Sisters of the Fire Read online

  Nine

  Rose passed five long days sitting by Heath’s wordless, sick body. Steam filled Yldra’s tiny house. The older woman said that bloody shadows had pooled in Heath’s lungs and the only way to get them out was time and moisture. The steam was infused with hyssop, hollyhock, and burdock root, lending the room an unpleasantly sweet organic smell, like broken roots and mud and crushed flowers. Yldra had brought his fever down with a potion of snapdragon and bugloss that she mixed into wine with mashed garlic. Heath could only manage a sip or two at a time, in between long sleeps punctuated by violent coughing fits that left him blue with breathlessness.

  ‘He hasn’t died yet, so he probably won’t,’ Yldra had said in an abrupt tone that morning before she took Linden walking out on the moors, looking for a particular kind of moss that only grew at high altitudes.

  Keeping Linden away from the sick room had proved challenging. Once Rose had found him standing over Heath, looking at him with an expression that was curious but not empathetic, as Heath slept on with rattling breaths, and she wondered how she could explain who this thin man was to her son. After what Cardew had told her, she could hardly explain him to herself. But warm pleasant weather had been on Rose’s side, and Linden had been happy enough to accompany her or Yldra on expeditions that left his little legs aching so much that he slept long and hard from early evening right through until morning.

  Rose sat in the quiet room and watched and waited. Cardew had headed home after eliciting a promise from her to send word if Heath recovered. Hours passed. Rose brought more water for the pot, emptied more of Yldra’s infusion into it, watched him sleep, watched him wake wracked by coughs. Felt his hand creep out to flop weakly onto her knee. She rubbed his wrist. ‘I’m here,’ she said, over and over. And although he couldn’t speak, she knew he was comforted by her words.

  Sometime around the middle of the fifth day, when Rose’s stomach was starting to rumble with hunger and she considered how she might get some mashed stew into Heath’s mouth without making him cough himself inside out, his weak hand on her knee became a more insistent tap.

  ‘Heath?’ she asked, pulling herself back from the thoughts she was lost in to regard his sunken face.

  He pawed at his mouth.

  ‘Water?’ she asked.

  ‘Water,’ he managed, the first word he had said whole since she had first found him at Cardew’s. To hear his voice electrified her heart. Despite its frailty, it sounded like him: a voice she hadn’t heard in nearly four years. Memories and sadness tumbled through her.

  She rose and fetched him a cup of water and helped him half sit so that he could sip it. The first gulp set off a violent coughing fit, and most of it ended up in Rose’s lap. He said sorry with his fingers against her sleeve, and indicated she should try again.

  He drank. Stopped and breathed. Drank.

  ‘Your medicine,’ she said, when he had managed the whole cup of water.

  He nodded and lay back down as he waited for her to find the right potion from Yldra’s shelves, then rested in her arms again – so thin – while he took a deep draught of it. Then he nodded and settled on his back, looking at her.

  Rose returned the cork to the little stone bottle and put it aside, fixing him with her gaze. ‘You spoke,’ she said.

  He nodded, then said breathily, ‘My Rose.’

  A smile overtook her face and warmth flushed her cheeks. ‘How wonderful it is to hear your voice. But you must continue to rest. Yldra says you are getting better, but very slowly. Do you feel better?’

  He nodded once, then the coughs wracked him again and she stroked his hair away from his forehead and settled him once again among the blankets and told him he mustn’t try to communicate more. He lay, gazing up at her, a great sadness in his eyes.

  ‘You …’ he said, gesturing weakly with his hands. ‘You talk. How is Rose?’

  ‘Rose is … I’m well and happy, all things considered, and …’ She couldn’t bring herself to tell him about Linden. Not yet. ‘I miss Rowan.’ But now they had spoken of Rowan, she couldn’t resist asking Heath for confirmation of what Cardew had said. ‘Is it true?’ she asked softly. ‘The story Cardew told?’

  He nodded, sighed, and opened his mouth to speak.

  ‘No, no, don’t speak,’ she said. ‘Rest. When you are well again … we will talk at length then.’

