Morrigan's Cross - Circle Trilogy 1 Part 37

Drunk, angry, grieving, she thought. All of those made him dangerous. If she showed him her fear, he'd only be more so. "You're in my way."

"Not yet."

"I don't have time for drunkards. Maybe you don't want food, but Glenna needs it, for healing strength."

"I'd say she's feeling strong enough."

Bitterness edged his tone as he glanced up.

"Didn't you see the lights brighten a bit ago?"

"I did. I don't know what that has to do with Glenna."

"It means she and my brother are having a go at each other. s.e.x," he said when she looked blank. "A bit of naked, sweaty s.e.x to top off the evening. Ah, she blushes." He laughed, moved closer. "All that pretty blood just under the skin.

Delicious."

"Stop."

"I used to like when they trembled, the way you are. It makes the blood hotter, and it adds to the thrill. I'd nearly forgotten."

"You smell of the whiskey. This is hot enough now. Sit down, and I'll make a bowl for you."

"I don't want the f.u.c.king soup. Wouldn't mind that hot, sweaty s.e.x, but likely I'm too drunk to manage it. Well then, I'll just get that fresh bottle, and finish the job."

"Cian. Cian, people turn to each other for comfort when death's come. It isn't disrespect, but need."

"You don't want to lecture me on s.e.x. I know more of it than you could ever imagine. Of its pleasures and its pain and its purposes."

"People turn to drink as well, but it's not as healthy. I know what he was to you."

"You don't."

"He talked to me, more than the others, I think, because I like to listen. He told me how you found him, all those years ago, what you did for him." "I amused myself."

"Stop it." The tone of command, bred into her bones, snapped into her voice. "Now it's disrespect you're showing for a man who was a friend to me. And he was a son to you. A friend and a brother. All of that. I want to put a stone up for him tomorrow. It could wait until sunset, until you could go out and-"

"What do I care for stones?" he said, and left her.

Glenna was so grateful for the sun she could have wept. There were clouds, but they were thin and the beams burst through them to toss light and shadows on the ground.

She hurt still, heart and body. But she would deal with it. For now, she took one of her cameras and she stepped outside to let the sun bathe her face. Charmed by the music of it, she walked to the stream. Then just laid down on its bank and basked.

Birds sang, pouring joy into air that was fragrant with flowers. She could see foxglove dancing lightly in the breeze. For a moment she felt the earth beneath her sigh and whisper with the pleasure of a new day. Grief would come and go, she knew. But today there was light, and work. And there was still magic in the world.

When a shadow fell over her, she turned her head, smiled at Moira.

"How are you this morning?"

"Better," Glenna told her. "I'm better.

Sore and stiff, maybe a little wobbly yet, but better."

She turned a bit more to study Moira's tunic and rough pants. "We need to get you some clothes."

"These do well enough."

"Maybe we'll go into town, see what we can find."

"I have nothing to trade. I can't pay."

"That's what Visa's for. It'll be my treat."

She lay flat, closed her eyes again. "I didn't think anyone else was up."

"Larkin's taken the horse for a run. It should do both of them good. I don't think he slept at all."

"I doubt any of us did, really. It doesn't seem real does it, not in the light of day with the sun showering down and the birds singing?" "It seems more real to me," Moira said as she sat. "It shows what we have to lose. I have a stone," she continued, brus.h.i.+ng her hand through the gra.s.s. "I thought when Larkin comes back we could go to where the graves are, make one for King."

Glenna kept her eyes closed, but reached out a hand for Moira's. "You have a good heart," she told her. "Yes, we'll make a grave for King."

Her injuries prevented her from training, but it didn't stop Glenna from working. She spent the next two days preparing food, shopping for supplies, researching magic.

She took photographs.

More than busy work, she told herself. It was practical, and organizational. And the photos were-would be-a kind of doc.u.mentation, a kind of tribute.

Most of all it helped keep her from feeling useless while the others worked up a sweat with swords and hand-to-hand.

She learned the roads, committing various routes to memory. Her driving skills were rusty, so she honed them, maneuvering the van on snaking roads, skimming the hedgerows on turns, zooming through roundabouts as her confidence built.

She pored through spell books, searching for offense and defense. For solutions. She couldn't bring King back, but she would do everything in her power to safeguard those who were left.

Then she got the bright idea that every member of the team should be able to handle the van. She started with Hoyt.

She sat beside him as he drove the van at a creeping pace up and down the lane.

"There are better uses for my time."

"That may be." And at this rate, she thought, they'd be a millennium before he got over five miles an hour. "But every one of us should be able to take the wheel if necessary."

"Why?"

"Because."

"Do you plan to take this machine into battle?"

