Firebrand

by Gillian Philip

‘Good,’ I said hopefully. ‘Can I fight?’

  ‘You, greenarse? Don’t make me laugh.’ She laughed anyway.

  ‘I’m good enough.’

  ‘You’re a fumbling beginner and you’re too damn short. Look at your brother. When you’re as tall as he is and half as good with a sword, then you can fight.’ She slammed her hammer onto the steel, fountaining white-hot sparks.

  Scowling, I turned on my heel, hoping Eili hadn’t overheard that. Did the sharp-tongued cow have to say it so loud? It was pretty rich coming from Raineach, who wasn’t so tall herself: she was small and slender, elfin-faced, and you’d never have thought from looking at her that she had the power in her arms to forge swords.

  Eili remained hunched over her workbench till I was beside her, and only then did she look up with a wry smile. Her brown eyes were sympathetic. Hell: she’d heard Raineach’s snide remark. The little girl shrank back behind her, mistrustful, but Eili tutted.

  ‘Come on. He doesn’t bite, believe it or not.’

  I bared my teeth and gnashed them, and the child giggled.

  I stuck out my tongue, and she giggled again, and stuck hers out in return.

  ‘So short I can’t even scare a midget like you,’ I said.

  ‘Take no notice of Raineach,’ said Eili softly. ‘She doesn’t mean it, it’s the way she is.’

  ‘Course,’ I said, as if I didn’t much care. ‘What’s that?’

  In fact I could see what it was. She had twisted thick silver wire into a rope, and now she was coaxing it into a torque, the size that would fit a wrist. It was a basic piece, but she’d made it well, and she was taking enormous care to shape the curve of it just right. With tongs she softened it briefly in the small stone forge, then cooled it in a bowl and examined it critically before taking the little hammer to it once more. On the workbench lay two spherical knots of silver, ready to be soldered to the ends of the torque. Eili wasn’t keen on delicate ornamental silverwork; it was weapons-smithing that interested her. This must be a special project, and she must have been working on it for a while.

  She hadn’t answered my question. Maybe she thought it was a stupid one. Or maybe…

  My heart clenched with an aching hope. I didn’t have any jewellery to wear, not so much as a ring, and she’d commented on that more than once. Sionnach wore a wrist torque, and I’d admired it before, in Eili’s presence. Biting my lip, I decided not to ask again, but my heart slammed my ribs when I saw the ferocious care she was putting into the thing, when I remembered her kind smile and her warm eyes as she turned to me.

  Perennial optimist, that was me.

  4

  FOUR

  I snapped awake to black winter stillness. I don’t know what time it was: either late or incredibly early. Close by my room there were footsteps, and murmurs, but I knew they hadn’t woken me. Something else had, like a claw scraping lightly down the nape of my neck, but when I slapped my hand at the spot, there was nothing there: no insect, no spider. No dream-monster even, because I knew what I’d felt was real. Instantly I felt a hungry curiosity and the kick of adrenalin.

  I listened hard. Nobody had any business being awake at that hour. Yes, if they’d been giggling with drink, or high on music or love. But night walkers had no business talking that way, quiet and intent. The footsteps weren’t aimless; they were heading for the lower halls of the dun and the antechamber to Griogair and Leonora’s rooms. They were the light clicking steps of women, and I knew the voices well, because I’d heard them often enough for the first seven years of my life: Kate, and Lilith.

  That morning our queen had ridden into the dun, the skirts of her long silk coat draped over her mare’s chestnut haunches like a robe, my mother at her side, and a detachment of fighters at her back. Kate hadn’t announced her arrival: she hadn’t had to. Leonora had felt her coming.

  I watched her arrival—and my mother’s—from the parapet. I’d been half-hiding, wondering if Lilith’s gaze would roam the courtyard in search of me, flicker eagerly over the faces of the clann. I shouldn’t have worried: Lilith had eyes only for Griogair. They glittered, riveted on his austere beauty. Her own skin almost glowed. What a beautiful pair of lovers they must have made. But either Griogair couldn’t feel her adoration, or he was ignoring it. He didn’t so much as look at his old lover.

  Leonora did.

