Six

“Go,” Moiread said. Madoc didn’t seem to have heard her. It was hard to tell. His face was blurred, and his whole body kept fading in and out. She propped herself up on her elbows. She’d regret that later. “Go. Downstairs.”

“Lie back down,” he said. He bent down. Moiread heard a thud. It puzzled her briefly; then she felt the air against her feet.

Right. He’d taken her boots off. Nice man. No priorities. She shook her head, which she regretted immediately and profanely. “I’ll hold on. Lying down. Boots off. You talk to the girl. While she remembers.”

Having said her piece, and with her arms rapidly turning to wax, she let herself slump down against the pillows again.

Madoc made an uncertain sound. “I don’t know how long that might take, and you—”

“I’ll be fine.” That was a lie. She didn’t think she’d die. She’d had belladonna a few times before as a treatment for pain, which generally hadn’t worked on her, but never enough to make reality melt this way.

She was fairly sure she wouldn’t die.

Dying wasn’t her main concern.

“I’ll be here. I’ll manage the rest. Talk to her. You have to go down anyhow. I’ll need water. And meat. Lots of both. I’ll pay.”

“That you will not,” said Madoc, all clipped anger.

“Then—” She gestured, and the hand she used sank into the coverlet. It belonged to her arm, but that arm grew longer, falling down and down into nothing. Moiread bit her lip. “Sooner you go, the better I’ll hold on.”

That swayed him. Even in delirium, Moiread could sense the shift in his thinking. “I’ll return before long,” he said.

Do. Please. She didn’t say it. Couldn’t, after trying so hard to convince him, knowing it was necessary. But the room felt empty when he was gone, and the shadows began to crawl with shapes: not frightening in themselves, not to her, but very much so in what they portended.

Tasks would help. Focus would help. Moiread lifted one heavy hand, willed it to compliance, and started to undo the lacing on her breeches.

About a year later, she’d managed to strip down to her shift and taken the illusion off. It didn’t draw much power from her normally, but Moiread suspected she’d need every particle—and nobody who didn’t know her would get close enough to make out her true sex unless something went wrong.

Unless something else went wrong.

With the slow clumsiness of a badly wounded animal seeking shelter, she crawled under the blankets, curled on her side, and shut her eyes.

A door opened. Moiread didn’t know what door at first. That it was a door and not a tent flap meant she wasn’t at war, but otherwise she was lost. She made a questioning noise.

“I’ve brought food,” said a voice—male, Welsh, pleasant. Madoc. Memory came back. Her vision focused a little too.

“The girl?” she managed.

“She said the man was thin, shorter than me but taller than the innkeeper, unshaven but not bearded. Dark hair. She thought dark eyes as well, but he was wearing a robe with a hood. He’d a chain around his neck too.”

“Could be half the men in town.”

“That he could,” Madoc said, his words echoing and distorting. “I doubt the man has lingered about the place either. In his shoes, I’d have had a horse waiting for me and been a good mile out of town by the time we realized there was anything amiss.”

“Unless…” Moiread said, and then stopped. There’d been an objection. She’d been thinking of it. Now it was gone. “Damn.”

“Oh, he may have waited to see if his plan worked. It’s possible. But I doubt he lingered. Drink.” His wavering hand set metal to Moiread’s lips. She opened her mouth. The ocean washed in, drowning what Madoc said next.

Men in plate were marching—clank, clank, clank—and she had to go and meet them, the English, keep them from her home. Why was she lying in bed? Her men would be waiting. She went to rise, and a hand on her shoulder pushed her back down.

“No, not for a while yet,” said Madoc, and his voice cleared her head. He held meat to her mouth. Moiread chewed and realized that the clanking sound from before had been knife against platter. “It’s working fast, the poison.”

Moiread swallowed and nodded. “Everything’s fast for us. Save age. I never understood that.”

“And it’s likely no time for either of us to try. Meat and water… Shall I keep bringing those, or will you need other things?” He fed her as he talked, but paused to let her answer.

“Those will do.” She stretched her mouth into a smile, pulling the muscles out and up in each direction. “It’s a siege, aye? You lay in supplies, and then you wait for it to pass.”

* * *

Madoc had seen people poisoned before—not often, and often not intentionally—but easing pain was a tricky matter, and one sort of berry often resembled another. He’d seen the confusion, the blurred vision, the sight and sound of things that weren’t there. When Moiread’s limbs shook, or when she lay with flushed face and glassy eyes, Madoc worried, but he felt himself on familiar ground.

Other things were not familiar at all.

On the second day, helping her drink another goblet of water, he felt heat coming off her when his hand was inches from her skin. Carefully, Madoc pushed back Moiread’s tangled hair and touched fingertips to her forehead. Her skin was like a fresh warming pan—not hot enough to blister him or set fire to the sheets, but far hotter than any fever, even a deadly one, would explain.

