Seven

She was too late to see anything—a pity, even though she hadn’t come out with that intent. Spotting the dragon in flight, Sophia had caught her breath and stared at the vast greenish-blue form, taking in the outstretched wings and the lashing tail, unable to believe that anything so immense and so far from human could spend most days as a man. Then, seeing the creature descend, she’d followed. Who wouldn’t have?

What she’d found was Cathal standing above a dead stag. He looked just as he had that morning, clothes all in place, sword hanging at his side, and even his hair only slightly disheveled, but when Sophia walked out into his view, he drew his head and chest back in surprise, not a motion she’d seen from him or from any human being. Snakes acted so, startled and ready to strike. She stopped in her tracks.

“Satisfying your curiosity?” he asked, watching her with narrowed eyes.

His voice sounded deeper than usual, though Sophia wasn’t sure whether to credit that to transformation or anger. Now was not the time to ask.

Now might have been the time to lie, but she couldn’t think of anything plausible. “Yes, but no.” She raised a hand. “I saw you land and came over to watch…but I’d come out to go to the village and then realized that I’d no hope of making my way there without a guide. I hadn’t known you were…out. Hunting.”

Cathal regarded her silently. One hand went to the fastening of his cloak, which Sophia now noticed was a silver dragon’s head. His was a family powerful enough to hint at their true nature. She would do well to remember that.

She would also, said her conscience, do well to remember that Cathal was not a salamander nor a griffin nor a two-headed calf, but a man and her host.

“I’m sorry,” she said, dropping her eyes. “I shouldn’t have intruded. I saw nothing. I give you my word on it.”

Honestly meaning apology and reassurance, she realized too late how suggestive the last sentence sounded. The winter air wasn’t nearly frigid enough to chill her blush in that moment, and she couldn’t make herself look up at Cathal.

Not until she heard him laugh.

“Well,” he said, and she lifted her eyes to discover his face open with mirth and his hair ruffling in the slight breeze as if it shared the joke. “I’ll cherish my modesty yet, then. And I’ll not faint just now.”

“Please don’t,” she said, measuring the length and breadth of him with her eyes. “I could no more carry you back than I could that deer.”

“Come now, lass,” Cathal chided her, shaking his head. “If I’m more than half its weight, I’m either the worst glutton in the world or a far worse hunter than I’d thought.”

“And you both weigh less than the mountain. After a certain point…” Sophia spread her gloved hands, illustrating helplessness. She glanced back to the stag. “It is a very large animal. Especially for winter, I think?”

“Aye, it’ll do. I hope.” Cathal followed her gaze, then looked back to her, studying her face. It was a gentler kind of assessment than the sort he’d given her in his solar, Sophia thought. “Will you be able to eat it?”

Instinct and travel through England made her glance behind her before she responded, and she lowered her voice as well. “No. It’s… We would have trapped it and then cut its throat. There are other restrictions too.” Seeing concern enter his face, even if it was just the worry of a host for a guest, Sophia smiled and fought back the urge to step forward and touch his cheek in reassurance. “If my life is in the balance, that will no longer matter. And until then, I do very well. You set a good table.”

“I sit at one,” he said, shrugging, “and I nod at the right times when the cooks and the steward talk to me. Forgive me. I know that the Mussulmen hunt and eat their game. I’d thought it might be the same for your people.”

“It was a kind hope.” The reference made her remember the profanity she’d overheard that morning and that his statement that he spoke Arabic. “Were you on Crusade?”

“A few.”

She had always been good at figures. The ones she did now showed a picture almost as staggering as his flight overhead had been. “How old are you?”

Sandy eyebrows came together as he thought. “A century and a quarter? Maybe less. Remembering each year gets difficult. I’m the youngest. I know that,” he added with a wry tone that she recognized well.

“You and my brothers,” she teased in return. “Never will any of you forget it, and heaven forbid the rest of us should.”

“Oh aye,” Cathal said, “I expect we’ll let it go the moment our elders forget to remind us of their place in things.”

Sophia laughed and held up her hands. “I can’t argue that point with you either… I’ve an older sister myself. And she knows it. I can still remember every word of her last lecture.”

“And how long ago was that?”

“When I boarded the ship for England. She was worse than our parents. They resigned themselves to my peculiarities years ago, but Rachel…” She shrugged. “Her eldest daughter should be getting married soon, so that might take her mind off me.”

“Peculiarities?” Cathal asked, cocking his head slightly.

Sophia couldn’t make out whether he was teasing or honestly curious. She wrinkled her nose at him. “Alchemy. Scholarship. Being a Catherinette—” Cathal’s puzzled look reminded her that not everyone had spent the last ten years or so in France. “Over twenty-five and unwed. I never worshipped the saint, of course, but…you understand. You must know that none of these are usual in a gentlewoman.”

“Oh,” he said, like one reminded of long-forgotten things, and smiled ruefully. “Aye. That. I haven’t spent much time with…gentlewomen…these past few years.”

“I’d imagine there weren’t many on Crusade.”

“A few. Wives. Daughters. A handful who themselves fought.”

“What was it like over there?”

