Twelve

More messages; more time on the roof of the tower, talking to spirits of the air; and little enough in reply. Douglas spoke of waiting and intrigue, and expressed regret but couldn’t help. Moiread didn’t write at all. Cathal could only hope that was carelessness on her part, not inability.

Some of the men have heard tales of an English necromancer. I’ll find what more I can, said the letter from Artair, but Cathal didn’t expect very much, nor a quick arrival. His father was dealing in the fates of lords and nations, not of one man, and even his time was limited.

A letter to Agnes got a response as well, though she was busy with her own home and affairs. All the same, she wrote, I am loath to think of a loyal retainer like Fergus suffering such a fate, or of this man having the presumption to dictate to you. Souls and their capture are unfamiliar to me, but I shall look to the library here and to my contacts elsewhere. It does sound, she added, as though your alchemist has the right idea of it.

Even as Cathal read to the end of the letter, he kept looking back to those two words, your alchemist, and glaring at the paper. He couldn’t have said why, save that he could hear Agnes’s voice as it had been in their childhood when she would frequently imply that he, if he made an effort, might not be completely and hopelessly stupid. Over the years, she’d stopped doing so maliciously, just as Cathal had stopped pushing her into the horse trough when she was wearing her best gown, but the echoes still lingered.

She has a name, he thought, and then, And you’re but five years older than me. Our sire doesn’t speak of mortals as pets, not often. Stop showing off.

And yet he was certain she meant no harm.

Family: they never quite stopped needling you, even by accident. It had been a while since Agnes’s affectations had bothered him—but then, Cathal knew, he’d grown touchy enough over the past few months. Doubtless it was only that.

Yet, when Sophia asked him to show her the holly he’d mentioned, he felt a certain incipient smugness toward Agnes and a hope that whatever Sophia discovered would work on its own, that this human scholar was good enough to solve the problem herself, without any assistance from a condescending quasi-mortal sorceress. She didn’t have as many years as Agnes had, and she had not the bloodline of Cathal’s mother’s side, but all the same, he was beginning to suspect Sophia could hold her own in argument with any of them.

She could certainly surpass any of them for enthusiasm, he thought when he met her and Alice by the castle gate. Sophia was talking, explaining some principle that Cathal couldn’t overhear. Her gloved hands were flying about as they’d done in Fergus’s room, and he could see her dark eyes sparkling even in the depths of her fur hood.

Alice, in the way of friends, listened with a combination of interest and tolerant amusement. The two of them had clearly been down this road a few times before. When Cathal approached and Sophia stopped talking, Alice turned and gave him a long look, one not as sharp as her gaze had been at first but still extensive and thoughtful.

“Madam,” said Cathal, tempted to ask what she was searching for and if she’d found it.

Adding to the impulse, he received a few more of the same glances as the three of them left the castle, and Alice’s gaze returned to Sophia after each. Whatever message passed between them was foreign to Cathal. He had the vague feeling that he might have come up to some obscure measure, in Alice’s eyes, but only just.

In truth, he couldn’t fault her. With Fergus up in the tower, he could have nothing but admiration for a friend’s concern. And, like Sophia, she made her way through the snow without complaint, both of the women following in his tracks along the path he made. It was hard work for them, hindered by skirts as well as weaker frames, and the journey between the castle and the forest was a quiet one. The crunch of feet in snow and their quick breaths fell into the empty air, and made in time a rather companionable rhythm.

Once they reached the forest, the going was easier in some ways. The trees had kept down the worst of the snowdrifts, and fallen pine needles made for an easier foothold. Cathal forged ahead still, finding buried logs and boulders before they could become a hazard, but simply walking took less effort than it had done on the way.

“It’ll be your Lent soon, will it not?” Sophia asked.

Cathal had to count the days, tapping his fingers against his thigh, before he nodded. “Aye, I suppose. Hardship for you?”

“No, not generally,” said Sophia. “If nobody’s eating meat at all, you see, I’m far less conspicuous. Toward the end, of course, there’s Passover, but…” She spread her hands, long fingers in black gloves opening as if to let go. “That’s toward the end. Time enough to think about it.”

“I always liked the day before Lent, back home,” said Alice. “They’ll parade an ox down the street, and children go from door to door for crepes.”

Sophia laughed. “You only liked not having to cook as much for yours.”

“If you’d ever had to feed a man and two huge boys every evening, you’d be just as happy,” said Alice.

“Where are they now?” Cathal asked, turning back to glance at her in surprise.

“Yaakov’s dead…a fever, five years back. The boys are apprenticed.”

“And I gave her big eyes,” said Sophia, shaking her head in pretended remorse, “and begged her until she said she’d come with me to strange, cold lands, so that I would have company and my family could sleep nights.”