He called on the saints in a whisper, crossed himself, then picked up the goblet again.

Madoc ate his own meals rarely, grabbing slices of bread and meat when he went to the kitchen after Moiread’s food. Gradually he trusted the girl, Jillian, to guard the room for short intervals, but never more than a few minutes. He never had her bring food, and he slept, uneasily, in a chair beside Moiread’s bed.

Her hand on his bicep wakened him from one such doze. Everything was dark around them—it must have been after midnight—but her eyes glowed like a cat’s. The pupils were round, though, and huge, almost swallowing the witch light of her irises. Her hand was hot iron. “You. Madoc. Please.”

At once he stood and moved to her side. Her hand slid down his arm to his wrist, and her fingers grasped tightly. “What is it? What can I do?”

His first and deepest fear was that she’d been wrong, that she was dying after all, but her voice was strong and lower than he was used to.

“Talk.”

“Pardon?”

Her pupils had been too large a moment ago; belladonna did that. Suddenly they were far thinner, though just as long. Madoc thought of snakes. The blue-white glow from her eyes was far brighter than before. “The body fights. Old tactics. Doesn’t understand why not. Not now. Not here. It doesn’t know.”

Sharp pain lanced through his wrist. Madoc looked down. He’d never noticed Moiread’s fingernails, but he vaguely remembered them as short, sensible, as fit a woman with plenty to do and most of it physical.

Now silver-gray claws pierced his shirt and his skin. As he watched, they blurred and went away, and it was a woman’s hand clutching him.

“Give me words,” she said, her eyes still glowing. There was a blurring all around her, a sense of potential. “Keep me human.”

Understanding brought with it another sort of fear, and so, as Madoc nodded, he began with the first words that came to his mind: “Pater noster qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum…” He stopped. “Will Latin be all right?”

“Will be fine.” She chuckled like a rusty blade coming from its sheath. “I speak a few tongues. Any will do.”

And so he prayed, and then spoke of his father’s priest when he was growing up, and how the man had been known for his temper but patient enough with a lad who’d constantly asked questions and wanted to hear stories of saints and miracles. That led into the story of Saint David, and how a hill had risen up under him while he was preaching, and the festivals in Wales on his day. By the time Madoc had exhausted himself on that subject, Moiread had fallen back into an uneasy sleep. With her eyes closed, it was harder to tell, but the sense of impending change had gone. She looked like any other woman on a sickbed.

That night was the first of many such incidents. Madoc bandaged his own wrist, pulled his sleeves tight to cover it, and told Moiread about Branwen and the “Dream of Rhonabwy,” recited poems, and sang songs he’d heard from his mother or troubadours or drunken guards. Once a forked tongue flicked out of her mouth while she listened; another time, silver scales appeared across the bridge of her sharp nose, like unearthly freckles on her pale skin.

“If you need to change…” he said during one of those moments. “If it’ll help, I can perhaps get you far enough outside the village—”

“No.” When she opened her mouth, her teeth were pointed. “You couldn’t. Not wi’ so much motion, so many smells. And…” She hissed in a breath. Her hands clenched on the bedsheets, and the fangs disappeared. “If I change when I’m ill, it’ll be easier to get lost to instinct. To… Well, I’ll no’ do it around so many people.”

Her meaning was impossible to miss. Madoc didn’t raise the subject again.

None of the later trials was as bad as that first night, perhaps because both he and Moiread were better prepared or perhaps because the poison, and her body’s defenses, had peaked in those dark hours. Gradually the shifting stopped, but Madoc kept up the stories and the songs. Moiread seemed to rest easier with them, and he felt as if he was doing something when he spoke, even if it was only distracting her.

He wished he knew more of physicking. Bleeding might help, or herbs, but he’d no training in such matters even where humans were concerned, and Moiread wasn’t. Madoc watched the too-shallow rise and fall of her chest as she slept, put cool cloths on her forehead, fed her, and made himself eat.

The body fights, Moiread had told him. In the night, as she slept or muttered rambling commands to phantom armies, Madoc wondered if hers had given up, if remaining in human shape was a sign that she’d surrendered to the poison.

Those thoughts made sleeping even harder and left food sticking in his throat.

On the afternoon of the fourth day, with no preamble, Moiread opened clear eyes, shook her head, and sat up with no apparent trouble. “God’s teeth, but I’m glad that’s done with. Worse than childbed, or so I hear.” She looked at Madoc, who sat staring at her, and put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m in your debt, sir.”

“No, for it’s my fault,” he managed.

“I’m sure someone would have tried to poison me on my own merits one of these days,” Moiread said. “You stayed. And you helped. It speaks well of you.” She climbed out of bed, a touch clumsily and weakly for her, but not at all what Madoc would have expected from an invalid. “And now, I suggest you sleep. I’m going to go see if there’s any chance of a bath.”