Bloodstone (43 page)

‘Bag of wolfmeat?’ Her cold smile flashed. ‘I will never obey you on this. You’ve got your traditions; well, so have I. Civilised ones. If I live to be a thousand years
old, I won’t forgive them.’

In the awkward silence, Jed coughed. ‘There’s good news,’ he told me brightly. ‘A lot of the women are feeling awful sorry for you.’

I grinned wickedly, but Finn’s face darkened. ‘It’s not funny.’

‘It kind of is. Anyway, Finn. I couldn’t stay in exile, I’d have died of misery. It was this or kill me. They’re my clann and I love them.’

‘Well, I don’t, and you can’t make me.’

‘I thought your grandmother had this conversation with you. Stay human, don’t hate. They had to do it. Eili demanded it, and I deserved it.’

‘You did
not
deserve it. Conal would have killed them.’

‘She told them that, too,’ added Jed, wiggling his eyebrows.

‘Wow. Did she really?’ I wished I could have seen their faces.

Well. I’d be seeing them soon enough. I took a breath, then crouched down and lifted Rory, gritting my teeth. He was such a fragile wee thing still. It didn’t hurt too much.

‘You worried?’ Finn asked me softly. ‘About going down to those pious bastards?’

What worried me most was Finn, so willing to hate on my behalf, but I decided to keep my mouth shut for now. ‘Worried? Nah. Terrified.’ I smiled at her. ‘Let’s
go.’

The silence that fell in the great hall was nearly as oppressive as the silence that met me when I rode back into the dun. Not one of the self-righteous tossers seemed to be
breathing.

I watched their eyes, every one of them, Branndair snarling softly at my heels. There was an arrogant swagger in my step, in case I needed to walk through scorn and derision, but I could make
out nothing but respect; and in that instant it was worth it. I wanted to howl with relief. In only one face was the hatred undying.

Eili sat watching me through narrowed lids, her hands clasped tightly in front of her. Beside her Sionnach got to his feet, his eyes on me, his fingers splayed on the table.

‘Murlainn,’ he said.

I nodded to him. Eili remained in her seat, but around the hall the rest were all getting to their feet, clumsily, as if their tardiness embarrassed them.

‘Seth.’

‘Murlainn.’

‘Captain.’

Finn opened her mouth at me, mock-awestruck ~
Get you
.

~
Finny, give it a rest. I’m dying of embarrassment here.

Every clann member but one was on their feet as I reached the top table, and Grian and his advisers backed off. I didn’t look at the archway beyond the table: couldn’t bear to,
didn’t have to. I went straight to the central chair, the one with a scabbard and sword belt laid across its arms like a barrier.

I set Rory down on the table, tweaked his nose, then laid the scabbard and belt on the table beside him. I only had to snap my fingers to make Finn and Jed drop obediently into the places to my
right and left.

I made myself not grin. I could only hope
that
attitude was going to last.

Lifting Rory again, I sat down casually in the forbidden chair, Rory curled in my lap. The exhalation of breath from hundreds of lungs went around the hall like a single sigh.

I looked up at them all. My clann.

‘Tomorrow night,’ I said. ‘The wake for Cù Chaorach and Torc. You’ve left it long enough.’

I rested my left ankle on my right thigh, and bounced Rory on my lap, smiling into his eyes. I hadn’t leaned right against the chair back, but I’m fairly sure nobody noticed but
him.

‘The captains will come to my rooms at noon for their orders.’ I studied the ranks of stunned faces, and widened my eyes, shrugging. ‘That’s all.’

‘Murlainn.’ The whispered word echoed eerily around the hall.

The clann began to talk again, uncertainly, as muted as they had been on that night I hated to remember. I got a justifiably wicked pleasure from seeing that, once again, more than a few were in
tears. Branndair lay at my feet, his hungry yellow eyes on the clann.

One by one they stood up and came to me, clasped my hand and pressed it to their foreheads. All of them, one by one, returned quiet to their seats. Not for a single one did I put Rory down: not
even for Grian, not even for Orach. When I’d counted them all – all but one, that is – I got to my feet, handed Rory to Jed, and slung an arm round him and Finn.

‘You,’ I murmured, ‘have given me back my clann and my dun and my life. Now let’s get out of here. And oh, gods, do I need a drink.’

Finn

‘Finn,’ said Sionnach. Leaning on the stone archway, he gave me a sympathetic smile. ‘Your mother is here.’

