Firebrand (Rebel Angel Series)

by Gillian Philip

  Elegantly twisting her hand, she presented the back of it to him a second time.

  He looked to his left, and his right, meeting the eyes of his clann. They knew as well as he did: it was no choice at all. After perhaps a minute, he took her hand again as if he was taking hold of a snake. He pressed it once more to his forehead, and kissed it.

  ‘How I wish,’ she said softly, ‘your mother could see this moment. It’s not like her to run, is it? But perhaps she couldn’t bear the shame.’

  She jerked her hand away before Conal could fling it.

  This time she didn’t even bother to slap him. One of her captains brought forward her horse and helped her mount, and she rode away without a backward glance. The creature was milk-white, but for its soft black muzzle and its dove-grey tail. Bells and ribbons and crystals were woven into its silky mane, its hooves were embellished with silver, and its bridle was braided green silk. The tinkling of the elaborate harness was the only sound as she rode out; it was all that broke the silence of dread and awe, and her guard captain gave Conal the most contemptuous stare I’d ever seen anyone dare to give him. I didn’t want to see him look at my Captain like that, so I glanced towards the sky, and that’s when I saw the raven sitting silent and still on the grey north parapet, watching us all.

  Swiftly I looked back at my queen on her jewelled horse, until the gates swung shut behind her.

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ I barked. ‘See that poor pony? Does the woman believe her own frigging myth?’

  Conal exploded with muffled laughter at my side, and that was the cue for nervous hilarity from our own clann and shocked stares from what remained of Kate’s. The silence and the awe were shattered. I was pleased with myself as I heard first grumblings and then ever more indignant raised voices of anti-monarchist complaint.

  ‘So where did you pick that up?’ said Conal, throwing an arm round my shoulder.

  ‘Ah, some old weaver who came through the clachan last year. It’s got a ring to it, you think?’

  ‘And then some.’ He was grinning. ‘I hope to gods she didn’t hear it, but I doubt you’re that lucky.’

  His laughter faded and he gaped past me, but the smile that split his face was one of adoration. ‘Reultan!’

  I turned with a sinking heart; I don’t know why. The woman striding towards him was one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, and she wore embroidered linen, silk trews, fine black leather boots and an elaborate silk coat like the ones Leonora favoured. Her hair was raven-black and straight as a fall of water. Her eyes were blue like sheet-ice on a cloudless day and they brimmed with tears that made them glitter.

  ‘Cù Chaorach, you fool.’ The woman put her arms around him and pressed her face to his, closing her eyes as he embraced her. ‘Why did you have to antagonise her?’

  He shrugged and smiled, tightening his arms round her.

  ‘You forced her into it. You nearly died! Conal, you’re an idiot. Please, please don’t make her do it again.’

  I gasped with fury. ‘Make her? She did it because she wanted to. He didn’t exile himself!’

  Her eyes opened, focusing on me, hardening and cooling like molten metal thrust into water.

  ‘So. This is the brother, is it?’

  Conal released her, but he kept an affectionate arm around her. ‘This is Seth, yes.’

  I could feel the contempt coming off her like an ice-mist. She was the archetypal courtier: arrogant, dismissive, frighteningly certain of her place in the world. I think I did remember her, from my childhood days in Kate’s caverns, but to be honest I could have been mistaken. She and all her kind were interchangeable. ‘Tell me she’s not my sister.’

  ‘I’ll tell you myself,’ said Reultan. ‘I’m not your sister, thank the gods.’

  ‘There.’ Conal rolled his eyes. ‘You’re not related; you don’t have to like each other. Just get on, won’t you?’

  Some chance. Reultan and I loathed one another on sight and for our entire lives, but gods, we always understood one another. Perhaps that was the problem.

  Still, that first time we met, she fascinated me and I fascinated her, on a purely scientific level. In some ways we were alike, but still it felt like the collision of alien species. Her upper lip curled. I took a deliberate, insulting step away from her. So I was confused when her eyes lit up, warmed with joy.

  I was knocked off balance as Eili flung herself past me into Reultan’s arms and the two women embraced. ‘Reultan!’ whooped Eili.

