Threadbound, p.46
Threadbound, page 46
Bran looked up at him again, tearing his eyes away from his father with what looked like a physical effort. “I—”
“Give it time,” Jamie said softly, knowing full well it was easier said than done.
Bran glanced back down at his father, lips pressed together. “We dinna have time,” he rasped. “Without him, we canna hold back the Sidhe.”
Jamie let out a breath, fear settling thick in his stomach—although, oddly, it was a fear that didn’t steal his breath. Instead, it coiled around his spine, helping somehow to steel his resolve. “We have to try,” he replied.
Bran didn’t take his eyes off his father as he let out a long breath. “Aye.”
Bran tightened the belt around the heavy enchanted mail he’d pulled over his head, pretending its weight didn’t make him feel as though he were drowning in the air. His muscles felt thick, his bones ached, and he was having trouble making his eyes focus on small things, like buttons and belt buckles.
He had left his father’s side with despair heavy in his stomach—Cairn’s condition was unchanged. Jamie had told him not to give up hope. That they didn’t know how long the draught would take to begin to work.
Bran could no longer afford to hold on to impossible hope. Not with the walls shaking around them and the cries of the wounded and grief-stricken echoing in the air. He no longer had the time to wait for Cairn to recover. War had come to the Court of Shades, and the Sluagh had to meet it. Although Bran was the youngest of Cairn mac Darach’s children, he couldn’t shirk the duty that came with being the great-nephew of the Sluagh King.
Before he’d come to the armory, Bran had taken a potion of his own—one he knew would work better than their failed draught. It was a cnàmh-droma an laoch, a potion designed to fortify the strength and endurance of warriors in battle—to help them not to feel fatigue or succumb so quickly to their wounds. Bran was hoping it would keep him from losing consciousness too soon.
He knew the cnàmh-droma an laoch would leave him exhausted and all-but-useless after a half-day. Bran had no expectation that he would be conscious—or even alive—that long, even with the potion’s fortifying aid.
He knew he was likely walking to his death, but he no longer had a choice.
The Neach-Cogaidh had been called into battle—his brothers and sisters, both by blood and by arms—and even though he had been released from his oath, Bran could not simply wait for them to die on the field or be dragged back to the keep, their bodies broken and bloodied. Bran knew that he was likely to be among those who returned under power other than their own—he could only hope, for his own sake and for Jamie’s, that he would be among the broken rather than the dead.
He hadn’t been able to say what he probably should have to Jamie. To tell him again that he loved him. Tell him that he never wanted to leave his side—that even now he didn’t want to leave Jamie, but that he had to. He was willing to give his life for his people.
I am willing to give everything for Jamie.
Bran’s fingers paused as he buckled on a sword belt. He had to see the Bean Nighe. Because his final wish—for his father to be successful—required him to answer her question.
But finding the hag in a keep full of frightened Sluagh and a handful of Sidhe who called Sluagh family… Assuming she was even here. On the one hand, Bran couldn’t afford to give up the time it would take to find her. On the other, he didn’t know if he could afford not to.
Indecision was a killer—he knew that. So he finished buckling on the belt, drew and tested the edge of the sword, took a deep breath, and walked out into battle.
Jamie—followed by Trixie and Rob—had found his way into the infirmary, since, as Trixie put it, they all understood the basics of medieval medicine, and it wasn’t that hard to put pressure on bleeding wounds. Rob was even actually useful, since he’d been a life guard, which came with first aid training.
Trixie hadn’t been wrong, although Jamie had seen more than enough blood and protruding bones within the first few hours that he never wanted to so much as look at a first aid kit ever again. He was also sharing an unusual amount of sympathy with the fictional Lady Macbeth, since he was pretty sure his hands would never again feel clean.
“Jamie.” Bran’s sister, a smear of blood across her cheek, came up to him, breathless and pale. Of course, Jamie wasn’t sure what color skin a finfolk was supposed to have.
“Yeah?” He wasn’t entirely certain he’d pronounce her name correctly, although Trixie didn’t seem to have a problem with it.
