Aisling 2: Dream Page 12

  “The Watcher is watched,” Dallin wheezed .

  Vertigo closed him in a hard fist. He dragged his eyes back to Wil’s, reached out, gun dropping from his hand as it latched on to Wil’s sleeve.

  Leaned in, whispered, “Run.”

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  Chapter Three

  Wil just barely kept himself from growling anxious impatience. They must have hit Brayden with that chunk of wood a lot harder than Wil had thought. Brayden had seemed fine just a moment ago, but now Wil was going to have a bugger of a time getting him to his feet, let alone out of the alley before the gunfire started attracting a crowd.

  The men had all scattered, except for the two Wil had shot. Wil had no doubt the others would be back in minutes with reinforcements. The scraggy woman was cowering in the doorway of what Wil assumed was the hostel’s kitchen, clutching her gold to her thin chest and singing to herself, that eerie smile still pulling at her mouth. Her sudden appearance, the realization of what she was, had thrown him almost completely before. Now, he dismissed her, blocked her from his consciousness like she didn’t even exist.

  He yanked his arm out Brayden’s grip, leaned in until the dark gaze fixed and focused on Wil’s face. “We have to go,” Wil snarled. “Get up, we don’t have time for this.”

  But Brayden only grabbed hold of Wil again, this time clenching a fist to the collar of Wil’s coat, dragging him in. “Go.” A breathless grunt, urgent and fierce. “Run!”

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  “I’m

  trying to, damn it, would you—”

  Wil stopped short, eyes narrowing. He hadn’t noticed the look in Brayden’s eyes until just this moment. Hadn’t seen the stress, the pain, the urgent command. The way he dragged his oddly hazy gaze away from Wil and pointed it over Wil’s shoulder. Hadn’t noticed that Brayden had dropped both his guns to the dirt…

  Brayden was never without his guns.

  There was a prickle at the back of Wil’s neck, a bulky shadow falling over Brayden’s face and stretching out behind him. Wil turned slowly, pushed his reluctant glance up even while his stomach began a queasy descent to the ground.

  He knew right away why Brayden had told him to run.

  Knew right away that this was some very serious shit. Tall and wide, and blond and tanned—a Linder, but somehow so unlike Brayden it made Wil want to cringe.

  “Is this how your Guardian guards you?” the man wanted to know. His voice was gruff and graveled, harsh, and the smile in his eyes made something inside Wil go loose and cold.

  Brayden was trying to get up, stand between Wil and the man, and not quite making it. It took a moment for the hilt of the knife jutting from Brayden’s lower back, the growing stain of blood on his coat, to jumble itself into sense in Wil’s head.

  Oh. So that’s what he’s doing down there.

  “Exile,” Brayden said through his teeth.

  “Watcher,” the man returned and dipped his head, mouth turning up at one corner in a smirk that sent a shiver down Wil’s spine. The hard blue eyes dismissed Brayden, turned to Wil. The man turned his hands palms-up. “You see I am not armed. I am no threat to you.”

  Wil ignored him and bent to pull the dagger from where it jutted out Brayden’s back—

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  “Don’t do that,” the man said calmly. Wil hesitated and peered up. The man shrugged. “Do it and he’ll bleed out before you can get him help.”

  Uncertain, Wil turned to Brayden. “Is that true?”

  “Yeah,” Brayden wheezed, moved his mouth like he meant to say more, then only nodded somewhat drunkenly.

  Wil set his teeth and turned back on the man. “What do you want?” he asked, relieved that his voice was steady and not as reedy as he’d feared.

  “Ah, we all want so badly,” the woman sang, giggled a little and smoothed her torn, ragged skirts about her ankles. “Give them what they think they want to keep them from taking what they don’t know you have.” Her bird-like hands fluttered in the air in front of her face, and she laughed again.

  A small shock went through Wil, and he frowned at the filthy woman, a grimy little oracle, leaking portents like pus from a wound. How many times had he told himself that same thing? How many times had he used it as an excuse for deeds he didn’t want to remember?