‘Okay.’ I hugged my knees and stared out beyond the parapet. ‘Thanks, Sionnach.’

Jed and I sat close together on the broad battlement of the dun, backs against the low wall, staring out to sea across the early spring machair with its smattering of wild flowers.
Sionnach’s footsteps faded down the steps, back towards the courtyard. Hooves clattered on stone and were muffled by grass as a patrol rode out. A horse whinnied in the stables, a hammer rang
on metal; there was laughter, and the start of a quarrel. The yells from an anarchic twenty-a-side football match were drowned by the closer racket of four off-duty guards playing Jenga. Behind it
all was the lazy growl of wind turbines, the blade shadows sweeping hypnotically across the battlement.

The only silence in the place was the one between us. Jed looked sideways at me, chewing his knuckle. ‘Kind of ironic, this, isn’t it? You going. Me staying. I’m really
sorry.’

‘That’s okay.’ Though it wasn’t.

Music burbled quietly out of the courtyard amplifiers: nobody had bothered to change it since last night’s full-moon party. I wanted to be back there, before the dawn I’d been
dreading, curled sleepily against Jed with his arm around me. Watching Orach drag Seth up for a dance; trying not to read Eili’s lethal gaze as Seth’s face registered a kind of
happiness. Trying not to fall asleep in Jed’s arms, an awful premonition twisting my heart. I hadn’t wanted the sky to pale: I didn’t want to wake and find the night gone. I
wanted to stay more than I’d wanted anything in my life.

Jed picked awkwardly at a nail. ‘They honestly think Rory’s their great hope. Seth says it’s superstitious shite, but Rory will have a good life here. Much better than over
there.’

‘I know. It’s fine.’ I stared across the machair. ‘You’ll have a good life too.’

He said quietly: ‘It’s the only place I’ve ever existed.’

A familiar gurgling giggle drifted up from the courtyard, so we both peered over our shoulders. The Jenga game had been brought to a halt but nobody seemed to mind. Rory was settled happily
between the four guards, two men and two women, who lay on their stomachs helping him build and destroy a Jenga-brick tower.

Jed chewed his knuckle. ‘I’m not staying just so Rory can be some sodding figurehead. He’s too little to get lumbered with that. But...’

‘But Seth doesn’t care that he’s the Bloodstone, does he?’

‘Nah. Couldn’t care less. He’s just besotted.’ Jed gave me a twisted grin. ‘Bit late in the day, but I couldn’t separate them now, could I? Seth came barging
into my room at four o’clock this morning.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Panicking his hungover head off ’cause Rory had a tummy bug.’

‘Aw, Jed. He isn’t used to it, pure Sithe don’t get bugs. Cut him some slack.’

‘Aye. He needs it.’ We started to laugh, till our eyes met.

Jed looked away sharply, out towards the grey sea. ‘You’d better go and see your mother.’

‘Don’t get into any scraps, right?’ I cleared my throat. ‘And don’t cut yourself. And don’t ride water horses. And don’t let Seth boss you around,
’kay?’

‘Look who’s talking.’ He managed to smile. ‘Want me to come? Moral support?’

I shook my head as I got to my feet. This was one I’d have to face on my own.

At the foot of the stone steps someone barred my way, and as I looked into Eili’s cool eyes, my heart sank. I knew the woman was going out on a reconnaissance patrol and wouldn’t be
back for three days. I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to see her again.

‘So, Finn. You’re going with your mother?’ Eili was almost smiling. ‘I know you’re angry, but weren’t you going to say goodbye?’

‘Eili,’ I said. ‘Conal didn’t want you to do what you did to Seth.’

Eili did not look away, but she didn’t lose her temper either. ‘Conal lives in my heart,’ she said, ‘but he doesn’t have to live in my skin. Seth is my Captain: I
have to protect his life, and I have to rely on him to protect mine. I had to do it, Finn, and Seth understands that, even if you don’t.’ She paused. ‘You watched. You disobeyed
him, I saw you. I hoped you’d scream or weep, shame him, but you didn’t. Well, good for you. But you shouldn’t have watched at all if you couldn’t take it.’

‘It’s because of what you did that he’s making me go back.’ Resentment choked me.

‘No, it’s because of how you reacted to it. Anyway, there’s your mother to think of.’ Eili set her jaw. ‘Con... al would agree with him. Conal would want you to go
with Stella.’