  My father took Kate’s hand as she slipped elegantly from her horse’s back, and kissed it, then pressed it to his forehead. There was respect but no humility in the gesture. He was, after all, Captain of his own dun. When Kate offered her cheek, he kissed that too, and smiled his fierce formal smile. The fierceness made it no less charming. Ah, despite my best efforts, my father still fascinated me.

  It seemed to be no more than a friendly visit. I didn’t think for a second I’d be invited to sit near my father at supper, and I wasn’t, but as far as I could make out the conversation at the top table was casual, light and funny. The fighting cadres got along famously, as well they might; those who weren’t friends or acquaintances were at least distantly related. There was rivalry concerning horses, weapon skills, speed and dogs and hawks, but it didn’t even come close to blows. It felt more like a festival than diplomacy. Orach huddled into me, passing on gossip and making me laugh, and high on a party and on one another, we fought all comers among the other clann children and beat them.

  Half the fighters ended up bedding each other, and across loyalties too. By sundown Conal’s arm was draped round a redhead I remembered from Kate’s caverns, one I used to insult before running, fast. He’d beaten her three hours earlier in a swordplay bout—oh, the heat and the sweat and the ferocity—but he’d loved the fight in her and had presented her with an elaborate silver arm ring by way of a compliment. Now, curled against him, she had a look that was half smug, half lustful.

  ‘Griogair!’ yelled one of Kate’s fighters. ‘Send Cù Chaorach to deal with Kilrevin next time. The brute would never show his face again.’

  Griogair smiled thinly. ‘Alasdair Kilrevin’s mine. I need the exercise once in a while.’

  Orach dug me proudly in the ribs, and the hall echoed with laughter.

  ‘You let him off lightly,’ growled a voice. ‘Every time. He needs killing.’

  Griogair wasn’t used to being criticised about Kilrevin, and for a moment he only stared in silence at the speaker. The surly-faced lieutenant sitting in the shadows had had one too many whiskies, and Griogair obviously decided it wasn’t worth a quarrel. Kate was watching the drinker too, and I could not decipher the expression on her face.

  ‘He kills for the sake of it,’ the lieutenant said. ‘He kills for pleasure, and the slower the better. I saw the last settlement he routed. I was there to clear the corpses.’ He took another swig of whisky. ‘Give Kate his head.’

  Kate laughed lightly. ‘Now, what would I want with such a thing?’

  Griogair’s smile had grown tighter. ‘Anyone can tell atrocity stories.’

  ‘Are you saying I’m a liar?’

  ‘Hey.’ Conal’s smile took in both men. ‘It’s late. It isn’t the time for this talk.’

  ‘It’s past time for it,’ snarled the drinker. ‘Kilrevin’s a thug and a bandit.’

  ‘And no worse than he ever was,’ shrugged Conal, running a hand through the redhead’s braided hair to loosen it. ‘He keeps the Lammyr at bay beyond the borders, doesn’t he? You want that dirty job yourself?’

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Leonora, and her cool quiet voice was enough to shut them all up. ‘You were right the first time, Cù Chaorach: this isn’t the time. Righil! Carraig! Broc! I thought you’d give us music, but perhaps you’re too drunk?’

  That was a challenge they wouldn’t let go, so bleak talk of thugs and Lammyr gave way, as it should, to fiddle and bodhran. I didn’t dance with Orach, though I loved the furious beat. I waited for my own moment, when the dancers tired, and the drummers eased their sweating rhythm.

  The first time I sang—I
think I was ten—I did it out of bloody-mindedness more than anything. Convention demanded they shut up and listen to a singer, which made a pleasant change, and I wasn’t shy. But as it turned out, I could sing quite well. I didn’t have a sweet or a pure voice—it hadn’t broken by then, though there was already something rough-edged about it, raw and wild—but for some reason the clann liked it. From that first night and the first few notes, they let me sing. They’d say nothing afterwards, but I’d know from their fascinated eyes and their tense bodies that while I kept my song going, they were mine to entrance.

  It was the same the night Kate and my mother came to the dun. As a single bow drew a long sad melody out of a single fiddle, I lifted my head in my shadowy corner and sang. And one by one, they shut up and listened.

  I didn’t want centre-stage; I didn’t need their applause. Leaning casually in my corner, arms folded, I sang a sad and angry war-lament. Orach leaned on her fists and listened, entranced. Griogair watched me, silent. Conal smiled, one arm tightening around his redhead. When I finished my song I pushed myself away from the wall and walked back to Orach, not waiting for approval that would never come. Sure enough, the conversation swelled again almost instantly. But I’d held them all spellbound for long minutes, and I felt a violent screw-you pleasure at it, and anyway singing made me high. It always did. I knew I wouldn’t sleep well.

