Vengeance: The Umbra Chronicles Book 1 Page 5

  I would have danced a jig, but Darragh was busy beating the crap out of me for being so careless. The next attempt was due a week after that ‒ it seemed an even longer week than the first, because now I had to heal from my injuries.

  Caradoc’s response… it nearly made the beating worth it. I was curled up on my cinder-pile, my feathered net of hair wrapped around myself while I slipped in and out of consciousness. Out of consciousness was far preferable to being awake. I was lucky I hadn’t ambushed Darragh on an upper storey or I would have died on the stairs. As it was, it was all I could do to drag my sorry, broken bones to the fireside. Even though the embers were still glowing, I couldn’t stop shivering.

  I heard Caradoc before I saw him. ‘Hey!’ he called in a low whisper. ‘Hey, how’d it go?’

  I wanted to say, ‘It was a complete success! Only one more to go! And what a pleasant evening, my dear!’ but all that came out was ‘Guh.’ Oh, to laugh.

  ‘Emer?’ He knelt down beside me and put a hand on my shoulder to turn me over. ‘Are you mad at me again?’

  I didn’t say ‘Guh’ this time. It was a scream that became a whimper as it forced its way through my broken jaw.

  ‘Emer!’

  It was pitch black in the kitchen, save for the glow of the embers that didn’t cast much light beyond the fire guard. He couldn’t see me. I couldn’t see him so well, either, through my swollen eyes. I wasn’t even sure I still had two eyes. I’d felt something pop, but that could have been my cheekbone. See how brave I am?

  I heard Caradoc retch when he saw my face, heard him swear in earnest like I’d never heard him swear before. He dropped his cloak over me and tucked his arms under me. I wasn’t conscious after that, when he transported me to his room, holding me in arms that shook violently.

  He laid me on the bed. It was the first time I’d lain in a bed for what seemed like a hundred years. He cried a word aloud, and beyond my closed eyelids, a light flared to illuminate the room.

  ‘In the name of Umbra, Emer,’ Caradoc said next, laying a trembling hand on mine ‒ one of the few patches of unbroken skin, ‘I swear I will kill that man for doing this to you.’

  Don’t swear, I wanted to say. If you start threatening vengeance on every man who has ever hurt me you might never stop. Again, this came out as ‘Guh.’

  ‘In Umbra’s name,’ Caradoc repeated, and I felt a kiss on my fingers.

  By the time I woke up again, it was nearly dawn. I felt like… like I didn’t feel too bad. I was a bit sore, but I’ve woken up worse some days simply by sleeping wrong.

  I opened my eyes and it took me a minute to realise that not only could I open them, but there were two. I looked around and saw Caradoc asleep on the bed next to me. I moved around on the bed a little. Nothing broken. That was new. I opened my mouth and my whole jawbone didn’t shatter into splinters. Caradoc must have been up all night to have healed me like this ‒ and he must be a powerful mage just to heal like this at all.

  He stirred shortly after I moved. He woke quickly, wide awake immediately and looked at me. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘I can speak in words now,’ I told him proudly and felt downright delighted when he laughed. He sobered quickly, though.

  ‘Was it Darragh who did it?’

  ‘Darragh.’ I nodded, mostly because I could. ‘I threw dust in his face, so I deserved it. After all, I’m only a featherskin.’ I’d meant to be facetious, because my ego has never really been in serious danger, but he took me seriously. And maybe, somewhere deep inside that I didn’t want to look, maybe I meant them, too. He rose up on one arm and leaned over me.

  ‘Don’t ever let me hear you talk about yourself like that again. The words we use to ourselves are powerful. You have to respect them or they’ll break you.’

  I looked at him a little closer. Maybe he wasn’t as shallow as I’d thought, if he could think thoughts like that. ‘I will,’ I said quietly.

  He examined me then, looking at me closely through the feathers. ‘I thought you were going to die,’ he whispered, as though to say the words out loud gave them power, too. ‘I thought he’d killed you.’

