King's Warrior (Renegade Lords Book 1) Page 20

  Which meant he did not have one now.

  Tadhg knew the moment he saw him that all hope was lost. The look in Fáe’s eye, the lines of his face, the graceful yet predatory stance of his body: he’d been lost entirely to the dark side.

  Fáelán had become a stark naught, and reveled in it.

  Which would make him exceptionally difficult to negotiate with.

  Tadhg had no coin, no gems, nothing of value to offer. Only their ruptured past. And the dagger.

  Fáelán stepped into the room and the force of seeing him now, after all these years, struck Tadhg hard enough so he couldn’t move for a moment.

  When he did, he stepped away from the wall and thrust out a hand.

  Fáelán did not reach for it.

  Tadhg retracted it with a bitter laugh. “You too?”

  “Me too what, little brother?” Fáelán came slowly into the room. “Me too, finding it interesting you’d come here, to us who you abandoned, for help? Aye, then: me too.”

  “Fáe,” he said quietly. “You know why I left. I could not do this anymore.” He glanced at the room, at the ill-gotten goods, at Máel, who smiled his cold, dark smile.

  “He could not do me anymore, Fáe,” Máel observed softly. “Little Brother does not like me.”

  “I do not trust you,” Tadhg said tersely.

  “You do not trust any of us.” Fáelán said as he paced the room like the hunter he was. “No, you could not do what we did anymore, Tadhg. You could only go and serve the king of the Galls, who took our land, destroyed our people. You turned against us—”

  “I never turned—”

  “What would you call it?”

  “Fáe—”

  “What do you want here?”

  The parry of words were curt and sharp, and Tadhg wiped his hand over his face, then dropped it. “I need your help.”

  “What sort of help?”

  “Magdalena needs food and rest, and safety.”

  “Magdalena?”

  “My woman.” Even here, now, there was a thrill inside him at the words, a hot savage satisfaction.

  Fáelán turned his head slowly to peer into the other room, where Maggie sat. “You want us to care for your woman?”

  “And I need to find the earl of Huntington.”

  “Why?”

  Tadhg turned his head away faintly, shook it a little, and blew out a long, thin breath. He said nothing. It was a very definite nothing.

  Fáe’s chin came up, the slash of a smile cut across his lightly-bearded face as he waited.

  Let him wait. Too many years had passed, too much had been seen and done, for Fáelán’s commanding presence to be decree any more. Tadhg was no longer their errand boy, nor their little brother, nor the lord of mud. He was the king’s man, and his own.

  Their gazes held and the silence extended.

  Fáelán turned on his heel and started out of the room. Beyond him, Tadhg could see Maggie sitting, staring down the length of the room at him, trusting him to manage this. To save her.

  “Wait,” he growled from between gritted teeth, looking down at the ground.

  Fáelán stopped but didn’t turn.

  Tadhg pulled out the ruby dagger and laid it in the table.

  Fáelán came back in, Máel rose from his seat, and Rowan pushed his shoulder off the wall. They all stood around the table and stared down at the thing, silver-steel sharp, the blood-red ruby in its hilt glowing in the firelight.

  “Christ’s mercy,” Rowan muttered. “That is a monster ruby.”

  Máel was the first to reach for it, of course. “Worth a fortune.”

  “I know who’d pay,” Rowan said.

  Máel smiled. “I know who’d pay more.”

  “That is the king’s,” Fáelán said flatly. They all looked at him, but he was staring at Tadhg. “Why are you here in England, with the king’s ruby in this strange dagger, and not with your beloved king?”

  Tadhg let out a long breath, and sat down. “That is an awful long story, brother.”

  Fáelán pulled out a bench opposite and dropped onto it. “It has been some long time since I heard one of your tales, brother.” He kicked his boots up on the table and held his arms out to the sides, hands wide. “I am all ears.”

  Unwise as it might be to tell these opportunistic mercenaries about his adventures, they’d once been his brothers in arms, through many trials and tribulations. They’d saved each others’ lives more times than he could count. And while Tadhg could lie to the pope with a clear conscience, he could not, unfortunately, lie to them.

