Lady of weeds, p.26
Lady of Weeds, page 26
part #2 of Lady Series
“He could be imprisoned yet. He was never meant to come ashore, and I knew they took the ring as treason and abandonment. I knew that when we married. I accepted it, and there’s nothing I can do but wait for him.”
Enfys made an annoyed noise and said, “Waiting for a corpse or an abandoner! I always said it was foolish to be fond of you!”
“Nobody asked you to be fond of me!” Carys said, stung. “All I require of you is to buy a jewel or two for a very small price every now and then! I didn’t ask for your friendship!”
“Half gone to the sea already, and no good to the human world,” continued Enfys, as if she hadn’t spoken. “I warned Aled, too, for all the good it did. What’s the good of taking the time to befriend a creature with the sea in its blood? I was ever a foolish old woman.”
“Then we agree on one thing at least,” snapped Carys.
To her surprise, this retort made Enfys grin. “There’s more life to you these days,” she said. “Let the boy have his seat. He’s earned it.”
“It’s not something to be earned.”
“No,” agreed Enfys. “But let him have it anyway.”
“I doubt I could take it from him short of tipping him out of it,” Carys said sourly, her temper recovered. “I’ve no mind to go to the trouble.”
“That’s the spirit,” Enfys said encouragingly.
“I don’t excuse you for your mischief.”
“Well, Miss!” said Enfys immediately, “Nobody asked you to!”
Carys sent her a look of dislike, which Enfys returned with a crabbed, perversely gleeful one of her own, and they walked in silence for some time.
When the inn was in sight, Enfys asked abruptly, “What do they want with you, that pair? They’re not the sort to involve themselves with anyone without a reason.”
“Information, I think,” said Carys. “But they seem not to know how to ask everything they want to know. My feeling is that they want to know what they need to know, without letting me know what they want to know.”
“They don’t trust you?”
“Not with this. I’ve an idea it’s to do with the prince as much as Clovis Ma’s brother.”
Enfys considered this, and at last shook her head. “They were looking for a brother on a ship, but the prince arrived safely in the capital. There was some confusion about which ship he sailed by at the first; some report that he’d been seen on two different vessels. One of those vessels was lost at sea—the same one the brother came by—but the prince arrived safely for all that. If they’re looking for the one, surely they can’t be looking for the other.”
“Yes,” said Carys slowly, and yet she couldn’t help thinking it was a matter of both, and that there was much more to it than there seemed. Why else did Ma Yong Hwa continue to wander the shore when he knew his brother-in-law was dead? Why was his wife so little afflicted by that same knowledge? She added, “It seems a waste of time to have kept him in Eppa for so long—they knew the poor thing was likely to die or disappear, so why bother to put the poor waif through the training?”
Enfys sniffed. “Training, you say? A smattering of statecraft, a good grounding in two languages from countries he’ll never belong to properly, and raised in a peace-loving country that has to conscript military service to keep itself well enough stocked! They don’t even teach them about those on the shore. He was doomed from the beginning.”
A slight smile came and went on Carys’ face. If it came to that, not even the villagers really knew about the selkies. They whispered and gossiped, and tall tales were told when the fishermen got too drunk at a gathering or by the fire and family, but it was rare for anyone but the guardians of the shore to know the extent of the threat. It was why the role of guardian was so important: it was necessary to protect the selkies from the villagers as much as the fishermen from the selkies. The revenge of the selkies was swift and terrible, and as inevitable as the turning of the tide.
The fishermen, sensibly, tried to have as little to do with them as possible. Those who learnt about the selkies at sea were not likely to live to benefit from the experience.
“Still, it’s a shame,” she said. The half-Eppan prince couldn’t be much older than Eurion—far too young to be cut off from life. And yet, someone had tried to kill Eurion, too.
“The shame is the way our king orders his family,” Enfys said bluntly. “But if that Steele or whatever his nasty name is asks, I never said it!”
“You think Steele belongs to the royal guard?”
“One part of it, perhaps,” said Enfys. “The part that’s been going around murdering royal heirs to make the succession clearer.”
