Firebrand

by Gillian Philip

  ‘Agreed. And while we’re gone, you will not cross the border of the dun lands. You or any of your allies.’

  Kate licked a fingertip, and held it high, shutting one eye as if testing the wind speed.

  ‘What a dangerous woman you are, Leonora. You know what makes you so dangerous?’

  Leonora only lifted an eyebrow. The raven tilted its head at Kate.

  ‘You do want to die, that’s the thing.’ Kate’s smile looked real this time. ‘You’d actually prefer to die.’

  Leonora smiled too.

  ‘It gives you insane courage, a deathwish like that.’ Kate tapped her fingertips against her cheek, then pointed first at Conal, then at me. ‘But it makes you very dangerous to them too, doesn’t it? How long will it be before you give in to the call?’

  ‘Watch me live,’ said Leonora.

  40

  FORTY

  ‘You can stay,’ I told Catriona. ‘You don’t have to come. You’re happy here and you’re safe in the dun. You can stay.’

  It was only words. She knew it and so did I.

  ‘With you,’ she said. ‘That’s where I’m happy.’

  She ran her fingertip across the healed scar on my chest. I kissed her. ‘Good.’

  If I’d known. If I’d known. Would I have left her there?

  * * *

  I pitied Conal. Oh, when I think how I pitied him. He had to leave his lover, and I did not.

  He wouldn’t take Eili, wouldn’t let her come with him, because he said the otherworld would kill her, just the air of it. She was bound to her own world as she was to a lover, and besides, she was already in possession of another male soul. Her loss would destroy Sionnach. His would ruin her. Both of them were tied to one world by the only names they owned: taking them out of it would kill them both. Conal refused to bind to her.

  ‘When I come back for good,’ he said as she wept into his chest. ‘Then.’

  ‘What do you mean, for good?’ I’d overheard him, and I had my misgivings.

  ‘You think we won’t come back?’ He was almost savage. ‘I won’t stay away from here. Nor will you. We’ll see it again, Seth. Often. One day we’ll come back for good, but before then, oh gods, we’ll see it again.’

  ‘As long,’ said Leonora dryly, ‘as Kate never sees you.’

  * * *

  On the banks of the watergate, Reultan wept bitter tears, but she was bound to Aonghas, and of course she followed him. She’d have followed him to the gates of Hell; and in the end, I suppose she did.

  I watched Leonora go into the little loch, and I watched my brother. Closing my eyes, I imagined them stepping out into the rain-soaked forested wetland, green and lovely, drenched in the colours of bank and tree and sky. I thought that perhaps life in the otherworld would not be so bad. The watergate on that side was beautiful; there was no better place to arrive.

  We’d go east, Conal said, where people did not know us. We’d settle on the shores of an eastern firth, and live quietly behind the dwindling Veil, and we’d hunt for Leonora’s damned Stone, and when we couldn’t bear our exile any more we’d creep home for a time like thieves.

  Kate’s patience was limitless. So, said Leonora, was hers.

  Under the bluest Sithe sky, streaked with tattered cirrus and paling to infinity, I twined my fingers into Catriona’s and smiled at her. She touched my lips with gentle fingers, and I kissed her. The day could not have been crueller in its loveliness, so I would not look at the stunning sky and the moor. I looked only at Catriona as I led her into that watergate, and she looked at me, and we went to our fate together. That at least we did together.

  I wasn’t looking at her by the time we surfaced and I shook the water from my hair like an otter. Her fingers were still wound into mine, tight and curled, but I was distracted, and shocked, staring at the woodland that was not a woodland. I was looking at bleak moor, and ancient stumps, and a grey sullen sky, and my feet sucked in boggy ground as I waded out of the watergate into our new life. It was changed, so changed. Catriona seemed loath to follow; she was slow, and stumbled at my side, and I tightened my hand on her curled fingers.

  Ahead of me Conal had turned on the bank and was looking at me, and I thought there was horror in his eyes, and grief. Aonghas had much the same look. Leonora and Reultan? It was strange, and foreign: their faces held nothing but pity. I laughed.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘It’s not so bad. New beginning and all that.’