"Not with you at the wheel. Practicalities, Hoyt. I'm the only one who can drive during the day. If something happens to me-"

"Don't. Don't tempt the G.o.ds." His hand closed over hers. "We have to factor it. We're here, and where we are is remote. We need transportation.

And, well, driving gives all of us a kind of independence, as well as another skill. We should be prepared for anything."

"We could get more horses."

The wistfulness in his voice had her giving him a bolstering pat on the shoulder.

"You're doing fine. Maybe you could try going just a little bit faster."

He shot forward, spitting gravel from the tires. Glenna sucked in a breath and shouted: "Brake! Brake! Brake!"

More gravel flew when the van came to an abrupt halt.

"Here's a new word for your vocabulary,"

she said pleasantly. "Whiplash."

"You said to go faster. This is go." He gestured toward the gas pedal.

"Yeah. Well. Okay." She drew in a fresh breath. "There's the snail, and there's the rabbit.

Let's try to find the animal in between. A dog, say. A nice, healthy golden retriever."

"Dogs chase rabbits," he pointed out, and made her laugh. "That's good. You've been sad.

I've missed your smile." "I'll give you a big, toothy one if we come through this lesson in one piece. We're going to take a big leap, go out on the road." She reached up and closed her hand briefly over the crystal she'd hung from the rearview. "Let's hope this works."

He did better than she'd expected, which meant no one was maimed or otherwise injured.

Her heart got a serious workout from leaping into her throat, then dropping hard into her belly, but they stayed on the road-for the most part.

She liked watching him calculate the turns, his brows knit, his eyes intense, his long fingers gripping the wheel as though it were a lifeline in a storm-tossed sea.

Hedgerows closed them in, green tunnels dotted with bloodred drops of fuchsia, then the world would open up into rolling fields, and the dots were white sheep or lazy spotted cows.

The city girl in her was enchanted.

Another time, she thought, another world, and she could have found a great deal to love about this place. The play of light and shadows on the green, the patchwork of fields, the sudden sparkle of water, the rise and tumble of rocks that formed ancient ruins. It was good, she decided, to look beyond the house in the forest, to look and love the world they were fighting to save.

When he slowed, she glanced over. "You have to keep up your speed. It can be as dangerous to go too slow as too fast. Which applies, now that I think about it, to pretty much anything."

"I want to stop."

"You need to pull over to the shoulder- the side of the road. Put the signal on, like I showed you, and ease over." She checked the road herself. The shoulder was narrow, but there was no traffic. "Put it in park. That's all the way up. Good. So-What?" she said when he pushed his door open.

She pulled off her seat belt, grabbed the keys-and her camera as an afterthought-then hurried after him. But he was already halfway across a field, moving quickly toward what was left of an old stone tower.

"If you wanted to stretch your legs or empty your bladder, you just had to say so," she began, huffing a bit as she caught up to him.

The wind danced through her hair, blowing it back from her face. As she touched his arm, she felt the muscles there gone rigid.

"What is it?" "I know this place. People lived here.

There were children. The oldest of my sisters married their second son. His name is Fearghus.

They farmed this land. They... they walked this land. Lived."

He moved inside to what she saw now must have been a small keep. The roof was gone, as was one of the walls. The floor was gra.s.s and starry white flowers, the dung of sheep.

And the wind blew through, like ghosts chanting.

"They had a daughter, a pretty thing. Our families hoped we would... "

He laid his hand against a wall, left it there. "Just stone now," he said quietly. "Gone to ruin."

"But still here. Hoyt. Still here, a part of it. And you, remembering them. What we're doing, what we have to do, won't it mean they had the very best chance to live a long, full life?

To farm the land and walk it. To live."

"They came to my brother's wake." He dropped his hand. "I don't know how to feel."

"I can't imagine how hard this is for you.

Every day of it. Hoyt." She laid her hands on his arms, waiting for his eyes to meet hers. "Part of it stands, what was yours. It stands in what's mine. I think that matters. I think we need to find the hope in that. The strength in it. Do you want some time here? I can go back, wait for you in the van."

"No. Every time I falter, or think I can't bear what's been asked of me, you're there." He bent, plucked one of the little white flowers.

"These grew in my time." He twirled it once, then tucked it into her hair. "So, we'll carry hope."

"Yes, we will. Here." She lifted her camera. "It's a place that cries for pictures. And the light's gorgeous."

She moved off to choose her angles.

She'd make him a present of one, she decided.

Something of her to take with him. And she'd make a copy of the same shot for her loft.

Imagine him studying the photo while she studied hers. Each of them remembering standing there on a summer afternoon with wildflowers waving in a carpet of gra.s.s.

But the idea of it hurt more than it warmed.

So she turned the camera on him. "Just look at me," she told him. "You don't have to smile. In fact-" She clicked the shutter. "Nice, very nice."