The Silver Scar Read online

  The world started a slow spin, the throbbing in Trinidad’s fingers and wrist keeping time with his racing heart. Israel, his baby brother, the son of murderers, left at the mercy of Indigos. My god, Wolfie …

  “Roi turned the kid into a sleeper,” Castile said. When Reine didn’t speak right away, he growled, “Tell him.”

  She bit her lip, flicked her gaze from one to the other. “Revenge mojo got to Papa. Fuckin always settlin scores, that one. Couple of ours died that day in the bomb and Papa, he’s gonna make someone pay. Trouble is, we had no idea where Cave Coven is. Then Israel wakes up not knowin who he is. Half the job is done already, so Papa chems the kid. Teaches him to make bombs in a trance. By the time he’s ready, Trinidad is gone Christian, and Papa thinks he can do one better than revenge. He can pull the trigger when we need it, head off a wicked big attack. Like a crusade.” Reine seemed to come back to herself. Her voice sharpened. “Worked like gold, too. We sent him inparish and the Church took him in.”

  Of course. Father Troy. Always collecting strays. Trinidad’s knees felt watery. He locked them to stay upright.

  “We didn’t know if we got the chemwipe to stick inside Israel until Javelot … she was the one. I went soft on the whole idea.” Reine sounded ashamed. Trinidad couldn’t tell if it was for using Israel or for going soft. “But she kicked my ass and she took Israel, made him do it.”

  Trinidad could barely get air behind the words. “Do what?”

  “Blow up the jail. He was supposed to go to the church and blow that, too. Never made it. I don’t know why.”

  Castile cleared his throat. “He didn’t make it to the church because we stopped him.”

  Reine blinked at him, chapped eyelids over bloodshot eyes. “You knew all along?”

  He glanced at Trinidad. “His nightmare we roved into? I recognized Roi d’Esprit. And he asked for you, remember? I thought it was strange, but you told me he was chemwiped. But still. He could remember. I thought I’d get something on you to hold over Reine in the savvy. So this morning I roved. I found Wolf and he told me.”

  “How did he find out?” Trinidad asked.

  “I don’t know.” He shook his head. “Really, I don’t.”

  Trinidad looked at Reine, at her hard, lined face, her dreadlocked braids haphazard around her face, her fingers cut and bleeding. Her thumb pressed against the blade of her knife. She put it away under his stare.

  “Did you tell him?” he asked.

  She twitched her head no. “Javelot. My sister. She’s missin. Maybe they caught her and made her tell.”

  Trinidad tightened. The bishop would use this against him, just like Castile was trying to do.

  Castile flinched, but his next words came hard and angry. Defensive. Like he’d had reasons to lie, good reasons that trumped their friendship and loyalty. “I couldn’t tell you. He asked me not to. And he was right. You would have gotten yourself killed, Trin, like you keep trying to do. But you have family now. Great Horns, Wolf—Israel is your brother. He needs you. You can’t die on him now.”

  Trinidad just looked at him. Wolf had always been his brother.

  “You see how trying to make up for what your folks did isn’t working? You can’t undo what they did any better than I—” He swallowed whatever he was going to say. “I know you’re angry with me for not telling. I know I fucked it all between us. But Israel needs you.”

  Trinidad shook his head. What had any of this to do with his parents? He was just trying to live up to his vows. The bishop would use Wolf against him. The sooner he could fight, and maybe die, the less opportunity she’d have to do that.

  “Let Trinidad decide,” Reine said.

  Castile laughed, caustic against the tension in the room. “That’s fucking rich, after you carve him up and dump him for dead at my feet. Now you want him to fight for you?”

  “You’re the one askin for him in the first place,” Reine said.

  Trinidad couldn’t think. It all was coming too fast, colliding and smashing like bullets into bodies. “Stop. Just—stop talking.”

  He turned away from them. His armor constricted his breath, his mouth tasted like iron, his skin slicked with cold sweat. Israel … Wolf. Wolfie. He closed his eyes, throat held in the vice grip of unshed grief.

  And Castile had lied to him, betrayed him.

