpentry beneath look like molded, melted plastic.

Actually, there might be some of that jammed in there, too.

Mardoll knelt down beside a bucket, washing the sun-colored walls in the sunlight, grinning with pleasure at her labor or possibly the results. She looked up at him before standing and drying her hands on her leggings. “Hey. What’d you do today?”

He shrugged. “Angel stuff.” A running joke.

She pressed against him and raised her lips, offering a kiss. “Damn,” she said, when he pulled back again. “How did you manage to get so tall?” He realized that he was looking down a good decimeter into her eyes.

He laughed and changed the subject. “I had an idea.”

“Oh? That made you grow?” She emptied her bucket, started putting things away under the sink. A tower on the roof supplied the flat with cold running water.

He sighed and hung Nathr on the back of an old wooden chair. He pulled the seat out and swung it around, perching on it backwards. “I’m just … Well, I don’t want you to get old, Mar.”

She straightened, closing the under-sink cupboard. Turning around, she leaned back against it, kicking one foot up. “There’s not much you can do about that, angel. Seeing as how I’m a mortal girl and all.”

He shook his head. “There is. I just talked to Selene. She says that the Bearer of Burdens—”

“Your mother.”

He tilted his head in acknowledgment. “My mother says we need more angels. And she told Selene how to make them.” His mouth had gone dry, and swallowing to wet it brought no relief. He said, quietly, “You could be one of them.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You could become one of us. Waelcyrge.” It’s a little easier the second time.

Her frown surprised him. “Really?” she said. “What’s entailed in that?”

“I kiss you. Angel-kiss. Selene does, too. We take you to my mother and she gives you your sword.”

“You steal my soul.”

He shook his head, watching the shadows that the sunlight made across her face. “I give you a little bit of mine.”

“That’s…”

He caught the scent of the cleaning bleach. “What?”

She turned her back on him abruptly and began running water into the sink. “That’s a Hel of a commitment, Cath. That’s like marriage-plus, you know? Not just a lifetime. Forever.”

He pushed the chair away and strode over behind her, placing his hands on her tawny shoulders. “I don’t want to push you,” he lied, turning her head and tilting her chin up. He kissed her gently, tasting rose petals and moss. “Think about it. Think about everything that we could be.”

Think about not dying on me in a few short years.

50 A.R.
On the Fortieth Day of Summer

Cathmar came down the steps from the flat into a mist silvering with the early-morning light. He took a deep breath, throwing his head back to feel the cool air roll down his throat into his lungs. He and Mardoll lived on a zigzag cobbled lane so narrow Cathmar could touch both stained walls with flat hands if he spread his arms. The sun hadn’t yet cleared the walls of the city, or angled high enough to send fingers grasping under the edge of the University to burn the fog away, so the effect was a bit like walking through a dream.