“The king must know.”
“The king is very well aware,” said Ma Yong Hwa’s voice. He greeted them with a bow from the gate at the inn, and there was an expression on his face that Carys couldn’t quite read. “As to whether or not he decides to do something about it—that is another matter.”
“I’ll make myself scarce, then,” Enfys said. Carys wasn’t sure if she was embarrassed at being caught out in her speech, or if she merely wished to distance herself from Carys and her remarks. “If you’ve done scolding, Miss!”
“I’ll return for Eurion later,” said Carys, smiling faintly. Of Ma Yong Hwa, she asked, “Is your wife within?”
“She waits for you in the garden.”
Carys frowned. “I didn’t tell her I was coming.”
“Perhaps—” he hesitated, then continued. “Perhaps you could make just a short visit today? My wife is weary.”
“I can go away,” Carys offered. She had no desire to tire out Clovis, who was seemed to be heavy-eyed at the best of times. “It was just that I wished to tell her that Eurion will come again to see her.”
“I see,” said Yong Hwa thoughtfully. “No, she wishes to see you. But for a short time, please.”
“Of course,” nodded Carys.
“If you go by the walk at the side, you can find her beneath the trees.”
“You’re for the seashore again?”
“I think not, today. There is someone I wish to see.”
Steele? wondered Carys, but she didn’t think so. She inclined her head to Ma Yong Hwa, who bowed in return and turned to go. She would have moved on, but he hesitated.
“In the village,” he said, “you should be careful with your words. There are some strangers these days, I think.”
He bowed again and was gone, and Carys was left wondering if the warning had been given because he didn’t wish rumours to spread, or if it had been given to prevent Carys coming afoul of the elder prince’s minions—or Steele.
Clovis Ma was where Carys had been told she would find her. The woman leaned back into the seat back with her eyes just barely open and a glazed look to them that said she saw nothing that passed in front of her, her hands folded on the small card table that had been set up in front of her. Beneath those rice-powder white hands were a couple of sheets of what looked like artists’ paper.
Carys hesitated before her, unsure whether to stay or go, then sat down on the same garden bench to await her awakening.
She had almost forgotten Clovis’ pale presence by the time there was a faint sigh and the shifting of skirts beside her. Carys glanced across at the other woman, and became uncomfortably aware of the woman’s pallid blue eyes resting on her.
“You’ve been waiting,” Clovis said, in the veriest thread of a voice. “I saw you but couldn’t come to greet you.”
“There was no need,” Carys said. She wasn’t sure quite what she was excusing, since they were sitting beside each other, and Clovis Ma had not needed to come and greet her, but the phrase came instinctively to her lips.
“I have something for you.”
Carys frowned a little. “I came to tell you that Eurion will meet with you again soon. There’s no need to give me anything. I won’t keep you long; I think you’re tired.”
“Yes,” said Clovis. “I asked my husband to leave me out here so that you could tell me.”
Faintly amused, Carys said, “I see. Did you see me from your window?”
“No,” the woman said, serenely. “These are for you. One is quite old; I don’t know who it is. The other is your Eurion.”
She turned the papers over as she spoke, and Carys looked down at them instinctively. Charcoal on paper, they were drawings that were done by a master hand, sweeping with lines of the sea that slipped through serried edges of jagged rock. And in the centre of each there was a human figure: one, golden-haired, held captive by the slick, sharp-toothed selkies in their seal form, and the other, dark-haired and open-eyed, ensconced in a grand throne with bound limbs, the water thick with bulbous-eyed seals.
“What are these?” asked Carys calmly, though the distant feeling of waves swelling touched the edges of her consciousness.
“This one,” said Clovis Ma, touching one delicate finger to the first drawing, “was from a dream I had about ten years ago. This one I dreamed but a few weeks ago.”
“What do you mean, dreamed?” Carys demanded, and now there was a harshness to her voice. The drawings couldn’t be true—it wasn’t possible for them to be true. People didn’t dream in truths that they hadn’t seen for themselves.
