Bound into the Blood Read online

  “Iona threatens the same,” Ives chuckled. “Benitoe must be stopping his aunt from kicking up too much of a fuss.”

  “Or he’s keeping some of it to himself to spare us,” George suggested.

  “Could be.” Ives paused for a moment, and George waited impatiently for the real topic to be introduced.

  “Dyfnallt working out well for you?” Ives asked.

  This can’t be the real subject, either, George thought. “I could use another whipper-in with Benitoe away, but with both Rhian and Dyfnallt willing to swap roles as huntsman and Brynach helping out, it’s good enough for the hound walking.”

  Ives hesitated again. Taking a guess, George ventured, “When’s Benitoe coming back from Edgewood? Does his aunt still need his help with the inn?”

  A surreptitious glance at Ives confirmed his suspicion. This was what Ives wanted to discuss. George leaned back and waited.

  Ives cleared his throat. “You know Benitoe is part of the Kuzul.”

  George nodded. That was the governing council for the lutins in Gwyn’s domain. The workings of the handful of elders were obscure outside the lutin community but occasionally they stepped into the light for matters that involved the fae or other races.

  When Gwyn ap Annwn sent his foster-son Rhys north to Edgewood to revive it after the exile of Gwyn’s sister Creiddylad, almost all the industry had to be rebuilt and the people salvaged from centuries of abuse. Benitoe had been sponsored to the Kuzul by Ives as a sort of junior member, delegated to look after the interest of the lutins who had been lost there.

  “The Kuzul have a new mission for him, huntsman, and it involves you.”

  “You want me to let him have as much time off as he needs, is it?”

  “No, that’s not it at all.” Ives frowned and glanced down. “I told them this was korrigans’ work,” he muttered, “but they overruled me.” He raised his head and looked George squarely in the face. “They want him to visit the human world, with you. To look for trading opportunities.”

  That surprised him, Ives thought, watching the huntsman’s face.

  “Let me explain,” he said. “It’s the old story, those who want things to stay the same, and the factions that want change.”

  Where should I start, he thought. “Have you heard about Deuroc, yet?” he asked.

  George shook his head.

  “He’s one of the resurrected ones from Edgewood, come in with all his family surviving. They put him in charge there, and he’s been working with Benitoe. He’s part of the Kuzul now.”

  He hesitated. The engrained habit of saying little about the doings of the Kuzul to outsiders was hard to overcome.

  “Most of the Kuzul were alarmed by the disaster at Edgewood, so many of our folk dead or missing. But there’s no denying that the survivors, well, they’re different. They lost family and friends, but it’s made them tougher. They have no interest in returning to the old ways, and Deuroc is their voice.”

  “Forged in the fire,” George murmured, and Ives nodded.

  “Deuroc tells them they’re getting stagnant. Tells them the destruction in Edgewood can work in their favor. ‘Look at that inn run by Maëlys,’ he says. ‘Could that have happened anywhere else?’ And the older councilors just frown and try to ignore him.”

  “But I think he’s right, huntsman,” Ives continued. “They’re all working together over there, the lutins and the fae, and Rhys and Edern are encouraging it by keeping the rents low and helping them rebuild with loans and material.”

  Ives remembered Edern’s vow that Rhys had sworn to uphold, to look out for the lutins in Edgewood in Isolda’s memory. Not dead a year yet, his daughter, and it still caught him by surprise when he thought of it. He took a breath.

  “Horse breeders like Luhedoc and some of the others who meet with outsiders, they’ve grouped together in one area, where the farms were mostly abandoned and there’s a small, empty village they’ve renamed Karnag. A mix of several clans, you understand, not just one, and there are a few fae, too. And korrigans. Things are moving very fast there.”

  George gave a half-smile as if he recognized this sort of story.

  “Well, Deuroc wants them to expand,” Ives said, “and he’s convinced enough of them to give it a try that the Kuzul have been forced to take action. The oldsters are worried most about the young folk who want to go there from other places, against the wishes of their clans, and what that will do to disrupt us. Me, I think having a place for them to go is a good thing, a way to experiment, to learn.”

