by Rebecca Ross
He laughed, to cover up his uneasiness. “Very well. I shall play along with your games.”
He was making me out to be a child. I hardened myself to his insult, glancing over my shoulder to admire the tapestry.
“Within every MacQuinn tapestry lies a golden ribbon that the weaver has hidden among the wefts.” I paused to meet Pierce’s cold stare. “Bring me the golden ribbon that hides within this tapestry, and I will accept your sword and give you my favor.”
He stood at once, rattling the dishes on the table. By the swagger in his stride, he thought this would be very simple, that he would be able to study the intricate design and find the hidden ribbon.
I cast a glance to my father, to my brother. Jourdain looked like he was carved from stone, his ruddy face caught in a scowl, his hand curled in a fist beside his plate. Luc merely rolled his eyes as Pierce passed, pouring himself another cup of ale and settling in his chair as if preparing for great entertainment.
Pierce stood before the tapestry, his fingers at once going to the halo around the maiden’s face and hair, the most obvious place to hide something golden. But his five minutes of study turned into ten, and ten into thirty. Pierce Halloran lasted forty-five minutes before giving up, tossing his hands up in frustration.
“No man could find such a ribbon,” he scoffed.
“Then I am sorry, but I cannot accept your sword,” I said.
He gaped up at me; the shock morphed into a sneer when there was a sudden gust of applause. Half of the hall—half of the MacQuinns—were cheering, standing for me.
“Very well, then,” Pierce said, his voice surprisingly calm. He strode back up the dais, gathering the two swords he had brought. But then he walked over to me, to stand with his face terribly close to mine. I could smell the garlic on his breath; I could see the bloodshot veins in his eyes as he whispered, “You will regret this, Brienna MacQuinn.”
I wanted to respond, to whisper a threat back to him. But he turned so quickly he gave me no time, hastily departing the hall, his accompanying guard rising from their tables to follow him.
The excitement broke, and the MacQuinns who had cheered for me sat back down, resuming their dinner. I felt Neeve’s gaze; I looked to her, to see that she was grinning in delight. I tried to smile in return, but there was an older woman at her side who was regarding me with such disgust that I felt my relief melt, leaving me cold and worried.
“Well done,” Jourdain whispered.
I turned to see my father standing in my shadow; he took my elbow, as if he sensed I was about to drop.
“I greatly offended him,” I whispered back, the words scratching up my throat. “I did not realize he would be so angry.”
“What did he say to you, just before he left?” Jourdain asked.
“Nothing important,” I lied. I didn’t wish to repeat Pierce’s threat.
“Well, do not let him upset you,” my father said, guiding me back to my chair. “He’s nothing more than a pup with milk teeth who just had his bone taken away. We are the ones in power here.”
I prayed Jourdain was right. Because I did not know if I had just stomped on the serpent’s head or its tail.
EIGHT
WHERE ARE YOU, AODHAN?
Lord Morgane’s Territory, Castle Brígh
Cartier
It was time for me to write my grievances of the Lannons, and yet I did not know where to begin.
After dinner, I retreated to my chambers and sat at my mother’s desk—one of the few pieces of furniture I had insisted remain during the castle purge—and stared at a blank sheet of parchment, a quill in my hand, a vial of ink open and waiting.
It was freezing in my room; the windows were still broken, as I had chosen to replace the other, more prominent windows first. Even though Derry had boarded up the casements for now, I could hear the wind’s endless howl. I could feel the bitterness in the tiled floors, the darkness that seemed to have me by the ankles.
I am half Lannon. How am I to bear these grievances?
“Lord Aodhan.”
I turned in my chair, surprised to see Aileen holding a tea tray. I had not even heard her knocking or sensed her entrance.
“I thought you could use something warm,” she said, stepping forward to set the tray close by. “It feels like the winter king is overstepping the autumn prince tonight.”
“Thank you, Aileen.” I watched as she poured me a cup, and that was when I realized she had not just brought one mug but two.