  He hadn’t the strength to nod again, but closed his eyes and tried to breathe over the shadows in his chest. Rose watched him a while, then closed her own eyes to sift through what Cardew had told her.

  Heath’s provenance had always been a mystery. Wengest’s sister had taken a Ærfolc lover. ‘It was the kind of thing she would do, just to annoy my father,’ Wengest had always said. Now she was long dead, but Heath’s father remained unknown. According to Cardew, though, he had not been a servant of no consequence, as Wengest had suspected. He had been the Wood King, Connacht of the West, warlord druid of a Ærfolc tribe in southern Bradsey, who had been working for many years to unite all of the Ærfolc under one banner in order to take back some of the land that had once belonged to them. When illness had fallen upon him, he charged his followers to look for his heir.

  ‘Connacht was both strong in battle and strong in the sight. He could have been an undermagician, but he loved the company of his kinsfolk too dearly,’ Cardew had explained. ‘Six feet tall he stood, and broad of brow. Often he wore the antlers of the great hunter and told mysteries and prophecies at the full moon. He declared that his heir, blood of his blood, would be marked by the same combination of war and magic as he was.

  ‘I was part of the band that sought out Heath. We took with us an old seeress who found him on a farm on the northern border. He looked as surprised as you, Rose, when we told him of his great lineage. It took us many weeks to convince him to accompany us to Connacht’s encampment. But finally he did.

  ‘Father and son were reunited in the grim little wooden hut where Connacht was weakening daily. This is how low our people have been brought, when our great chieftans die in dark places. Heath sat by his side and reminded Connacht of his mother, by name and description. Connacht remembered her fondly, remembered a love affair as passionate as it was doomed, for she was of Netelchester and he was of the woods. With his dying breaths, Connacht declared Heath his son and heir.’

  Here, Cardew had fallen silent a few moments, as they made their way slowly up onto the moors via overgrown roads, passing rocky formations that looked as though they had been built by giants.

  ‘You know Heath,’ he’d said at last. ‘He is strong in battle, but he has no sight. He worked hard to understand his dead father’s plans, to continue bringing the tribes together at counsel, but it took only a few months for the tribes to look to him and find him wanting. No horns at the full moon. No mysteries and prophecies. A good man, yes, but ultimately only a man.

  ‘For my own part, and that of my kinsfolk, we were prepared to wait to see if those other aspects would develop. But the tribes began to splinter again, until the same old seer who had found him dreamed that Heath had a daughter of war and magic, and that she was Connacht’s true heir. Heath reluctantly admitted she existed but that he didn’t know where, and she had no idea he was her father. But excitement grew among the Ærfolc, and they have been looking for her ever since, despite Heath’s pleas to leave her be. Blood of the Ærfolc, granddaughter of the most powerful kingdom in Thyrsland, Ælmesse. They call her the Little Queen.’

  Rose’s daughter. Rowan.

  Rose sat quietly as the afternoon light changed, sending yellow splinters through the shutters so that the steam in the room was visible and ghostly. Rowan was too young to be a warrior, but she suspected Bluebell had long hoped she would become one. And did Rowan have the sight? Rose had seen no evidence of it, but Rose hadn’t been in the company of her child in four years. Rowan’s aunt Ash and great-aunt Yldra had both taken the path of undermagic; even Rose herself had sometimes felt glimmers of something tha
t couldn’t be explained with the senses most people used to ground themselves in the world.

  And most persuasively: sometimes, late at night, Rose woke and was sure she felt Rowan in the bed with her, breathing soft and warm against her back. She would turn and see nothing, but still the strong sense her daughter was close – had always been close – persisted.

  The door flew open, and Yldra and Linden entered. Linden held a large basket of plants and Yldra limped along beside him, her hand on his shoulder as it often was, either for added support or protectively or both. Nobody had to tell Linden to be quiet because he was always quiet. He placed the basket by the hearth and approached Rose to give her a kiss. Then he stood a little while looking down at Heath, that same look of passive curiosity on his face.

  ‘How is our patient?’ Yldra said in a soft voice, joining them.

  ‘He spoke,’ Rose said. ‘Not much, but he said he is starting to feel better.’