  I could tell I was going to grow sick of that name.

  ‘Eilid!’ Her eyes widened with delight. ‘Little Eilid! Is that you?’

  ‘Yes, believe it or not she grew up,’ I muttered, and Conal kicked my ankle.

  ‘They all call me Eili,’ said Eili. ‘For short.’

  ‘I like it. Conal, where is our mother?’

  I admired the way she said our, subtle, but stressed just enough to exclude me.

  ‘Gone to the soothsayer. Asking an idiot charlatan how to find some bloody talisman that doesn’t exist. A Stone, if you please. She’s been gone for a month.’

  ‘Don’t be so disrespectful, Conal. The prophet is an oracle and a reliable one.’

  ‘The prophet is fooling herself,’ laughed Conal. ‘And everyone else.’

  ‘So,’ said Reultan dryly. ‘You’re saying Leonora can be fooled? I’d like to see you say it to her face.’

  Conal shrugged, defeated but grinning.

  ‘She left Faramach.’ Reultan nodded at the parapet. ‘To keep an eye on you?’

  ‘Who knows what that bird’s for?’ He made a dismissive gesture. Behind his back, I gave it the finger, but it didn’t react. Something struck me as I gazed into its still obsidian eyes.

  I said, ‘Kate didn’t dare turn up till Leonora was off the scene.’

  The raven flapped down to the inner wall of the tannery, stretched its massive wings and gave a harsh laugh.

  ‘Seth’s right,’ said Eili.

  ‘I know he is.’ Conal looked thoughtful.

  Reultan looked as if she wanted to slap me. I could see from the tension in her jaw that her teeth were tightly clenched. Conal winked at me and squeezed her arm.

  ‘It’ll be good to see more of you, Reultan. Even in the circumstances. You won’t ignore me, will you? Pretend you don’t know me?’

  ‘Don’t be a bigger fool than you already are,’ she said crisply. ‘Who will you take with you? Ten, isn’t it?’

  ‘Eight,’ said Eili. ‘Obviously Sionnach and I are going with him.’

  ‘With us,’ I said resentfully.

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘So who?’ said Reultan.

  32

  The answer was: ten of his best fighters. That was what Kate had asked for, and that was what she had to be given. Carraig and Righil, his lieutenants. Sionnach and Eili. Orach. Feorag. He managed to negotiate to keep Raineach in the dun, but one of her sons had to come with us. Eorna was left behind; his lover Caolas rode out with us with unashamed tears flowing down her face. The skilled bowmen Luthais and Raonall were bound lovers, and inseparable, and they were the last two.

  Kate had to wait for me, and she was not pleased, but I would not give in, and she had to be a little careful now. She had pushed her humiliation of us far enough, and if she went too much further she would be in danger of losing sympathy even among her own clann. Kate was not a tyrant, or if she was, she was a very clever one and she knew the power of consent. Her legitimacy sprang from consent and she ruled by it; it was just that she knew how to gain consent for the cruellest actions by sweet reasonableness in others. And subjects who love will excuse a great deal, and a great many of Kate’s subjects loved her to the point of irrationality.

  I would not leave the dun till Grian said Catriona could travel. Her wound was not life-threatening, but it was a serious one, and she was already weakened when she took it, and full-mortals are prone to infection. Nor would I leave her alone; my clann might feed and w
ater and shelter her but they would not befriend her, and I wouldn’t inflict twelve months of solitary misery on her. I gave her the choice and she chose to come with me, as I knew she would.

  So we rode to Kate’s fortress together a month after the others, taking Branndair, but letting the blue roan loose at the gates of the underground fortress. Kate ignored Catriona, but she summoned me to stand in front of her—she did not risk asking me to kneel—and in front of her smirking courtiers and her dead-eyed captains and my own friends, she told me I would stay an extra month to serve her when my brother and my comrades had gone home. I shrugged, then bowed my head, to signal that I was at her command, but I didn’t have to care about it.

