Daughter Of The Forest by Juliet Marillier Read Free Book Online Page A

this one, you and I. Just do as I ask, and leave the rest to me.”
    “What are you going to do? And what if Father finds out?”
    “Too many questions! We don’t have much time left—can’t you just do it?”
    I turned to face him, arms folded around myself. Truth to tell, I was shivering, and not just from cold.
    “I know you don’t lie, Finbar. I have no choice but to believe what you’ve told me. But I’ve never poisoned anyone before. I’m a healer.”
    I looked up at his silent face, the wide, mobile mouth, the clear gray eyes that always seemed intent on a future path that held no uncertainty whatever.
    “It happens,” he said quietly. “It’s part of war. Sometimes they talk. Sometimes they keep silent. Often they die. Just occasionally they escape.”
    “Finbar,” I said. ‘What if—what would happen if someone else, say Donal or one of the guards, helped a prisoner get away, and Father found out? What would he do to them?” Young as I was, it had not escaped me that what my brother proposed was no mere act of childish disobedience, to be punished by a reprimand or, at worst, a whipping. This was no less than a knowing undermining of my father’s campaign; a willful hindrance of the quest that was his very reason for being.
    “There’d be a price to pay,” said Finbar reluctantly.
    “What price?”
    “They’d be up before the brithem, if Father did things in accordance with the law. There’d be a hearing, and a judgment, and a sentence. Reparation to be made. A flogging, maybe. Banishment, most certainly. But that’s not how it would be done.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “The law does not allow the execution of a man for such an act; that is not acceptable if due process is followed. But Father couldn’t afford to let a traitor go free, to spread news abroad. The culprit would be sent into the forest and never seen again. Helped on his way, so to speak. Maybe they’d find his bones five, ten years hence. You know what they say about these woods.”
    “You’re willing to take such a risk? For a boy you don’t even know?”
    “If I do not act, I deny him a life,” Finbar said quietly. “For me, the choice is clear. It always has been. But you’re right, Sorcha. There could be very serious consequences, and perhaps it is unfair of me to involve you.”
    “But you can’t do it unless I help?”
    “Not without far greater risk.”
    “You’d better go and get on with it, then,” I said in a voice that sounded like somebody else’s. My hands sought a sharp knife and began automatically to slice and chop the ingredients of my sleeping draft. Henbane. Witch’s bonnet. The small blue fungi some call devil spawn. Nightshade, not too much. “Go on, Finbar.”
    “Thanks.” There was a flash of that smile, the generous smile that lit up his whole face. “We make a good team. A foolproof team. How can we fail?”
    He hugged me for a moment, just long enough for me to feel the tension of his body, the rapid beat of his heart. Then he was gone, slipping away into the shadows as silent as a cat.
    It was a long night. Awareness that the slightest error could make me a murderer kept me alert, and before daybreak the sleeping draft was ready, corked safely in a small stone bottle convenient to conceal in the palm of the hand, and the stillroom was immaculately clean, every trace of my activity gone. Finbar came for me as the sound of jingling harnesses and hurrying, booted feet increased out of doors.
    “I think you’d better do this part as well,” he whispered. “They’ll be less likely to notice you.” I remembered, vaguely, that he was supposed to be joining the campaign this time—had not Father decreed that it would be so? Then I was too busy to think, slipping silently to the kitchens on my brother’s whispered instructions, edging behind and between servants and men-at-arms who were snatching a last bite to eat, preparing ration packs, filling wine and water bottles. Fat