  ‘Of course he is,’ Yldra said with a prideful sniff. ‘Come on, Linden. Let’s fetch more water for the steam pot.’

  Yldra moved away, but Linden stayed a moment, looking at Heath. Then Heath opened his eyes and saw the boy, saw Rose’s hand around his soft wrist, and his eyes flickered with understanding. Tears pricked at Rose’s eyes.

  ‘Linden, come,’ Yldra repeated.

  Linden turned and walked away. The door closed behind them.

  ‘The boy,’ Heath managed.

  Rose’s tears fell freely. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Wengest,’ he said. ‘The boy is his.’

  Rose nodded. The likeness was unmistakable. Wengest when he was clean-shaven, which was rarely, had a distinctive cleft to his chin. Linden also. ‘I must have been pregnant last time you and I were … together. I didn’t know. I wasn’t sick … I didn’t count my courses because we were travelling. We were –’

  Heath tapped her knee with his fingers. ‘Nothing to explain,’ he said breathlessly, then began to cough.

  Rose had believed Wengest infertile, and perhaps he was most of the time. But somehow one tenacious seed had survived its journey to her womb. Somehow she had done in exile what she could never do while living the life of queen of Netelchester: produce a true, male heir to the kingdom.

  ‘He can’t ever know,’ Rose whispered. ‘Wengest will take him from me.’

  Heath tried to talk but couldn’t, but Rose knew what he would say. Wengest might have you back. Wengest needed a male heir almost as much as he needed to breathe. He had ambitious kin; his grip on Netelchester was not as firm as he would wish. A son, especially a son by the bloodline of Ælmesse, was the end of all his troubles.

  The troubles of kings, always circumscribing her. Rose knew her true destiny was never to be anyone special, but to continue to produce special children for other special people. Little more than a broodmare.

  ‘He’s not taking my son and he’s not taking me,’ Rose said, under her breath.

  Heath didn’t reply, but she knew he understood by the brush of his knuckles across her hand. She grasped his fingers and pressed her face against them, and told herself to breathe.

  Skalmir knew it was too late, that Rowan had already seen the grim corpse of Lang on their front path, but he still covered her eyes with his hand as he carried her past the body and down to the road. Rowan wore a little moleskin backpack that he had hastily stuffed with clothes for her. She clutched in her right hand her bow and quiver; she had refused to leave Skalmir’s house without it. But leave she must, and immediately.

  As he reached the road, he noticed the drag marks through leaves and mud. Lang had not died on their front path. He had been killed in the forest then dragged back there, as a warning to Skalmir, no doubt. Lang hadn’t died on watch: he’d died while hunting the woodlanders.

  Rowan began to squirm. ‘I can walk myself,’ she said.

  He set her down, facing her shoulders firmly forwards. ‘Walk fast, don’t look back,’ he said.

  She did as she was told. The morning was still cool and dewy. Bird calls in the trees sounded too ordinary and too sweet. Skalmir’s field of vision seemed bright with fierce vigilance. Every movement, every sound was a potential threat. He kept a hand on Rowan’s shoulder, even when she tried to shrug it off.

  ‘Who did that to him?’ she kept saying. ‘Who would kill Lang? Lang was a nice man. I know he looked fierce, but he saved that baby bird with me. Why would anyone kill him?’

  Skalmir didn’t answer, just kept urging her on. To the village, to Sister Julian and safety.

  ‘Snowy, why aren’t you answering me?’

  ‘Because I don’t know, Rowan. And that’s why you have to go stay with Sister Julian until I can find out, and make sure you are safe.’

  ‘How long will I have to stay?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Sister Julian is very boring. She won’t let me shoot my bow.’

  ‘Rowan!’ he boomed. ‘Keep walking.’

  She dissolved into tears, but kept walking nonetheless. The road curved away from the house and he was glad. The grisly sight was behind them for now. The further out of the forest they drew, the more his shoulders relaxed. Rowan sniffled and dragged her feet, but it would be all right. She was out of the woods and the woodlanders wouldn’t dare to go to the village. Would they?

  Should he take her further south, all the way to Withing? Or even back to Folcenham so her father’s full retinue could keep her safe? How was he to make that decision with his head and not his heart?