And yet, there on paper was her husband, eyes open and sightless, limbs as limp as the dark hair that wafted around him. The pale suggestion of a skull showed beneath his face, as though he had been there an impossibly long time, held together by magic and the embrace of the ocean.
Swallowing, Carys looked away from it to look at the other, and there was Eurion; pale as death, eyes closed, his hair streaming down into his eyes as he was lifted toward the surface by his clothing, selkies crowding every side of him.
Clovis Ma said simply, “I dream. And those dreams are the truth of what is outside while I can’t walk to see it with my own eyes.”
“Say that’s possible,” Carys said, conscious of her breathing and the hardness of the garden seat beneath her. It wasn’t possible, but perhaps impossible things were possible in Eppa. She lifted the drawing of her husband. “Then what did you dream to draw this?”
“I have no memory of that. I drew it for a reason, but I can’t remember why. This one,” her finger rested on the drawing of unconscious Eurion again, “I remember. That dream was interrupted, so I drew the last thing I saw. I remembered the other drawing when I was considering if I should give this one to you. You knew that man?”
“He wasn’t a man,” said Carys quietly. “Not exactly. But at that time, he was. I knew him.”
“Then you may have them,” Mistress Ma said. “I would have given them to you sooner if I’d known.”
“When you speak with Eurion, do everything you can to get those memories,” said Carys. She folded the drawings rather numbly and slid them into her pocket, too many thoughts in her mind to be acknowledged each alone. But at the top of them all was the icily certain knowledge that her husband was dead, his body suffused in blue and green waves and kept as a warning to other selkies who might dream of a life above the waves. Just below that thought was the jarring one that her husband’s face had grown unfamiliar: a loved, lost thing that was no longer vital or real enough to be grasped.
“Eurion can’t stay with me,” she said huskily. “It’s no longer safe for him.”
“We’ll get the memories,” said Clovis Ma, and there was a strange obstinacy to those pale eyes. “You see, none of us can do without them. I have to go now. I’m sorry.”
Carys murmured her farewells, but the woman was already gone. Eyes wide and glassy, her skin so pale it was nearly translucent, she dreamed impossible dreams. Caught in the cold, heavy, real world, Carys stood rather uncertainly and turned toward Enfys’ cottage and Eurion, seeking warmth.
She drew near to the new annex as Eurion came out, ignoring the fluttering shadow that must have been Enfys at the window of the shop as she passed. It was necessary to tell Eurion that she was going, and that he could follow when he was finished. There was no need to do anything else.
But Eurion dropped his trowel and stripped off his apron, striding toward her. “Carys?”
“I’ll go back alone if you’re not finished,” Carys began to say, but she got no further before he wrapped his arms around her, warm and close, hair tickling her cheek.
“What did she do to you?” he demanded. “You’ve gone all cold again! I’d just got you warm and now she’s hurt you again!”
“She did me a kindness,” Carys said, with the weight of those drawings in her pocket, but she didn’t push Eurion away. Perhaps her right arm curled around his waist in return, but Carys was only truly aware of the warmth and the steady in and out of Eurion’s breath.
Then, something wriggled against her neck; a small, whiskered thing.
The sand otter was still in his pocket.
Carys laughed, surprising herself, and pulled away. “It’s still alive?”
“Yes,” said Eurion, sighing a little. “Are you sure you’re all right, Lady?”
“Quite sure,” she said. And somehow, she was. There was the deep ache of old pain in her chest, but it wasn’t raw and sharp as it had once been. In the lightness of that realisation, she said, “If you’re not finished, I’ll have tea with Enfys and wait for you.”
Eurion tilted his head at her, then smiled brilliantly. “Really, Lady?”
“No, really, I’ve no need for help,” said Enfys’ voice pointedly, along with the rattle of a teapot lid. “I’m sure I can manage this tray by myself. It’s just the joints of my fingers—good boy.”