  She worked us hard. Conal was one of her captains and he had his own detachment, of course, and he kept Carraig and Righil as his lieutenants. The rest of us were split among her other captains. Some were pigs and loved having Conal’s clann to order about. Some were decent human beings. Luthais, Raonall and Feorag were under the command of Cluaran, monosyllabic and shaven-headed and a hard taskmaster but fundamentally a good man. Sionnach and Eili had the misfortune of being in Fearchar’s detachment, as did Raineach’s son Eachann: Fearchar was a spiteful bastard who delighted in giving them the worst jobs and treating them as second-class fighters. Orach and I were split up, Orach to be commanded by a woman named Alainn. Probably just as well, given that I was sometimes separated from Catriona for days at a time.

  My captain, and Caolas’s, was a man called Aonghas. I liked him and admired him, and deep down he liked me too, but he couldn’t show it too much, because his lover wouldn’t like it.

  His lover was Reultan.

  They became bound lovers about a month after I arrived, which was bad news for me because after that Aonghas was less inclined to be friendly to me, though he was fine with Caolas. He would occasionally give me an apologetic look when Reultan treated me with contempt, but rarely spoke up for me. He was besotted with her.

  To be fair, the besotting was mutual, though they seemed very unalike. He had cropped dark hair and moss-green eyes and a face that smiled a lot, and one of the kindest natures of all the captains. Gods knew what he saw in her, but there it was, he was bound to her and there was no going back and clearly he didn’t want to go back. He even brought a softness to Reultan’s eyes, though not when she turned them on me.

  Aonghas was very like Conal, in many ways, and the pair of them were the closest of friends. As soon as Conal had returned to the caverns, I heard, Aonghas had walked forward to embrace him, right in front of Kate and Lilith and all the courtiers. You had to admire him for that kind of cheek, and for that kind of loyalty.

  I say Conal and Aonghas were the closest of friends; that’s a little dishonest of me. The fact is, they loved one another like brothers. I tried not to be jealous and resentful, but sometimes it leaked out and I disobeyed one of Aonghas’s orders, or gave him cheek, and then he’d have to punish me with solitary confinement or a beating whether he liked it or not. Conal gave me no sympathy on these occasions, saying I’d driven Aonghas to it. I still liked the man.

  I don’t know if Kate thought she was knocking the rebellion out of us. Sometimes now I wonder if she was actually playing some elaborate game, provoking us to worse rebellion for some purpose of her own. That didn’t occur to me at the time, of course. What a greenarse I was.

  I watched Sionnach being beaten, once, for some minor offence he’d given to Fearchar. He stood gripping the post he was tied to, and his eyes were locked on mine, his jaw clenched, his knuckles white. I could do nothing for my gentle friend. All I could do was watch, and hate, but he made not a sound, and in the middle of it he smiled at me through the cold sweat on his face, and I knew that rebellion was being thrashed into his bones, not out of them.

  A year, I kept thinking. It’s only a year.

  No-one had a worse time than Conal, despite his captaincy. Kate tested him with the foulest jobs: executions, punishment beatings, croft burnings and confiscations. He had kissed her hand and sworn loyalty. He had to do it. But his eyes grew empty and his face set hard.

  I was sleepless as ever one night when I heard his footfall in the corridor. They happened a lot, these night-time pacings. I hadn’t dared follow him before but each time, a fresh line was slashed into his arm by morning: one for every crofter he’d hung. With Conal she was trying to beat all the goodness out of him: that much I knew. That night I lay beside the sleeping Catriona and had the first terrible sense of being made into something against my will.

  Carefully I eased out of bed, determined not to wake my lover. She’d been sick every morning for a week, and there wasn’t a Lammyr in sight, and I had a terrible foreboding. To take my mind off it, I followed Conal again.

  Down a long torch-lit tunnel and through two antechambers the caverns opened out into a huge wet-walled space where a silver fall of water filled a clear pool. The noise of the water was a constant sibilant rush, and the underground waterfall was as cold as water can only be when it’s never seen the sun. By the time I stepped into the echoing space Conal was stripped and standing beneath the waterfall, arms propped against the stone wall and his head bowed into the full force of the water.

  There was someone else in the cave. Aonghas sat against the rock wall, arms resting on his knees, a silver flask in one hand. He turned his head and looked at me, but he didn’t smile.

