Aini wondered if he’d heard of Nathair talking to some Campbells about swearing fealty to him above the king.
“Of course not,” Callum said, “but we can’t fight the king.”
“Especially not with Clan Campbell and its chief against us too.” Thane was setting up the conversation so it’d come around to making Thane chief.
Callum spun around. “What are you saying, lad?”
“I’m saying that I found out something that changes everything within Clan Campbell and gives those like you and me—Scots who know what is right but have until now lacked the ability to speak up—the power to rise.”
Callum called for his man at the door. “Take them to the guest wing. Give them each a set of clothes and take their soiled ones to the laundry. Fetch them some food. They’re all exhausted from their travel and are talking nonsense.” He locked eyes with Thane. “I won’t hear any of that here, lad. And that’s that.”
Thane was losing him. The frustration and confusion that had been in his eyes, all over his face, was gone, replaced by a wall of cold eyes and thinned lips.
He had to be convinced.
Aini gripped the arms of her chair. “Aren’t you even a little curious about what we found out?”
“It’s a game changer, Earl,” Bran whispered. His brown eyes glittered in the near dark.
Callum crossed his arms. “If Scotland were wrenched from Earl Nathair’s hands, what then? You can’t just go around shucking leaders off. The king would only send in another, maybe worse, replacement. An Englishman. Someone who doesn’t care at all about us.” He eyed Aini, then watched Thane. “This may seem honorable and worthy to you now, impressive to your lassie here, but you can’t go around thinking with what’s under your kilt.”
Aini’s fingers pinched the chair’s leather arms. “How exactly could another ruler be worse?” she asked, ignoring the jab. This was bigger than her own pride. “The very man in charge of security is murdering our people with no trial. He takes innocents into his cells under Edinburgh and tortures them until they tell him what he wants to hear. How could anyone do worse?”
“Maybe let’s not tempt fate with questions like that, sweetheart,” Myles said, grimacing.
“Scots that don’t have a job catering to the wealthiest in Scotland and England are in the worst spot imaginable. Because of the new taxes on factory workers, soon mothers and fathers won’t have the money to buy food for their children. They’ll starve in the street. They’ll freeze to death in the winter when they lose their housing. I know Edinburgh—it is my home—and I can already see the sickness of poverty creeping up on the people there. The desperation in the kids who sell apples on the corner and the way people shrink from a kingsman who is simply walking his beat. It is the calm before the storm, Earl Callum.”
The lab genius morphed into the Heir—eyes flashing, jaw clenching, and nostrils flaring. “And we intend to hold off that storm with everything we have, Uncle. Even if it means death.”
Callum threw his hands up. “You’re too young to know when to shut your gob, lad. I love you, but you’ve gone mad. To bed. The lot of you. I’ll breakfast with you and you’ll be gone tomorrow just after. This conversation never happened.” He gave a nod, turned on his heel, and left the room.
All the air went out of Aini.
“That went well,” Myles said.
Neve smacked his knee. “Shut it.”
Vera swept from her chair, dress rustling. “Sleep will help our side too. He’ll be in a better mood to listen and he’ll have time to think on the truth you’ve set at his feet.”
“I disagree.” Bran crossed the room and faced Thane. A lock of his brown hair fell over his cheek, but he didn’t bother pushing it away. “Go after him, Thane. Make him listen. He may very well report us the minute fear sneaks into him. I’ll go with you, if you like, but you must go. Now.”
Thane rubbed his face and growled in frustration.
Vera glared at Bran. “What do you know about it, card dealer?” Bran dropped back a step, face going slack as Vera continued. “I can tell the connection between Earl Callum and Thane is strong.”
She was talking about her Threader ability. Here, her eyes alone glimpsed the colored light connection between Callum and Thane that showed their relationship. But the guard at the door couldn’t find out about any of their sixth sense abilities.
“Give your uncle some space. Time to allow the shock of this to sink in. I mean, you show up on his doorstep looking like a totally different person and you’re with a load of strangers…it’s no surprise he’ll take a bit of working to move him to our side.”
