Threadbound, p.39
Threadbound, page 39
Jamie now had a completely different perspective on real. Magic was real. Fairies were real. There were impossible creatures and potions and spells. Things that made no sense to him, although Bran had tried to describe the rules that governed them, patiently explaining that magic was a science just like Jamie’s chemistry and medicine—it had laws, just like physics, except completely different from anything Jamie had ever known or understood.
He was trying, though. Not simply because his research now seemed to span both worlds, but—perhaps even more importantly—because he wanted to understand Bran and the world he came from. Jamie was glad that he had both excuses to ask questions, although he still felt like there were some fundamental concepts he was just failing to grasp. Some piece of something that just hadn’t yet fallen into place.
Bran didn’t fully seem to understand the recipes that had become Jamie’s research obsession, either—both of them were missing something. It was infuriating from a scholarly perspective.
At the moment, Jamie had time—he was waiting, either for news of Cairn’s health or for Bran or someone else to come find him—and the room he was in contained paper, charcoal pencils, and ink-pens that were more or less like the fountain pens Jamie liked, but couldn’t afford. Having nothing else to do, Jamie began a list of the things he knew about the recipe—The Draught for the Breathing Dead. He couldn’t shake the niggling feeling that it was somehow related to what the odd crone had said to him... But he didn’t understand what she’d meant by ‘breathing dead men.’ It wasn’t quite the same, but it was so very similar…
Jamie felt, again, like he was missing something. Something important.
He wished Bran were here to talk to. But Jamie very much doubted that Bran was going to be interested in talking about Jamie’s research insecurities right now.
Jamie had filled multiple pages with notes and sketches by the time someone—a small, long-faced creature with what looked like goat legs and pointed hooves—came to bring him more food and take away the dishes from his earlier meal. It took all his willpower to stifle the impulse to automatically thank the creature, and then spent at least an hour worrying about how to show his gratitude when the creature came back.
Agitated, Jamie ended up rooting through most of the drawers and chests in the room, finding—with some surprise and pleasure—that one of the smaller wooden chests sitting out on a side table held skeins of yarn, ribbons, and threads that felt like wool and cashmere and cotton and silk. At first, he’d hesitated, but then he realized that someone must have put it here on purpose for him. He busied himself knotting together a bracelet in shades of grey, brown, blue, and red, with the notion of leaving it for the creature who had brought him his dinner of cheese, bread, spiced meat, and a fruit that reminded him a little of a pear crossed with something dark and tart, like a cranberry.
When the creature came back and looked down at the knotted yarn, confused, Jamie had smiled. “It’s for you.”
The creature’s too-big, horizontally slit eyes—a cool blue-grey—widened, and it touched one finger to its chest.
Jamie nodded. “Yes.”
Its pinkish skin flushed, and then it smiled, showing him teeth that were almost alarmingly big—almost like a beaver’s teeth, square and very white.
Jamie smiled back, trying to keep the shock at the size of its teeth off his features. It left humming, its expression pleased, so he figured he’d probably managed that successfully.
It was late—very late—and Jamie was tired, but he wanted to try to acclimate to the rhythms of the Court of Shades this time, if only because he knew Bran preferred those hours, and only humored Jamie’s internal clock because he knew Jamie had to work. But in Elfhame, Jamie wasn’t the one who had places to be at particular times of day… or night.
That, and he was hoping to see Bran again, and he didn’t want to miss that opportunity because he fell asleep. But he was too tired to go back to work—his brain couldn’t focus—so he turned, instead, to the threads and yarns and ribbons in the small chest.
Jamie looked up blearily when the door opened, surprised that the creature had come back after the sky had started turning predawn-grey. But it wasn’t his new hoofed friend—it was Bran.
Jamie put down the lacy thing—he had no idea what it was or what it would become—he’d tied together and stood, uncertain what to do or say. Wanting to help assuage the grief and exhaustion he could see so clearly in the lines of Bran’s sharp inhuman features.
