“And I thought you had brains enough not to pull something like this. Ah. I’m seeing it now.” Menzies rubbed his chin. “You want to move the lad around like your puppet. You want control. You know you should be content enough that the king forgave the Gowries for their bitter past and enjoy the lands you have.”
Mother walked down the front steps and it was all Thane could do not to run to her and push her back inside the house. “That’s some fealty you’re showing there, Menzies,” she said.
Menzies glared her way. “Stay out of this, Senga, and there won’t be a need for too much violence. I’m just trying to teach your son here the lessons you failed to.”
Anger seared its way down Thane’s fingers and his hands became fists.
Senga crossed her arms, her voice carrying. “Did you or did you not bend the knee to Clan Campbell, offer the hilt of your family sword, and swear to be loyal to our cause?”
Thane remembered this was how she used to look all the time—confident, tall, sharp.
“You think this falls in line with that oath?” Menzies snapped, looking flushed despite his barking tone. “You’re attempting to yank your father’s role as chief from under his boots.”
“I want to put it to a vote,” Thane said. “The representatives, yourself included, will decide that. I will accept the outcome, whatever that may be.”
“Well, I won’t.” He pointed the gun at Aini and Thane’s heart stopped. “Have you told these disciples of yours what you did to gain back Rodric’s trust, Thane?”
Thane shut his eyes. He couldn’t tell them. Aini would never forgive him. It had been necessary. But it was a horror—committed after he knew better than to ignore his conscience and do as Nathair and Rodric demanded—and Aini could not find out.
“Och, I can tell you have not.” Menzies laughed, an ugly sound that pebbled Thane’s flesh. “Let me take you down that road, will you? I’ll enjoy that. What do you think? Are you his whore, you pretty little thing? Did you realize you were bedding a man who cares so little for human life? For the pain he inflicts on others?”
Aini stepped forward, eyes on fire. “I’m no whore. And I know exactly who and what Thane is.”
Thane’s stomach lurched. He remembered bone and blood. Lies and pain. It had nearly been the end of him.
Menzies watched Aini like the threat she was. His thumb rose over the gun’s hammer and he clicked it into place, leveling the barrel for a clean shot.
Thane’s whole body buzzed. “Wait. Just listen.” He forced himself not to run, not to panic, not to rush Menzies’ finger into pulling the trigger.
“Seer!” Vera, paled and panicking, hopped onto the bumper of the Dionadair truck, ignoring the weapons aimed at her head and staring at Aini. She ripped her sleeve. A phone was strapped to her arm. Pressing a button, she shouted, “Aini MacGregor, MacBeth’s Seer, needs our help to defeat a man named Menzies!” Thane couldn’t breathe as she turned to glare at Menzies. “Now the entire Dionadair are headed here with your name on their blades.”
Menzies swore. “Seer, aye. I know exactly what that title entails. Allow me to put you out of your misery, traitorous abomination.”
Thane pushed away from Bran, who held his sleeve, and two women he didn’t know. He had to get between them. His heart and lungs shook inside his chest, threatening to pierce right through him.
He reached under his sweater and clasped the Coronation Stone.
The world shivered. The fire in Thane’s blood raged hot. A blue-white light appeared around him, a circle of what he knew would form into mantles, swords, helms, and bearded kings of old. There were gasps. Shouts. The rattle of a gun hitting the drive.
Menzies eyes were big as moons. “What am I seeing?”
Thane released his hold on the stone. The light faded.
Callum picked up Menzies’ gun. “I told you I wouldn’t call a gathering unless I had good reason, man.”
Thane put his hands on his knees and tried to breathe, watching Aini talk to Neve, unhurt, alive. The house behind her tilted. He took another breath. That gun. That was too close. He was going to kill Menzies. Someday. Somehow. Or at least keep the man from ever holding a weapon again.
The memory of what Thane had done to gain Rodric’s and Nathair’s trust flashed through his mind. Aini would ask about what Thane had done, what Menzies was talking about. And there the thing growing between them would die.