  A stiff silence enshrouded them. He felt Castile’s anxiety rippling through it.

  “Get out,” Trinidad whispered to Reine.

  Reine tread across the floor softly, latched the door behind her with the barest of clicks.

  “I’m sorry. I should have told you.” Castile stepped closer, arms wrapped around his own body. Sometimes he seemed a strong, controlled man. Other times he was a cornered, frightened animal, like in the Barren when Trinidad realized they were raping him back at the jail. That desperation was back, tenfold. “I know you’re angry. But you can’t do this. Don’t do this, Trin.”

  Trinidad’s anger evaporated. The lies seemed like a small thing in the face of war. He could almost understand why Castile had done it, even why the Indigos had hurt his brother. But everything had been taken from him in his life, and he didn’t know how to make Castile see that he only had one thing left to trust. “Christ died for me. The least I can do is return the favor. I know it means nothing to you, but it means everything to me.”

  “Christ was just a man, Trin.”

  “I am just a man.”

  Castile ran both hands through his hair, shoving it back from his face. “And Israel?”

  The thought of losing his brother again stung deeply, but he forced himself to continue. “Wolf is a Christian. He wants to be an archwarden. He understands my vows. What kind of example would I be to him if I failed to act when I could?”

  He couldn’t tell Castile he didn’t want to die, couldn’t say that he’d only started to feel alive again, that if anyone could make him turn his back on his vows, and gladly, it was Castile. He couldn’t explain, couldn’t make his lips shape the words in time before Castile spun away to reach for the door latch.

  “Do you know how dead your eyes get when you fight?” His voice shook. “Then you say something, you look at me, and you’re back like you were never gone. I don’t fucking know what I’m going to get from one second to the next with you. But I do know this. You’re not leaving me again.”

  Castile slammed the door open and burst through it. A cold wind of dancing snow and silence swept in.

  He watched Castile throw himself on his horse and gallop through the gates. No one stopped him. Reine turned her head toward Trinidad. She stood motionless a long time, staring at him.

  Pain raked him. Violence welled up and he clenched his fists against it. Christ’s peace. He’d sworn himself to it. But why can’t You grant it to me?

  “Eli Eli, lama sebachtani,” he whispered.

  God did not answer.

  FORTY-FIVE

  Castile slowed his horse to a trot on the way out to the dirt road that crossed from the Indigo freehold to Highway 93. With every step he felt the distance between him and Trinidad stretch into true severance. He blamed his stinging eyes on the cold wind and tried to concentrate on the Indigo army as he rode past them. They were already gathering into tribal regiments, fifty warriors there, two hundred here. Smoke wisped away from fires. Banners caught in the cold breeze, moving like painted spirits overhead. There were more Indigos than he’d ever hoped for.

  There wasn’t anything like enough.

  No one challenged him, and he was glad. A dull roar thudded through his skull. He felt dried up and worn out, like he’d ravaged himself with cheap drink. Yet he felt nervy, too, hands trembling, heart thudding. Trinidad was going to die soon, the fucking fool. A sword blade would carve the life from his body. He’d end up in the Barren, meaningless, dead, and there wasn’t a damn thing Castile could do about it.

  He found the road, kicked his horse to a gallop, and let his hood fall back. Faint snow stung his cheek
s, the wind whipped up the turmoil and fury in his heart, and he rode hard and fast, away from Trinidad and his death.

  A dull glow lit the distance, well upriver from the cave. Someone had lit pyres to send the warrior-witches to the Summerlands. Castile wished he could have worked the pyres. He should have stayed to care for their dead, for all the use he was to the living. Instead, he turned to the path toward their cave, treading through the creek. It bubbled through the ice and snow. His horse snorted and shook its head, prancing and slipping over icy rocks.

  Once inside, he waited for Aspen to speak, shifting from foot to foot after making his report on what had happened at the Indigo freehold. She took the news of Trinidad’s challenging the bishop to singlehand without comment as she scrubbed her guard’s blood away from the stone floor with stringy rags. Her baby daughter slept near the fire.