  ‘Skalmir?’ Rowan said in a little voice, disrupting his thoughts.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are you angry?’

  ‘I’m angry at whoever did that to Lang.’

  ‘Are you angry with me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is it my fault? Is it my fault he died?’

  ‘How could it be your fault?’

  ‘Because I talked to those people … were they bad people?’

  Skalmir didn’t know how to answer. In all likelihood, they were protecting themselves when they killed Lang. Wengest had radically underestimated them. ‘All I know is I need to keep you a long way away from them.’

  ‘Will I have to stay a long way away from you?’

  His heart squeezed. ‘Perhaps, Rowan. I can’t make that decision. I have to send a message to your father.’

  ‘They knew about the singing tree,’ she said, setting her little jaw. ‘I’m sure the singing tree isn’t bad.’

  He stopped and pulled her in front of him, bending so his eyes were level with hers, a hand firmly on each arm. ‘You must put the singing tree out of your mind. It would be dangerous for you to try to find it, do you understand?’

  ‘Ow, Snowy, you’re hurting my arms.’

  ‘Tell me you understand. Rowan, tell me.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, I understand. Then it was my fault. I went with them that day and they came back and Lang got arrows in his eyes.’ Her bottom lip began to shake and he pulled her against him and held her and inhaled her sweet scent, wondering if it would be the last time.

  Then he stood. ‘Let’s keep moving,’ he said.

  ‘Whoever killed him was a good shot,’ she said, and the words seemed so cold after the warm embrace that he shivered.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘They were.’

  He had never been so grateful to see the village. They met Sister Julian just outside her painted front door, as she was leaving to come to the woods.

  ‘Rowan?’ she said, startled, as the little girl ran to her and started crying into her skirt.

  Skalmir approached. As always, Julian looked slightly alarmed by his presence.

  ‘Can Rowan stay with you?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course. Why? What has happened?’

  ‘Lang is dead!’ Rowan cried.

  ‘Murdered and left on our doorstep,’ Skalmir muttered. ‘It’s not safe for Rowan there.’

  ‘What makes you think it’s safe for her here?’ Julian asked.
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  ‘I don’t think they’ll come to the village.’

  ‘And what if you think wrong?’

  He nodded. ‘I understand. I’ll hire a standing guard for a few days, until I hear from Wengest.’

  ‘More guardsmen?’ Rowan asked, turning her tearstained face to him. ‘They’ll get arrows in their eyes too!’

  Sister Julian’s face went white.

  Skalmir put a hand on Rowan’s shoulder, but addressed his words to Julian. ‘They didn’t come for him,’ he said. ‘They killed him in the woods. He went after them first.’

  ‘Do you intend that to give me comfort?’

  ‘Sister Julian, you know she can’t stay in the woods with me.’

  Julian nodded, her eyes falling on Rowan. ‘You’ll have to share my bed,’ she said with a little smile. ‘I have terribly cold feet, I should warn you.’

  Rowan blinked back tears. ‘Then we will have to make you some socks.’

  Julian indicated her bow and arrow. ‘You go on in, but leave those dirty things outside the back window. I’ll be inside in a few moments.’

  Rowan went inside and Julian pulled the door closed so she and Skalmir could speak without her hearing.

  ‘What do they want?’ she asked him.

  ‘Rowan,’ he said simply. ‘But they aren’t going to get her. I’ll send a message to Wengest and –’

  Sister Julian was shaking her head. ‘I love and honour my king,’ she said, her voice low and urgent, ‘but you have told him once of this threat and he went about resolving it the wrong way. You and I both know who you should send that message to.’ Her mouth turned down at the corners, as though the words tasted sour.

  Sister Julian was right. He needed to summon Bluebell.

  Skalmir spent the day in the village, settling Rowan in, finding and employing two watchmen to alternate shifts, sending an express message to Bluebell: he had no idea where she was so he scattered it out to Blicstowe, Fifelham and Merkhinton. Somebody somewhere would bump it along to where she had last been seen. It was a simple message: Snowy. Nether Weald. Urgent.