  “So how did they decide?” George asked.

  “Deuroc thinks this ferment of activity in Edgewood could be the foundation for a larger role for lutins in the world. He sees change coming for the fae and the korrigans, with the new ways being made by the rock-wights and the new power of Gwyn as King of Annwn. ‘If we don’t make a place now,’ he says, ‘we’ll dwindle into backward folk of no importance. They’ll leave us behind.’”

  George nodded.

  “Some in the Kuzul said, ‘Where would you have us seek for this wonder? What new thing can we make part of our lives?’”

  Ives smiled. “Deuroc and Benitoe have been working together, you understand. So he tells them, ‘New things come from the human world. Look there.’”

  George covered his face with one hand and shook his head.

  “So they’ve given Benitoe the task. Find something suitable for the lutins that lets us grow with everyone else while still remaining true to our nature.”

  “Ah,” George said. “For a moment there you had me worried. I thought you were going to ask for something difficult.”

  Ives chuckled at his dry tone.

  CHAPTER 3

  “Catch that puppy!”

  Benitoe heard Maëlys just a moment too late as he opened the door from the stableyard into the Golden Cockerel Inn.

  The half-grown bitch pup, conscious of sin, fled past him before Benitoe could stop her. A glance inside told the story—an empty common room with chairs up on the tables for cleaning, and an overturned wooden bucket of soapy water, the pool still spreading across the floor.

  He looked back grinning over his shoulder from the height of a couple of steps, and watched Luhedoc casually stand aside as the puppy vanished through an open stall door in the stable. He closed it behind her, neatly penning her inside.

  Benitoe laughed at the maneuver, and then walked in to confront his flustered aunt.

  “Causing trouble, are they, auntie?”

  She planted her feet in the middle of the puddle and put her hands on her hips. “Bad enough that they’re underfoot everywhere. They have a real talent for chaos, especially that one.” Her glare followed the wet footsteps of the criminal out the door.

  A yip from the kitchen indicated another puppy had overstepped the bounds of proper behavior. Benitoe wondered where the third one was. He was sure he’d find out, soon enough.

  Luhedoc followed Benitoe into the inn’s main room. “You know the folk like them. We haven’t lost any chickens yet, at least.” This, to his wife.

  “It’s true, that,” he told Benitoe. “The customers feel like they’re part of Gwyn’s people again, seeing his young hounds around.”

  Maëlys reluctantly agreed. “Even Rhys has dropped in to see them,” she said. She opened her mouth to add something else, and hesitated.

  “Couldn’t convince him to take one, auntie?” Benitoe ventured, and she blushed.

  “Our lord Rhys is too smart for that,” Luhedoc said, “and besides, the manor house is no place for raising a hound whelp.”

  Benitoe cleared his throat, and they both paused to look at him. “I’ve gotten a message.”

  Luhedoc nodded. “We saw it come in.”

  Benitoe walked over and uprighted the bucket. He picked up the mop and started to work on the floor, already soaked, to save his aunt from the task.

  “Do you think you can spare me?” he asked, as he ran the mop back and forth, squeezin
g out the excess every so often.

  Luhedoc rubbed his jaw. “Well, I can always use more help with the horses, of course, but we can get along shorthanded for a while out at the pasture.”

  The horses that Benitoe and Luhedoc had brought back from Iona’s farm, descendants of the herd Luhedoc had left there almost 20 years ago, were thriving on one of the abandoned farms in Edgewood that Luhedoc had claimed.

  Maëlys said, quietly, “We knew we couldn’t keep you here forever, not while you have other work to do. We’re lucky you’ve been able to stay and help as long as you have.”

  “Wish there were someone experienced to help with the horses, though,” Luhedoc said to her.

  “You can’t blame them. The fae are all busy rebuilding their own lives, and few of our folk are interested in training stock, rather than tending them.”

  Benitoe spoke from the far end of the room, where he was making progress mopping the floor. “You could recruit someone to help.”