Bran closed the door, then looked up at him.
Jamie stepped forward, uncertainly holding up one hand, although he had no idea what he was going to do with it.
Bran crossed the room and stepped directly into his arms, his forehead coming to rest against Jamie’s collar bone. Jamie held him close with one arm, gently stroking his fingers through Bran’s feathery hair with the other, feeling the fae’s fingers tightening in the fabric of his shirt, feeling the rise and fall of Bran’s back as the smaller fae sobbed into his chest.
Jamie wasn’t sure what to say. He never had been, when the person crying in his arms was one of his half-brothers or -sisters after being yelled at or struck by their father, when it had been a friend with a broken heart, or when it was his own heart that had been broken. So he just held Bran close, letting him weep out his fear and grief and frustration into the knit of Jamie’s sweater.
The sun had finished rising by the time Bran calmed, although Jamie was more than willing to hold him for ten times as long. Bran drew in a long breath, then let it out, his back moving under Jamie’s hand.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Jamie asked softly.
“He’s dying,” came the response, low and sad. “He knew what it was when the symptoms started. Because it’s the same poison that was given to Cuileann mac Eug.”
Jamie tried to remember who that was. “The Holly King?”
Bran nodded against Jamie’s chest. “Aye.”
“Didn’t you say he was poisoned thousands of years ago?” Jamie asked.
Bran nodded again.
“Does that mean—” Jamie didn’t finish the question.
“Except that it’s Athair who has been keeping him on the threshold of death.” Bran’s voice was heavy with despair.
“Athair?” Jamie repeated.
“It means father.”
“Ah.” Jamie kept gently stroking his fingers through Bran’s hair, the motion as much to soothe himself as to comfort Bran. He didn’t know how to ask his next question—so what will happen to the Holly King now?—without seeming callous.
Bran answered him anyway. “It’s just a question of time, now.” His voice broke. “They’re already—already dead. Just… still breathing.”
Jamie sucked in a breath.
Bran pulled back. “What?”
“Just—something someone said to me.”
“What?” Bran repeated.
“An old woman. Well,” he corrected himself. “She looked like an old woman. She said to me that I would help the breathing dead men.”
Bran pulled back farther, and his green eyes were wide. “The Bean Nighe?”
“She said that’s what people called her, yeah.”
“She said you would ‘help the breathing dead men’? Those exact words?” Bran was a little breathless and oddly excited.
“Yes?”
“Did she say what that meant?” Bran asked.
“No,” Jamie replied. “But it’s weirdly close to the name of that stupid recipe—”
“Lugh damn it, of course it is!” Bran pulled away from him and began to pace. Then he stopped and turned back toward Jamie, his green eyes bright. “Habetrot and Taranis bless it—that recipe.” He paused, his eyes searching Jamie’s. “Jamie, what does it do?”
Jamie shook his head. “I don’t know. Only that it’s called a Draught for the Breathing Dead.”
“With anail an duine mhairbh… and seudan a ainnir.”
Bran had said, when they’d found the plant, that it could raise the dead. And another of the Elfhame herbs—the maiden’s jewels—was an antidote.
“You don’t suppose…” Jamie stopped himself from asking the question.
“What exactly did the Bean Nighe say to you?” Bran demanded, crossing the room again and gripping Jamie’s arms so tightly he thought the fae might leave bruises. He didn’t complain—he repeated everything he could remember about his encounter with the crone.
“Jamie,” Bran said when Jamie had finished, his voice urgent and tense. “We have to try.”
Chapter
Forty-Four
Bran had awakened Iolair, one of his brothers, to tell him that they were going back to Dunehame. There had been an argument, although held in low tones that Jamie hadn’t been able to follow. Bran had snapped something about being useful rather than standing a deathwatch, and then he’d stormed from the room, leaving Jamie to follow.
