Ishleen loaded a sack with vials of lung-fever potion and handed it to me. “Put a poultice on those knuckles. Your harmless wolf must have an awfully hard head.”
I couldn’t return to the hovel until well after dark, so I went about my day like it was any other.
Our village was home to some two hundred men, their wives, and their children. They were tough, hardworking men, laboring as sentries, fishermen, trappers, farmers. The women supported them, running the households. I’d proved hopeless at cooking and sewing, little better at healing and potions, so I helped in the stables—a boy’s job, but one I loved well enough that Father allowed it.
I threw myself into my work, feeding, brushing, picking hooves clean. Our clan wasn’t rich, but we had many mounts and treated them well.
When I finished, my heavy heart led me down the path to the gallows.
A group of boys, young warriors-in-training, gathered at the foot of the scaffolding. A nervous-looking boy stood on the raised wooden platform, beneath the beam Dyfed had hung from yesterday. Beside him stood Madoc, waving a birch rod. “To fall asleep on your watch,” he said, “risks the lives of every villager. Such negligence will not be tolerated.”
This boy had been on watchtower duty when the bodies washed ashore. My warrior lived because the boy had fallen asleep.
“Strip,” Madoc ordered.
Trembling, the boy removed his tunic.
“Kneel.”
The boy obeyed, curling into a supplicant pose. Madoc brought the rod down on his bare back in rapid strokes. I cringed as the branches lashed him, leaving pink welts from his neck to his waist. He endured his punishment with barely a whimper.
“Rise,” Madoc said when he was done. The boy did, stiffly. “Now go, all of you, and don’t let this lesson be forgotten.” The boy held his head high, descending the stairs. The other young warriors followed, nodding respectfully as they passed me.
All except one, whose eyes bored into me.
Ennis. Dyfed’s son.
Madoc remained on the platform. My father’s older brother looked much like him, only shorter, his hair and eyes a darker shade of brown. There was starkness in the lines and hollows of his features, as if his bones were trying to break free of his skin.
“Did Torin give you leave to birch that boy?” I asked.
He folded his arms behind his back. “How I discipline my warriors is my choice. I don’t answer to him. Or to you.”
“They’re Torin’s warriors as much as yours. You could’ve made that boy empty chamber pots to teach him a lesson. Your discipline was cruel.” I shouldn’t have said it, but I was as adept at holding my tongue as I was at sewing.
“If I were cruel, I’d have made the boy drop his trousers like a child and birched him until he couldn’t sit. I left him his pride and beat him like a man.” Madoc leaned against the gallows. “Why are you here? To pay homage to the thief you killed?”
“His name was Dyfed, and it was you and Torin who executed him.” My eyes flickered to the beam above Madoc’s head.
“Yet you’re as guilty as the souls of those you condemn.” My uncle’s smile was laced with poison. “Your mother damned you from the start, naming you after a traitor.”
Aillira, the first god-gifted daughter of Glasnith, who was so loved by the gods they blessed her with the gift of mind-reaping and vowed to bless her female descendants with gifts of their own. Aillira, who fell under the spell of the Great Betrayer and turned against the gods who loved her, bringing about decades of plague, war, and strife.
Her name was a curse. She was mother and villain, loved and hated. Many questioned my mother’s sense when she bestowed me with the short form of a traitor’s name. I supposed it a mark of her boldness that she didn’t listen.
I took a slow breath. “If there’s nothing you want of me, I’ll be going.”
“You’ve so little to offer, Lira. But I’m sure I’ll find use for you, when the time comes.”
The anticipation in Madoc’s voice sent prickles along my spine.
That night I entered the hovel cautiously, as if walking into a wolf’s den.
Over the years, I’d taken in all sorts of injured creatures. I’d bandaged wings and paws, fed and soothed each animal until it was healthy and strong enough to set free. For my efforts, I’d been growled at, scratched, bitten. I knew the risks of aiding dangerous predators.
As soon as I stepped inside, I was knocked to the ground.
The warrior pinned my wrists, bending over me. Naked, glistening with sweat, eyes bright with madness. Even now, I didn’t see a monster. I saw a wounded wolf, alone, afraid.
I pulled one wrist free, smacking him on the nose, showing I was neither adversary nor prey. “You won’t hurt me. I’m the only one who can help you.”
Eyes wide, he slouched back.
I sat up slowly, lifting a hand to his brow. “You’re burning up.”
He regarded me suspiciously, until something captured his attention. My skirts had bunched at my thighs. In a blink, the warrior snatched my knife from its sheath.
“You won’t hurt me,” I said again, less certain. I plotted a path around him to the door, the dodges and strikes I could use to evade him.
He pressed the blade to his own throat. Crimson leaked down his skin.
“No!” I wrestled the knife from him and tossed it away. The warrior’s shoulders sank, as if I’d stolen his last shred of hope.
Gripping his jaw, I examined the wound—the cut was small but deep. I tore cloth from the blanket, pressing it to his neck to staunch the blood. “What were you thinking?” I asked, even though I knew. Pulling him from the harbor wasn’t saving him, but capturing him. Too sick to leave, he was a prisoner in this hovel, waiting to be tortured, executed. That’s what men did to their enemies. That’s what the Sons of Stone would do if they discovered him.
“I’m no warrior. I mean you no harm.”
He stared at the fallen knife.
“No.” I leaned to block his view. “That is not the way.”
If he’d had the strength, he would’ve shoved me aside and grabbed the blade. I saw him calculating his odds as it was, but then the fever took hold. He coughed, fighting for breath, the sound wet and sharp, sawing through his lungs. Of course he’d not hesitate to slit his own throat, when he faced death from every direction.
I thought of Rhys as a boy, ravaged by lung-fever, moaning in his bed. This warrior wasn’t Rhys, but he was someone’s brother, someone’s son. “You’ll be all right. I’ll look after you.”