“Do you know how to sew?” she asked him.
“Um. Yeah? Why?”
“I canna keep up with the stitching.”
Jamie felt himself go pale. Then he saw Maigdeann’s expression fall, and he couldn’t refuse. Instead he swallowed, then forced himself to nod. “Okay.” He swallowed again. “Just like canvas or leather, right?”
She pressed a hand into his arm with a thin smile. Then she handed him a roll of suede, which, he discovered upon undoing the tie, held a suture kit that looked like it belonged somewhere in the middle ages. Cleaner and newer, but still. Bone needle. Coarse thread. Pieces of linen to cover the wound.
It wasn’t until she was on the other side of the infirmary that Jamie realized she hadn’t actually confirmed the answer to his question.
He really hoped he didn’t end up maiming or scarring anyone too badly.
Jamie nearly jumped out of his skin when one of the goat-footed people—a pùca, he’d learned they were called—came running into the infirmary, horizontally-slitted eyes wide. “Lady Maigdeann!”
The finfolk woman turned, her bright blue eyes worried. “What is it, Alltdannsair?” she asked, her voice urgent.
“Your father, Lady Maigdeann! He’s awake!”
Jamie sat down abruptly on the edge of the empty bed he’d been putting fresh linens on while trying not to think about the reason that bed was empty. That fae—his black eyes fixed and wide, his skin swirled grey and white and smeared with blood—had lost his battle with death, while it seemed Cairn had somehow won his. We did it. We actually did it.
Yet Jamie felt a strange mix of disappointment along with the elation at having succeeded in brewing the draught. Almost as though the life they’d given back to Cairn had been taken from the young fae whose hand Jamie had held as he drowned in his own blood, nothing any of them could do to save him as the Sidhe poison had slowly suffocated him from the inside. Jamie didn’t actually want to think of it that way. Didn’t want the responsibility for the fae’s death.
Intellectually, Jamie knew that wasn’t how it worked. There weren’t a finite number of lives to be lived, and if one person got to keep living, someone else had to die. But it felt that way, all the same.
Maigdeann, her eyes brimming with tears, followed the pùca out of the room at a run.
Eadar came over and squeezed Jamie’s bicep, a grin on his golden-hued features. “You did it,” the fae whispered.
Jamie nodded dumbly.
“Jamie…” Trixie had joined them, her own eyes as wide as the pùca’s had been. “We… we did it?”
He nodded again.
Rob—who had come up behind him—let out a whoop that made Jamie jump again.
“How much did you make?” Eadar asked, then, his blue eyes sharp.
Jamie met his gaze. “Enough for a second dose,” he said softly.
“Then—” Eadar didn’t finish the question.
“You should do it,” Jamie told him. He had exactly no business entering the bedchamber of the Holly King to administer an antidote. He also had no desire to do so.
But Eadar shook his head. “I have to stay here, with Maigdeann gone.”
Jamie swallowed. “I—I can’t. I—”
“I’ll do it,” Trixie said. “If you won’t.”
Jamie felt a mingled sense of both guilt and relief. Trixie shouldn’t be doing it either—the idea that a human or a halfbreed would enter the bedchamber of the Holly King himself was absurd. Neither one of them belonged in the bedroom of a creature of legend. But if he wasn’t willing to do it, and she was…
The infirmary door opened again, and Jamie twitched.
The figure who entered this time was an old woman—or so she mostly appeared, webbed feet aside, although whatever the Bean Nighe was, Jamie thought that ‘woman’ was probably not the most accurate term, even if she did consider herself to be female. Everyone—aside from a few whimpers of pain—went absolutely silent.
Eadar stepped forward as though to greet her, and she waved him away. “Come on then, girl. Death doesn’t wait for just anyone.”
Mouth hanging open, Trixie just stared at her.
“Well?” the Bean Nighe demanded, white eyes fixed on Trixie. “What are you waiting for? I issued an invitation.”
Trixie glanced around, her expression panicked, then pointed at herself.
“Yes, you, girl. Or have you changed your mind about wanting to know the ancient secrets of the world?”
