"And?" Although Maureen could see it coming.
"And we need a place to hide. They need a place to hide." He picked up the charred rabbit and gnawed away with apparent relish, as if he hadn't just described scenes that would leave most men puking.
She frowned. "They sent you to ask?"
He shook his head, swallowed, and wiped his mouth again. "I volunteered. I doubt if anyone else could have gotten past Shadow or your other pets."
"And why wouldn't your enemies just follow you here?"
He glanced at the black leopard warming her ankles like a housecat. "Because they're afraid of you." The cat blinked lazy eyes and continued to purr, as if he'd understood every word.
Maureen flowed to her feet and the cat suddenly tensed, heavy against her knee as if her slightest wish would launch him across the fire at Padric's throat. That could become a problem. But then, so's the magic. Learn to keep your temper, girl.
"Screw it. Bring them in. You can have the fucking dump."
Padric stood, slowly, cautious, eyeing the cat. "Something you need to know. Fiona was there. So were some Fair Folk we've always connected to the Pendragons. Conservatives, people who really like the status quo." He paused, still staring at Shadow.
"You bring change." Then he vanished into the darkness, as if he were a leopard himself.
Probably doesn't want to give you time to change your mind.
She needed a drink to wash away the stench of his story. But she'd sworn off that stuff. And now she had to walk back into temptation. She had to walk under the keystone of the arch back into Dougal's lair, before a bunch of strangers crowded in and muddled every trail.
The trail to Brian. Those cellars might give a clue as to where he went. He'd found someplace where her bond didn't reach.
Thunder rumbled again, closer. She turned until she felt the keep in front of her and strode off into the dark between the trees. The cat padded along beside her, a moving pool of black among black shadows and against black rocks and trunks. Fresh rain drowned the dying campfire behind her, and she didn't worry about coals eating down into dead roots and duff and surfacing again in flames twenty feet and five weeks away. This forest could take care of itself. She'd made sure of that.
Shadow froze and then inched forward paw by careful paw, glaring up into the blackness of a tree, tail-tip twitching, and Maureen touched the trunk. Smooth bark, beech, rejoicing in the rain washing its leaves and soaking down to its roots. Sean's ghost perched on an upper limb, cold and afraid. Maureen shrugged. Any ghost that was afraid of a leopard was no concern of hers. She waved the cat on.
Why does he follow me? I don't command the beasts like Dougal did. Maybe he'd gotten so used to people that it was habit. Or maybe he senses a fellow killer and is looking to clean up the scraps.
And then they were on the edge of the forest, with the keep's stone walls and jagged towers outlined against forked purple lightning. Frankenstein's castle, and the monster was coming home. Rain poured down out of the thunder, around her but not on her. She gritted her teeth and stalked across open rock and grass to the open gate. The cat waited behind, under the shelter of the forest and away from her personal thundercloud.
Through the empty courtyard until lightning strobed off the top of the burned tower right in front of her and she felt the tingle in her feet, into the empty kitchen and down into the empty cellars, grabbing a flashlight from the shelf behind the door. Doors, servants hiding behind locked doors.
Evil things walk the storm winds. The Mistress is angry. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For I am the evilest son-of-a-bitch in the whole fucking valley.
Her heart started to race again, and her palms turned slick. She stalked on, moving fast to get something done before she ran screaming from the weight of stone crushing down on her shoulders. Down past the cell door with its melted hinges. Stupid waste of energy, should have just had the smith chisel the damn thing off for scrap. But she felt better with it behind her. Down through the ironbound oak doors that marked the end of the spaces that were used and into dust and must and darkness. The stones glowed faintly in the beam of her flashlight.
Footprints in the dust. One pair led on, close-spaced as if they were walking slowly and checking everything for traps as they went along, farther apart as they returned through passages they'd cleared already. She could see Brian and decades of soldiering in the methodical way of them, into and out of connecting doors. She checked empty rooms and cellars choked with ancient trash, finding nothing that gave a clue as to where he'd gone.
Another pair of feet, smaller, came out of one wall and went into another. Hidden passages? She thumped on one wall and then the other and got a bruised hand for her trouble. Pixies?
Brian's footprints led into a doorway to the left, into bare living stone. She pushed against the door and it creaked on its hinges, not barred or locked or even latched. She pushed through into the wood-yard at Great Northern Paper's pulp mill, cords of wood as far as her flashlight beam could reach, stacked solid under a stone ceiling.
Except along one wall. The footprints led on. She followed them. She trailed one hand along the wood, identifying bark, drawing strength from the dried-up corpses of old friends. Make a project, work out dendrochronology from the rings and find out how long