  ‘Here I am.’ I wanted to reach up and touch his face where the stubble pushed through the skin, but I didn’t because I was only a featherskin. The word sounded in my head like a bell until I couldn’t hear anything else. Caradoc was right. The words we use to describe ourselves are powerful, but I’d never admit to anyone what words sounded in the silence of my own mind when he was near me.

  He was still looking at me. ‘Yes, you’re here,’ he repeated. He was focused on my face: my eyes, my lips, as though he couldn’t look away and I was glad I was lying down because I was weak with longing. His hand brushed the feathers on my cheek.

  I was sure he was going to kiss me. I was sure he was going to kiss me. He lowered his head, but he didn’t kiss me. He dropped his head to my shoulder and hid his face there. For a dozen long moments, I felt him weep and it broke my heart. I put one arm around his shoulders and let my other hand slip into his wild hair. I felt like I was cradling a child, and yet very much a man. I felt an almost unbearable tenderness flood through me, and in that moment I would have given him anything.

  When he lifted his head his eyes were wet, but he was fully in control of himself. He’d stopped crying and he wasn’t going to kiss me anymore. ‘I’ll have to take you back,’ he said.

  I nodded. ‘What if someone notices I’m not injured or dead?’

  ‘Did anyone but Darragh know you were injured?’

  ‘Of course.’ I was a little affronted. ‘Servants might be invisible to you, but we do exist you know. Probably ten servants stepped over me as I crawled back to the kitchen. A dozen more complained about having me get in the way of their work.’

  ‘Are you exaggerating again?’

  ‘No! OK, fine, I do exaggerate ‒ a bit, mind ‒ but I’m not now. People get pretty cranky when they’re busy and you’re in the way.’ I shrugged and worded this next part carefully. ‘As far as they’re concerned, I’m only a featherskin, and I was in the way. What do you suppose they thought was more important?’

  He looked shocked ‒ more than shocked; horrified. He sat up. ‘You can’t go back there,’ he stated.

  ‘Where else am I supposed to go, hero? I can’t exactly go away to the beach for a week.’ I put a hand on his arm. ‘Don’t get so wound up. I’ll hide in a corner of the still room for today and I’ll crawl out, bit by it, over the next few days until they start to complain that the sweeping hasn’t been done and cranky Caradoc has no fresh rushes on his floor. No one will notice if I’m slow and careful. As long as I’m out of the way, no one will care.’

  ‘I’ll care.’ He’d spoken quickly, faster than he’d planned, as though the words were instinctive and I knew I’d remember that moment for the rest of my life, no matter what followed.

  I held out my arms to him. ‘Take me back to my cinder- pile in the kitchen, hero, and I’ll enjoy my week at the beach.’

  I’d expected him to reach for the travelling cloak that was thrown over the foot of the bed, but he was a more powerful mage than I’d realised. He put his arms carefully around me and in the next minute we were back to the kitchen. The embers were cold and dark now.

  ‘Be safe,’ Caradoc urged. ‘If anything happens ‒ anything ‒ call out to me and I’ll come straight to you. Promise me.’

  I promised, obedient as I’d never been obedient in my life. He looked at me closely for a moment then disappeared.

  Chapter Six

  I thought Caradoc was going to kill Darragh that very day. I was afraid he might and ruin all the work he’d done in seeking freedom for the Camiri, just for my sake. When I crawled out of the still room, I learned that Darragh was gone. He’d travelled back to Cairnagorn to attend to Librarian business.

  I was working in the stables when Aine’s betrothed and his squire arrived. Whoever decided that the best jobs for a featherskin were the most dirty, mos
t smelly jobs in the castle had a lot to answer for. Feathers pick up odours like nobody’s business and bathing was so uncomfortable that I avoided it unless I could manage to step aside in the rain and ruffle my fingers under the feathers.

  A knight rode into the yard. Distantly, I heard him announce that he was at the service of princess Aine.

  Caradoc was with me in the stables. He insisted on caring for his own horse, and it was sheer coincidence that he was always in the stables when I was. We chatted, our heads popping over the dividers between the stalls occasionally. Though why he wanted to look at me, I didn’t know.

  The knight dismounted in the yard and clanked his way towards the castle. His squire dismounted the pony he was riding and led the pony and his master’s steed into the stables. He was only about twelve, a boy who already had an unmistakable look of anger in his eyes and bitterness around his mouth.

