At last, I shake Orin awake. He gives me the look they all do when I’ve had my hands on them, the threads of my magic worming its way through their blood and bone; it’s the look you give anyone who’s hurt you, no matter that you come out better at the end.
‘Have this,’ I say, handing over the food and drink, ‘and bequick about it. I’ve still a way to go and no more time to waste on you.’
He sits up gingerly, takes what’s offered with a mumbled thanks and then announces with a bravado that doesn’t quite work because of the tremble in his voice: ‘I’m coming with you.’
‘Oh, I know you are. And you’re going to tell me everything from beginning to end, and when I go in that bloody barrow, you’re coming along too.’
36
Rosie is less than impressed at the weight of two – the lad’s slender but he’s tall and lightly muscled, like to fill out the same as his father and so heavier than he looks. His arms are around my waist, loose, but he’s so close I can smell the blood and sweat of him. It’s been a while since he stopped talking, since I stopped asking questions, picking at his story until I thought I’d got all I could out of him. Beside us, Merry-girl lopes along, a little slowly, a little gingerly, but she keeps up.
How, after fleeing a fight with his father, Orin had found himself and Rowan somewhere new in the forest, Night’s Barrow, and lost, just as the sun dropped and huntsman and hounds poured out of the earth. How he thought he was dead, but stood his ground, remembering his late gran’s tales that if you ran, you became prey. How the huntsman looked at him a long time, sniffed at him as if his scent was familiar, like a horse with a foal, something it recognised. How it had asked for his company, enquired after his dreams, took him hunting – exhilarating! – and then began to ask for favours, small at first, then larger, harder to do, harder to stomach, but he didn’t wantto let the huntsman down. And I thought how I’d have done anything for the high sorceress, Almira, how the fear of losing her favour was as corrosive as acid. I thought about what Ididdo for her and it’sveryhard to hate this lad now.
A thought hits me. ‘You didn’t walk out here?’
‘He took Rowan.’
‘Blister?’
‘Only Da calls her that. The huntsman took her so I couldn’t leave…’
I grunt. The shadow half didn’t want him dead but also didn’t want Orin to be able to find help quickly. Does it plan to come back for him?
‘My mother hated you,’ he says, apropos of nothing. I’m not surprised to hear it. I knew it when she came and begged my help in getting pregnant, knew how she’d eaten her pride like a rotting apple, something that would be sure to leave its mark on her, its bitterness in her.
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Surely you know.’
‘But I want to hear you tell it.’
‘What? Am I your storyteller now?’
‘Got anything better to do?’ he challenges. The little turd has a point.
‘Before your parents married, your father and I were friends.’ How prim I sound; how stupid I sound.Friends.
‘Lovers.’
‘Yes.’ I owe this boy no blushes.
‘Like you are again.’ His tone is tight as wire twistedaround a bolt. I think about that last time at the smithy, in Faolan’s bed, the haze of passion, thinking I’d seen a shadow pass the doorway, thinking myself mistaken. Yet that shadow might have been roughly the height and slenderness of the lad. Orin at the door, watching another woman in his mother’s bed, taking his father’s affection.
I know I’ve avoided the smithy and its master for a long time, but in the recent moments I’ve spent with him I’ve not seen Faolan interact with his son. And it’s to my shame that I’ve never thought much of it. Orin’s not my child, and I’m selfish after so long a separation. Greedy for the man and his time and the illusion of being able to, perhaps, make up for what was lost. To devour whatever days or weeks or months or years we might have left with each other. That was what I wanted for myself, something that for the first time in an age was neither affected nor influenced by consideration for the needs of others. Perhaps if I’d known the lad his whole life – certainly if he’d been my own – then I’d have behaved differently. But for that brief span, I just yearned for something that was mine alone.
‘My parents used to fight about you,’ he says, and I see I’m the wicked witch of the piece.
‘I have no doubt,’ I say levelly, ‘that your mother was unhappy about me. But to be fair, I knew your father long before she did, and he and I had finished ourbusinessbefore they married.’ I clear my throat. ‘Or close enough.’
‘She would scream at him. About you. That he carried you in his heart.’
‘Orin, it’s very hard for someone to be rational if theyfeel insufficiently loved. If they don’t think they’re first in someone’s affections, and if they spend their time concentrating on who came before them. Your father left me for Helvis – had I been her, that would have been a sufficient victory.’
‘He thought about you, though, and she knew it.’
‘I didn’t see him for years, didn’t speak to him. Did my level best to not think of him.’Made a legion of summer husbands to distract myself.
