Naamah's Kiss - Jacqueline Carey [43]
"It is," I said firmly.
I do not think she was displeased, although she snorted contemptuously a second time. The young ones made their farewells and left with her; and then there were only four of us alone on the mountainside.
Oengus took a deep breath. "On to Bryn Gorrydum?"
I nodded. "On to Bryn Gorrydum."
* * *
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
City of stone. That was what my uncle Mabon had called it—and it was. Cobbled streets, stony and hard beneath our feet. We walked them warily. Passersby gave us curious glances. It wasn't that we looked so altogether different from them. Oengus or Mabon or my mother could almost have passed for one of the folk of the Cullach Gorrym. The physical differences were slight—the angle of their cheekbones, the tilt of their eyes. No, it had more to do with the stamp of wilderness that marked them like a scent.
And of course there was me, looking like none of the folk of Alba.
Oengus led us to the D'Angeline quarter. There, for the first time, I saw my father's people strolling the streets, speaking in their fluting tongue. And they, too, looked like and unlike the rest of the folk of Alba, the fair-skinned tribes. My mother had said it well many years ago. There was a keenness to their beauty, an almost too-perfect symmetry, sharp and deadly as a blade.
I found myself staring at them in fascination. A good number of them stared back, albeit with considerable more subtlety than I managed.
We stopped outside an elegant building with a stone plaque engraved with the words Bryony Associates, encircled by a trailing relief of bryony flowers.
"That's it," Oengus announced.
A little bell played a merry tune as we entered. Mabon smiled to himself and played it back on his pipe. A D'Angeline woman with shiny brown hair coiled in a complicated manner hurried into the salon to greet us, stopped short, and stared blankly at us, too startled for subtlety.
It had been a long journey. Now that I thought on it, I realized we all looked unkempt and travel-worn.
"May I—" She cleared her throat. "May I be of assistance?"
"Aye," I said. Mabon had strung the ring on a length of sinew for me since it was too big for my finger. I fished it out of my bodice, pulled it over my head, and handed it to her. She took it in bewilderment. "I've need of money."
She glanced at the ring and turned pale. "Is this what I think it is?"
"As to that I cannot say, for I've no idea what you might think," I said mildly. "But it is a token given to my mother by her mother and her mother's mother before her, back to Alais the Wise."
"Henri!" The woman called out in a stream of D'Angeline so swift and lilting I couldn't make out a word. Cillian had been a good teacher, but I suspected he'd a dreadful accent. A youngish man came at a run. He stared, too. "They've come to make a claim on her highness Alais' historic fund," the woman said in careful Alban. "They come bearing her token."
He blinked. "Truly?"
"So it seems." She turned back to us and inclined her head. "I pray you, forgive our rudeness. I am Caroline no Bryony and I am at your service. It's only that none of Alais de la Courcel's descendants for whom the trust is marked have surfaced before today, so your appearances comes as somewhat of a surprise." She hesitated, eyeing me. "You're… of the Maghuin Dhonn?"
Oengus gave her a bright, feral smile that did nothing to ease her nerves. "We are and she is."
"Moirin is my daughter," my mother said calmly. "Moirin, daughter of Fainche, daughter of Eithne, daughter of Brianna, daughter of Alais."
"Brianna's line, then." Caroline no Bryony squared her shoulders. "Right. The signet will have to be authenticated, of course. If you'll come with me, Henri will fetch the original imprint of the seal."
We followed her deeper into the building. Feeling the stone walls close around us, I forced myself to breathe slowly and evenly. If I was bound for the City of Elua, I was going to have to become accustomed to being enclosed behind man-made walls.
The room to which she led us was richly