  It was Maldwyn.

  He didn’t see me, and walked straight past Caradoc, but I couldn’t help my reaction. I gasped and fell backwards into the straw. I flung the pitchfork away from me like it burned my hand. I made a thud when I hit the back of the stable and pressed my back against it as hard as I could.

  Caradoc looked around the corner of the stall. ‘What is it?’ he demanded when he saw me huddled in the straw.

  I just stared at him, literally unable to speak. He shocked me when he grabbed the side of the stall and gave it a shove. ‘Emer, tell me!’ he shouted.

  I drew up my legs underneath me. ‘It was nothing,’ I whispered. I closed my eyes tightly and turned my face until I felt the press of the stone wall against my cheek. I wished I was anywhere else in the world. I cried out when I felt hands on my arms.

  ‘No!’ I cried. And I kept saying it. ‘No! No, no, no, no.’ I wasn’t paralysed. I’d opened my eyes. I wasn’t blind. I could see Caradoc, but I almost didn’t recognise him. All I knew was that he wasn’t a threat, but I couldn’t stop myself from that terrified repetition of ‘No, no, no, no,’ while my legs pushed into the straw beneath me, trying to push myself through the wall behind me. Just, ‘No, no, no, no, no.’

  I clapped my hand over my own babbling mouth to hold in the words and every atrocious memory they stood for. I closed my eyes, because I knew it was Caradoc and I knew I was safe. His hands were so gentle on my arms, smoothing down the feathers like he was stroking a bird.

  I finally stopped talking, stopped the flow of words anyway. Caradoc kept stroking his hands down my arms. And then ‒ more surprised than I was by the wild rush of fear ‒ I started to cry.

  And Caradoc was magnificent. He let me lean against him in all my stinking, feathered horror, gave me kind words and gentle touches until the tears stopped.

  While my face was still hidden against his shoulder he asked again, with deceptive softness, ‘What is it, Emer?’

  I had spent my life lying about practically everything. Every year a new name, a new parent, a new home. Pretending that our year with Maldwyn never happened, afraid that if I told the truth that the world would end. I even deceived Caradoc, although I hadn’t meant to. I’d had enough of secrets and lies. I had to tell the truth to someone, and Caradoc was right in front of me.

  ‘I’m from the future,’ I said, simple, as though that fact could ever be simple. ‘I came through a Portal into the past, to now. That boy who just walked past, I knew him years ago, when I was fourteen and he was a grown man.’

  And just like that the moment of truth was gone. I still hadn’t looked up. I pressed my face closer into Caradoc’s shoulder and skipped over so much history, it might as well have been a lie. ‘My twin sister was taken from me. She’s in danger. The White Queen has her and she is as cruel as winter. I have to get back to my Sparrow. I’m so afraid for her I can’t bear it.’

  Poor Caradoc. He was built for battle, not for existential angst. He still patted my back, but absently like he was trying to work it all out. Finally, he said, ‘Where is your sister now?’

  I gulped back the last tear and patted his shoulder before I lifted my head. ‘She isn’t born yet,’ I said. ‘Neither am I. We were born after the Ruin of Cairnagorn.’ As though that mattered.

  ‘How are you going to get back to her? Are you just going to wait until it happens again? Until you’re older?’ I looked into his eyes for a moment and I was never so tempted. Caradoc would wait with me, if I asked him. I knew it as sure as I knew that the sun would rise in the morning. I could have my whole life here, happy, even if I was covered in feathers. But then I thought of Elisabeth, at the mercy of the White Queen and I shook my head.

  ‘She’s my sister,’ I said. ‘She’s the only thing I’ve ever had. Life is not life without her.’

  Caradoc blinked, like he was about to shed his own tears. He nodded. ‘I understand,’ he murmured, his voice very deep. I liked him even more for the compassion he was showing. ‘I’ll help you get back through the Portal. I can’t promise that you’ll make it ‒ the Portal is deep magic, only the Librarians know how to use it, and some people suspect that even they don’t know as much as they say they know. But I can promise you that I will do everything in my power to help you. If you don’t succeed, it won’t be for lack of my help.’

