She paused at the next landing, hand on the lever latch, unease tugging at her mind. She couldn't remember the way they'd come. How many landings had they climbed, how many sets of stairs, how many twists and turns?
Smoke seeped through a crack and tickled her nose. She looked up. The door lay directly under the landing to her bath, back into the tower.
No thanks.
Down two more flights of stairs, a heavy door led off the opposite side. She tested it, gently, blocking with her foot, and found cool, clear air. A breeze blew into her face, and she thought she heard a growl overhead, the sound of a predator seeing fresh meat: more oxygen to the fire. Chimney effect. People who expected sieges shouldn't live in perfect chimneys. She closed the door behind her.
A short passage brought her to the kitchen--to empty chaos of food half-ready and pots boiling over on the wood-fired ranges and crocks of milk and flour dropped on the floor by fleeing cooks. She carved off a chunk of fresh bread and layered it with butter, chewing on that while gathering dried sausage from a hanging garland and tossing apples into a cloth bag for a picnic lunch. Cheese, and bottled water, and more bread followed. God, she was hungry.
Wine. Bottles of wine waited, racked, probably for cooking, but she wasn't picky. Maureen grabbed one, the memory of her thirst wakening and calling out for alcohol. She dragged the cork free with her teeth and swallowed red nectar.
And suddenly she realized the urge was weak. Wine was nice, yes, but not necessary. Maybe Dougal had forced her through withdrawal and out the other side. She set the bottle down and lifted both her middle fingers to salute him.
She stared at her wrists, at the red circles that had grown into welts like warming frostbite. The iron bands had drained her power, bound her soul. Dougal wouldn't have taken them off until he was sure she'd use her power for him.
Now they were gone. She felt different, free, as if she was emerging from a dark, damp tunnel into daylight. She wasn't afraid. She didn't need the drink.
She remembered a time like that once. A time when she thought and acted like a normal person. A time when the world smiled at her. A change had started when she unlocked the iron bands. The magic of the Summer Country seemed to blend with her mind and was working to heal her madness.
This is where you belong, she thought. Madness is like a weed, a plant out of place. When you march to a different drummer, the world calls you crazy. Your blood tried to change the world into the Summer Country and retreated into madness when it failed.
Doors led into pantries, into twisting stone passages, into damp stone stairways that probably led to wine and root cellars. Maureen fumbled her way out through a labyrinth of afterthoughts and additions until she finally found sun and sky and an open yard. She looked up.
The round stone tower of the central keep loomed overhead, four or five stories of defiant fortress. It belched flame and smoke like a blast furnace. Chimney, indeed. The idiot had built a chimney and filled it with fuel and lived in it. That was why so many real castles had cold stone floors and arrow-slits for windows. It made them damned hard to burn.
Something rumbled deep inside the tower, like bolts rolling around on a kettledrum. Sparks fountained into the sky, and then the smoke thinned to gray instead of black. More air, she guessed, less fuel. For all the smoke and burning, she still smelled the lavender of the bath, the onions and garlic and roasting meat of the kitchen. The tower carried the smoke straight into the sky.
Men and women bustled around the yard, hauling buckets of water and spraying thatched roofs with garden hoses against the slow rain of embers. She wondered why the hell they fought to save their prison and then realized it was probably the only home they had.
Someone spotted her and grabbed another's arm, and a spreading pool of faces turned towards her. They backed away, dozens of them, fear written in their wide eyes. "That's the one," she heard them whisper. "That's the red-headed witch who killed the Master. What kinds of pain will she bring to us? What are the games she plays?"
She shook her head and turned toward the castle gate and the forest beyond. She didn't want to think about the slaves. She didn't want to think about her belly, either. She'd only done what she had to do.
A man stepped out of a stone outbuilding and jerked to a stop, breaking her funk. She blinked twice before the picture registered, the mixture of terror and resignation on his face. It was Padric.
He carried a peregrine on his wrist, a beautiful huge bird of slate gray and a white breast mottled with black. He carried a pair of heavy scissors. He stared at her bare wrists and neck, and sweat beaded on his forehead. He crossed himself with his free hand.
Maureen pulled the knife from her waistband. The cold hiss of steel sliding out of its sheath overwhelmed the roar of the fire and the crowd fighting it. She felt the greasy warmth of blood on her hands, felt the frenzy of hacking Dougal into chunks of crawling meat, and almost vomited. Could she kill again, without the madness driving her?
He studied her face and blinked at what he saw there. "Please let me free all the birds, Lady, before you kill me." He snipped scraps of leather from the falcon's ankles and flung her into the air.
The peregrine circled, puzzled for an instant, and then climbed steadily into the sky. It was beautiful. It was free. Maureen followed it with her heart, until it dwindled into a speck and vanished in the smoke against the morning sun.