  “For a horseman’s wages?” Luhedoc snorted. “Who would travel all this way for that? No, we’ll just have to get by until some of the young ones around here grow into it, I suppose. Keep an eye out, though, you never know who might turn up.”

  Maëlys said, proudly, “Those horses are going to be the backbone of this business.”

  Luhedoc shook his head, “Only until someone else gets into breeding, too. It’s the inn itself is the bigger draw.”

  “Only until someone else starts up another one,” Maëlys responded. They both laughed softly, and Luhedoc put an arm around her waist.

  What a couple they are, Benitoe thought, grateful that Luhedoc had survived eighteen years of darkness here in Edgewood. The clan adoption Maëlys had performed for him made her his “auntie” under the law. That she would do that, before she was even sure Luhedoc was alive, well, he still couldn’t quite believe it. All those years with little family, and now part of one again. He smiled privately as he swept the mop back and forth under the tables.

  Luhedoc coughed. “So, what was in that message?”

  “Hush, dear, it was Kuzul business.”

  Benitoe straightened up. “Yes, but it’s no secret. They want me to look into trade in the human world.”

  “But that’s korrigans’ work, isn’t it?” Luhedoc said. “So many make their living that way.”

  “And why not lutins, too?” Maëlys said. She turned to Benitoe. “You could always partner with a korrigan, if you thought you needed to.”

  Benitoe had a brief vision of sharing a wagon bench seat with a korrigan on a trade route. One thick and one thin, he thought, but both of a height. No, they had their own trade routes and he wasn’t sure about the details of how they maneuvered in the human world. They must have agents, they’d stand out too much otherwise. Maybe lutins could do that better. We look more like humans, less like dwarves.

  No, I’m no trader, he thought. But opening up a trade route, scouting it for someone else, that had some appeal. He’d like to see the human world again, at least for a little while.

  “Will it be safe?” Maëlys said. “You’ve told us about it but it would scare me to death.”

  “You?” Benitoe said, incredulously. “You, who walked miles through a snowstorm to reach Greenway Court and then on into Edgewood, just to look for him?” He hooked a thumb at Luhedoc. “And then, oh my timid aunt, you took on this great abandoned inn and resurrected it while you waited for him to show up.”

  He picked up the bucket with its dirty water and carried it and the mop back across the floor. “I don’t know what would scare you, if that didn’t. I think you’d handle the human world just fine, once you got used to it.”

  He put the mop and bucket down when he reached her. “I never heard of a lutine running an inn before, so we’re a fine pair, aren’t we?” He gave her a hug.

  Then he picked up the mop and bucket again to empty the dirty water outside in the stableyard.

  Benitoe packed his clothes in the room over the stables that he occupied when he stayed at the inn. He planned to drop in on Rhys before leaving—he hadn’t forgotten the time, a few months ago, when young Rhys was just the senior whipper-in for his foster-father’s hounds, and kind enough to show him what to do. He may be running Edgewood now, for Gwyn, bringing it back from ruin as his first experience of rule, but he knew Rhys would make room in his schedule to see him, if he could.

  He wanted to ask Rhys to have someone watch out for his aunt and uncle, since he might be out of touch for a while. Besides—he smiled, thinking of the task set him by the Kuzul—maybe there was something Rhys would like to propose in the matter of trade, he or his steward Cadugan. The Kuzul hadn’t mentioned a deadline but there was no point waiting to get started.

  What will this mean for me, really, he wondered. Greater responsibility in the Kuzul? But I’m not old enough for any useful political alliances. The youngest of the real council members were in their fifties, early middle-age. They wouldn’t think much of me, not even thirty.

  And yet, he thought as he sorted through his belongings, this is the second task I’ve been assigned by them. They must have approved of the way I handled the search for the lutins in hiding in Edgewood, months ago. Deuroc has been pushing for more flexible responses to the changes we’re encountering around us. The coming of the huntsman stirred things up, like a sudden storm, and they must value my relationship with him.

  So, no political power for me, perhaps, but this is a chance to continue building my credibility with them. If I do it well.