He’d caught up to Bran in the corridor, his long legs easily able to close the distance, despite the speed of Bran’s stride. But Jamie didn’t know what to say, so he kept his thoughts to himself—his worries that they were going to try to brew the recipe and something would go wrong, that they wouldn’t be able to make it at all, or that they’d succeed, but that the resulting potion wouldn’t do what they hoped it would.
Jamie followed Bran back to his rooms—he hadn’t known it, but Jamie been taken to Bran’s rooms, although he wasn’t certain if that was because they were bondmates or if it was somehow obvious to the Sluagh that they were… what? Dating? A couple? Bran had agreed that he wanted more than just casual sex, but they hadn’t actually talked about what their relationship was, or on what terms they were in it.
Now was definitely not the time to bring that up for discussion.
Bran was putting several things into a leather satchel—this one a bluish tone, although it matched the style of the one still in Jamie’s apartment. Several glass jars with herbs, some vials with viscous liquids, and a few other odds and ends—stones, bundles of sticks, bunches of dried herbs. Jamie stayed out of the way, leaning against the window ledge and running his fingers through Patch’s soft fur as Bran moved around the room, muttering to himself.
Jamie felt his forehead pulling together in a frown. He was tired, but Bran looked wrung out. Even though they’d both been awake the same amount of time, Jamie knew how difficult impending grief was to carry. His momma had slowly faded—first her sharpness, then her memories, then her ability to do anything… and finally it was just her breathing shell, lying in a hospice bed while Jamie watched her empty eyes blink slowly at the blank wall. Her death had felt like someone had removed a particularly horrific and painful bandaid—sharp and raw, but also a relief. He still felt guilty about the relief. He probably always would.
But if Bran was right about what the Bean Nighe’s remark to Jamie had meant, then he might not have to watch his father die, might not have to endure what Jamie had endured at his momma’s bedside. Jamie would do a lot to spare him that kind of pain. Even if he wasn’t sure Bran was right about what the crone had said.
Having hope was better than grim certainty. Maybe even when it was false hope.
Bran handed Jamie the first satchel, which he put on his shoulder, then found another, this one a canvas-like material. Then the fae turned to one of the many shelves in the room, running a finger over the spines as he searched for—and found—a handful of books, all of which were tucked into the bag. Patch was paying closer attention to them, now, and Jamie could have sworn she was giving them both a disapproving look. As though she knew they were planning on leaving her again.
“Sorry, Patch,” he murmured softly. “But you can’t come with us.”
Bran looked up for a moment, his expression thoughtful, then shook his head. “Not this time,” the fae told the gealach marchaiche. “We need to work.”
Patch put her furry head down, setting it on claw-tipped front paws with a huff. Jamie was starting to think that maybe she actually did understand what was happening. He wasn’t sure if that made him feel better or worse about leaving her behind.
Bran stuffed a few pieces of clothing in the canvas bag, then swung it over his shoulder. “Let’s go.”
“Now?” Jamie asked, the frown still in place.
“Aye, now.”
“You need to rest,” Jamie argued. “At least a couple hours.”
Bran’s eyes were almost feverish. “I canna—”
“How long does he have?” Jamie interrupted him, trying to compensate for the harshness of the question by using a gentle tone.
Bran’s expression was stricken, and Jamie couldn’t help himself—he crossed the room and took Bran’s hopeless expression in his hands, cupping the fae’s face in his palms and pressing a kiss to his forehead. Bran leaned into him, drawing a shuddering breath, hands resting on Jamie’s hipbones. “I dinna know,” he whispered.
“Months?” Jamie asked softly. “Or days?”
Another shuddering breath. “I—I think at least a month? But I canna tell. Maigdeann canna tell.” His voice trailed off.
“But you have two hours to sleep so that we don’t accidentally do something wrong,” Jamie pointed out, his lips still moving against the skin of Bran’s forehead.
“I—I dinna think I can.” His voice was so small. So vulnerable.
“Then at least just rest,” Jamie insisted. “Two hours.”