“I wanted to see the strange, cold lands,” said Alice. “At the time, at least. I wanted to hear new songs and new stories, and see castles and cities in this part of the world. And I wouldn’t have let you go alone in any case, you who forget to sleep when you’ve got your head in a book.”

“That… Well, yes,” Sophia said, surrendering the point. “Oh! Is this the place?”

They’d come into a small clearing where the trees were largely evergreen and the shrubs around them grew thickly, many still green even in early February. “If I remember right,” Cathal said and then nodded as he spotted the bright-red berries of a holly bush under one of the trees. “Aye.”

“Why, I think I can find a number of useful plants here. If there’s time, of course—and if you don’t mind. Ordinarily I’d say that you could return to the castle, but I doubt either of us could find the way back from here.”

“I don’t mind,” said Cathal. “Glad to be outside the walls.”

“All the same,” said Alice, “there’s little sense us staying out here until our fingers fall off. We may as well split up. I think I know enough of what you’d want, Sophia, and Sir Cathal—”

“Holly, at least. Do I have to do anything when I pick it?” he asked.

Sophia shook her head. “Some plants do require special care in their harvesting…mistletoe, mandrake, a few roses…but I shouldn’t think we’d find any here and now, and I can’t foresee needing any such soon.”

“Good. Stay within sight of the clearing. I think there’s naught out here now to hurt you.” There were wolves enough, largely a threat to the dead, and in the winter a few might be desperate enough to attack a living human, but none would come within a good distance of Cathal even in human form, and he would hear anything approaching. “Scream if you need to.”

“Be sure that we will,” said Sophia.

At first, they split the clearing equally, but when Cathal moved from one tree to another, he caught Sophia’s scent: herbs, strong soap, and ink, overlaying human female, particularly her in a way that humans didn’t have words for. He looked sideways and saw her no more than an arm’s length away, carefully breaking small branches off one of the evergreen trees.

“Yew?” he asked, remembering her earlier conversation with Donnag.

“Pine.” Sophia didn’t turn her head, and her hands never left off their motion, just as they hadn’t in the laboratory. But her voice was friendly now, and she went on. “It’s not specific to either of the experiments I’m doing at the moment, but it’s good for cleansing, and that’s necessary enough. I’ll need to purify the room a few times as I go along. Also, if there are women in the village or the castle who want to have children, I can make a potion with the cones or the nuts, or show Donnag how, but perhaps she knows already.”

“I wouldn’t have any idea,” said Cathal. “Our rites use pine, though I never looked very closely at it. Father or Agnes would hand me what was needed, and I’d take their word. But I doubt Donnag knows about those. I didn’t know it was the same for mortals.”

“I’d imagine some variation…that you’re better innately at translating will or divine power through your flesh.” Sophia broke off a final branch and straightened up. “Or that it’s easier for you, rather. Regardless, the same principles would apply, I’d think. You are also things of the world, made by the same creator, yes?”

“Yes,” said Cathal. The work had disarranged Sophia’s cloak, and when she straightened, a breeze blew her gown and kirtle against her body, clearly outlining her full breasts and the flare of slim waist to rounded hip. He felt very much a thing of the world just then. “At least I think so.”

“You think so?”

He shrugged. “The oldest ones belonged everywhere or nowhere. So they say.” The stories were old ones, but new to Sophia, and as long as she was watching him with wide eyes and parted lips, Cathal was glad to keep talking. “Gods, if not your god…or Father Lachlann’s. Or the Fair Folk, maybe, as they call them around here. They could be in this world or others, as they chose. Not so solid.”

Unshocked, wondering, Sophia stepped forward, looking at him as if for some evidence of divine glow. “You look quite solid to me,” she said, smiling a little.

Right now, my lady, parts of me are extremely solid.

Cathal bit back the reply and cleared his throat. “It’s been generations. We get more mortal with each. And I’m young,” he said.

“So you mentioned,” she said, and then shook her head a little. “But you’re…both, you mean to say. Beings of this world and not.”

“Aye. It also varies among us. Some think of themselves differently. Mostly, I’m a man.”

“Yes,” she said, too quickly, and then caught her breath. “I mean…” If she’d had anything further to say, it vanished. Her lips moved as she stared up at him, but words died before they could emerge.

There were only a few inches between them now. Her lips were full and dark red, her eyes shining, and Cathal was mostly a man. Kissing her took no more thought—allowed no more thought—than drawing his next breath.

Sophia didn’t so much step into his arms as flow there, smooth, sure, and quiet. As her hands settled on his shoulders, her lips parted under his and she tilted her face upward, not merely yielding but eager. She was warmth, she was softness, and Cathal hadn’t realized until that moment just how strongly he’d craved both. Heedless of the snow, the possible spectators, or anything else in the world, he wrapped his arms around Sophia and pulled her against him, thinking only of the moment and of making it last.