For once, Vera was making good sense.
Thane blew out a breath. “All right. Fine. Sleeping will be so simple to do now that I’ve cracked the world open and my psycho father could be on his way here right now.”
Aini touched his sleeve. He looked down, and the pain in his eyes speared her. “He won’t call it in,” she said.
Vera eyed the guard. “Your…relationship with your uncle is strong. Bright and true. He loves you. He won’t report you. Not yet anyway.”
Aini smiled. “Listen to her, Thane. We’ll talk again in the morning. We still have a chance.”
“Fine. Fine.” Thane let her lead him by the hand behind the rest of the group and the guard. Aini hoped the man couldn’t tell they’d been talking about Vera’s sixth sense. That was all they needed, some vigilante ready to be the hero.
She looked to Vera, then glanced at the guard. Vera nodded and elbowed the guard.
“Where does your family hail from, pal?” Vera asked.
“What? Umm. From Inverness actually. I came here when I was ten to start schooling with the earl’s fighters.”
“And your family name?”
“McConoughy. We have a place up near Travars Pub.”
Vera smiled like the cat who’d swallowed the bird. “And that’s all we need to keep you quiet, you glaikit thing, you.”
Confusion twisted the guard’s features. He gave an awkward shrug and gestured forward.
The dark stairwell led to a long hallway.
“Watch your step,” the guard mumbled, obviously put off by Vera. “This covered walkway’s flooring is very uneven.”
Warped wooden boards pressed into Aini’s boots as they knocked along and came into a more open space showing more stairs and two levels of rooms.
“What happens if we see Lady Greensleeves tonight?” Vera asked the guard.
The man sniffed. “You won’t. No such thing.”
Vera looked at him like he was about as smart as a slug, linked an arm each with Aini and Neve, and pulled them into the nearest guest bedroom. “Sometimes I believe we’d be so much better off without the men in the world. Too bad they’re the only ones who can flip my switch.”
Aini threw Thane a sympathetic half-smile which he returned before the door closed. She wished she could have time alone with him, to feel the warmth of his arms and tell him it was all going to work itself out. That this was their fate and they couldn’t fail. Too bad she didn’t really feel that way. She was just as worried as he was.
Chapter 11
Lady Greensleeves
With a wink, Vera sauntered away from Aini and toward the first bed in the low-ceilinged room. She flung herself down, not bothering to even take off her boots before sleep grabbed her eyelids and tugged them shut.
“Guess we should do the same.” Neve took her shoes off and set them by the second bed, a narrow cot covered in a thick duvet. “You take the good one, Seer,” she whispered, smiling.
Aini didn’t have the focus to argue. The four poster bed squeaked a little under her weight and she tugged her clothes and shoes off, planning to sleep in her bra and underwear. The sheets smelled nice, like soap and lavender, and she hauled the heavy duvet up to her chin. Vera was already snoring. Neve waved and turned over, but Aini could tell she’d have the same trouble sleeping as Aini.
As Neve
plucked at her duvet and scowled at the yellow color of her hair dye, Aini’s mind churned like the taffy puller, stretching out tonight’s conversation and combining it with the one she had with Thane in the back of the truck. Why would Callum be any different in the morning? He’d just say no to helping them again. He wouldn’t listen. How could they stir his passion?
Eight large paintings covered the guest room’s whitewashed stone walls. One was of a double bridge keeping company with a plethora of ferns, sunlit saplings, and thick moss. Another showed an old manor house with too many chimneys and lighter stone marking the edges of each corner. Several boasted a crowd of smiling people, all lined up for the photo. Children grinned and showed missing teeth. Women in fine, striped silk dresses or plain work trousers turned to look thinner or hugged friends to pose. Men sucked in stomachs and smiled over bow ties or work shirts.
This was what Callum loved. His town. His people. Somehow Thane had to relate this problem directly to them. It already was, really, but how could they argue the cause to tie it more immediately to Callum’s beloved home?