She set my tea beside the blank page, and then poured herself a cup, drawing up a stool to sit. “I won’t pretend that I’m ignorant as to what you’re trying to compile, my lord.”
I gave her a sad smile. “Then you should know why I’m struggling.”
She was quiet as she regarded me, anguish lining her brow. “Aye. You were only a baby that night, Aodhan. How could you remember?”
“Since I’ve returned here, there seem to be a few things coming back to me.”
“Oh?”
“I remember smelling something burning. I remember hearing someone call out to me, searching for me.” I stared at the wall, at the mortar lines between stones. “Where are you, Aodhan?”
Aileen was silent.
When I glanced back to her, I saw the tears in her eyes. Yet she was not going to weep. She was smarting with anger, reliving that horrible night.
“Aileen . . . ,” I whispered. “I need you to tell me the Morgane grievances. Tell me what happened the night that everything changed.” I took up my quill, rolling the feather in my fingers. “I need to know how my sister died.”
“Did your father never tell you, lad?”
Mention of my father brought up another wound. He had been dead for nearly eight years now, and yet I still felt his absence, like there was a hole in my body.
“He told me that my mother was killed by Gilroy Lannon,” I began, my voice wavering. “He told me that the king cut off her hand in battle and then dragged her into the throne room. My father was still on the castle green and could not reach her before the king brought out her head on a pike. And yet . . . my father could never tell me how Ashling died. Perhaps he did not know the details. Perhaps he did, and it would have killed him to speak of it.”
Aileen was silent for a moment as I dipped my quill in the ink, waiting.
“All of our warriors were gone that night,” she said, her voice hoarse. “They were with your father and mother, fighting on the castle green. Seamus was even with your parents. I remained behind at Brígh, to care for you and your sister.”
I did not write. Not yet. I sat and stared at the page, afraid to look at her as I listened, as I envisioned her memory.
“We did not have much warning,” she continued. “For all I knew, the coup was a success, and your parents and the Morgane warriors would ride home in victory. I was sitting in this very room by the fire; I was holding you in my arms, and you were asleep. That’s when I heard the clatter in the courtyard. Lois, one of your mother’s women-at-arms, had ridden home. She was alone, battered and bleeding to death, as if it had taken all of her strength to make it back, to warn me. I met her in the foyer, just as she collapsed. Hide the children, she whispered to me. Hide them now. She died on the floor, leaving me in a cold panic. We must have failed; my lord and lady must have fallen, and the Lannons would now come for you and Ashling.
“Since I had you in my arms, I thought to hide you first. I would have to hide you and your sister separately, in case one of you were discovered, the other would not be. And so I called for one of the other servants to fetch Ashling from her bed. And then I stood there, Lois’s blood pooling on the floor, and I looked down at your sleeping face and wondered . . . where could I hide you? What place could I lay you, where the Lannons would never look?”
She paused. My heart was pounding; I had still not written a word, but the ink was dripping onto the page.
“That’s when Sorcha met me,” Aileen murmured. “Sorcha was a h
ealer. She must have heard Lois’s words, for she brought a bundle of herbs and a candle. ‘Let him breathe this,’ she said, catching the herbs aflame. ‘This will keep him asleep for now.’ So we drugged you and I took you to the one place I could think of. The stables, to the muck pile. That is where I laid you; I covered you in filth and I hid you there, knowing they would not seek you in such a place.”
The odor . . . the smell of refuse . . . I understood now. I rushed my hand over my face, wanting to silence her, dreading to hear the rest of it.
“By the time I hurried back to the courtyard, the Lannons had arrived,” Aileen said. “They must have come to us first, before the MacQuinns and the Kavanaghs. There was Gilroy, mounted on his horse with the crown on his despicable head, and all of his men around him, blood on their faces, torches in their hands, steel at their back. And then there was Declan, beside his father. He was just a lad, only eleven years old, and he had been to Castle Brígh countless times before. He had been betrothed to your sister. And so I thought surely, surely there would be mercy.
