Dotted between the sick were the injured. Bloodied bandages. Missing limbs.
The healers seemed little better—exhaustion dogged their footsteps and dulled their eyes.
My chest tightened as I passed the encampment. Beyond, the fortress was heavily guarded. Twice the normal complement stood watch at the gates—sentries stationed all along the stockades, helms gleaming. I glanced over my shoulder, expecting some kindof attacking force, but there was nothing. Only a plain crusted in mud and dotted with dry brown grass.
A guard hailed me thirty paces from the gate. “Halt! State your business.”
I reined Finan too hard. He jerked his head, snorting. “I bear tidings for the queen!”
“Your name, wench?”
Wench?I opened my mouth to dress down the sentry. But twenty feet above me, nocked arrows slithered against bowstrings. Eyes glared harder than even I was used to. I scanned the faces, but I did not recognize anyone among the fianna.
This was not the same home I’d left. Just as I was not the same person who’d left it.
I jerked back my hood, angled my face toward the sunlight, and shook out my long dark hair.
“Tell Cathair his little witch has come home!” I grinned, making a show of scanning the faceless guards. “Surely one among you has heard of me?”
Everyone was silent.
“Come!” I shouted. “Tell me I feature in at least one story you tell your children to scare them into eating their vegetables. No? Bedtime, then?”
Finally, the gate cracked open. Ten heavily armed fénnidi tromped out to escort me into the bailey, where I relinquished Finan to one of the stablehands.
“Water him well,” I commanded. “And feed him grain.”
“We’ve no grain, m’lady.” The groom was young, and one of the fénnidi kicked him for his honesty. “Sorry.”
“Then graze him, at least.” I frowned at the boy until he nodded.
Assured Rogan’s precious stallion would be cared for, I crossed the courtyard. The armed guard tailed me. In the shadow of the keep, I paused, rounding on them.
“I assure you, I can find my way to Cathair’s chambers unaccompanied.” I flicked my fingers. “You may go.”
The rígfénnid gave me a mulish look. The men all clutched their spears and shields. I straightened and prepared to fight for a modicum of independence in the place I’d once called home.
“Gentlemen,” said an oily voice from behind me. “Your escort is gracious indeed. But I can take it from here.”
The warriors bowed, then trotted to their posts. I turned.
“Hello, little witch.” The lines around Cathair’s mouth creased deep when he smiled. “I’ve missed you.”
Cathair was as I remembered him—slim, good looking, observant. But he seemed somehow less fearsome. There was more gray in his beard. The trinkets lining his fingers and clinking in his hair looked cheap. Dark circles ringed his eyes. Even so, hatred sent my blood pounding against my eardrums. I dug my nails into my palms, sending semicircles of pain lancing up my arm.
With a sweeping glance toward the sky, the palisade, and the fénnidi ringing it, Cathair stepped back inside the fortress. I followed. Inside, the halls were as I remembered them, if smaller. But that wasn’t what gave me pause. The stones, the plaster, the wooden beams—they were alllifeless, inanimate. As, of course, they should be. But I had grown so used to Corra’s squawking and teasing that Rath na Mara seemed sterile in comparison.
A fortress without a Corra felt like a body without a soul.
Cathair pushed into Mother’s throne room, which echoed with emptiness. The door to her chamber of horrors was shut, for which I was grateful. I wasn’t sure I could tolerate seeing strange objects ripped from Tír na nÓg—Folk artifacts displayed as spoils of war. The druid helped himself to wine from a decanter, then sat with his bejeweled cup on the plush velvet chair beside Mother’s austere throne. It was his customary position, but it left me without a place to sit. Unless I wanted to casually park my arse on the throne of an absent queen.
It felt like an oblique sort of test. So I remained standing.
“Where’s Mother?”
“The high queen campaigns against Eòdan. Their king grewweary of shipping his precious grain to Fannon, where the newly crowned Connla Rechtmar garrisons too many fianna along his borders. Rechtmar retaliated, with Delbhna as his ally. The queen could not withhold aid from her king brother. Bridei remains neutral but has refused to fight the raiders who continue to settle land along the eastern marches.”
Bridei was Rogan’s kingdom. “Cairell Mòr risks war with Mother? But they have been allies for years.”