  Then Catriona stumbled again, and I had to turn to catch her as she almost fell to her knees in the sodden ground. Her fingers still felt strange, knotted and bony, and when she looked up at me, I knew that my mother must be laughing at me now, from wherever she was burning.

  I lifted my lover into my arms and buried my face in her wrinkled neck and wept.

  EPILOGUE

  I don’t know how often, in the so-many years since, I’ve tried to remember my lover’s weary wicked grin and the touch of her dry wrinkleskin fingers on my cheek.

  Thirty years, if she’s lucky. I remembered Conal’s brutal prediction. She hadn’t been lucky, of course. She’d met her stepfather, and the priest-Lammyr, and Conal, and me.

  I watched my tears dribble into her white seal-skin crop of hair, then pressed my cheek against it. It still felt the same: silky.

  ~ Don’t cry, she said.

  The weight of her was nothing. Lying against me she felt like a bird. As if her bones were hollow and I could fletch her with sky-blue wings and she could fly.

  Her fingertips caressed my cheek, finding my tears.

  ~ That summer with you, my lennanshee. And a year with Kate. And two years here! It’s more than I wished for, tied to a stake with your brother. It’s been enough, my love.

  ~ Not for me, I said.

  ~ You knew, my love, she told me gently. ~ It was less than we thought but you knew. I’m glad. And I loved you. I’m glad I loved you.

  Could she speak to my mind? I don’t know. I didn’t know any more if I was thinking or speaking, with her. It was all the same.

  ‘Seth?’

  ‘What?’

  She hesitated. Perhaps she was catching her failing breath.

  ‘Don’t be angry.’

  I couldn’t answer.

  ‘They’re dead, all of them. Don’t waste your heart on rage.’

  How could I help it? I’d promised myself no end of revenge, on no end of men, but I had been cheated even of that.

  ‘Please? I’m fond of that heart, my lennanshee. Don’t waste it. Not for my sake. And they must be dead.’

  ‘There are men like them, Catriona. There always are. Rage isn’t wasted.’

  ‘I didn’t say, don’t waste your rage.’ She tilted her head, smiled a tired smile. ‘It’s your heart that’ll waste. And I love it too much.’

  I kissed her forehead. I didn’t want to stop kissing her. I had to force my lips away from her skin, so I could say:

  ‘I’ll give it a try.’

  ‘Good. Will you hold me?’

  ‘Of course I’ll hold you. I’m not letting you go.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll have to do that, my lover.’

  ‘Call me by my name,’ I said.

  ‘Murlainn,’ she said, and smiled. ‘I’ll see our sons.’

  ‘Course you will.’ I smiled back at her, then tucked her head close into my shoulder.

  ‘Don’t go, Murlainn,’ she said. ‘Not till I do.’

  ‘You know I won’t,’ I said. I gritted my teeth. ‘I love you.’

  ‘I know that too.’

  * * *

  I had not moved for hours. I hadn’t shaved for days, though it’s not as if Catriona would care.

  I heard his soft knock on the door, but I did not watch Conal come into the room. I stroked Catriona’s dry lined cheek over and over. Her lips were a little upturned at the corners, but they seemed less creased than before, her face less lined and weary. I combed my fingers through her white crop, felt the angles of her skull with
the palm of my hand. She was beautiful, still beautiful. While she aged with us beyond the Veil, aged in an eyeblink, she’d not had all the beauty beaten out of her by struggle and hunger. She’d aged well. She’d aged well.

  Oh, gods, she’d aged. I pressed my wet face to her hair and clenched my teeth.

  ‘Seth.’

  I would not look at him, would not let him see my eyes. I blinked, very hard.

  ‘Where will you go?’ asked Conal.

  I waited till I could speak. ‘Up among the stones. It’s like where. It’s like where.’

  ‘Where her children are,’ he said gently. ‘On the other side.’

  I nodded. My whole body trembled. Grimly I tightened my arms on her frail body.

  ‘But I mean,’ he said, ‘I mean, where will you go now?’

  Slowly, slowly, I rocked her back and forth in my arms. I had to wait to speak again.

  ‘Did you check for me, Conal? Did you find out?’

  ‘Seth, they’re dead. That’s the truth. She outlived them all. The guards, the little man from town, her stepfather. All of them.’

