"Aye. ." Jenna breathed. "I can." Perhaps it was because Lamh Shabhala remembered Sinna’s touch, perhaps it was because Sinna’s mind and hers were open to each other, but Jenna could feel her presence expand, filling the room so that in her mind she could see everything in it as clearly as if it were day. She let it expand farther, moving her awareness outward.
And stopped with a gasp.
"Aye," Sinna said. "Even the dead can feel that threat."
Outside, on the wall, a dark form crept upward in
the night, hands already on the balcony and death lurking in his heart. The intruder pulled himself silently over the rail-with her eyes, Jenna saw nothing but the closed doors leading to the balcony, shut against the night and the cold air. But with the cloch, she saw the man crouch, then stand, and she saw the small crossbow in his hand and the quarrel smeared with brown poison.
"You see," Sinna said softly. "Lamh Shabhala can do more than throw lightnings. Watch; let me use the cloch. ."
One of the balcony doors swung open, and a night-wrapped form slipped in with a breath of cold wind. At the same time, Jenna felt the stone around her neck respond as the ghost of Sinna moved forward, her body changing as Lamh Shabhala’s energy surged through her, her shape suddenly that of Jenna herself, young and brown-haired, the torc gleam-ing around her neck. "You!" Sinna shouted, and the intruder turned, firing the crossbow in the same motion. The quarrel went through Sinna's chest, burying itself in the plaster behind her. Sinna laughed, and she was herself again, an old woman. Behind the dark wrapping of the assassin's head, his eyes were wide, and he looked from the ghost of Sinna to Jenna, standing near the bed. A knife flashed in his hand, but before he could move, Jenna felt Sinna's mind close over her own and-like a skilled teacher's hand guiding a student's-she let energy burst forward from the cloch, shaping the force as it flew, and the assassin was picked up as if in a giant's hand and slammed against the wall, grunting in pain and shock. A wisp of the cloch's power ripped the cloth from his head, so that Jenna could see his face.
"Do you recognize him?" Sinna asked.
Jenna shook her head-his features were those of a stranger.
"Then he was hired, and he has a name to tell you." The man was struggling, trying to push away from the wall and move, but Jenna held him easily. "There, you have him," Sinna said, and Jenna felt Sinna's mind leave hers.
'I'll tell you nothing," the man grated out, writhing in the grip of the cloch. His gaze kept slipping from Jenna to the ghostly image of Sinna.
"No?" Sinna said. "Tighten the power around him,
Jenna. Go on. Squeeze him, Jenna. Make him feel you."
Jenna did as Sinna instructed, imagining the tendrils of Lamh Shabhala’s energy snaking around him, pulling tight like a noose. The man gri-maced, the lines around his eyes and forehead deepening, and he spat defiantly.
"Good. I like defiance," Sinna said. "It increases the pleasure when he finally gasps out the name we want. I wonder if he’s ever felt his ribs crack inside him, snapping like a dry branch into a dozen knives of bone. I wonder if he’ll whimper like a kicked dog when the eyes pop from his skull, or scream as his ballocks are crushed and ruined."
Sinna/Jenna yanked at the cords of energy, pulling them tighter still. The man moaned, and Jenna glanced at Sinna. "I can’t-" she began, appalled, but with the shift of attention, the assassin momentarily pulled away from his invisible bonds. Before Jenna could respond, the knife still in his hand moved. With a cry, he plunged it into his own chest. Blood welled around the wound, and flecks of red foamed at his lips. He wailed, his eyes rolled upward.
He fell. The wind from the balcony brought the fetid smell of piss and bowels.
Sinna sniffed. "Not a common assassin, then, but a loyal and devoted retainer, to kill himself rather than talk," she said. Her voice sounded eerily emotionless. "I would guess that someone’s becoming impatient."
Jenna gaped in horror at the foul corpse on the floor. "Would you have done that, what you told him you would do?"
Sinna laughed. "If he had come to me, in my time, rather than to you? Aye, I would have done that and more to stay alive. I have done it. And so will you, Daughter, if you want to remain the Holder."
"No, I won’t," Jenna said, the denial automatic. Sinna only smiled.
"Jenna!" Maeve’s voice called from outside the room, and she heard footsteps pounding toward her. Jenna pulled the torc from her neck, and Sinna vanished as Maeve and Mac Ard rushed in, Mac Ard with his sword drawn. He stopped at the doorway, gazing at the crumpled body of the
assassin. He hurried over to the man as Maeve went to Jenna. He prodded the assassin's body with the tip of his sword, then knelt and pressed his fingertips against the neck just under the jaw, grimacing at the smell. She saw him glance at the small crossbow on the floor near him. "Dead," he said, rising again. "And by his own hand, it would seem. Jenna, are you all right?"
"I'm fine," she answered, trying to keep her voice from trembling. Her arm ached, burning cold, and there was ice in the pit of her stomach, making her want to vomit, but she forced it down, forced herself to stand erect and pretend that she was calm. Later, she could allow herself to cry at the remembered fear and the death. Later, she could run to the anduilleaf and its relief. But not now. .
"What happened here?"
Jenna pointed to the open door to the balcony, then to the quarrel embedded in the wall. "He climbed up from outside and shot that at me, but… " She paused, considering her words. She pulled away from her mam's embrace. "I knew he was coming," she said, more strongly, "and I swept the bolt aside with the cloch, then held him. He killed himself rather than be captured; if I'd suspected he would do that, I would have stopped him, but I was too late. No doubt he didn't want me to know who hired him." She watched Mac Ard's face carefully as she spoke- certainly it wasn't Padraic, not after all he's done. He's had a hundred better opportunities if he wanted them. . Yet she watched. Mac Ard was frowning and serious, but she had seen him speaking with the Ri and knew that he could keep his thoughts hidden from his face. She couldn't stop the para-noia from creeping back into her mind. He could easily tell an assassin where and when to find me.
"You 'knew he was coming'?" he said, his head tilted, one eyebrow raised.
"Lamh Shabhala can do more than throw lightnings," she stated: Sinna's words. . His eyes narrowed at that; his mouth tightened under the dark beard and he turned away from her. He went to the quarrel and pulled it from the wall, sniffing at the substance daubed over the point. "Aye, 'tis poisoned," Jenna told him.
There was anger and fury in Mac Ard's face, but Jenna didn't know if it was at the attempt, or at the
failure of it. "The garrison will comb the grounds, and those on watch tonight will be punished for allowing this to happen," he said. "I’m sorry, Jenna.
I will have gardai sent here immedi-ately. This won’t happen again."
How convenient that would be… to have his own people around me all the time. "Thank you, Tiarna, but I don’t need gardai," Jenna said firmly.
"Jenna-" Maeve began, but Jenna shook her head.
"No, Mam, Tiarna," she insisted. "Get rid of… that." She pointed at the body. "Call the servants in to clean up the mess. But no gardai. I don’t need them." She lifted Lamh Shabhala. "Not while I hold this."
Chapter 20: Love and Weapons
"SO far," Jenna said, "they tell me that they think the assassin was sent from Connachta."
"Jenna. ." Coelin's arm went around her shoulders at that. For a moment, Jenna tensed, then she relaxed into the embrace, moving closer to him as they walked slowly along the garden path. The planted array in the keep's outer courtyard rustled dry and dead in the winter cold, and a chill wind blew in off the lough, tossing gray clouds quickly across the sky and shaking occasional spatters of rain from them.