Firebrand (3 page)

Conal was wearing his sword on his back, his silver-embossed sword that Griogair had had made for him, and I wondered if he’d come here to kill me. I wondered if the prospect bothered me that much, and I decided that it did. My fingers tightened on the stone. I’d damn well hurt him first.

‘Go away,’ I snapped.

He shrugged lightly. ‘But this isn’t your rock. And I like it here.’

‘Don’t look at me,’ I snarled, raising my stone a little higher.

Sighing, he turned himself round on the boulder so that his back was to me. ‘Better?’

No. Worse. I went on glaring my hatred at him. The sword was a beautiful thing, and more than beautiful. I’d seen Conal wield it in practice, I’d seen how it sang in the air, light and fast as his thought, perfectly balanced on its tang, answering him like his own hand.
My father, I knew suddenly, would never give me anything like that. It didn’t matter how hard I tried, I would never be his son. Not really.

‘But you’re my brother,’ murmured Conal.

‘That means you get to lord it over me, does it?’

‘No.’ He glanced over his shoulder but didn’t quite look at me. ‘It means I’d like to know you. And it means that what I want…it isn’t the same as what Griogair wants.’

‘He wants me to go away.’

That silenced him. He didn’t even bother to contradict me, because he knew it was true.

‘I don’t,’ he said at last.

Hot tears spilled out of my eyes, and the humiliation made me loathe him even more. ‘Shut up!’

‘Seth…’

‘Don’t call me that!’ My words got all tangled up in my tears.

‘Isn’t that your name?’

I sniffed violently. I wanted to hit him with the stone. I wanted to hit him like I’d hit the fish, till he didn’t exist any more. Then he’d know how it felt. My face was all tears and snot, like some infant, streaked with the dried blood from my nose.

‘Go ahead,’ he said.

I stared at the back of his head.

‘Preferably not with the rock,’ he added, ‘but go ahead and hit me.’

I don’t know why I dropped the stone. I could just have used it anyway, but I did drop it. Before I could think any harder I ran at him, and struck him hard on
the side of his face. Then, like a coward, I ran away again and crouched, ready to bolt for my life.

Slowly, a little stunned, he put his hand to his face. I knew I’d hurt him and if he pretended I hadn’t, I promised myself I’d hate him forever. But he shook his head slightly, wincing as he touched his cheekbone.

‘Strong,’ he murmured. ‘You’re strong.’

‘I hate you,’ I said.

‘I know. Can I turn round yet?’

‘No!’ I didn’t want him to see the fresh tears brimming in my eyes.

‘Did that make you feel better?’

‘Yes,’ I lied.

‘Good.’

I could tell he meant it. He wasn’t trying to teach me some stupid moral lesson about the futility of violence. He actually just wanted me to feel better.

‘Your mother had my mother exiled,’ I spat, as much to remind myself as him.

Shrugging very slightly, Conal half-turned. ‘Well,’ he said, a smile just creasing the corner of his mouth. ‘Your mother did try to poison my mother.’

I slumped down into the heather and gnawed on my knuckle for a while. The silence between us was almost companionable. Almost. If I hadn’t been on the verge of tears I’d have been closer to contentment then than I’d ever been, just sitting there in his company. I had to keep reminding myself he was Griogair’s firstborn, the only one my father loved, the one who’d made me superfluous before I was even conceived. If he tried to tell me now he’d be my friend, I’d pick up
the stone again and kill him.

After a while he said, ‘Do you know Sionnach MacNeil?’

I did, but I said nothing. He was a nice enough boy, about my age, one of the few human beings in the dun who’d acknowledged my existence, one of the few children who didn’t torment me. If I was the kind of child who ever needed a friend, I remember thinking he might do.

‘He knows where there’s a fox den, up in the pine-wood,’ Conal went on. ‘He’ll take you up there if you want.’

‘Who says?’ I snapped.

‘He did.’

‘All right,’ I said, because I could think of no other answer.

‘So can I turn round yet?’

‘All right.’ Quickly I rubbed my nose on my sleeve.

So he turned and looked at me. I didn’t want him to smile at me, and he didn’t. Instead he reached out a hand to me, simple as that.

Biting my lip hard, I looked at his hand. And then I took it, simple as
that
.

Then Conal did smile. But by then I didn’t mind too much.

* * *

So after that, I had at least one friend in the dun. Sionnach liked the things I liked, and we spent most of every day together, and being Sionnach’s friend gave
me a bit more status, since his father was Griogair’s second-in-command; Niall Mor MacIain was actually kinder to me than my own father. And Conal, while keeping a distance that was entirely my choice, slowly made me part of the clann; so slowly and gently, in fact, that neither I nor the clann noticed the moment when I stopped being Griogair’s unwanted mistake and became one of them.