“But Gilroy looked to Declan and said, ‘Find them.’ And all I could do was stand there on the cobbles, watching as Declan slid off his horse and entered the castle with a group of men, to search for you, for your sister. I stood there, the king’s eyes on me. I could not move; all I could do was pray that Ashling had been hidden as well as you. And then the screams and shouts began to rise. But still . . . I could not move.”
I could scarcely hear her, her voice was trembling so hard. She set down her tea and I set down my quill, and I moved to kneel before her, to take her hands in mine.
“You do not have to tell me,” I whispered, the words like thorns in my throat.
Her cheeks were wet with tears, and Aileen gently touched my hair—I nearly wept at the gentleness of it, to know such hands had hidden me, had kept me alive.
“Declan found your sister,” she murmured, closing her eyes, her fingers still resting in my hair. “I watched as he dragged her out into the courtyard. She was sobbing, terrified. I could not stop myself. I lunged for her, to take her from Declan. One of the Lannons must have struck me. The next thing I knew I was on the ground, dazed, blood on my face. I saw that Gilroy had dismounted, and all of the Morganes had been called out into the courtyard. It was dark, yet I remember all of their faces as we stood, silent and terrified, waiting.
“‘Where is Kane?’ the king shouted. And that was when I realized . . . your mother had been killed at the rising, but your father had survived. And Gilroy didn’t know where he was.
“It gave me hope, just a tiny thread, that we might survive this night. Until the king began to ask about you. ‘I already have Kane’s daughter,’ Gilroy taunted. ‘Now bring me his son, and I will be merciful.’ None of us for a moment believed him, this king of darkness. ‘Where are you hiding his son?’ He insisted. No one but I knew where you were. And I would never tell him; he could tear me to pieces, and yet I would never tell him where I had hidden you. So he drew forth your sister, held her before us, and said that he would break each of her bones until one of us revealed where we had hidden you, where Kane was hiding.”
She opened her eyes, and now I had to close mine. My strength faded into dust; I leaned forward, to conceal my face, as if I were a boy, as if I could hide again.
“Watching them torture your sister was the most difficult moment of my life,” she whispered. “I hated myself, that I had failed her, that I had not hidden her in time. The king made Declan begin it. I screamed at him. I screamed that Declan did not have to do it. He was just a lad, I kept thinking. How can a lad be so cruel? And yet he did exactly what his father ordered. Declan Lannon took up a mallet and broke your sister’s bones, one by one, until she died.”
I could no longer fight it. I wept the tears that must have been hiding in me the entirety of my life. That my sister had died so I might live. If only it had been me, I thought. If only I had been the one to be found, and she had been the one to survive.
“Aodhan.”
Aileen called me up from the darkness. I raised my head; I opened my eyes and looked at her.
“You were my one hope,” she said, wiping the tears from my face. “You were the only reason why I lived day after day these past years, that my despair did not kill me. Because I knew you would return. Your father had to sneak back to the castle after the Lannons left that night; I have never seen a man more shattered in my life until I set you in your father’s arms and made him swear to me that he would escape with you. I did not care where Kane went or what he did; I said, this child slipped through the Lannons’ fingers, and he will be the one to return and crush their reign.”
I shook my head to deny that it was me, but Aileen took my face in her hands to hold me steady. There were no more tears in her eyes. No, there was now fire, a burning hatred, and I felt it catch in my own heart.
“I will record all of our grievances for you to take to the trial,” she said. “After they are read, I want you to look Declan Lannon in the eye and curse him and his House. I want you to be the beginning of his end, to be your mother’s and your sister’s vengeance.”
I spoke no vow to this. Was not my mother a Lannon? Did I still have distant family among them? I lacked the courage to ask Aileen, to address Líle’s letter that I had found. But my compliance, the eagerness to do as she bid, must have been in my eyes.
I was still kneeling on the floor when I heard it again in the howling of the wind.