  So, in the end, he had no choice: he told them everything.

  Fáelán’s pale, pewter blue eyes, the mark of true Rardove heirs for centuries, peered at him, impassive. The others listened and looked between Tadhg and Fáelán as the silence stretched out.

  In the other room, they could hear Maggie’s soft voice, talking to someone.

  The gentle, airy sound seemed to make them all restless, as if some sort of spell had been cast from the other room. Máel glared at her darkly, then pushed away from the table and began pacing. Rowan scowled at the tabletop, his hand restless at the hilt of a blade in his belt. Fáelán looked slowly into the other room, too, then back at the dagger.

  Then he smiled, slowly. It was a cold thing, frozen steel bending under great pressure. “So, you want help to save your wretched king?”

  Tadhg’s jaw tightened.

  “Why do you not go to your noble friends?”

  “I cannot. I cannot find William the Marshal. Prince John has claimed Richard is dead. He and the French king are raising an army. The nobles are torn in two. They are turning from him. All the king’s men are falling away.”

  “As should you.”

  “How do you know Huntingdon is still loyal?” Máel asked from his stance against the wall. “He might have turned too.”

  Tadhg shook his head. “Not him.”

  “Heard he was shipwrecked coming back from crusade.”

  Tadhg turned to him slowly. “Are you certain?”

  Máel smiled. “Why don’t you ask around and find out? I’m sure Prince John would like to know an outlaw’s asking around to deliver that dagger to an earl who’s in line for the throne. Or, is that what you wanted us to do for you, Tadhg? Ask around? Draw Prince John’s attention down upon us?”

  Fáelán let silence fall, then said, “Why do you look to us, Tadhg, when your friends of many years can not, or will not, help you?”

  “I need to get her to safety,” he said fiercely, nodding toward Maggie in the other room. She sat in front of the bright fire, untouched food before her.

  Fáe followed his glance.

  “She is an innocent,” Tadhg said.

  “There is no such thing.”

  He fisted his hand on the table. “You’ve no idea.”

  “Innocence is death,” Máel said softly.

  Fáelán looked at Tadhg for a long second. “Take her to the Cove.”

  Tadhg snapped his gaze back. “I would not take her to Renegades Cove if my life depended on it.”

  “What if hers did?”

  Silence again.

  Fáe sat back in his seat and looked into the fire. “Tell me, little brother, are they hunting you?”

  Tadhg’s jaw worked.

  Fáe shook his head. “I thought as much. English honor is a tarnished thing. If you cared for her, Tadhg, you did poorly to bring her into your world.”

  “You think I do not know that?” Tadhg said a low snarl. “It is done now. She was already unsafe, and I had a mission that required me here. And when it is complete, I am taking her home.”

  The words were out. Saying them solidified them, like plunging molten iron into water: forged. He would devote his life to this cause, then, taking Maggie home.

  A smile touched Fáe’s taut face. “You forget, we have no home.”

  “I have a home, and I am taking her to it.”

  “You declaimed your
home, and serve its enemy’s king.”

  He dropped his hand on the table and leaned closer to Fáe’s pale eyes. “You speak to me of treachery and abandoned causes? You, Rardove’s heir, turned into a bandit of acquisition? You will do anything for whoever pays you the most to do it. What have you to say about enemies and abandonment?”

  “And how are you different?” Fáe shot back, leaning forward an equal measure. “Except that you serve the foul English. I serve no one, and that is better than an Englishman. And you do not fool me, even if you fool yourself: you did what you did to further your own ends, the same as I.” His face twisted into a grimace, half smile, half bared teeth. “Do not speak to me of ambition and grand causes, little brother. You come from the same place I do.”

  “You think I do not know that?” He thumped his chest with his closed fist. “You think I have not spent my waking life trying to be something other?” His voice was low, but it carried like a shout. “Criminals, outcast, renegades and outlaws. At least I have served something better.”