Now, when he rode into the dun with Griogair, from a hunt or a patrol or a diplomatic visit to Kate, Conal would say sharply ~
Athair! Father!
That would be enough to make Griogair start, and look at me, and almost smile. It was all I ever got but it was more than I’d grown to expect. Conal would reach down a hand and pull me up onto his ferocious black horse—and sometimes Sionnach too—right in front of the whole clann. Then I’d just about burst with pride. I wasn’t Griogair’s son, not in any true sense, but look at me! Look at me, you dogs that used to sneer at me and kick me and ignore me: I’m Conal MacGregor’s
brother!

It was all I’d ever be, but by then, it was more than enough. So one night I went to bed still believing I hated him, because I’d planned always to hate him. And in the morning I woke up knowing that I loved him. If Griogair wouldn’t be my father, Conal would, and I would love him till the day I died. And he hadn’t even had to twist my mind.

By the time I was eleven, I was in love in a different way. Gradually I’d made other friends, though not many: there was Feorag, a year younger than me and my partner in crimes that Sionnach refused even to contemplate; there was Orach, a quiet golden-haired girl who shot like a dream, and who tended to follow me around though she rarely spoke. I liked her company, and I enjoyed her devotion, and a year or two later, in the cool darkness of the sea-caves beyond the bay, we stripped each other of virginity.

I’ve loved a few women: loved them honestly and intensely and with all my heart. Many more I’ve loved with my body but only half my heart. Sithe life is too long for whole-hearted love. A heart can only break so many times. I’m not saying it fails entirely: just that it mends the wrong way. It warps. It’s stitched together loose and askew and it doesn’t work as it should.

If I’d known that earlier, I’d have been more careful with it.

Orach was my first love, my always-occasional love, the love and comfort of half my life. She was there when other loves left, when other loves died. She was there till another came along, as unexpected and stunning as a freshwater spring in frozen tundra.

But that was my last love, and far too many centuries in my future. Back in my stupid youth, and Orach
notwithstanding, my angry young heart belonged to Eili MacNeil.

She was Sionnach’s twin, an imperious beautiful girl who treated me with cool kindness. She had brown eyes to drown in, and dark red hair that she cut roughly short with a dagger, and she was more of a tomboy even than the other young girls of the clann: all she lived for was swordplay, and archery, and horse races on the machair.

And Conal.

Eili followed my brother around like a puppy, and this was the degree of her obsession: the only reason she cut her hair short was to be like him. I didn’t take her crush seriously, though. In a way it made me happy, because being Conal’s brother, but the same age as Eili, seemed to me an irrefutable advantage. The more I saw of Eili the more I loved her, and it didn’t matter to me that she was devoted to Conal. After all, so was I: we had that in common. And I looked like Conal, despite my black hair; I even fought like him, because he was teaching me swordplay whenever he could. I knew that one day she would simply stop loving him and start loving me instead, and after all, we were pure-blooded Sithe. If we didn’t have all the time in the world, we had as much of it as anyone could want.

How did it never occur to me that in long, long lives, age comes to mean nothing?

But in childhood, Sionnach and Eili and I were the best of friends. Whatever other children came into our orbit, it always came down to the three of us. We fought and rode and played and hunted together, and
dogged Conal’s footsteps when he was around the dun, and pestered the cooks and the stablehands and the smiths till they were half-demented with us. Generally, in other words, we were children.

It was the swordsmith Raineach I’d gone to annoy, one autumn day just after I turned twelve. I liked the woman, surly as she was, and I admired the way she worked, and I was hoping that one day she’d make me the sword I wanted, so I sucked up to her relentlessly. She knew that was what I was doing, but she put up with it, because she liked me as much as I liked her. I think when Raineach was young she’d been an outcast too. We can always recognise one another. It’s something feral in the eyes.

That day, as soon as I stepped from the bright morning chill into the dark wall of roaring heat that was her workshop, she raised her eyes from the half-made weapon hissing in the long water trough, gave me a nod, then jerked her head very slightly towards a corner. I thought she was palming me off on her two sons, both good company but younger than me. There was no sign of them. Instead Eili was there, intent on a small piece of silver that she was twisting with pliers. Pushing sweaty spikes of hair out of her eyes she licked her lips, fixated on the work. Raineach’s three-year-old stepdaughter stood watching every move of her hands, dark eyes wide and mouth open.

Trying not to go straight to Eili’s side, I folded my arms and watched the smith beat the soldered steel, the razor hard strips to the softer core.

‘Another sword?’ I said hopefully.

‘Aye,’ said Raineach darkly. ‘Not for you, greenarse.’ She thrust it back into the furnace.

‘Who, then?’

‘Not that it’s any of your business.’

‘No, but who?’

‘Eorna.’

‘Why does Eorna need another sword?’ I said resentfully.

With a sigh of exasperation, she whipped the annealed metal from the furnace, then wiped sweat off her face with her bare forearm. ‘Don’t you keep your cloddish ears open? You know fine Alasdair Kilrevin’s restless. Kate expects trouble from him, and she expects your father to put him back in his box. Happens every decade or so. Kilrevin gets bored if he can’t do some killing now and again. The bastard needs to let off steam.’

‘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.

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.