Where are you, Aodhan?
This time, I answered the darkness.
I am here, Declan. And I am coming for you.
NINE
THE SHARP EDGE OF TRUTH
Lord MacQuinn’s Territory, Castle Fionn
Brienna
The next morning, I packed up my writing tools and returned to the loom house.
This time, I emerged on the threshold and knocked on the lintel to announce my presence, my eyes sweeping the vast weaving hall and the women who were already hard at work.
“Good morning,” I greeted as cheerfully as I could manage.
After last night, the weavers would undoubtedly talk about me. And I had decided not to hide from such conversations, but to meet them directly.
There were perhaps sixty women in all, working on various tasks. Some were at the looms, coaxing the wefts into tapestries. Others were stationed at a table, drawing the cartoon that would be replicated into tapestry threads. Others were still spinning wool. This is where Neeve was, sitting at a wheel in a stream of morning light that cast her hair into a shade of gold. I noticed that her eyes brightened at the sight of me, and I could tell by the smile tugging on her mouth that she wanted to invite me into the weaving hall. But she didn’t move, because at her side was that older woman again, the one who had glared at me last night after Pierce had departed.
“May we help you?” the woman questioned in a careful, yet not very hospitable, voice. She had a large gray streak in her hair and a frown on her angular face. The only movement she made was to place her chapped hand on Neeve’s shoulder, as if to keep her in place.
I drew in a deep breath, my hand fiddling with the strap to my leather satchel. “My father has asked me to help gather the MacQuinn grievances, to take to the Lannon trial.”
No one spoke, and I began to realize that the woman at Neeve’s side was the head weaver, that I could not gain entrance to this place without her blessing.
“Why should we give up our grievances to you?” the woman asked.
For a moment, I was speechless.
“Be gentle to the lass, Betha,” another weaver, whose white hair was braided in a crown, spoke from the other side of the hall. “You would be wise to remember that she is Lord MacQuinn’s daughter.”
“And how did all of that come about, hmm?” Betha asked me. “Did Lord MacQuinn know whose daughter you truly were when he adopted you?”
I stood silent, my heart striking my breast like a fist. I could feel the heat ris
e in my face; I wanted to give nothing but honesty to the MacQuinn people. And yet to answer Betha’s question would make it seem that I had fooled Jourdain. Because he had not known I was Brendan Allenach’s daughter when he adopted me, but neither had I known. Yet I knew saying such would only sound hollow to these women.
“I am here to take up grievances, per my father’s request,” I repeated, my voice strained. “I will sit just beyond the main door. If anyone would like for me to scribe for them, they may come to me there.”
I avoided looking at Neeve, worrying my façade might shatter if I did, and I walked back down the corridor, out the antechamber and beyond the main door into the morning light. I found a stump to sit on, just beneath the windows, and there I sat, my boots lost in the long grass.
I don’t know how long I waited, the wind nipping my face, my passion cloak drawn close around me, my stack of paper held in place with a rock, my ink and my quill waiting. I could hear the women speaking, their words indecipherable through the glass of the windows. I waited until the shadows grew longer, and I could no longer feel my hands, the truth settling like a barb in my heart.
None of the weavers came to me.
The weavers did not want me to record their grievances, so I was shocked when one of the grooms did.
He found me after dinner, meeting me on the stable path as I took an evening walk with my wolfhound.
“Mistress Brienna?” The groom stood before me, tall and lanky, his long dark hair braided in traditional Maevan plaits. I didn’t know why he looked so worried until I realized his gaze was on Nessie, the hound beginning to growl at him.
“Peace, Nessie,” I said, and her hackles lowered. She sat at my side, and I looked to the groom once more.
“I know what you are doing for Neeve,” he murmured. “I must thank you, for teaching her to read, for writing down her memories.”
If he knows about it, Neeve must have decided to tell him.
“Neeve is very smart,” I said. “I am happy to teach her as much as I can.”