The clan representatives along with what appeared to be most of Clan Campbell worked their way into the house under Mother’s direction. She ordered all guns and ceremonial swords onto three tables the kitchen staff had produced at the base of the front steps. Two cooks in aprons watched over the dangerous collection.
“Just in case a foul plan sneaks into your heads,” Mother said, as the crowd nodded respectfully to her and streamed under the arched lintel.
Aini found Thane’s side. Her mouth leaked a little blood. She must’ve bitten the inside of her cheek too hard. “I need to know.” She crossed her arms and locked him down with her MacGregor eyebrow.
Thane was definitely going to be sick. “Please don’t ask me to tell you.”
“I thought we were building a relationship on trust. After the whole spying-on-me-and-my-father thing, I’d have thought you’d be keen on honesty between us.”
“I am. I know. But this…”
Vera, Myles, Bran, and Neve closed a circle around them.
“You all right, pal?” Bran cocked his head.
“Aye. No. Well…” Thane rubbed his face harshly. “You don’t understand, Aini.”
“Make her understand,” Neve said.
Myles shook his head like a fly was in his ear. “Why do we need to know really? Hasn’t there been enough of this? Nathair is an arse and he messed with Thane. We know that. Why are you torturing him and making him drag out the past?”
“This isn’t the past. This happened less than a week ago. After Thane had come to his senses about what his father was and what was wrong and what was right. Whatever he did, it wasn’t under the influence of brainwashing.”
Vera shoved into the center of the ring. “Oh, you think it’s like that, aye? Know so much about it, do you, Seer?”
Thane hated Vera’s tone. “Vera. Don’t.”
“No, I suppose I’m not aware of everything to do with brainwashing,” Aini said, face open. “But I need to understand this if I’m going to risk my life, yours, my father’s, as well as Scotland’s future, on his ethics.”
Vera laughed and held her stomach. “Forgive me, Seer, but don’t think for a second that those with what you think are proper ethics are the ones who can run a country.”
Bran coughed. “I hate to say it, but she has a good point.”
Vera gave him a nod. “To beat the baddies, you must sometimes become one.”
“Then just tell me, Thane. Tell us what you did so we can understand.”
Aini’s brown eyes swallowed him up. God, he loved her so much. The way she opened herself to criticism. How she accepted new realities with such courage. The sharp mind she paired with a good, strong heart. He owed her this truth. Even if it tore them, and the rebellion apart.
He pictured that night. The fog and the sea. Rodric’s mocking looks as Thane approached, hands open, weaponless.
“I’m surprised they didn’t fire away the moment I walked up,” he said. “Rodric was primed for hurting. I’d always been his favorite target. Now that I’d shamed myself in the eyes of Clan Campbell in full, I was more open to injury than ever before.”
Thane leaned against the banister, trying to ignore the ongoing arguments about him going on in the next room. He heard Callum’s voice, then others. Some positive, others aggressively inquisitive.
“At that moment,” he said, continuing, “I had none of my father’s rancid protection. I’d gone to the other side. I was the enemy. And Rodric was more than ready to end me slowly and painfully.”
Thane blinked. The group watched
him with careful eyes and fisted hands. Like they had been there with him. His heart thudded once for each of them. Despite their flaws. Despite his own blazing flaws.
“I had to completely flip what he thought I’d become.”
Aini shuddered and hugged herself, but she didn’t take back her demand for an answer. Thane steeled himself to continue, running a hand through his hair, then over the bump of the stone under his sweater.
“Rodric and Rabbie had a man there. A man who distributed traitorous flyers at concerts and clubs. He wasn’t a true Dionadair, I don’t think, but he was a rebel in his own right.”
“Was he from Inverness?” Vera asked.
“Aye. They called him the Third Fiddler of Inverness.”
Neve brightened. “After the old tale about the two fiddlers who spent one hundred years trapped with Thomas the Rhymer in the fairy hill?”
Thane nodded. “Most likely. This man hid flyers in a false back of a fiddle that he played for coins. When no one was watching, he tucked statistics on the king’s ordered killings in Scotland, as well as the instances of disappearances, under car windscreen wipers and into purses and through mail slots. He always disappeared before the kingsmen could get their hands on him.”