  Fáe snorted, then sat back in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest. “We will take your woman for you, watch her. You, little brother, are on your own. We do not aid the English.”

  Tadhg was surprised the fury in his gaze did not strike his half-brother down. “‘Take my woman?’”

  Fáelán shrugged a little. “Watch her for you.”

  He looked around at these competent, broken men who’d saved his life too many times to count. He felt almost cleaved in two by the pain of watching them slowly commit suicide, and the fury of it.

  “I would not trust you to watch a star in the sky,” he snarled.

  Máel made a sound that resembled a growl. Rowan blew out a laugh that was not a laugh at all. And Fáelán smiled that cold, cold smile.

  Tadhg leaned forward, his chest pressed against the hard edge of the table. “You cannot ‘take her.’ She is beyond your means, the sort of woman you could never dream of in your black heart, and I swear to all the gods, old and new, I am taking her home.”

  Silence echoed. From the other room, Maggie stared in. Words were not required to detect this hot, humming tension.

  The false, faint smile haunted Fáe’s lean features but his hand, still gripping the dagger, tightened into white knuckled fist. Then he snapped his hand up and flung the dagger at the far wall.

  It tumbled end over end, flashing steel as it hurtled through the air. Everyone leapt to their feet as it passed an inch from Tadhg’s face—he rolled back just in time—and embedded itself in an oak post on the far wall.

  Fáelán pushed to his feet. “Go home, Tadhg. Good luck in your quest for what shall never be. We are not meant for home or happiness.”

  Tadhg felt his heart hardening. “I am. I claim it.”

  “Then go claim.”

  He left the room.

  Tadhg’s face contorted in a mess of emotions too complicated and intense to name.

  With a guttural curse, he strode to the wall, ripped the dagger out, and stalked out of the room, passing the others with a low biting curse.

  “You let him die, you moulting desert rams. That is why I left. Because you are all going to die, in here.” He thumped his chest. He snapped his gaze to Máel. “You are already dead. Fáe is next.” He glanced at Rowan. “They’ll drag you down with them if you let them.”

  He strode out, into the front room where Maggie sat waiting for him, innocent and, as Máel had predicted, all but doomed for that sin alone.

  Chapter Forty-One

  MAGGIE HAD WATCHED the tawny-haired beast march out in Tadhg’s wake, and followed them with her eyes.

  The long room, more than half a block in length, was separated at intervals by huge oak beams, but no doors, so she could see all the way down to the far end, where Tadhg stood with his ‘brothers.’ He was on his feet, spine to the wall, looking up at the ceiling, while the others sat and stared at him coldly.

  She was observing the silent tableau with such intense focus she gave a start when someone cleared his throat behind her.

  Hand to her chest, she turned and stared in astonishment at a boy who stood there, peering back at her with great earnestness, holding a bowl of soup cupped in his hands.

  “Stew, my lady?”

  “Why, I…” He set it down and slid it closer. “Thank-you.”

  “Welcome,” he replied with an airy, casual disregard that bespoke either someone not taught his place, or someone with a very great place indeed. As this one lived in an outlaw’s den, she suspected the former.

  He began clearing away dishes and mugs scattered across the oak table.

  “My name is Magdalena,” she said, for lack of having anything other to say, but overcome with the need to say something to this self-possessed youngster, a child in the house of outlaws.

  He glanced at her from under a mop of unruly hair. “Pleased to meet you, milady. That’s a fine name.”

  She smiled, surprised and faintly charmed. “Thank-you.” She hesitated. “And yours?”

  “Lóegaire.”

  “I am pleased to meet you, Lóegaire.” She examined him a bit more closely. “How old you are you?”

  “How old are you?” he retorted, and she couldn’t help but laugh. At the far end of the room, the men turned and looked her direction. “I am nearing my thirtieth year.”

  He whistled. “That’s old.”

  “Yes, thank you.” He angled up a knowing grin. “And you?”

  “Ten. Thereabouts.”

  She gestured around the room. “This is quite a nice…place.”

