Anne Kelleher - Silver's Edge

“My lady Duchess?”

Kian’s low voice startled her, so that she pulled away entirely from Rowena’s stranglehold grasp, and stared up, feeling that he must have appeared in response to her thoughts. His dark brows were knit over his intense dark eyes, his mouth drawn down and grim. As he leaned down to speak into her ear, his hair, the color of sun-bleached seashells, brushed against her cheek. It was damp from the rain, and on his blue and green plaid, tiny droplets of water gleamed like pink-tinted pearls in the reddish light. “If you will, my lady, I need a word with you at once.”

Cecily took another step back. In Kian’s presence she felt herself young, and ripe and ready as a peach to fall into his hand—the opposite of everything Donnor made her feel. But she heard a new timbre in Kian’s voice that she had never heard before—an urgency that bordered on fear. She saw him glance above, and following his eyes, saw that Donnor no longer stood like a sentinel at the watch. “What’s wrong?”

Kian shook his head, his mouth barely moving. “I—I cannot say here. Please, come with me, my lady.”

Their eyes met, and while her spine stiffened against her body’s involuntary response to his closeness, she realized that there was nothing of the lover in the man who stood beside her, tense as a stallion poised to bolt. With a brief murmur to Mag, and a final squeeze on Rowena’s shoulder, she allowed Kian to lead her to a seldom-used retiring room off to one side of the hall, now stocked with barrels and baskets of every description and size, in which were piled high everything from candles and the season’s first apples to bandages and twine. “What is it? What’s wrong?” She wiped her hands on her apron, and watched, puzzled as he led her into the center of the room, then shut the door behind them. He filched an apple from a large basket beside the hearth and turned to face her. His expression was as grim as she had ever seen it, but it was colored by that new element, an element that looked very much like fear and tinged by doubt and disbelief. He looked, she decided, like a man who’d seen a ghost. Or a sidhe.

He hesitated, clearly gathering his thoughts. “In truth, I scarce know how to begin. I would have showed it to you before I had it burned, but I would not inflict such a curse upon your memory.” He ran the apple under his nose. “Faugh—the stink of it is still on me, and I’ve washed my hands three times.” He threw the apple into the empty hearth, where it landed with a bounce and a roll.

Show me what? she wanted to interrupt, but he went on, his words tumbling over themselves like stones falling downhill. “It was just past three—” she startled at his words, realizing that the day was much farther advanced than she had realized “—just past three, just as I had come to stand my turn upon the watch—you know that every able-bodied man over fourteen is taking a turn?”

When she nodded, he continued. “Within the first hour, two men came in. The first was from Tuirnach of Pentland. Donnor’s own messenger hadn’t arrived yet, not by the time this messenger left, which was only two days ago, which is troubling enough in and of itself, but it’s the second one that has unsettled me, to the point where I stand before you now like a moon-mazed calf.” He paused and shook his head as if to clear it. When he spoke again, his voice was so low, she had to strain to hear it in the quiet room. “The second messenger—though he’s no more a messenger than I am a cook—came from a little village, in the uplands, just above Killcarrick Keep. Donnor knows it—it’s the village where Dougal lives—Dougal the smith who forged the sword Donnor wears in battle. You know the smith I mean?”

She nodded mutely, listening intently, trying to discern the source of his disquiet.

“Donnor’s messenger isn’t the only one missing. For Dougal himself is missing—he disappeared four or five nights ago.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know what happened. I do know that the piece of carcass this man showed me was part of nothing ever spawned in this world.” His eyes sought hers and held them, as if gauging her reaction. “For you see, in the same hour that it was realized Dougal the smith was missing, the villagers found a goblin—a dead goblin, thank the goddess—floating in Killcarrick Lake.” He took a deep breath and in the gloomy light that filtered through the translucent sheets of yellowish horn which filmed the windows, she saw that he absolutely believed the truth of what he said. “I saw it—smelled it—touched it—” He shut his eyes and grimaced. “I told my squire to burn it behind the midden, lest the stench of it alone cause a panic.”

Cecily’s mind raced. A thousand years or more had passed since the days of Bran Brownbeard, and the only time one heard talk of goblins was in the legends told around the winter fires, in the histories chanted through the annual cycle of ritual and ceremony. “But—but that isn’t—that’s not possible.”

Kian gave a soft snort of derision. “Believe me, if what that man had in that sack wasn’t goblin flesh, I don’t know what would be. The claws—they were exactly as the old tales describe, and the way it reeked—” He shuddered. “There’s no doubt in my mind at all. But beside the problem it presents all its own—which is how a goblin got here in the first place—there’s the effect it could—it will—have on the outcome of our rebellion. For after yesterday, we hang on by not much more than a few threads here. The Humbrians are loading up their warships even as we speak. If the men desert our cause to return to protect their homes from goblins, we shall not stand.”

For a long moment, she was silent. “But—but,” Cecily began, frowning. “If this is true, at the news of a goblin in Brynhyvar, the druids will step in—surely there will be a halt to the hostilities—the druids will insist—”

“Indeed, and the Humbrian army will continue to grow on the other side of the water and we will not be able to mobilize or maneuver while the druids wrangle amongst themselves.” He looked at her, and she knew he expected her to understand the greater meaning contained in his words, beyond the obvious. “If that happens, Donnor will be forced to call in old alliances across the Sea and beyond the mountains. And the war will spread across our borders, like a fire raging out of control.”

“Why have you come to me?” Her voice quivered, for his presence unsettled her. She clasped her hands before her, to steady them. Too easily he stirred up feelings she thought firmly suppressed. And why did he always make her feel as if there was something about her that he knew and she did not, as if he could see some aspect of herself she could not? In the hazy light, his pale hair glowed with a pearly luminescence and not for the first time, she thought he looked like a lord of the Shining Ones.

“Where’s Donnor?” he asked abruptly.

“Gone to rest at last, I imagine. He was up on the balcony until just now—hoping some word would come, I think. He will be glad to hear from Tuirnach at least.”

“I sent the messenger to eat—he’s ridden without stopping through two nights to reach us as quickly as he did.”

She took a single step closer, and fancied she could see the beating of his heart through the thin linen shirt. “You didn’t answer me.”

His dark eyes bored into hers, and the room was so quiet, she could hear her pulse pounding in her ears. In two quick steps he was beside her, and for a moment, she thought he might sweep her up into his arms. But he only spoke in a whisper that seared her to the bone. “I come to you, my lady, because I remember who you are, even if you choose not to.”