  “We never give ’em anything that matters,” she murmured to her fingers, grinned her ruined grin at the man Brayden had called Exile. “Keep it so well, it hides even from our own.” She giggled.

  The man ignored the woman entirely, just let his smile spread a little wider, asked, “Does he take you to the Cradle, lad?”

  Wil jolted a little—he couldn’t help it.

  “Ah, but you’re no lad, are you then?” the man went on. He nodded sagely, tilted his head. “Did you think they’d just let you walk right in?” His voice had dipped down, conspiratory and filled with mock-concern. “Did it never occur to you that there were others who Seek?”

  He took a step forward, but Brayden let loose a 118

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  rumbling growl and drew his short sword from its sheath; it shook as he held it up, not much of a threat, but the man stopped, eyes narrowed. There was something wrong about him, something… off. He gave off threat like it breathed from his pores—he knew what they were, both of them—and yet there was circumspection in his mien, like he was looking for more. And he’d kept Wil from pulling out that knife and letting Brayden bleed to death.

  The woman staggered to her feet, threw herself at the big man, took him in a bony embrace. “Exile,” she breathed, burying her face in the sleeve of his coat. “Ye’ve waited so very long to take Her Children in-hand.” She looked up at him, pleading. “Will She take my hand, then?”

  The man’s smile turned shrewd. He slipped his arm about the woman, peering down at Wil, cunning. “D’you want what she has, then?” he asked smoothly. “I see the look in your eye. I see the need.”

  Wil shook his head, sucked in a heavy breath. Bloody hell, was it carved into his forehead?

  He wanted to shoot the woman so he didn’t have to look at her anymore. Didn’t have to wonder how close the resemblance might have been. Didn’t have to know that he still wanted it so badly he’d consider killing for it and then killing himself if he managed to get it.

  “Wil,” Brayden wheezed, “if you don’t move right now, I swear, I’ll shoot you myself.”

  Wil could only frown and wonder why he wasn’t doing exactly as Brayden had said. He should be running.

  Except he wasn’t going to. Couldn’t.

  “I’m going,” Wil told Brayden, low and even, “but you’re coming with me.”

  Grunting a little, Wil stooped and wrangled Brayden’s thick arm over his shoulder as carefully as he could. He 119

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  kept a steady eye on both the man and the woman as he did it, and his finger on the trigger. It was very telling that Brayden couldn’t seem to shrug Wil off.

  Instead, Brayden wrapped his arm about Wil’s neck, dragged him in. “Wil,” he hissed. “Don’t be an idiot—

  I’ll catch up if I can, but this is not apples and potatoes, you’ve nothing to prove. Look at him, don’t you know what he is? They took his Marks.”

  And yet had left him alive, knowing what he apparently knew, setting him loose in a world they hadn’t trusted for thousands of years to do with the knowledge what he would…

  It didn’t make sense. A Clan that didn’t even tell its own people what it was about, allowing their secret to slip through their borders in the form of a disgraced Old One?

  Wil looked the man over thoroughly, noted the calm, calculated challenge, the lack of malice in the measuring stare. The way he kept peering at Brayden with a badly hidden look of muted urgency. The too-obvious lack of any sort of assault on Wil himself, his mind or his person.

 
Wil gently disengaged himself again, stood. “No, they didn’t,” he told Brayden. “He did it himself. Or maybe had another do it for him.” He tilted his head, watched the man’s eyebrows rise. “He can’t hurt me,” Wil furthered softly. “He hasn’t got the power.”

  “He’s been mucking with my head since we got here,”

  Brayden snarled.

  It made sense; unless something had gone very wrong with Brayden’s reflexes, no one could have ordinarily got behind him, let alone stuck a knife in him. He’d been acting odd for hours, twitchy and unlike his usual confident self. And now that he thought about it, Wil himself had managed to sneak up behind Brayden earlier, and he hadn’t even been trying. It wouldn’t do at all to 120

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  assume anything, or underestimate this man. There was a sinister air about him, but in the same way a hurricane was sinister, a flood—a force of nature, the sole purpose of which was to move from Point A to Point B, and if you couldn’t survive the onslaught… well, it wasn’t personal.