  He moved back and stood up. ‘We’d better get back to work,’ he said. I liked him more for pretending that ‘we’ both had to be hard at work. His life was in the lap of luxury now and I slept in a pile of rags. I finished cleaning out the stables and started to head back to the castle, Caradoc close behind.

  He stopped me at the door to the stables with a hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Wait a minute.’

  ‘What?’

  I turned around. The bucket of water hit me full in the face. While I was still standing there in shock, my arms out, even my fingers splayed, he hit me with another bucket of water. I brushed the worst of it off as quickly as I could, coughing and sputtering, but he’d thrown the water at me so hard that it had gone under my feathers. I hadn’t brushed myself so vigorously since I’d woken up in the featherskin and tried to pull the feathers out.

  ‘Come on, Emer,’ Caradoc said bracingly and I moved the drooping feathers away from my eyes to see him holding another bucket of water.

  ‘Oh, Caradoc,’ I moaned.

  ‘Come on. One more for a rinse.’

  He was being so nice about it that I’d nodded. I drew a deep breath to sigh as loudly as I could, so he knew what a sacrifice I was making and held up my arms.

  He tipped the bucket slowly this time and I was utterly saturated. I waited a moment, until I was soaked to the skin, and I shook myself like a wet dog and splattered Caradoc with every drop of water I could loose from my feathers.

  He just laughed.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Emer. I know you hate it, but believe me, you needed it!’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Now I have to go back and clean the fair princesses’ apartments. I can’t even go outside and lie on the grass until I dry off.’

  He caught my hand. ‘I wish you could,’ he said, softly, impulsively. ‘I wish we could both go and lie on the ground in the sun until your poor feathers dry out.’ That meant the world to me, so naturally, I pulled my hand away and ran back into the castle.

  I started the afternoon cleaning Aoife’s room. By the time I packed away her last set of underclothes we were on a first name basis, did she but know it. The woman was the messiest person I’d ever come across in my life. Sure, I’d never had more possessions than I could fit in a bag, but I was fairly certain that even if I had more junk than the average extended family, I wouldn’t have half of it on the floor and the other half in a heap on the bed.

  The door slammed open when I was putting clothes away. Aoife was still shouting at her maid when they came into the room. I hid in the dressing room beneath a pile of furs. Aoife was still in the bedroom, but Gwen came into the dressing room to get fresh clothes for her mistress. Her eyes went wide when she saw me.

  ‘You can’t be here!’ she cried, sho
uting and whispering at once.

  ‘Who else do you suppose cleans this mess up?’ I whispered back.

  Gwen crouched down. ‘But she isn’t going out again. She’ll see you.’

  ‘She’s got to eat some time,’ I replied. ‘I’ll sneak out when she goes down to dinner.’

  A bellow from the bedroom startled us both. ‘Gwen! I want my shawl!’ Aoife shouted. ‘Hurry up, you Camiri mutant!’

  The maid – Gwen – grabbed up a lace shawl so fine it put a cobweb to shame. ‘Don’t move a muscle,’ she urged. ‘I’ll set some supper aside for you if you don’t get caught.’ She hurried out, saying brightly, ‘Here we are, your Highness, your shawl. The finest lace in the land.’

  And I was under the furs.

  The princess bathed and snacked on exotic fruits that even sounded delicious. Eventually Gwen left, so Aoife could rest.

  I heard the Princess undress – heard the swish of garments as they fell to the floor where I would no doubt have to pick them up again. I heard the protest of a feather pillow as she lay down. I crept out of the pile of furs cautiously. I peeked my feathered head around the door of the dressing room and hastily drew it back again when I heard the door to the bedroom open. I thought at first it was Gwen coming back to check on her mistress, but the footsteps were heavy enough to belong to a man.

  ‘Took you long enough,’ Aoife drawled. I heard the bed creak as he sat down beside her, heard the thump as he pulled off his boots. I pressed myself up against the wall and battled tears for the second time today. I heard them kiss and I lost the battle. I was never going to be able to face Caradoc again.