  ~ Murlainn.

  I nodded to him, wondering if I was in trouble again, and not much caring. After a moment he held out the flask to me, so I sat down against the wall beside him and took it. The whisky was peaty and sharp; it burned the back of my throat and made me feel slightly sick, but I drank a good dram of it anyway. Too late at night. I passed the flask back to him and he took it without a word. In silence we watched Conal.

  When he stood up straight and took his arms away from the wall and the waterfall, I saw the dirk in his right hand. I didn’t dare say a word as he carved two methodical neat lines on his forearm, parallel to the rest. Blood flowed from his split flesh, and he thrust his arm back under the water till the wounds were washed clean.

  ‘Does he want a healer?’ I asked, my throat dry.

  ‘Never does,’ said Aonghas. And sure enough Conal stepped out of the water and wrapped a cloth round his arm, expertly, as he must have done it many times before, tightening it in a slipknot. He pulled his clothes back on over his soaking skin and sat down beside us.

  ‘Today,’ he said, ‘I was ordered to kill a child.’

  I thought his voice would echo. Instead it seemed to be swallowed up in the darkness and the damp stone. Aonghas held the flask towards him, but he shook his head.

  ‘He was the age you were, Seth, when I first laid eyes on you.’

  Reflexively I swallowed.

  ‘You didn’t do it,’ said Aonghas.

  Conal gave him a sidelong look. ‘No.’

  ‘Didn’t think so.’

  ‘I hanged his father and his uncle,’ said Conal, ‘and I turned him and his mother out on the moor where they might very well starve, but no, I did not kill him.’

  ‘For which disobedience,’ remarked Aonghas, ‘Kate may very well kill you.’

  ‘If you report him,’ I said. My voice was swallowed by the cave just as Conal’s had been, so I said it again. ‘If you report him I’ll kill you.’

  Aonghas did not react at first. Carefully he set down the flask, then sat back against the wall and stared at the roof, unseen in shadow.

  ‘Murlainn,’ he sighed. ‘Be insolent here and now, if you like. The rest of the time, keep your tongue in order. I do not like having you whipped. I did not like Fearchar setting his thugs on Sionnach. But it’s what must happen if you’re stupid. I have my own life to think about.’

  True. I fidgeted uncomfortably, remembering. My back didn’t hurt any more but the scabs itched. Just as well it was dark in that place; I wouldn’t have liked Aonghas to see my flush of shame. Conal wouldn’t have noticed anyway.
He was silent, his head bowed onto his arms, his arms resting on his knees.

  At last he said, ‘My mother hasn’t returned to the dun.’

  ‘She had business with the soothsayer,’ said Aonghas.

  ‘Half a year ago.’ Conal gave a dry miserable laugh. ‘No-one’s business could take so long, even with that old charlatan.’

  ‘But you must know where she is?’

  ‘No. Only that she isn’t at the dun. Last time I felt her she was very far away. She’s been blocking me for months now.’

  ‘Well.’ Aonghas shrugged lightly. ‘If Leonora was dead you’d know it. So would Reultan.’

  ‘Maybe. But she found it hard not to go with Griogair.’ He laughed again, high-pitched and desperate. ‘That’s an understatement, isn’t it? Hard. Could be she’s stopped fighting it. Could be she’s going to go to him after all. She’s the only person since Griogair died who could stand up to Kate, and she’s leaving us. Leaving us.’

  Aonghas put an arm round his slumped shoulders.

  ‘One day this’ll be over,’ he said.

  ‘So I tell myself,’ said Conal bitterly.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘it won’t.’

  They both turned their heads and stared at me. I was shocked too. I don’t know what had brought it on, but I knew it was true.

  ‘She’ll never let us be,’ I said. ‘We may as well walk out now.’

  ‘You better have your block up, you stupid little shit,’ said Aonghas.

  I gave him the filthiest look I could get away with. ‘Indeed. I’m not stupid.’

  ‘You could have fooled me.’

  ‘I obviously did.’

  ‘Quiet,’ said Conal. ‘Both of you.’