Guy Kay - Ysabel

“I could quote Browning,” he heard his mom say.

“I thought of that too, Meg, first time,” his aunt murmured.

“I didn’t,” Ned said. “Mainly ’cause I have zero idea what you’re talking about.”

Both of them smiled, exchanging a glance. “You will one day,” his mother said. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s go.”

She called Cadell’s name, loudly, and walked straight up to the barrier that ringed the tower.

Ned was wondering what they’d do if he wasn’t here, when a darkness on the far side moved and became a shape. He saw the Celt come over to them, on the other side of the makeshift fence.

“Why here?” Meghan Marriner asked. No other greeting.

Cadell shrugged. He was holding his left arm. “I thought I’d rest. It is a place I know. Then I realized it could be a problem to go down into the city like this.”

Ned shone the beam on his shoulder, and winced. The bandage had ripped apart. The shirt was soaked in blood. There was blood on the hand holding his shoulder, too.

His mother said nothing.

“Ned, bring the light over. You’ll have to hold it for me.” Aunt Kim sounded angry. “You, on that rock, sit down. If I do this again you will undertake not to fly?”

The big man looked down at her. Ned saw him smile. He knew what was coming before the man spoke.

“No,” Cadell said. “I can’t do that.”

“So we do this now, and then do it again?”

He stepped over the low fence and went to sit, as instructed, on the rock. Ned remembered wolves here, the last time.

The Celt said, quietly, “I expect nothing of you. I am grateful you came.” He looked at the three of them. “Only the boy? Where is the warrior?” Amusement in his voice.

“Dave? Waiting in the car.”

Cadell laughed aloud. “You feared for his life. Wise of you.”

Aunt Kim had been reaching for his shirt. She stopped.

“Truthfully? My fear was that he would have killed you, even if he tried not to. And as I understand this, we’d have lost Melanie when he did. Next comment?”

She sounded like his mom, Ned thought. Really precise.

The man sitting on the boulder stared up at Kim, as if his eyes could penetrate thoughts through the dark. Ned kept the flashlight beam on his shoulder; he found himself breathing faster.

“You actually believe that? What you said?” Cadell murmured.

“I do.”

The Celt seemed amused again. “You don’t understand what you’re dealing with yet, do you?”

“I think I do. I think we all do by now. I think the failure’s yours.”

She had taken a pair of scissors from her sister’s hand and began cutting away the shirt. Uncle Dave’s shirt this time. Cadell’s had been sliced away in the villa the first time this was done.

His deep voice was quiet. “Not every man who fought at Waterloo or Crécy or Pourrières was a warrior. Being at a battlefield doesn’t mean anything in itself.”

“True. You begin to sound less of an idiot,” Kimberly said. Her hands were busy as she spoke. “There are even men I have known—three or four of them—who could certainly best my husband, but I am not persuaded you are one, with a wrecked shoulder, especially.”

“You make me want to test him, for the joy of it.”

“I know I do. That’s why he’s by the car. This is about Melanie.”

“Melanie is gone,” Cadell said. “You must accept that. It is about Ysabel. Everything always is.”

“No. For you and the other one. Not for the rest of us,” Meghan Marriner said. She handed Kim sterile wipes to began cleaning the wound again.

“We’re sure he missed the brachial?” Ned’s mother asked.

Her sister nodded. “He couldn’t have moved the arm. There’s no major muscle implicated. This is just an infection risk. The knife was in his boot.”

“You up to date with your tetanus shots?” Meghan said. “Got your immunization record?”

Aunt Kim laughed. Cadell said nothing. Ned watched his aunt’s hands moving quickly, exposing the wound. “I can’t suture out here, obviously, and I still don’t think he needs it.”

“Clean, debride, antibiotics.”

“Yes.”

Cadell remained silent through all of this, sitting very still. Moments passed, the wind blew. It really was cold. Then, softly, the man who’d called them here said, “You have never seen her. You have no way of realizing what this is. What she is. You will say you understand, but you do not. The boy knows.”

The air I breathe is her, or wanting her.

Aunt Kim looked at Cadell. She hesitated, choosing words, it seemed. “Yours,” she said finally, “is not the first love I have known to last for lifetimes. It isn’t even the second. You will forgive me if I value one of us more than your passion.”

Ned blinked. It wasn’t what he’d expected. Cadell took a breath. Then the Celt smiled again. “I begin to wonder if I should pity your husband.”

“He’d say yes, but I don’t think he suffers so much,” Kimberly replied, her hands packing the wound with gauze. She looked into her patient’s eyes again. “And he could give you the same answer I did.”

Ned watched Cadell gaze at his aunt. Then the Celt turned and stared at Meghan, and finally at Ned himself. Aunt Kim wrapped the wound in silence. Ned held his light steady and looked up above it at the tower and the stars.

Impulsively, he said, “Why did you put that skull and the other thing under the cathedral?”

Cadell looked at him. He actually seemed surprised. “Why do you think I did?”

“I have no idea why you did it.”

“No, I mean, why do you think it was me?”

Ned felt himself flushing. “Well, I mean…”

“He told you I did?”

This kept happening with these two. He could never get his balance. Now he was trying to remember if Phelan had actually said so, in as many words.

“He led us to think so.”

“And why would I have done something like that?”

“To…to bait him. Because he was searching for you?”

“Down there? Really?”

Ned swallowed.

“There’s been nothing there for a thousand years,” Cadell said.

“So…so what would he have…?”

“He wanted to bring you in. Obviously.”

“It isn’t obvious at all.”

“Of course it is.”

“But why?”

“He sensed you, read you as someone linked to this world.”

“Before I knew it myself? ’Cause I had never—”

“That can happen.” It was his aunt, interjecting. “Happened with me that way. Someone knew me before I understood anything.”

“But why would he want me?” Ned protested.

Cadell’s voice was surprisingly gentle. “He looks for ways to balance matters.”

“He threatened us with his knife!”

“One of his knives,” Cadell said dryly.

“He never once asked for…he never…” It was hard to form thoughts suddenly, cause words to make sense. He was trying to replay that first morning in his mind, and he couldn’t.

“The Roman? Ask for something?” Cadell was still amused. “That he would never do. He sets events in motion, and takes what he can use.”

“He said you like to play games.”

“That’s true enough.”

“He kept telling me to stay away. That there was no role for me.”

The smile remained. “Do you know a better way to draw a young man? To anything?”

Ned felt anger surge. “The dogs outside the café? Was that you?”

“That was me.”

“Playing games?”

“I told you I didn’t expect you to come out. Neither did he.”

“This makes no sense!” Ned cried. “When would he have had time to steal those things? And get them to the cathedral? Why did it look like him?”