I could hear how much it hurt to say his name, and my heart stopped thudding so angrily against my ribcage. She could have insisted on Seth’s execution, after all, but she
hadn’t.

‘Eili? Is it over, with Seth? Will you leave it at that?’

‘I don’t know. I wanted him to die, Finn, and I still wish he had.’ Eili looked at me for a long silent moment. ‘I don’t know. But I’ll try.’

I nodded unhappily. ‘Bye, then.’

‘Finn,’ Eili called after me. ‘There’s something else Conal would want.’ As I turned, she smiled. ‘He’d want you to come back.’

‘Yeah.’ I smiled too, properly. ‘I will.’

Upstairs, outside Seth’s rooms, I hesitated, aching with nerves. I could hear raised voices even through the solid oak door: Seth and my mother, at each other’s throats again, only
it didn’t make me so happy as it once did.

Stella’s voice was harsh. ‘How typical of you, Seth, to make me come to you.’

‘Nobody made you come here.’ He was angry too, but his voice was low. ‘It’s your own stupid oath you’ve broken, Reultan.’

‘Don’t call me by that name.
Not ever
.’

I’d lost my taste for eavesdropping. As I shoved open the door, they both fell guiltily silent.

Stella recovered first. ‘Finn,’ she said, a funny catch in her voice. ‘Finn.’ She wrapped her arms round me ferociously.

I was briefly shocked rigid; then I hugged her back, burying my face in her shoulder so that neither she nor Seth would see I was crying. Seth kept awkwardly quiet, taking a new and intense
interest in the stone walls. As Stella let me go and cleared her throat, recovering her composure and her ice, I felt the hesitant glance of a mind against mine, wilder and more wolfish than
Conal’s but suddenly just as protective. I knew what Seth was telling me.

~
Steel yourself, Dorsal. ’Cos your mother is.

‘Finn, you’re coming back with me tonight.’ Stella tried to smile. ‘I’ve only left it this long because of Conal. I’m sorry.’

‘Stella, be careful for her,’ said Seth. He whetted his sword as Stella looked on with distaste. ‘Finn’s a talented girl.’

‘She’ll learn to keep that quiet, like I do,’ said Stella. ‘She’ll learn to live with the natural laws God intended.’

‘Zealot.’

‘Leonora had her way,’ she snapped. ‘She’s dead. And now so is my brother.’

‘He was my brother too,’ said Seth quietly, stropping the blade.

‘I was in a black taxi when I felt him die,’ said Stella, quite dispassionately. ‘The driver thought I was mad, or drunk. Ah, what does it matter? What do you think you can do
without him? One day this world will die, and I don’t want Finn’s heart to break when it happens. And I don’t want her to come to the same end as Conal, or her father. She
doesn’t belong here.’

Seth looked at me. ‘Yes, she does.’

‘She is my daughter!’

‘That’s why she’s going back with you.’ Seth held up his blade and turned it in the light, then looked along it into Stella’s blazing eyes. Turning on her heel, she
stalked out.

‘I don’t want to go back,’ I told Seth, tearfully.

‘It isn’t up to you. Or me.’ Seth went on obsessively honing his new sword blade. He’d wear it away altogether before the day was out. He was driving me mad.

‘You’re the Captain of this dun!’

‘That doesn’t give me authority to come between a mother and her daughter.’

‘You could if you wanted to!’

‘It’s not about what I want.’ He rubbed his arm across his eyes and I was shocked to realise he was almost crying.

I stopped being angry with him, and gulped. ‘Stella swore an oath, Seth! She’s broken it to come and get me. What’ll happen to her?’

‘Nothing will happen to her.’ He still didn’t look at me, I noticed. ‘Don’t listen to that mumbo-jumbo, Finn. Jinxes, curses, shite. Don’t think about it. It
can drive you mad.’

‘Damn her.’ Tears stung my eyes. ‘I won’t even have Jed.’

‘You’ll have your mother, so don’t you dare damn her.’ He put down his whetstone at last to look up at me. ‘Jed would go back if he could have his. Don’t you
understand that she loves you?’ He scraped his fingers through his regrown hair. ‘Finn, if you ever choose to come back here, you’ll need to do it without hating yourself and her.
You need to learn to forgive each other. And,’ he added sharply before I could interrupt, ‘you need to forgive your clann.’