  He finally couldn’t stand her silence anymore. “We have to run, my lady. We need to get out of the county as fast as possible. Deeper into the mountains.”

  Her scrubbing didn’t miss a beat. “In winter? With the children?”

  “I can put them in the dray. You can ride with the baby, I’ll drive. The adults will have to come behind. We have a couple of horses for the old ones. I’ve heard there’s a herding settlement at the old quarry. It’s easily defensible but they could probably use more fighters.”

  “How did you hear that?”

  Castile cleared his throat, glanced away. “In prison.”

  “I’m to take the coven through mountain passes in the dead of winter on the word of murderers?”

  Once a convict, always a convict. “I’m a murderer, so yeah.”

  The rag finally stilled under her hand. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

  Castile ran a hand over his face and squatted on his heels. Talking to Aspen’s back while she bent to her gruesome task was getting to him. “If we don’t appear, if we don’t fight … I think they’ll leave us alone. After Trinidad dies …” He let the word fall away. Just thinking it was bad enough. “Afterward. It’s going to be a fucking massacre. The Christians are going to torture the Indigos into telling everything they know about us. Somehow, they’ll find the cave. We’d best not be here.”

  “They’ll still hunt us in our dreams, like before, if they want us dead that badly,” Aspen asked.

  It was an unarguable point. “I’ll kill Wolf. Israel. The one who roves them. The next time I see him I’ll kill him.”

  The rag started scratching at the bloody stone again. “Maybe it’s just you they want, Castile.”

  He realized she was leading him, maybe trying to trip him up, and he was glad her back was turned. Lying to a priestess’s face was bad mojo. “She wants Trinidad.” He stopped to breathe. Just saying the name gutted him. “She thinks she can manipulate him with religion, get him to rove her. She hates me for allying with him, for protecting him. Shit lot of good it did either one of us.”

  Aspen dropped the rag in her bucket of brackish water and turned around. “Why did you come back to the coven, Castile?”

  “To warn you. To get you all out.”

  “Not tonight,” she said. “I mean after prison.”

  He shook his head, bewildered. “This is my home.”

  “I think we both know it isn’t,” she said. “You chose a path away from the coven, away from the craft, a long time ago. You chose to fight and to use magic to do violence, and that was well before prison took you from us.”

  Understanding thundered through him. “You mean the ecoterr war.”

  “I love you, Castile, but I will never understand you. I don’t know how you could choose death and violence over life and love. It isn’t our way.” He opened his mouth to protest but she squeezed his hand. “No. Hear me out. You changed after Trinidad left. You were a child, so it was to be expected. But the old Castile never came back. Then you fell in with the ecoterrs—”

  “It was a worthy cause.”

  “Was it? People died.”

  “It was war. I fought for the world, the craft. I was fighting for my people.” His voice faded. He sounded like Trinidad.

  “I don’t think you were fighting for anything. I think you fought against the parish, punishing the Christians for taking Trinidad from you.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I didn’t even do all my work inparish.”

  “I know.”

  “What?”

  She smiled, but tears glittered in her eyes. “You’re not the only one with prison informants. I know how you managed to come out of prison with barely a scratch. You gave yourself to Windigo to protect you—”

  Castile stared at her, cold and stiff.

  “You can fight well. You could have taken him, maybe not killed him, but gotten him to leave you alone. So, we figured he had something on you. When you came out, Hawk did some digging. He paid off some prison guards to get to him directly. Windigo said your bombs destroyed that Denver church, the one where Marius was priest, and her home.”

  A weight grew on his back, like someone, or something, was pushing him forward. Chills climbed his spine at the touch. Herne. Shoving him toward the truth. No escaping, not this time. “He’ll tell,” he whispered. If he hadn’t already …

  “No. Hawk killed Windigo.”

  Castile stared at her, stunned. Windigo … dead. Only Lady Aspen knew the truth now. He thought he could trust her. She was telling him, not telling other people. He wanted to trust her. “My lady—”

  “Whatever Hawk did wrong,” she said, “and whatever you did wrong, he was prepared to take care of you, Cas, as one of us. As family. You’re my family, too.”

