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Chapter Three
The Empress Dowager was not a happy woman. As her younger son settled himself to keep watch over the very boy he'd been ordered to bring back to be put to death, she retired to her private chambers, furious that the men she'd sent to insure Nicodemus would do his duty had returned empty-handed, with the sniveling excuse that they had lost Nicodemus in the snow. More furious still that her elder son had attempted to castigate her for her actions—how dare he insinuate she didn't know how to control the silver-eyed bastard?
How, she'd demanded to know, does one lose a dark-haired man riding a monster of a horse in a world of blank white? The answer she'd gotten had been muffled and inadequate, the leader of the group of men dismissed under a cloud of shame, stripped of his rank, and the extra pay he received.
It had been a hasty move, banishing him, she acknowledged, pouring out two fingers of brandy and sipping the warming liquid. Declan had been right about that much. He was useful, was Nicodemus, even if that use seemed to have been fading over the past months. And he knew things that could never leave the borders of the Dèan Laighe Leis an Fhuachd; secrets of the state that other countries and fiefs would kill, maim, and spend extravagant amounts to obtain. She'd intended that he retrieve the Gypsy rat, and that the guards would then overtake him, even if it appeared he would come back on his own, and bring both back; the Gypsy to the noose, and her unfaithful son to languish in Cabhadh-làir's dungeons until he'd learned his place. Instead, he'd slipped away like smoke, and taken the boy with him.
As when she ever thought of Nicodemus, a burn that had nothing to do with the brandy slid through her—he should never have been born. She had never taken another man besides her husband inside her body. Not…not in truth. The other had been, well, a dream, to try and recapture the warmth that her marriage had afforded her only briefly. He'd come only in sleep, her nameless dream-lover, whispering things that had soothed the wounds her esteemed husband had opened on her self-worth, bringing her the pleasure that he never had bothered with. And then her dream had gone, never to return, and her husband had gone off to fight heathens to the East. The Emperor had died there, a death too good for him, from a nick by a poisoned blade, after three days of fevered agony, and her Declan, her eldest child and first son, had become Emperor. And nine months to the day Declan's father left, she gave birth to a child that shouldn't exist. A long, difficult pregnancy that required bed-rest more often than not, and was ended with a birth that had damaged her irreparably and left her bed-ridden for two months after.
The midwife had gasped, she remembered, horrified—there wasn't a man in the capital or in any of the surrounding villages who could lay claim to such coloring, and the Dowager was as fair as the winter sunlight with eyes like coal. The child, when he'd been presented to her, had black hair and eyes that had been grey even at birth; the picture of her dream-lover, a man that existed nowhere but in her own mind
She had not, as her first thought demanded, ordered the child drowned. Instead, a drunkard scullery maid who had lost an infant the day before had been summoned and given the child, and banished to a largely unused wing of the Keep, where she would not see either of them. Nevertheless, they collided often enough that she was reminded that the child lived still, even as the maid she had given the boy to had snatched him back, apologizing profusely. All the while, those eerie silver eyes had watched her solemnly, as blank and knowing as their father's.
And then the monstrous child had been injured protecting Declan, and for the first time, she saw his usefulness. So another first occurred; she sought him out, and found him, the right side of his face obscured by bandages, and his torso wrapped with them from chest to hips, the maid hovering. And she had asked him if he wished to be useful.
Stupid boy, she thought now, and poured another two fingers. He would learn the meaning of her wrath.
He had let the boy sleep for four hours—not enough to erase the dusky circles beneath his dark eyes, but enough to keep him going, Nicodemus hoped, as he rose to shake Arran awake and douse the fire.
"Come on, lad, we've miles tae cover a'fore the sun sinks. Wake oop, Arran."
"F've more minutes, Da," the boy moaned, curling tighter in the blanket and covering his face with an arm.
"Da?" the man muttered, and shook his shoulder again, "Now. Let's not be wastin' any more of the light."
With more grumbling, Arran climbed stiffly to his feet, while Nicodemus left him to saddle Tala again, and resettle the packs to make room for the lad. Not more than ten minutes had passed before he was leading the gigantic horse past the barriers, wincing slightly at the sickening curl his stomach gave, and the angry pulse at his temples. He didn't pause though, but fitted his foot into a stirrup and swung onto his steed's back, before reaching down to tug Arran on behind him. The sky promised more snow within a day, so Nicodemus didn't worry overmuch about the tracks.
It took almost five days of swift travel to reach the sparse little village beneath the Pass, and there they were delayed by a blizzard that Nicodemus had been watching build. He rented a room in the inn, and they were trapped there a sennight by the snows that raged on this side of the Deibh Pigeán Mountains. The time was passed with sleep, countless card games, conversation on a broad spectrum of topics, and, for Nicodemus at least, woodcarving. When finally they were on their way, he left behind a tiny wooden menagerie that the innkeeper's wife exclaimed over, and put in the place of pride on the mantel in the common room. On the sixth day, the snow finally stopped, and by the eighth, had settled enough that they could continue through the Sìon Sìtheán Pass. Another night was spent there, on the summit of the pass, and by noon the following day, they found themselves surrounded by thick forest, following a winding dirt road to the village on this side of the Pass. Here, they marveled, it was early spring, with the appropriate warmth and abundance of greenery.
Nicodemus restocked in the village, haggling, as Arran watched in fascination, with narrowed eyes and an increasingly common Highlands accent for arbhar and food for them, as well as asking directions to Staireán Sruth, which turned out to be less than two days away. And a brief contemplation of the sky, judging distance against waning sunlight and the mild threat of rain, Nicodemus elected to continue.
The last ten miles were taken alternating between a trot and a canter, Tala's strides eating ground effortlessly. The sun was bright, half way through its daily ascent, and the previous evening's threat of rain had burned away. Arran clung tightly to Nicodemus, his arms roped around the older man's waist so tightly that Nicodemus had to occasionally remind him to loosen.
It wasn't that he didn't trust Nicodemus to keep him on the horse, he assured himself, or that he was afraid. But they were going so fast, and Tala's strides were so huge that each made it feel as though he would go flying as the horse shifted beneath him, saddle or no saddle, and he wasn't the rider his companion had proved to be.
But the speed made up for the discomfort, and by midmorning, they were in Staireán Sruth. One of the few people remaining in the village proper, after goggling at Nicodemus for a good bit, directed them to 'Alasdair's house, jist up th' way there, aboout two an' a 'alf miles north.' Nicodemus thanked the old man, and mounted up again, pulling the Gypsy up behind him.