  Sure enough I lay awake for an age after the ceilidh died, my mind buzzing, wishing Orach was with me. The sleep that eventually came was light, the sound and movement of strangers more than enough to penetrate it.

  I sat up, listening, frowning. My head was clear, but I was surprised anyone else’s was. Clearly I’d misread something during the evening, and that irritated and intrigued me. Of course I was going to get up and investigate. Who wouldn’t?

  Anyone with half a brain, I suppose.

  I was alone, and just as well. You can’t skulk and prowl with a partner, not without getting caught. I knew this by instinct and I’d proved it to myself by taking Feorag with me once or twice, just for fun. He wasn’t stupid and he wasn’t clumsy; he just didn’t understand the importance of not being seen. He grew bored, breathed or moved at the wrong moment, or simply didn’t think it mattered a damn if some guard caught us eavesdropping. A couple of hidings later—which I blamed entirely on Feorag and not on the guards—I stopped taking him with me. I liked Feorag. It didn’t mean he was stitched to my backside, and I liked my own company better. Sionnach I could have taken, because Sionnach lived in calm silence the way he lived in his clothes: the boy wasn’t even capable of excessive noise. I’d have taken Sionnach with me anywhere. It was just that Sionnach would never have been stupid enough to come.

  The halls and passageways were preternaturally quiet. That felt different. On any ordinary night, and especially in the wake of a party, you’d have heard people still stumbling towards bed or a lover or another drink. I certainly expected to have to dodge sentries, not to mention the filthy-tempered Fionnaghal who ran the kitchens I had to creep past. But no-one moved, no-one stirred, no-one breathed. I didn’t like it. If no-one was about, what had I heard?

  I felt her before I saw her, and I went still as a stone. I’d never worked out why Leonora hadn’t had me killed, and I wasn’t at all sure the decision was final. I wouldn’t have admitted it, back when I was young, but she scared me. The funny thing was, I think I scared her too. Not in quite the same way, of course.

  It struck me that I hadn’t seen the old witch since she’d demanded music in the great hall. She’d slipped away, as she often did, and now here she was, walking silently away from the kitchens. What she’d be doing there, I couldn’t imagine: not indulging a late night hunger, anyway. Not unless she drank the blood of foxes or bats, because all I could smell on her was night air. I could smell Outside; I could smell the moor. She’d been out of the dun, and recently, but I was damned if I could imagine how, or why, not to mention why she’d make a detour to the food stores on her way home.

  At that point I almost lost my nerve and went back to my rooms, but my luck held and she didn’t sense me hiding there. Preoccupied, she dusted cobweb and earth from her embroidered coat, and passing within an arm’s length of my hiding place, she walked swiftly towards the passageway and the stairs that led to the west side of the dun.

  Yes, of course I should have turned back then. No, of course I didn’t. She was only joining the night wanderers. Of course I was going to follow. I thought, as idiots do, that I’d die if I didn’t know what was going on. And I knew my curiosity was justified when she turned the corner that opened into her anteroom, and I slipped silently after her, and I saw Lilith.

  For a few mad seconds I thought it would be an assassination; then I saw the others. The anteroom was vast, and more like a network of rooms, with its alcoves and recesses and aisles. Griogair stood waiting, and so did Conal: dragged prematurely away from his redhead, poor sod. Kate sat smiling at Leonora in her deceptively vacuous way, and at her side stood my mother, impassive as a carving. On the back of an oak chair Leonora’s raven companion squatted—I’d better not call it a familiar—its black eyes taking in everything and everyone. Each group was focused on the other, so it was easy enough to slink into the shadows unnoticed. I’d blocked my mind as always, but it’s possible more than one of them knew I was there, crouched in the darkest corner. The bird probably knew.

  Conal certainly did.

  ‘Perhaps we could make this quick, Kate dear.’ Leonora gave the queen a smile that was both sweet and fantastically patronising. ‘It’s been a long day.’

  ‘Leonora, of course.’ Kate returned the smile, detail for detail. ‘I’ll keep this simple.’