Eurion, grinning, took the tray and set it down on the stone fence-top, then swung one leg over to sit astride the fence himself. He reached out and drew Carys through the gateway to sit in front of him, her feet off the ground and tipping toward the village street, then passed her a scone and a teacup.
“At my age? Well, I never!” humphed Enfys, but bustled through the gate to sit on the wall, too.
Carys put her teacup down between herself and Eurion, golden tea swirling in the evening light, and broke away a soft piece of scone. Eurion did the same and fed it to the otter still in his pocket, despite Enfys’ sniff.
He saw Carys watching and grinned. “Do you want to hold it, Lady?”
“No,” said Carys hastily, but it was too late; there was a small, sleek slither of fur in her fingers. She put down her teacup on the stones beside her with a rattle, and tried to contain that lithe wriggle.
“Careful, Lady!” Eurion said, cupping his hands around hers. “You’ll drop it.”
“It will die anyway,” Carys reminded him, but her fingers curled around the otter’s pliable stomach and tiny paws clung to her in return, too small to grasp all the way around each finger. “You love things you shouldn’t love. Don’t tell me there haven’t been other sand otters in your pockets since you’ve been working in the village, because I won’t believe you.”
“That’s what Enfys says about you,” Eurion said.
“Don’t talk about me behind my back,” Enfys told him, with a jab to his ribs for good measure.
Eurion’s eyes roamed Carys’ face for a moment, then the warmth of mischief lit his eyes. “And really, Lady, I think I agree with her. I don’t think it’s a good idea to love selkies and village postmasters. Dogs are all right.”
“I thought you didn’t think I loved Aled?”
“I don’t think you’re in love with him,” said Eurion, and beamed up at her. “How can you be? You’re in love with me. But you love him. That’s why you don’t like to hurt him. You love him just enough to be inconvenient. When we’re married, it will be easier for you.”
“There’s no difference between loving someone and being in love with them,” Carys said impatiently. “As for the rest—nonsense! There’s no question of us being married.”
“There can’t be,” said Eurion, grinning. “Because I haven’t asked you yet! Ow! Carys, my ear!”
“You may choose to keep talking nonsense,” said Carys grimly, “but I don’t have to listen.”
“Ow, ow!” he complained, rescuing the ear from Carys’ strong fingers. “Look, you’ve shocked Enfys, now.”
“Shocked, my eye,” Enfys said grumpily. “Well, for all that you wouldn’t talk to poor Miss Allen, you’re certainly making up for it, aren’t you? Aren’t you finished that fireplace yet?”
Eurion grinned back at her, too, clutching his red ear. “You’ll feel bad if I collapse from too much work,” he said. “Just like Carys will feel bad if my ear falls off.”
“Not I!” declared Enfys. “Just so long as you finish it, you can collapse where you will!”
“You’ve got two ears,” Carys added. “Just mind you don’t have reason to lose the second one.”
It took Enfys’ sylph-like grin over Eurion’s shoulder to make Carys realise that she’d been laughing across at him as she said it. She stopped smiling at once, but Eurion’s eyes were already glowing at her.
He leaned forward and murmured, “Can’t I kiss you just once, Lady? I’ll do it so that Enfys can’t see.”
“Do what?” demanded Enfys. “If an old woman gives you tea out of the goodness of her heart, the least you can do is stop whispering in front of her!”
“It was nonsense,” said Carys, thrusting the sand otter back at Eurion. She picked up her teacup instead, nodding to a couple of young girls who wandered past arm in arm, giggling as they unabashedly gazed at Eurion. It was the time of day for walks, and sweethearts, and coming home after a day of work.
So when Enfys said significantly, “There’s a great deal of movement in the village today,” Carys glanced curiously at her.
Enfys wasn’t watching the steady ebb-and-flow of the village road before them, she was watching something further down the road, where it widened into what passed for a highway in the more remote areas of Sunderland. Carys followed the direction of her eyes, and saw a figure on horseback making its way up the village street through the signs and scurryings of the street at early evening. The villagers moved aside to let the horse pass, but each of them stopped and stared to see the stranger as he passed.