Trixie’s face turned a strange, blotchy mixture of white and red. “How did—”
The Bean Nighe cackled. “My dear girl, to whom did you think your prayers and wishes went?”
“He-Hekate?” Trixie squeaked.
The Bean Nighe waved her semi-clawed hand again. “Some have called me that,” she replied dismissively. “Or Trivia, Artemis, Baba Yaga. The many names matter not.”
Jamie felt his own mouth drop open at that, blood rushing into his cheeks at the idea that he’d so casually spoken to her.
Trixie made another squeak.
“Now, are you coming, or not?” the apparent-goddess wanted to know.
Trixie was beyond speech, and simply nodded rapidly.
“Then move, girl.”
Trixie scurried across the room to follow the seeming-old woman through the door, hesitating only long enough to turn around and mouthe the words Oh, my God back at Jamie and Rob.
When Jamie managed to turn to face Rob, the slightly shorter man looked as though he’d seen a ghost, strangely pale under the cocoa color of his skin. A ghost, or a pagan deity made flesh. He looked up at Jamie.
“Bloody hell,” he rasped.
Jamie just nodded. He didn’t have the capacity for anything else.
All the many hours spent training combat meant very little, Bran discovered, when you moved from the training field to the battlefield. He’d thought he understood pain, blood, and death, but now had developed a completely different and much deeper appreciation for the path of Taranis. His hands had gone numb what felt like hours ago, or perhaps days, and the ache in his bones was now the only sensation that told Bran he was still among the breathing.
Blood clung to every pore, ran into his eyes, and weighed down his feet—not because he was soaked in it, but because the heaviness of each cut, each slice, each stab brought with it a leaden pendant that dragged him down into the mire of mud and blood that covered the ground and fed the feur òl, the drinking grass, so named because it would absorb whatever blood or sweat fell on its narrow blades.
The feur òl had drunk deep and well tonight. Too well.
Bran had killed before, but not with the almost reckless abandon that Taranis demanded in war. He had killed to defend himself and the Neach-Cogaidh. But to wade into a mist of blood and rage, wielding both sword and magic, with the express intent of causing as much damage as he could… that stole a part of his soul that Bran knew he would never recover.
And yet he could not stop the scythe-like swing of his blade, not without risking becoming the chaff swept aside and underfoot amidst the haze of battle. Sooner rather than later, he knew, he would falter, even with the cnàmh-droma an laoch. A misstep or a tired arm or a mis-deflected blow would force him down into the cold embrace of the blood-soaked earth.
But he didn’t fall when one foot snagged on a clump of earth or bone or flesh. It was a close thing, but he managed—barely—to drag his blade up to meet the swing of another weapon that flashed silver and gold and sunlight. He followed the parry with a strike from his other hand, a cloud of magic bearing pain and smoke that would clog his opponent’s lungs and burn away their vision. It was an ugly way to die, wracked by pain and blindness and thickening air.
If Bran still had the strength, he would have made it quicker, a clean death that was over in an instant of confusion or warmth, but he could only put so much into the spells, and they grew weaker and slower, and he knew that soon enough, they would only maim and not kill.
He grimaced as another heavy weapon impacted his blade, sending a shudder up his arm that caused his fingers to lose their grip. Another desperate spell, this one to block a second blow as his arm—the one he’d broken once already—hung nerveless from his shoulder.
It was the fourth blow that finally broke through the magic, sending him to his knees, then his chest and face, pressed into the trampled grass and mud.
Pain and noise dragged Bran back out of the darkness, and he was surprised to note that his mouth and nose were no longer blocked by churned-up earth, blood, and sweat. His whole ribcage felt as though it had been crushed, and one arm ached viciously, but he could breathe, and the smells were the familiar scents of fresh linens and the acrid tang of medicinal salves, although undercut with a current of blood and bile that one didn’t normally find in his sister’s infirmary.
Someone had dragged him back to the keep.
Bran forced his eyes open, and relief washed over him at the sight of Jamie’s broad back across the room as the halfbreed worked at something—Oh.