  “He hasn’t done anything you can’t fight or do back ten times harder,” Wil said, tilted his head a little when the man’s smile curled sardonic.

  “In case the obvious has escaped you yet again,”

  Brayden ground out, “magic is slightly beyond my skills.”

  Wil almost pitied him. Brayden probably would have lived his whole life very happily believing what he’d just said.

  The far off shrill of a whistle broke in Wil’s ears, a renewed sense of urgency drumming a choppy rat-a-tat on his nerves. People from the hostel and whatever the building next to it was were peering down at them through dirty windows. Wil could feel their stares like buzzing insects over his nape. How much time had passed? Two minutes? Three? They needed to go—should already be gone—but a risk was one thing; blind stupidity another.

  He regarded the man with narrowed eyes, laid his bandaged hand to Brayden’s shoulder. “Did you know this would happen?” he asked the man bluntly.

  The man shrugged, dipped his head. “I was not as careful in my seeking as I might have been,” he told Wil.

  “Then you can fix your mistake,” Wil said tersely. “I assume you’re as skilled at healing as you are at… other things. Shaman.” He nodded toward Brayden. “Help him up.” He caught Brayden’s expression of anger and dismay, and looked at him straight. “Do I look like I don’t know what I’m doing?” he asked quietly.

  Brayden was sucking air in through his teeth now, sweating, face twisted in a perplexed grimace of pain.

  “Yeah,” he rasped, gave a slight jerky nod. “Yeah, you sorta do.”

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  Wil almost twitched a smile. “Trust me.”

  The other man pushed the woman away from him gently, murmuring something to her that turned her vacant smile nearly beatific. She glided back to her little alcove and crouched down in its corner, daintily adjusting her skirts. Waved at Wil.

  Wil’s eyebrows rose a bit, but he didn’t wave back, just kept an eye on the man while he knelt, guided Brayden’s arm over his shoulders and levered them both up from the dirt. Once Brayden was up and the swaying subsided, Wil darted out to retrieve Brayden’s guns and sword. The guns Wil jammed into his own coat pockets, but he slid the sword carefully back into its sheath at Brayden’s hip.

  “Where?” Wil asked the man.

  “The Temple,” was the straightforward reply. “I’ll lead; you cover.”

  Wil raised the gun again, gripped the forend, gave it a rough jerk to cock it then slipped it back beneath his arm.

  “Don’t fuck with me,” was all he said.

  The man’s eyebrows went up, skeptical. “You would kill me now?” he asked, more curious than surprised.

  Brayden whiffled a hoarse little snort and shook his head. “Well, he’s only just met you, after all,” he told Wil.

  Wil only smirked a little, shot his glance to one dead body then the other, and let the situation speak for him.

  He turned his gaze hard upon the man. “What is your name?”

  “Calder,” the man told him. “Barret Calder.”

  Brayden shot Wil a keen, startled glance. Wil only sighed a little, wondering with some bit of surprise why he wasn’t the least bit surprised. “The Temple, then,” was all he said. “Hurry.”

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  They didn’t venture out into the street, but hobbled along some of the same alleys and pathways Wil had traveled with Brayden mere moments ago, taking twists and turns that wound toward the more prosperous residences to the business district and on through the slums again. Several times they had to duck behind stray bushes or into a shadowed alcove to avoid a passerby, but by and large, the way was fairly clear, the majority of the city’s residents attending to their Market business. It only took a few minutes before Wil was completely lost and dependant upon the strange man who’d turned out to be surprisingly gentle as he dragged Brayden through the underbelly of Chester.

  Wil watched their backs, turning frequently and scanning about behind them, going so far as to scrutinize the ground itself, scuffing out with the heel of his boot the occasional drops of blood that leaked slowly from Brayden’s wound. All the twists and turns in the world wouldn’t help them if they left a trail as clear as that behind them. As he’d watched Brayden do on many occasions, Wil flicked his glance to all points—even up to the roofs of the buildings through which they passed—

  examining every shape and shadow for threat. Shouts and whistles still reached them, but they were far off, still concentrating the search on where they’d been, rather than where they might be now.

