Warrior's Daughter by Holly Bennett Read Free Book Online Page B

but what I saw when Ihoisted my head over the top was daunting: a steep drop down, with no ledge to land on at the foot of the stakes. The fence had been built right at the outside edge of the earthworks, three times a man’s height from the top to the ground. I would have to walk back to the gate, after all.
    “Does your mother know you are after jumping the wall?”
    A girl’s voice it was, so I was not scared, though I gave a guilty start all the same. As I squinted into the trees, a willowy figure emerged from the orchard.
    “Well?”
    I nodded. Even the way she walked was beautiful, I thought. I could look at nothing but her.
    “You are sure?” She was so close now I could see the deep, deep blue of her eyes—almost violet, they were—and the dark fringe of lashes so startling against the pale gold of her hair. She seemed amused, and I was glad to have given her even this whisper of happiness.
    I smiled and found my voice. “Yes, Lady Deirdriu. I have leave to come to the orchard to exercise my friend Fintan, here.”
    Deirdriu soon solved my problem. She bade me walk along the embankment until I was directly behind the smokehouse, and when I peeked over the wall, there she was on the far side, tucking up her skirts and climbing—surprisingly quickly—up the embankment. In a moment I had another surprise: a little door in the fence, cut into the posts and so well matched I hadn’t even marked it, popped open, and Deirdriu’s face peeked through.
    “You’re just the right size for this,” she said. “The guards have to crawl through on their knees.” There were pieces of chain staked into the hill to make handholds, and Deirdriu guidedme so I was able to slither from one to the next. Soon we were sitting under clouds of pear blossom.
    For a long time she was quiet, and so was I. The busy noise of the settlement faded away, replaced by a lazy murmur of bees overhead. Shafts of sunlight poked here and there among the branches, turning the gray bark gold and revealing a thousand dancing motes of dust and pollen in their path. Like a dreamworld, I thought, or a held breath, so quiet it was. I watched as Deirdriu gathered little heaps of white petals into her hand and let them flutter through open fingers onto the dark cloth of her skirt.
    “Lovely, aren’t they?”
    I nodded. Her eyes were faraway, and I did not want to bring her back by speaking. One finger stroked the single velvet petal remaining in the palm of her hand.
    “I wish I could have covered him with these petals. He was like that, you know, so lovely—gold and green, like the spring. It was he showed me the little door, when we first loved each other. We used to meet in this orchard.” Now the brilliant eyes rested on me, bruised violets in the dew. I thought I would weep at the sight of them, but I could not look away.
    Her voice was low and sad and private. “I begged him not to come back here. Did I not dream how it would end? Three birds I saw, bearing drops of honey in their mouths, sweet as Conchobor’s honeyed lies. But it was drops of blood the birds bore away with them. And now my Naoise is gone, and I am alone with my tears.”
    “I’m sorry for your grief,” I whispered. I had never said those words to anyone before, never tasted the ash of them in mymouth. Deirdriu seemed to really see me then, see how young I was.
    “It’s sorry I am, little one,” she said. “I should not burden you with such talk.”
    She had, though. It’s true that young as I was, I could already draw peoples’ stories from them, just by listening and waiting. But there was a strange recklessness to Deirdriu also, despite her quiet manner. She did not hide her heart, not even from a child, and her grief touched me like cold fingers in my belly. They scrabbled and stretched, and I knew suddenly that there was more, and worse, to come.
    I scrambled to my feet under pretext of looking for Fintan, trying to thrust aside the bad, scared feeling that