Spindle and Dagger - J. Anderson Coats Page 0,49

morning, I step into the yard and Niall is not by the door. When I get to the hall, he’s coaxing his magpie to lift its little feet to the tune a boy plays on a pipe whistle while an admiring crowd of youths oohs and aahs. Aoife cuts off my attempt at an apology by dropping the cat on my lap and insisting there’s nothing to beg pardon for. Or mayhap she’s saying the apology isn’t mine to make.

Aoife doesn’t say it coldly, but I spend the rest of the day with a tight ball of worry in my belly. Later, after Owain has rolled in long past dark and fallen into bed and pressed up close, I say, “Niall has been nothing but kind to you, and all you do is slight him. People have noticed.”

“Slight him?” Owain scoffs. “He should be glad I’m a guest here or he’d know what I really think. Hell, what kind of man takes so many baths and carries a psalter?”

One who doesn’t smell like sweaty horse and prefers not to linger in purgatory. But I bite my lip and say, “It’s not just Niall. Had you been here today, you’d know Muirchertach went to parley with the men of Waterford again because they are weary of certain bastards sowing their cargos with live mice and waving bare buttocks at their wives.”

Owain snort-cackles, like he’s remembering it fondly. “If the men of Waterford return the favor, you’ll be tempted to choose a pointy rock, but you’ll do better with a nice round one. Aim true and put your weight behind it.”

I sigh in disgust and shift away from him.

“What? No wife of mine is going to pass up a chance like that, is she?”

He’s lucky there are no rocks at hand now. “Look, tomorrow there’s to be a horse race. That could be fun, yes?”

“At Rathmore?” Owain’s good cheer is gone in a moment. “No. I can’t be here.”

“But —”

“But nothing.” He rolls over and puts his back to me. “Believe me, sweeting, it’s best for all of us if I’m anywhere else as much as possible.”

Anywhere else would be one thing, but not when it means out with Cormac stirring up hell in the Irish countryside. It would be different if they were a proper warband. Raiding has a purpose. Whatever this is will lead only to bad blood and bad ends.

After the room has gone quiet and there are no sounds but the mice in the walls, I close my eyes and whisper my old prayer to Saint Elen.

Thank you for understanding.

Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.

Please make Owain see how dangerous this foolishness is so he’ll stop —

“What was that?”

I startle and nearly fall out of bed. Owain has risen on one elbow and now he’s squinting at me in the slivers of moonlight from the half-closed window.

“N-nothing,” I stammer. “I thought you were asleep.”

“You said something about Saint Elen.” Owain’s voice is curiously level and wide-awake. “What she should do. I heard you.”

My heart is hammering. I haven’t said her name since the start of my prayer. Which means he’s been listening to me, silent as a cat on the hunt, as I whispered all kinds of things in the dark. Carefully I reply, “I’m praying to her. She’s my name saint.”

I wait. Holding my breath. Owain beside me drawn tight like a bowstring.

At length he mutters, “I’m losing patience with exile. Not understanding what the hell anyone is saying. Having to ask for everything. People expecting things of me. All I want is to go home and take back what’s mine. I’d listen to the Adversary himself if he’d give me a way to do it.”

I shudder. It’s too close to true.

“But I’d rather listen to a saint,” Owain adds quietly.

I don’t wait for the patter. I need him off this idea that he can have any sort of guidance from Saint Elen. I need him off it right now. “I wouldn’t trust Madog ap Rhirid to govern a byre. Who does he think he is, trying to run a province like Powys?”

It lands where I mean it to, and soon Owain lies growling at the ceiling and the Almighty and whoever else is listening, which is me, because it’s always me.

But now he’s talking about what he plans to do. Recall the lads of his warband. End his cousin in a variety of gruesome ways. Things he means to do himself alone, without any