Bran hesitated, then nodded.
He was asleep, his cheek pillowed on Jamie’s chest, before Patch finished settling herself against Jamie’s other thigh.
Jamie could feel Bran’s impatience as he filled out the paperwork for a visitor pass to the university’s library. Bran also had to sign several pieces of paper saying he wouldn’t touch anything with his bare fingers, that he’d give up his firstborn child if he did touch anything, that his soul was forfeit if he damaged any books, and so on. The usual draconian library forms.
Bran shifted his weight, the soft sound of his clothing surprisingly loud in the silence of the library. Jamie finished signing his name for the third time, surrendering his ID and enduring the librarian’s withering glare as they turned and headed deeper into the library’s reading room.
Bran’s brow was furrowed as Jamie unpacked his laptop and notebook at the reading table. “Where is it?” the fae asked.
“She’ll bring it out,” Jamie answered. “Old books are very fragile, so the librarians get them for you.”
Bran’s frown remained in place. “They dinna let you get your own books?”
Jamie shook his head, half-smothering a smile. “Not these. They’re old and delicate. They could be easily damaged if you handle them wrong, or, God forbid, spill coffee on them.”
Bran’s dark eyebrows arched. “Coffee?”
“Hence them not letting you bring food or drink into this part of the library.”
Jamie sat down and opened up his laptop, half-watching Bran as the fae shifted in the old wooden chair across the table. “I dinna understand why they hide the books away from everyone, anyway,” he muttered.
“They’re fragile,” Jamie replied.
Bran waved a hand. “We have books a thousand years old.”
“You also have magic,” Jamie pointed out. Not that he knew anything about it, but he was fairly certain that they wouldn’t treat thousand-year-old books so casually if they didn’t have some sort of magical preservation.
Bran blinked. “Aye, that’s true,” he said after a pause.
The sour librarian appeared, then, with the book in question, and Jamie made space on the table for her to lay out the book on foam blocks to protect the binding. Bran and Jamie were then given a lecture about what they were and were not allowed to do—no flash photography or scanning, no marking the pages, and so on—before she left them alone with the volume and a final, disdainful sniff.
Jamie transcribed the text directly into a text file while Bran—who didn’t actually know how to use a computer, although Jamie had started to teach him—quickly and accurately copied the sketched plants, nuts, and other objects drawn in the recipes or margins.
Jamie found himself impressed with Bran’s artistic skill—Jamie wasn’t terrible, but Bran was much, much better.
Even though they’d gotten there early in the day, they worked straight through lunch, Jamie ignoring the hollow in his stomach so that they could keep going. He’d have ignored it a lot longer if it would ease the stress lines around Bran’s emerald eyes and full mouth.
And then they did it again the next day.
And the next.
Jamie was really starting to hate C.R.M. Breabadair, whoever they were. The hand was the same throughout the book, which was at least a blessing, since once they got used to C.R.M.’s scrawl-like penmanship, the transcription went a lot faster.
But by the end of the third day, they’d managed to copy down pretty much everything in the admittedly fairly slim volume. Jamie was fairly certain most of it was completely useless—not just relative to Cairn’s illness, but to anything—and another quarter to three-eighths probably unrelated, including one very bizarre love spell for cattle, although Jamie wasn’t certain if it was to make two cows fall in love with each other or… He didn’t really want to think too hard about it. There were a few other recipes—besides the Draught for the Breathing Dead—that had to do with illness or antidotes that Bran had drawn his attention to this ingredient or that one, although Jamie hadn’t recognized any of them.
Jamie filed the different recipes and prayers and spells in different places on his computer, depending on their ostensible category, and Bran had a stack of carefully labeled sketches, several of which he’d annotated with other sketches, even more impressive in that they were entirely from memory.
Exhausted and hungry, Jamie had insisted that Bran go back to the apartment while he stopped to grab curry for their dinner.
Bran had been asleep, curled on his side on the bed, when Jamie got home.