  Trade, now, he thought. Yes, that’s more of the korrigans’ concern. But we trade in our animals and our goods, we’re not just minor folk tending the beasts on the farms. Why should we be so retiring, so negligible, when all this change and opportunity is afoot? If the lutins take to trade and compete with the korrigans, or even just deal in goods that the korrigans can’t, or won’t, it can only be to our benefit. And young ones will want these new chances, many of them.

  Ever since he’d seen a bit of the human world, a glimpse of Rowanton in Virginia, he’d been intrigued by the possibility. Why should the korrigans do all the trading with the humans? He nodded to himself.

  He’d have to talk to the huntsman, too. After all, he worked for George, and he’d need his help with this task, there was no getting around it. Would he be willing to take the time, with Angharad so near to the birth? He couldn’t do it without him.

  CHAPTER 4

  I’ve hit the mother lode, so to speak, George thought. He was sitting on the floor in the library of the huntsman’s house, surrounded by boxes and piles of paper. Everything my mother ever wrote seems to be here. The dogs had been banished to the front study where they snoozed, keeping him in sight whenever they awoke. The cats had vanished somewhere warm and quiet, and Imp was with Angharad in her studio across the lane.

  He’d been afraid that there wouldn’t be much useful material, all of it being from the late ’70s and early ’80s before personal computers were available or common. But apparently Léonie had decided to do all of her writing by typewriter, an IBM Selectric, by the look of it. She’d expected to be a published author eventually, so not only was her work done by typewriter, even in first draft, but apparently she’d typed her letters, too. Her creative writing existed in one copy per draft, as near as George could tell by a cursory look, but her letters were all carbon copies. Apparently she sent the originals and kept carbons, he thought.

  She seemed oddly organized for a young woman, but he found the orderliness of her mind familiar. I used to write software myself—must get it from her, I suppose. That would make more sense than getting it from my animal-loving father.

  There was a growing pile of respectable size in one corner where he accumulated the various drafts of her finished or partial works, each in its own stack, and piles nearer at hand for correspondence, sorted by person.

  He emptied the second box and tossed it to the far end of the room, then leaned forward to tug the
third one towards him. He’d already gone through each of these quickly once, to pull out the important official papers, but now he wanted to sort the contents fully.

  So far, he’d found nothing more of his father’s. He probed internally now and then, but Cernunnos was unresponsive. Evidently he doesn’t care if I look into my mother’s effects, he thought.

  Ah, the letters his grandparents had sent her were in this box, neatly stashed in shoeboxes. He’d noticed they were in one of these big boxes when he went through them the first time.

  Alun knocked on the open doorway that led from the library to the workroom, across from the kitchen. “Just a reminder. You’ll be eating in the great hall tonight, huntsman, and I won’t likely be here until rather later. Anything I can get you before I leave?”

  George waved him off, then called out. “Wait, do you know when Angharad will be back?”

  “She didn’t say, but I would assume later this afternoon, after she loses the good light,” Alun replied from the hallway and a few moments later George heard the back door close, leaving him alone in the house. Maelgwn was off with Thomas Kethin prowling the countryside and learning the skills of an apprentice ranger. He’d return whenever Thomas deemed it appropriate. Bedo was with Angharad.

  He finished emptying the third box and found it was all correspondence. Halfway there, he thought—time to take a break. He stood up and stretched his back, rotating his neck and listening to the vertebrae crack, and the dogs raised their heads off the floor in interest. “Never mind,” he told them. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Three more boxes to go. He moved them closer to where he’d been sitting so he could reach them, and sat back down.

  It’s not long past mid-summer, and still I want more light, Angharad thought, as she finished cleaning her brushes late in the afternoon. This storage room in the infirmary that Ceridwen had helped her convert into an impromptu studio wasn’t badly lit on a bright day, but it was nothing like her two large studios behind her house down in Greenhollow, just a couple of miles away. Her apprentice Bedo was making himself useful this afternoon, fetching them more supplies from there. Maybe she should let him live in the place for a while, maybe that would be the best solution.