  “Oh, aye, they do things right,” he agreed, and reached for a mug on the far side of the table, his hair swinging by the nape of his neck. It was in need of a cut, but she presumed bandits did not care much for such trivialities.

  She stirred the spoon through the bowl of soup idly, venturing another glance into the far room. Tadhg was now sitting at the table, their heads bent closer together. “And how long have you all been here? You and the…” Outlaws. Brigands. Criminals of some sort.

  How did one refer to the people whose home she was now in?

  “Oh, I’ve been here a few years,” the boy said, pushing the bowl closer to her. Soup sloshed over the sides. “They’ve been here far longer.”

  “Ah. And you one of their…son’s?”

  “Nah. I’m a hostage.”

  She gasped.

  The darkest eyes peered at her. “Want some bread, milady?”

  “I am not a lady,” she said. “A hostage?”

  “Aye. Ale, then?”

  “No, thank-you. Why are you a hostage?”

  He shrugged. “Because my family has something they want.”

  “I see. Can I…” She lowered her voice. “Help you?”

  He lowered his voice too. “No.” Then he grinned.

  She felt the edge of a smile.

  He looked at her pointedly. “Are you not going to eat?”

  She looked down at her bowl of steaming soup. “I am not very hungry…” The aroma of beef and tangy winter vegetables and salt wafted up to her nostrils, and her stomach pinched, then growled. The boy smiled.

  She smiled back. “Well, perhaps just a taste…although I will say, I do not like to eat alone.”

  He promptly set aside the tray and plopped onto the bench beside her. Garrulous creature that he was, he swung his feet and informed her, “I help make all the stews and such.”

  “Do you?” She spooned in a mouthful. It was hot and thick, a porridge more than a soup, and it was delicious. She looked at him with level regard. “This is quite delicious, Sir Lóegaire.”

  “I’m not a sir, milady.”

  “And I am no milady, sir.”

  They grinned at each other. Magdalena felt a sharp, almost twisting pang in her belly, for the children that had never yet been.

  Although…maybe now…with Tadhg.

  She banished that line of thought at once. Such thoughts were not for n
ow, as one sat with a small hostage in an outlaw’s den.

  “Well, Lóegaire, you are a fine outlaw’s cook,” she told him.

  He nodded and swung his feet off the bench as they talked, as ten-year-olds-or-thereabouts were wont to do. If he was a hostage, he a well-treated one. And a wealthy one. Or the child of a wealthy someone.

  She was just about to ask a question when a low roll of banked fury came from the far end of the room where the men sat. There were no shouts, no raised voices, but it rolled through the length of the apartment like thunder.

  Magdalena and the boy got to their feet and turned in time to see a dagger fly through the air and embed itself in a wooden beam. It stuck there, shuddering.

  “Son of a bitch,” the boy muttered, and slipped away.

  A tall, long-haired man came striding out and, without looking at her, turned and disappeared into a far room. A moment later Tadhg came striding toward her, his face fixed and merciless.

  “We’re off, then,” he said tightly, and took her hand, leaving the steaming bowl of soup behind.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  THEY SWEPT down the street as though carried on a wave. Magdalena’s skirts swirled around her ankles and the veil belled out behind her, the fur-lined hood hanging down her back.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, half breathless as they turned a corner. The sun was about to set, and light spread in a glorious wash across the horizon, but overhead, there were clouds. Snowflakes were beginning to drift down.

  “An inn. A very fine inn. I promised you a bath tonight, did I not?” Tadhg’s words were lightly spoken, as if his usual charming self, but underneath lay a cold tension, hard like stone.

  “Yes, but—”

  “Only the finest for you, Maggie.” The smile he turned on her was thin as a knife.

  She tried to stop their headlong trek through the streets. “Tadhg, what happened back there?”

  He tugged her forward again, gently but irresistibly. “Come, we must hurry. They will stop taking guests soon, when the sun falls.”

  Candles were appearing in windows above, and nighttime coldness moving in. “But we have no have money.” She reached for his arm, trying to force him to stop. “Listen to me. We will be turned away—”