Vera rubbed her hands together, obviously forgetting this tale didn’t end well. “What did he look like?”
“Just an old man. Thin. Wild-eyed. He’d been handsome when he was young, probably. Had a strength to him. He fought back—”
Thane’s stomach heaved and he had to stop and breathe for a moment. Aini and Bran both reached a hand out to steady him. Aini pulled her fingers back first and traded a heavy look with Myles. Thane recalled the trip home after Dodie knocked Myles out. Myles was Thane’s friend now. Would he still be in five minutes? Aini wouldn’t. There was no way she’d accept this. Not after how his clan had treated her father. He knew full well she could still picture Lewis’s family ring on the ground and…
He had to finish the telling before he lost his nerve. He refused to lie anymore. “Rodric demanded I extract information from the fiddler. They wanted to know where the man found his information and where he hid when he wasn’t on the streets. Whether the man knew more about the Dionadair than suspected. Of course, the fiddler was no coward. He clamped his mouth shut for the ones who’d taken him in and took several hard hits to the stomach and groin for his efforts.”
“So they left him with you?” Vera buttoned her coat up to her chin as snow began to fall.
The icy designs drifted into Aini’s hair, one thousand geometric patterns forming a crown of white.
“Aye,” Thane said. “He would not break.” The mask Thane had worn his whole life, the armor of unfeeling fortitude, it slammed over Thane. It didn’t fit like it used to. His heart thrummed under its weight, his new brand of thinking shining between the cracks. “I took three fingers from the man. Two from his right hand. Then one from his left before he crumbled into something far less than what he’d been.”
No one said a word. The only sound was the distant rumbling of the groups inside the house and the shift of wind in the pines outside the open front door.
“Was it your tool that took the man’s fingers?” Bran’s voice was steady, calm.
“Ah, no. I used garden shears. Rabbie’s, I suppose.” Thane squeezed his fists so tightly that blood refused to flow to his knuckles and gathered painfully in his fingertips.
Bran’s hand on his shoulder made him jump. “It was not your weapon. It was not your order.”
“It was my choice. I could’ve done it another way.”
“Truly?” Vera’s arms fell to her sides. “Would they have taken you to Bass Rock if you’d shown anything less than total, brutal commitment to the Campbell cause?”
“No, but—”
Neve stepped closer. “You had no time. No time to make some grand plan that would save us and keep your new way of living whole. You sacrificed yourself.”
“Don’t call what I did heroic. I won’t stand for it.”
Thane’s anger surged and rolled over him. It shoved him and pushed him and forced him away from the group and into the cold garden. He let the chill seep into his bones, punishing himself for the deed by imagining the fiddler’s shrieks over and over and over.
Chapter 19
The Weight of Love
Aini watched Thane walk away. Her feet wouldn’t move. His hands had held her, touched her cheek, brushed her lips. And just days before, those same hands had maimed a brave, good man.
“Forgive me, Seer, but don’t go thinking you’re too good for him.” Vera dipped her head to show some respect but her actions didn’t match her tone.
“It’s not that. It’s just…”
Myles and Neve stood near the door, heads together, talking. He pulled her into a hug and she stayed there as he sang a silly song above her head, quiet and ridiculous and perfectly Myles.
Why couldn’t her relationship be so simple?
Bran frowned at Vera. “Those sweet ones there don’t carry the weight you and Thane must. You can’t go around comparing yourself to them.”
“I thought you didn’t have a sixth sense,” Aini said. “I’m pretty sure you just read my mind.”
A sad smile flickered over Bran’s face. “It doesn’t take being a Threader,” he glanced at Vera, who was talking into her formerly hidden phone, “or a Seer to make good guesses. May I share a story with you, lass?” Bran’s honest face showed the beginnings of wear, of lines around the eyes and mouth.