Somewhere a clock chimed out the time. She’d been in bed for over an hour. Sleep wasn’t happening. She swung out of bed and grabbed a guest robe hanging from a wooden post in the wall. There weren’t any slippers and she had zero desire to put those ratty boots back on anytime soon, so she slipped out of the room on chilly, bare feet.
“Tav?” Vera hissed Aini’s fake ID name from her bed, but Aini just closed the door, pretending she hadn’t heard. She needed to walk alone to think.
Moonlight flowed over the outer room and along the stairs leading up to Thane, Bran, and Myles’s room. Surprisingly, Myles snores were absent. Normally, his snoring would be shaking the floor.
“Hey,” a quiet voice said, making Aini jump. Myles sat cross-legged at the far end of the covered walkway that spanned the space between the two parts of Huntingtower Castle. He waved, something small and light-colored in his hand. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
She wasn’t going to get any thinking done with him around, but she didn’t want to be rude so she crossed the cold floor. The wooden boards moaned and sent a shiver up her back.
Myles held his sketchbook. A chalked cow with dragon wings was paused in mid-flight on the page. “What do you think?” He held it up proudly.
“Is it a metaphor explaining the way I felt trying to talk Earl Callum into going up against Nathair?”
Myles chuckled. “Yeah no, but I like it. Really, you did well. I don’t think he’s coming around anytime soon though. Seems pretty ticked off about the whole thing.”
“We are asking him to commit treason. That’s not something you agree to right away.”
The moon illuminated Myles’s skin. He still looked tanned from his life in the southern colonies, but maybe his skin was just that shade.
“Did you send a message to your mother? Thane mentioned it.”
“Yeah. Some of the old guys at the safe house helped me with a code based on their occasional communication with the rebels over there.”
Aini wasn’t about to ask if he hoped his mother would write back. She already knew he’d deny that hope even though it would be obvious in his eyes. “Do you think you’ll ever go back?”
He blinked, chalk frozen above his paper.
“I’m sorry,” she said hurriedly. “Forget I asked.”
Wishing she was more sensitive, she pinched the bridge of her nose and contemplated how many mistakes she’d made just today.
“I’ll go back. Someday. I miss the people. They’re a lot like the Scots, but more…changeable. Individually. Don’t you think?”
“I’ve changed a lot, that’s for sure. I never would’ve rebelled five years ago. Rules were my lighthouse beam.”
“Oh, you still love the heck out of some rules, lady.”
“But I break the ones I don’t like.”
Myles opened his mouth to reply, but a scratching sound came from the roof. It sounded like the slate tiles were moving around.
“A raccoon?”
“I doubt it.”
“Because there aren’t raccoons in Scotland or because you think it’s something else.”
“Both.”
Myles scrambled to his feet and dropped his chalk. “Let’s get out of here.”
A light voice sang a line. The words were tangled, unintelligible. Goosebumps rose along Aini’s arms.
Myles swore. “Yeah, raccoons don’t sing,” he whispered. His chalk sat beside his foot, forgotten.
The strange noise moved to the spot right above Aini’s head and the moonlight from the window lit the painted vines and circles on the ceiling.
“I am thine, my love, and I will come to you,” a deep, sweet voice said.
Myles swore some more. Loudly.
Vera popped out of the door, and Aini about leaped out of her skin. “What’s that racket?” Vera demanded.
Aini shushed Vera and pointed up. “Lady Greensleeves?”
“It’s not.” Earl Callum emerged from the shadow behind Myles. “There is no ghost here. And you should all get back to bed.”
“I have zero problems with that directive. As you say, sir.” Myles saluted and ran off past Vera and toward his room.
Aini picked up his piece of chalk and faced Callum. “And who do you suppose is singing on your roof? One of your guards?”
“He has a right lovely voice.” Vera smirked.
“I didn’t hear anything. Now go on. The both of you.”
The scent of sage filled the air and the wall beside Aini shimmered like disturbed water.
“I don’t think…” Vera started, hand going to her lips.