“Hot. Dry. Old, and it’s me saying that.” Cathal smiled again, then sobered. “Or do you mean the fighting? It was war. War is verra much the same, one time to another. The English, the Saracens…” He spread his hands, and Sophia saw again how large they were. A scar, long faded but still visible, crossed one palm. “We all bleed the same. Even my clan. Everything I’ve faced, anyhow.”

The restriction caught her interest. “Are there things that don’t?” she asked, because curiosity was stronger than dread and not knowing had never helped anything.

“So I’ve heard. Ghosts. Shadows. Demons, mayhap. But I’ve only ever fought men.”

“Oh.”

Sophia glanced down, looking at ground where the snow had disappeared in patches. The earth revealed was muddy and dismal looking.

Lost in thought, she didn’t see or hear Cathal move, only felt the sudden warmth of a hand under her chin—warmth that spread down her neck the way heat from a normal touch never would have. She wanted to blame his nature, but she didn’t think she could.

He tilted her chin up, his touch unexpectedly gentle. “Whatever you’re thinking of,” he said, “you may as well ask. I’ll take no offense from it.”

“Oh,” she said again, this time because she couldn’t initially remember where her thoughts had been going. She took a breath. “You don’t sound like… There are those who talk about glory. High purpose. In war, I mean.”

“There may be those who find it.” He slid his hand away and stepped back. Sophia fought off the impulse to follow him. At least his distance was clearing her head, and his expression was less playful—although, as he’d claimed, he didn’t look offended, simply matter-of-fact. “The glory fades by the second war, I find. Perhaps the third.”

“But you keep going.”

“Aye, well, there’s little enough glory in most tasks most days. They’ve still got to be done…here for my people and there for the rest of us. Wars are better for all when skilled men are fighting. I’m skilled. At that,” he added, and sighed. “And it was a damned sight simpler out there.”

She looked up, past the square line of his jaw, and saw the shadows under his eyes. MacAlasdairs, it seemed, were no more immune to sleepless nights than any other men. As much as the words Cathal said, as much even as the resignation in his voice, those shadows illuminated her experience of him from a different angle. Beneath distance and curtness, she now saw weariness and uncertainty, a man struggling to fit himself to an unfamiliar role.

“Anything is simpler when you’re used to it,” she said. “I don’t think your steward would fare so well on campaign, any more than he would in my laboratory. I know I wouldn’t.”

As soon as she’d spoken, she thought, Well, of course, idiot. You’re a woman, and expected Cathal to say likewise, either laughing at her or taking offense at the comparison. When he didn’t, Sophia remembered his sister, the one he’d said had taken his place fighting the English, and then that he’d spoken of women fighting in the Crusades. It was easy to forget facts in expectation; she’d never liked that about her mind.

“And you’ve had many more years than most,” Sophia continued, because the silence had taken on weight and she didn’t know what that would end up meaning if she let it go unchecked. “Centuries. Well, a century.”

The word felt strange in her mouth. It didn’t quite want to attach itself to Cathal, particularly when he smiled. “That’s a way of seeing it, perchance,” he said, speaking as if he was turning the idea over in his mind, inspecting the shine and the facets of it. “It’s been centuries since Loch Arach had a new hand at the reins. Those here tell me everything they think to, but…they’ll not know everything I don’t know, aye? No more than I do.”

“That’s always what catches me,” Sophia said. “I learned from a few teachers, and that was all right as long as I could just imitate them every step. But then, when my situation was different from the ones we’d practiced, I didn’t know to ask, and they hadn’t thought to tell me. And then with experiments, there’s so much not to know, especially at first. You have to…to”—she gestured, trying to grasp the words—“hunt down ignorance before you can address it.”

Cathal nodded. Sophia realized that she perhaps hadn’t said the most helpful thing she could have and was about to apologize when he asked, “And what happens when you don’t catch your prey in time?”

“Well, I lost my eyebrows once.”

He stared at her, then laughed—quickly, but deep in his chest—and the laughter shook some tension from him. “They grew back bonny enough. Shall I take that as an omen, sorceress?”

“I’ve never been very good at divination,” Sophia said, shaking her head and smiling. Then, more soberly, “But it’s always been my principle that…that you do the best you can, you secure what you can, and then you do the work you’re called to do, and you can’t fret about more than that. I do fret, too much, but I try not to.”

“And then you end up in Scotland, looking for dragon scales.”

“Essentially, yes,” Sophia said, and turned her hands outward. “I don’t know if the principle is the same for what you’re doing. I’ve never been nobility, obviously, and I’ve never been in charge of anyone, let alone a castle. I don’t know how widely the theory applies. But war can’t be a very certain thing, can it?”

“No. It’s just over more quickly,” said Cathal, again in the thoughtful manner he’d had before, his voice distant even as his eyes met hers with a focus that made the ground feel slightly unstable beneath her feet. It wasn’t lust this time; she wasn’t sure what it was. Then it was gone. “You should go in,” he said. “You’re mortal. It’s cold.”

“I… Yes, it is,” Sophia said.

She hadn’t noticed that for a while.