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“Still can’t do it,” said Owain.
Fionnuala shrugged and Ariana scowled with her arms crossed.
Panting, Emrys looked up at the falling snow and released all the fire within him. He could not send the fire out of him. Instead, it poured out almost like steam. A wave of heat that evaporated the snow before it reached the ground. He turned back to his father, his aunt, and his teacher.
Owain said, “What’s his problem?”
“No problem,” said Fionnuala.
Owain raised his eyebrows and then snorted. He held out his hand to catch falling snow but stared off into the distance, into the dark of the night. Emrys knew he looked towards the airship, though it was too dark to see. Owain said, “Winter’s lasting too long.”
Ariana snorted. “Ask your druid.”
“Did. Says it’s a cursed winter. May have something to do with someone pissing off the gods of Chalon Forest.”
Emrys placed his hand over the wound the lord of bone gave him. Knew he’d burned it all away but he still felt the echo of the pain there. The echo of a thought or the attention of some strange intelligence. “What good’s a druid who can’t predict the weather?”
“Quiet, boy.” Owain pulled his heavy cloak tighter. “Will you leave with her come spring?”
Ariana and Fionnuala turned to Emrys and he nearly staggered from the question. Unbalanced, unsure how his father would have known or who would have told him or even who could have told him, for he had said nothing. Not even to Fionnuala or Alwyn or Aeronwen.
“He knows too little yet,” said Fionnuala. “If he leaves now, before he has true control, he may kill himself.”
“Sounds bad,” said Owain.
Ariana said, “Not funny.”
Owain snorted. “Not laughing. But fine.” He leveled his gaze on Emrys. “You may go but not until you have some control over your magic. Making fire is hardly the reason I brought Fionnuala to you. The depths of knowledge and ability that I demand—that my sons will demand—must be achieved.”
Emrys nodded, still unsteady. All the weeks he’d been carefully constructing plans to escape with Mari on the airship and all he had to do was ask his father.
“I could go with him,” Fionnuala said.
“Don’t want you going home,” said Owain.
“Let her go. We need no witches here.” Ariana spat and slashed warding signs into the air.
“We have seen an impossible reality, sister. We don’t need one witch. We need an army of witches. A war is coming, Ari, and I won’t be able to rely on you. Even with your strength and cunning, you cannot fight an enemy flying a league above us.” He took a breath and exhaled a plume. His breath condensing in the air, forming a cloud. He turned to Fionnuala. “My worry is letting you go home.”
Fionnuala, like Emrys, stood barechested in the snow. Emrys struggled to keep his eyes from her. Though he knew she was at least his mother’s age, she appeared so much younger. He assumed that was some effect of the magic coursing through her or some kind of incantation or spell or meditation she used to remain youthful. It disconcerted him, though, to see someone so uninhibited.
He remembered her naked flesh wrapped round him on the night he nearly burned himself alive while dreaming. She was unlike anyone he’d ever met. Rather than entice him, it made her seem stranger. Alien. Like she was another monster or god out of Chalon to terrorize him, if only she chose.
Fionnuala said, “If he’s trained, you won’t need me.”
“If,” Owain said.
Ariana said, “You would give up your boy to this university?”
“Shadow son,” Emrys said. He smiled and hoped the night would hide his anger, his frustration. He needed to get away. To leave all this behind. Once gone, he could shrug off their chains and any claim his father had on him. “I’m useless without the uncanny abilities our laird desires.”
“Ariana, sister, we cannot defeat these people from the skies. Not without weapons of our own.”
“Then steal their ship.”
Owain snorted. “Come spring, we’ll begin building our own. Berit and her druids believe—”
“What?” Emrys couldn’t contain himself. “You learned how to make an airship?”
“That’s what I aim to find out.” He turned back to his sister. “If we steal this one, they will come to destroy us. It is enough, now, that the other clans believe we have an ally in the air.” He turned to Emrys. “You’re to do more than learn from their warlocks in Eire. You’re my ambassador. You must convince these skypeople that we are better as an ally than as a subject.”
“Owain—”
“What would you have me do?” He rounded on Ariana, his voice rising. “If we must beg for survival, I will wear holes in my knees. My sons will live and they will be laird after me and Matauc will remain free. That,” he pointed at Emrys, “is why you must convince them. If they bring their armies here, we will be rounded up as slaves. Convince them that we can give them the north. Tell them we have a coalition of clans here stretching from coast to coast.”
“Brother, we—”
“Enough, sister. He’s an ambassador—a liar—not a druid. He has no allegiance to truth. Even if you did, I would expect flexibility. This is your home, Emrys. You may have no love for me or those you’ve spent your whole life with, but the land is in you. We are of the land. All of us. We belong to it as much as it belongs to us. Would you see this place ruled by strangers who want only to own it?”
“How did you know?”
Owain blinked. The question caught him off guard. “What?”
“You knew I’d leave.”
Ariana snorted. “No great secret. You’ve made your plans clear since before you entered Chalon and brought back that Lyr girl.”
“The Lyr girl.” Owain shook his head. “She prophesied my future.”
Ariana spat. “What she say?”
Owain sighed. “Emrys, you are not a subtle man. Not yet. You must learn to be.”
He had known all along. All these plans and all his planned deceptions meant nothing. He knew. He would always know, perhaps, what was inside Emrys.
It burned within him, even though he understood the freedom it gave him. He straightened his back and raised his chin. “I do not need my teacher.”
“You do,” Owain and Fionnuala said as one.
Owain continued. “You will keep learning her language and pull from her any knowledge you might discover. You’ll write back to me. You’ll find their druids or priestesses and you’ll build a network stretching from here to wherever there might be.”
“She speaks Faroise,” Emrys said.
“Heard she speaks more than that,” said Owain. “Learn from her. I suspect her own position in her clan or kingdom is not so dissimilar from the one I expect of you. Her knowledge is as much a tool as that airship. She’s dangerous, Emrys. A weapon. Do not be fooled by her pretty face or her coquettish playacting.”
The heat swelled in Emrys. Words of defence rose in him but he held them instead. There was no point in speaking to his father. Just more opportunities for mockery and condescension.
There was no reason to fight anyway. Owain was giving him permission. He could leave. And when he left, he would never look back. Even Fionnuala could not drag him back home.
He said, “I’ll do it. Whatever you want. I’ll do it.”
Ariana made warding gestures. “The God will not forgive this, brother. Selling your own son—”
“The God will not save me or my sons from war and famine, sister.”
Ariana shook her head and spat and left them in the snow, in the dark.