A woman’s head, cloaked in white-blue light, moved through the walkway’s wooden wall.
Aini was face-to-face with what had to be Lady Greensleeves.
Her body followed her head and Aini stepped back to give the ghost room. An emerald veil covered most of her hair and a darker green dress wrapped her small body tightly. The world shivered around her, white and blue. Her skin was a pearly gray. Her eyes were like banked coals in a hearth, burning, ashy, black, and red. The scent of sage and smoke was nearly overpowering.
“You will not stop me,” the ghost said quite clearly and Aini wondered if she’d ever get used to being a Ghost Talker.
“What’s she saying?” Vera asked.
Callum stood frozen, his face contorted in a mix of shock and outrage. Why was he so angry?
Aini told them the ghost’s words.
Lady Greensleeves lifted an arm slowly, her dress and veil billowing around her like she was underwater. “He is to blame for my unhappiness. Before there were others, but now, now it is him.” She extended one finger and aimed it at Callum.
The air was so, so cold.
“Why is she blaming you for her unhappiness?” Aini asked Callum.
Callum kept staring at the lady. “She lies. I’ve never seen her before tonight and I have no idea who she is, outside of the old stories. Those things happened well before my time or even my great, great grandsire’s.”
“Oh no. That’s a lie.” Vera came closer, keeping an eye on the ghost, but angling her body toward Callum. “I’m a Threader, dear Earl, and I can very clearly see a bright green and purple line reaching between you and this lady. You know her and you know her well. What did you do to her?”
“Nothing! And you—you’re both sixth-sensers! You shouldn’t be here. You…” Callum swallowed and schooled his tone. “I’ve done nothing wrong. No matter what you abominations claim this spirit says about me.”
Aini clenched a fist, ready to show this earl what she thought of his opinions.
“It was my resting place,” Lady Greensleeves cooed. “It was where I waited for my lover.”
Aini fought the instinctual urge to run. Facing an angry ghost was less than comfortable. “Did you disturb her grave?”
Callum scowled, and his hands shook at his sides. “No.”
&
nbsp; “Come on, Earl Callum. Whatever you did, just come clean and we’ll figure it out. You are a good man. Thane told us about how much you care for this area, for your home. He said you recently added a new wing to the orphanage you started when you were first given your title. I’m sure you didn’t mean to hurt this lady. Be honest and we’ll figure it out.”
“The orphanage…” The lady began singing quietly, almost too low to hear.
“What is it that bothers you about it?” Aini asked her.
Vera and Callum stared.
The ghost covered her face in her nearly transparent hands. Bones moved under the opal skin. “He killed her right on my grave. He desecrated my resting place. He ruined it. The blood, it pains me. Pains me!”
Aini knew neither Vera nor Callum could understand what the ghost said. Only her mind could unravel the language and the spirit’s noises and somehow turn them into words that made sense.
“Earl Callum,” Aini said, “was there an accident near the orphanage, near the kirkyard there?”
“How do you know there is a kirkyard just there?”
“Answer my question.”
“I don’t know what she is telling you, but I—”
“Enough of this.” Vera pulled out a knife. Where had she found that? “Tell us what you did, you evil man, you traitor to your people, tell us or I’ll finish you right here.”
“Try to gut me, girl, and see what happens,” Callum snapped.
Aini had no doubt Callum would win this fight. She could see it in his confidence. There was nothing faked about that.
“Maybe don’t wave knives at people we’re trying to persuade to support us, okay?” Aini held out a hand and lowered Vera’s weapon.
Vera’s lip curled, but she let Aini take the knife.
Lady Greensleeves’ hands fell away from her face. She glared at Callum. “She would not have spoken against you, coward. You should have given her aid.”
The area around Callum’s mouth had gone white and he looked ready to fall over. “What is she saying?”
“That you killed a girl on the lady’s grave and you didn’t need to. That the girl you killed wouldn’t have gone up against you about whatever you did.”
The Edinburgh Seer Complete Trilogy Page 35