  She fell quiet, waiting. His voice sounded dead, even to him. “I thought her house was empty. We were trying to scare her, that’s all. You know she’s been talking crusade since she was a young priest. I didn’t know …” He swallowed and thought of Father Troy’s little house pressed up against the church in Boulder Parish.

  “And that has to do with the environment, how?”

  “You know as well as I do its Christian rule that destroyed the Earth. They don’t care about here, now. All they care about is their precious Heaven.” He shook his head. “They got worse than they bargained for with the Barren.”

  “As did we all.”

  He leaned toward her and took her hand. It was wet and chilled from the bloody water. “Marius doesn’t know it was me. I’d be dead if she did. It’s not why she came after us. She came after us because I can rove. Because Trinidad can.”

  “Odd. The way I understand it, you went after Trinidad first.”

  He swallowed and thought of fighting Marius in the Barren, of the slash across her forehead and the one across his back. He looked down at his hand holding hers and pulled it away, tucking his silvered fingernails out of sight. “I thought he was roving them. I was scared he would use the Barren against us.”

  “You fear the Barren?”

  “Don’t you?” he asked.

  “Funny thing about fear. It has an odd way of turning into hatred. Marius knows an ecoterr bomb killed her family, and she knows you’re an ecoterr. You are close enough to the real thing, even if she didn’t know you’re actually the man who killed her family. That she doesn’t know explains why you’re still alive. It also explains why she tortured you, why they raped you.”

  The word fell like a bomb between them, obliterating Castile’s ability to speak. His armor constricted his breathing, he unsnapped his breastplate and dropped it at his side. “Trin told you.”

  “This whole time, I hated Marius,” Aspen said. “I feared her and I hated her for using her personal loss to fuel a crusade. I hated her for killing Hawk. Then I hated her for hurting you and killing our people. But now I can understand her, just a little.” She glanced at her daughter. “I would kill without blinking to protect my child.”

  “You won’t have to, my lady. I’ll take of you. I’ll do what Hawk couldn’t—”

  Hawk, who allied with the
enemy.

  Hawk, who knew what Castile had done and let him back in the coven anyway.

  Aspen was watching him carefully and nodded. “Hawk made mistakes, Cas. But when you went inparish with Trin and didn’t come back, he was frantic with worry.”

  “Because of Magpie,” Castile whispered.

  “Not just her,” she said. “I think Hawk was just realizing how he misjudged the bishop and their savvy, how badly we needed your help. Honestly, when he went inparish, I think he wanted to get close enough to the bishop to kill her. He cared about this coven, all of us. When you came back from prison and asked to rejoin us, he was the first to speak on your behalf. I worried over how it would work out, we all did. But Hawk wanted to trust you. He even let you bring Trinidad here.”

  Hawk had fought Trinidad and Castile a thousand ways since they were kids. Trinidad had only really fought back once, had attacked him like a rabid animal, scarring his face.

  He shook his head. “How could he have allied with the bishop? He had to have known what she might do. I can’t believe I ever trusted him.”

  “He couldn’t trust you fully either. You refused to talk about your past. Then you brought Trinidad here, so injured. Hawk realized something happened that day to make the Indigos choose revenge over food when they were starving. I think you lied to them, Cas, said something to get them to act. I’m guessing it went south.” She sighed. “With all you’ve done, all the secrets you’ve kept, it makes me wonder what else you’ve lied about.”

  Trinidad had been so bloody, so hurt. A tear traced a hot path down Castile’s cold cheek. He heard his voice, though he hadn’t meant to talk. But candles burned, the Dagger and Cup lay nearby, and Aspen gripped his hands. This was as sacred a Circle as any.

  “Trin killed Roi d’Esprit. I guessed where Trin would hide him, and I was right. I found the body but I didn’t have proof Trin killed him. Just rumors. Reine’s too smart to take revenge without proof. So I carved a cross on the body.”

  Aspen hissed a breath. “Does Trinidad know?”

  He shook his head. Cold seeped in and carved rivers of grief in his bones.