  ‘She didn’t have so long.’ She had no time at all.

  ‘No. But she had more, didn’t she?’

  ‘I don’t know. Did she?’

  ‘Seth. You know it.’ Crouching, he pushed my hair back from my eyes.

  Furiously I wiped them. ‘Go and look for your Stone, Conal. I’m going away for a while. A year or two. All right? I’ll care about the Stone again, I’ll care about the Veil. I swear I will. Just. Not right now.’

  He didn’t answer. Then I saw he was weeping too.

  ‘I’ll come back,’ I said, and managed to smile. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll come back.’

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Please come back.’

  He didn’t say soon and I was glad.

  ‘So you need your bastard brother?’ I wiped my nose.

  ‘I always did,’ he said. ‘I always did.’

  ‘Yeah. I knew that,’ I said. ‘Call yourself a Captain. Where would you be without me?’

  Gently he cuffed my cheekbone. ‘Greenarse.’

  I gave a desperate laugh.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘I’ll help. I loved her too.’

  He took Catriona out of my resisting arms, and I stumbled to my feet, and pushed open the door. I filled my lungs with night air, alien but beautiful, and we took her out into the darkness to find her sons.

  THE END

  BOOK TWO

  BLOODSTONE

  We shouldn’t be here.

  We said we’d never cross the Veil, that we wouldn’t come home till we found the Stone. But we’d given no oath.

  So we lied. So what? As if we could live without breathing our own air once a decade.

  Kate NicNiven must know that as well as we did. But if our queen wanted to kill us, she’d have to find us first…

  For centuries, Seth and Conal have hunted for the Bloodstone Kate wants, without success. Homesick, and determined to ensure their clann’s safety, they’ve also made secret forays across the Veil. One of these illicit crossings has violent consequences that will devastate both their close family and, eventually, their entire clann.

  In the otherworld, Jed Cameron—a feral, full-mortal young thief—becomes entangled with the strange and dangerous Finn MacAngus and her shadowy uncles. When he is dragged accidentally into the world of the Sithe, it’s nothing he can’t handle—but that’s before time warps around him, and the danger reaches out to threaten his infant brother.

  In the collision of two worlds, conflict and tragedy are inevitable—especially when treachery comes from the most shocking of quarters…

  Also by Gillian Philip from Strident Publishing

  Bad Faith

  Life’s easy for Cassandra. The privileged daughter of a rector, she’s been protected from the extremist gangs who enforce the One Church’s will.

  Her boyfriend Ming is a bad influence, of course, with infidel parents who are constantly in trouble with the religious authorities. But Cass has no intention of letting their different backgrounds drive them apart.

  Then they stumble across a corpse.

  What killed him? How did his body end up in their secret childhood haunt? And is this man’s death connected to other, older murders?

  As the political atmosphere grows feverish, Cass realises she and Ming face extreme danger.

  The scene is set for a murderously sinister dystopian satire.

  ISBN 978-1-905537-08-2

  (paperback, RRP £6.99)

  What the critics said about Bad Faith by Gillian Philip:

  ‘Accomplished, complex and satisfying.’

  Lin Anderson, author of driftnet

  ‘Vivid characters, tight writing, a multi-layered plot full of event and drama—murder, abuse, state violence, religious fundamentalism—this is a refreshingly intelligent story.’

  Julia Green, Armadillo

  ‘This is, dare we say it, an important book.’

  M.M., crimesquad.com

  ‘…superb novel…by a writer of the very highest calibre…this a first-rate, five-achukachick read.

  I urge you to hunt it down.’

  achuka, achukareviews

  ‘Blasted book! Kept me up until 2am.

  I couldn’t put it down.’

  Caroley, Bookcrossing

  ‘Gillian Philip creates a believable and chilling dystopia where some of the action is not for the faint-hearted, but the pace will keep readers moving on…buy this book.’

  Write Away

  ‘Philip manages to combine lyrical writing about adult themes, absolutely believable characters and real dialogue, with a breathtaking switchback of a plot, by turns funny, moving and terrifying, that will have you reading on the edge of your seat. I was torn between envy of such style, and total involvement in the world of the story…’

  Catherine Czerkawska, Vulpes Libris