  Lilith couldn’t resist joining in. ‘We won’t keep you long, Leonora. Politics can be so terribly burdensome…’ She didn’t add at your age, but the thought fairly reverberated off the antechamber walls.

  Griogair slumped into a carved chair, silent. He didn’t look at any of the women, only at Conal. Then he looked at his fingernails. And finally, the ceiling.

  ‘We’ve been waiting for you, Leonora,’ said Lilith. ‘I hope we didn’t hurry you back?’

  Leonora gave absolutely nothing away. I had to admire her.

  Lilith’s mouth tightened with annoyance, but she pretended she hadn’t been snubbed. ‘Kate has a proposal.’

  ‘We could have heard it in the hall last night, I’m sure,’ remarked Leonora. She extended her fingers to tickle her raven’s throat, and it croaked fondly.

  ‘It’s rather…delicate,’ said Kate.

  With his father’s gaze somewhere else, Conal took a casual step back, resting his back against a pillar. It brought me into his sight line, or it did when he turned his head a little to the left. Now he was looking straight at me. He couldn’t have seen me, in the suffocating darkness. But he Saw me, all right.

  The expression on his face made me shiver. Tentatively I lowered my block against him, and he slapped it brutally aside.

  ~ Fool. Greenarse. Stay out of sight.

  ~ Sorry…I began.

  ~ Out of sight, he snapped. ~ Or die. Get your block back up.

  I did as I was told. I felt ashamed, but brittle with curiosity. I didn’t dare move a muscle, not even to rub my temple where Conal’s bark had given me a throbbing headache, but I wouldn’t have wanted to. What, slink away now?

  Griogair was frowning at his beloved firstborn again, suspicious, but the women were still circling and biting like dogfish round bloody bait.

  ‘Kate, dear. Why should any proposal of yours need my help?’

  Shrugging lightly, Kate subsided onto a chaise. ‘Because I’m not strong enough, Leonora. Not without you.’

  That shut Leonora up. (Which alone made my risk worthwhile.)

  ‘Kate has an…ambitious suggestion.’ Lilith’s smile landed over Leonora’s shoulder: right on Griogair, in fact. ‘Have two such powerful Sithe ever coexisted at once, and at the height of their skills? There has to b
e a purpose to it, Leonora. And you have not just your own mind’s strength, but the backing of a magnificent dun captain.’

  Lilith wasn’t even pretending to smile at Leonora now. She was looking at my father as if she’d like to rip off his clothes with her teeth. As Griogair shifted slightly in his chair, I grinned to myself.

  So did Lilith.

  Kate was enjoying herself too, but with a sigh she combed back her hair with her fingers and got down to business. ‘So. Leonora. You know the Veil is nearing the end of its life?’

  That made my breath catch. The Veil? The Sgath? The strong membrane that kept our own world separate from the occult and dangerous otherworld? The only thing that stood between us and the despised creatures on its other side?

  And suddenly I knew what had wakened me: a disturbance in it. That’s what I’d felt, that cat-scratch on my spine. A shuddering jerk on the Veil, as if someone had tugged hard at it, tested its strength. It wasn’t something I’d felt before, because who’d do such a thing? I knew it, though; I knew it by instinct.

  The Veil was a thing I could feel and touch, after all. I could play with it a little, feel its fabric between my fingertips: tug it, stroke it, hold it in my fist. That was all. There seemed no purpose to that extra sense of mine: the Veil was simply something I touched each day that was something less than physical. I thought everyone could. I must have been ten or more when I realised they couldn’t. I was the only one; nobody else could feel the Veil the way I could. Except, perhaps, for Leonora, but she was a witch like my mother.

  As soon as I’d thought that, I had realised my talent was witchcraft. It was witches alone who could manipulate the Veil, in their small way. And where would we be if it weren’t for the ones who wove the Veil in the first place? Yes, yes, I appreciated witches, we all did, but who’d want to be one? Not me.

  So I tried not to feel the Veil any more. And I kept my mouth shut about the fact that I could. Nobody needed to know. It wasn’t as if I could sweep the Veil aside and see the otherworld. I couldn’t tear it, or repair it: no one could. I could feel it, that was all. I certainly couldn’t harm it. The Veil didn’t have a life, it just was, and it always would be. Existence without it was unthinkable.