The something was a bodach, her small body tense as Jamie carefully and slowly stitched together a long and ragged wound on one thigh.
Bran blinked. He knew better than to interrupt—distracting Jamie would almost certainly result in him accidentally causing the bodach pain or further injury, and Jamie would never forgive himself, even if it were an accident. So Bran stayed silent, watching with surprise at the steady and even stitches Jamie put into the bodach’s flesh. Although Jamie certainly hadn’t shown any squeamishness around Bran’s injuries, Bran had not expected him to have such a steady hand while putting needle into flesh.
Jamie was almost done when Bran realized that the bodach was breathing easier, her muscles less tense and her face less twisted in pain. And then he sucked in a sharp breath, because that meant that—somehow—Jamie had been healing her while doing his stitches.
Weaving witch.
But an ordinary weaving witch couldn’t heal with a handful of stitches—they could imbue magic into thread and fabric, but what Jamie had been doing was healing magic.
“He’s something, your Jamie,” Maigdeann’s soft voice murmured beside him. Bran carefully turned his head to see his sister—looking exhausted, her skin pale and dry—smiling softly in Jamie’s direction.
Bran licked his lips, wetting them before trying to speak. “Aye,” he agreed roughly, his voice as soft as hers.
“Your draught worked, Branndaidh,” Maigdeann said softly, using his childhood nickname, one hand gently resting on his shoulder. It took him a moment to process what she’d said.
“Athair?” he asked, unable to keep the hopefulness out of his voice.
“Recovering,” she replied, her lips turning upward.
“Praise Habetrot,” he breathed.
A few moments passed, then his sister spoke again. “You dinna ask if it worked on Cuileann mac Eug,” she said.
Bran felt the world shift, even though nothing moved and he lay still in the bed. Cuileann mac Eug had been bed-bound for longer than Bran had been alive—longer even than their eldest brother, Feur. Some of the eldest members of the Court of Shades remembered a time when Cuileann mac Eug had walked its halls instead of lying prone in state, his rasping breath the only indication that he still lived.
“Maigs?” he whispered.
This smile was wider, and Maigdeann’s blue eyes were filled with tears. “His eyes are as green as yours,” she whispered, and Bran felt them flood with tears of relief.
The King of the Sluagh lived.
Chapter
Fifty
Jamie wasn’t sure whether kissing Bran or killing him was the more appropriate option, although he supposed that killing him would have been counterproductive, since the reason Jamie was so frustrated was at Bran’s seeming determination to get himself killed. When Iolair had carried Bran—bloody and unconscious—into the infirmary, Jamie had nearly passed out, only willpower keeping him on his feet as he’d taken Bran’s too-still and too-bloody form from his brother’s arms.
Maigdeann had immediately swept over, her fingers already shimmering with healing magic, and had forced Jamie to first put Bran down on one of the empty beds and then step away. The injuries to Bran’s body hadn’t required stitches—his arm appeared to be broken (again), and he’d been struck repeatedly by something very large and very blunt which had left his whole ribcage a misshapen mottle of bruise and bloody scraped skin.
If he’d been human, Jamie thought, it would have been much worse—or, rather, if he’d been in the human realm. Modern medicine was a far cry from the medieval methods they were using here, but the fae had something human medicine couldn’t hope to match. Maigdeann and Eadar’s healing abilities were able to knit flesh and bone—at least to a degree. Jamie was seeing the limitations of magic as well as its miraculous capabilities. Both healers—and their apprentices—looked wan and pale, and not only because of inhumanly fair skin. Eadar’s golden skin had a greyish cast, and Maigdeann was vague shade of grey-green that could not possibly be healthy. Both had creases around their mouths and dark circles under their eyes that were apparently universal signs of exhaustion, whether fae or human.
Jamie tried to do everything they asked of him, if only to help alleviate the load. Rob and Trixie, too—once Trixie returned from having administered the draught to the Holly King, something she’d seemed in a trance about for a good hour or so afterward—were doing their best to be of use, but there was only so much two ordinary humans and one mostly-ordinary halfbreed could do.