  Brayden had gone notably silent, absorbed, Wil guessed, with keeping his feet moving and breathing through what was likely some terrifically acute pain. He lurched more clumsily than he’d done before, losing more blood the longer they wended about. Wil noted with dismay the spreading blotch darkening the back of his coat around the knife’s hilt.

  The trek probably took perhaps ten minutes; it felt like forever.

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  The Temple was smaller than the one Wil had seen in Putnam, though its architecture was otherwise identical in its plain, unadorned stateliness. The man—Calder, Wil made himself acknowledge—led them past several doors around back, helping Brayden carefully down a small stone stairway, hidden beneath a tangle of dead vine and bracken. It wound down below the level of the alley to a damp, moldy landing in a recess so dark and deep it was almost like stepping into night. A thick, squat wooden door slouched at the bottom. Wil kept alert, sweaty fingers twitching nervously around the trigger of the gun.

  If betrayal was imminent, it would come quickly and from the other side of that door.

  The cloying scent of incense was the first thing that hit Wil when the door creaked open. The suspicious look of the narrow man on the other side of it was the second. Wil almost smiled a little—now, this was what he’d imagined a shaman should look like: lean form backlit by a low torch sconced in the damp stone wall behind him; hair brown and longish, but combed back from his severe face and tied at the nape with a small length of plain leather; a very basic brown robe worn open and slung over simple woven tunic and trousers. The only thing remarkable about the man was the warmth that bloomed beneath the hard suspicion when he recognized his guest, and then the genuine concern he aimed directly and immediately at Brayden.

  “Oh, save me, what’ve ye brought me this time?” he chided by way of welcome, swung the door open wide and gestured them anxiously through.

  “Brother Shaw,” their ‘guide’ greeted the shaman, “I’ve brought you trouble as I’ve never done before.” Calder angled Brayden through the door first then gestured over his shoulder for Wil to follow. “It would do us all well if no one learned of our presence. You’d best get your kit.”

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  The shaman didn’t
argue or hesitate, merely headed toward a darkened doorway arched in stone. Along the way, he plucked a torch from its sconce on the wall, carried it before him, and gestured them all after. Calder nodded and made to conduct Brayden through, but Brayden jerked to as close to alertness as he’d been since they left the alley, pressed his hand to the wall to stop them.

  “Wil,” he mumbled, concern and confusion both. He tried to turn his head, but the pain must have been lacing throughout his whole body, because his movements were stiff and clumsy.

  Wil stepped around to save him the trouble. “Right here,” he told Brayden, calm and reassuring.

  Brayden was drawn and pale, thick, clammy sweat greasing his fringe to his brow, dark eyes peering at Wil like chary little animals from the deeping of a stygian cave.

  “My fault,” he wheezed. “I’m sorry. This isn’t what—”

  “It’s my turn on watch,” Wil told him, pushing confidence and as much command as he could muster into his tone. “Trust me.”

  “Watch the Watcher.” Brayden puffed a weak chuckle, gaze going fuzzy and trying not to. He nodded, swallowed thickly. “I think I’m going to be sick,” he muttered.

  “Don’t do that,” Calder told him, serious beneath the small encouraging smile. “It’ll likely hurt like a bugger.”

  Brayden blinked blearily at Wil. He let go the wall and dropped his hand to Wil’s, still wrapped about the rifle. “Keep it close,” he murmured, slightly slurred.

  “Choose you. Understand?” He peered at Wil through layers of pain, trying to clear the murk that was blurring the intensity in his eyes. He leaned in. “Wil,” he said, through his teeth this time, “understand? Choose—”

  “I understand,” Wil told him, pried Brayden’s great hand from about his own, flicked his glance over 125

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  Brayden’s shoulder and met Calder’s sober gaze. Nodded.

  Wil pulled up one more smile for Brayden, leaned up and in. “The hearts of mountains,” he said quietly. “Show me that contrary nature.” A slow, tired smirk. “Impress me.”