“Of course. And don’t think I think I’m better than Thane. I just can’t imagine him being the same person I spent time with right after that…”
“It’s confusing. You saw Senga take a bit of control today, aye?” Aini nodded and Bran went on. “She used to do that all the time. But Nathair beat it out of her. Beat the courage out of her, both literally and figuratively. She can’t handle doing the bad things it takes to fight him properly.”
“She doesn’t need to. We can help her.”
“Exactly. Because we are now the kind that can do the terrible tasks a rebellion calls for.” Bran leaned back a bit and studied Aini. “You’d do anything to keep your father from the king’s firing squad. Wouldn’t you? I can see it in you now. That ferocity. The fire and the ice. You have both. Like Thane.”
“I…I don’t know.”
“You do. Only you aren’t sitting well with it yet. Thane’s had a longer journey to this spot. He knows well what it will take to defeat his father and his king. And he knows he’ll get his hands dirty. He’ll bend his ethics to win.”
“But doesn’t that make us as bad as they are? Shouldn’t we stick to what we believe is right?”
Vera clenched her jaw as she studied her phone. She must’ve received a message from the other Dionadair. “No,” she said quietly. “The win is all that matters.”
Bran held up a hand. “I disagree. If we win but along the way become monsters ourselves then it’s not a win, is it?”
“It’s not. Not at all,” Aini said. She tried to see Thane in the garden, but he’d gone past the corner and was hidden in the stone and evergreen growth. “That’s what I worry about. Will this rebellion throw Thane right back into the life he fought to leave? He doesn’t want to be like his father. I will not let him be like him. If that costs us the rebellion, then so be it. I will not let him become a person like Nathair Campbell or King John. There has to be another way.”
“You know there isn’t another way, Seer.” Vera touched Aini’s wrist gently. “Fate has called you both.”
Aini refused to give in. Bran kept watching Aini like her face might tell him some big secret.
“What do you suggest we do when we are put in a place where winning and being a good person can’t both be accomplished?” she asked.
“You must decide moment by moment,” Bran said. “There is no rule or plan you can follow with this.” How well this friend of Thane’s already knew her. “Sometimes you’
ll be wrong. You’ll take a false step and hurt yourself and others. But the fact that you stop and consider each move for its place on the spectrum of good and bad—that is what makes you who you are.”
Myles had snuck up beside them. “You’re like the old wiseman in every movie, Bran.”
Bran threw a light, quick punch into Myles’s stomach.
Aini’s heart lifted. “You say there’s no rule or plan,” she said to Bran, “but that really sounded like one to me.”
“If it makes you smile like that, lassie, take it for whatever you like.” He hugged her, then yanked Myles and Vera into the embrace. “I love you, people. Despite your edges.”
“Because of them!” Vera mumbled a shout into Aini’s sleeve.
Neve jumped on top of them and let out a Whoop! Her mouth ended up near Aini’s ear. “It’s going to be all right, my friend. We’re in this together. Until the end.” She turned and smacked Myles’s hand. “Keep your hands off until we’re in private, you lout.”
“I was appreciating your edges, sweetheart. My apologies.” He winked at Aini, but did indeed keep his hands to himself. He was flirty, but he never seemed to press Neve into anything without her approval.
The group hug fell apart.
Vera held up her phone. “I have news. Dawn—an operative at the Glasgow main safe house—found a message from one of Nathair’s code names to a kingsman that details a plan to use chemicals on the people of Edinburgh. Just as we suspected, he will blame it on the king to rouse support for himself.”
“We can use this when we talk to the gathering here. I need to talk to Thane now. How long do I have?” Aini eyed the house.
“I’d say you have an hour while everyone catches up, spreads gossip, and finds something to eat,” Bran said. “Then you’ll both be needed inside to address the gathering formally in proper attire. There will be the fealty ceremony. After that, of course, is the dancing. Unless this goes badly.”
Buzzing with fear and anticipation, Aini walked toward the garden to find Thane. She’d never thought about how fighting to be a good person made you a good person. For what felt like the thousandth time, she thanked God he’d sent Bran to Thane.
The Edinburgh Seer Complete Trilogy Page 40