She would spoil this cheer, this contentment, she realized, and postponed it for just a few minutes.
“What was the song?”
“Ah, one that tells the tale of a heart broken by a fair-haired woman. You should learn the language. Marg might be the one for it, as I’d never have the patience.”
“I’ve picked up a little.Brisfaidh me di magairl.”
He stopped, leaned against Merlin. His mouth curved, just a little. “And what, I have to wonder, have I done lately that you’d want to break my balls over? Sure you mangled the pronunciation more than a little, but the meaning came through.”
“Morena gave me that one. It’s handy.”
“Well then, you can’t truly speak a language until you can speak its curses, can you now? You’ll be after your carrot now, won’t you?” he said to Merlin. He got one out of a bin, offered it. “And you’ve earned your nap as well.”
As he grabbed his duster and stepped back, Bollocks thundered by after two streaking cats.
“You’ll regret it,mo chara, if they get their claws in you,” Keegan called out.
“Mo chara. My friend. I’ve picked up a little more than swear words and curses.” And she found herself amused the mouse had the grain after all. “Where did you ride?”
“Here, there, then the other, and back again.” He tossed on the muddy duster, then closed the stall door. “Into the midlands to have a look at the spy we dug out of his snug cottage by a stream.”
She gripped his arm. “You found one? You’re sure?”
“I am now that I’ve seen him myself, and the shrine to Odran he had behind a locked door. From the other side he is, near to your partof it. Came over from the land of Alabama, near a dozen years past. Had a woman once, an elf called Minia who loved him, so he came with her and was welcome.”
He stopped by the mare, looked in her eyes, stroked her cheek, then reached in another bin for an apple, carved it in halves with his knife. “Two children they had, I’m told, before she took them and left him, as he grew surly and too lazy to work.”
He fed the horse half the apple, offered Breen the rest. When she shook her head, he bit into it himself as he strode toward the stable doors. “It seems in his bitterness and solitude, as he had little truck with his neighbors, he turned to Odran.”
“How did you find him?”
Keegan secured the stable doors. “It was Uwin, Shana’s father, who told one of the scouts we might have a look there. So they watched, and saw the man send a raven and receive another. It’s Odran who uses ravens, as we use hawks.”
“Yes, I know.”
He looked out at the hills. “It’s a twisty road, is fate. If Uwin hadn’t been so indulgent, so trusting, and told Shana council business, made her useful in that way to Odran, and if she hadn’t tried what she tried to do to you, to me, I wouldn’t have sent them from the Capital. My mother wouldn’t have found a cottage for them, and one that sat close enough to this man for Uwin to wonder.”
“You’ll take him in for Judgment.”
“Aye.”
“Banishment.”
“It might be that.”
“What else?”
“If we find no doubt of the treachery, it may be the Dark World. But as we’ve yet to find he’s done violence to any, it may be to send him back over, bespelled so his memory’s clouded.”
“Like mine was.”
He turned to her. “A bit like that, but with no way for him to find a way back. Talamh is barred to him, whatever the Judgment. He could’ve gone back when he found himself discontented here, and instead he chose to follow a path that would have destroyed his ownchildren. For his wife to have taken the children and left? This is a serious matter of itself.”
“Divorce. It’s the first I’ve heard of it here.”
“It’s not altogether like that.” Frowning, he shrugged. “Not with laws and judgments and all of it, as it’s a thing personal, intimate, and of the heart. The Fey don’t take the pledge or the ending of it lightly. I spoke with her myself, and though the love for him had died in her, she wept for the father of her children. She wept though she told me, and others confirmed, he’d refused to so much as lay eyes on his son and daughter these past four years.”
“When will you go?”