One

Scotland, 1328

Home.

“Praise God!” said Angus, and although Moiread didn’t share his vocal devotion, her silent thanks were equally heartfelt. She could have kissed the dark walls of MacAlasdair Castle like a sailor returning to land. She settled for an ear-to-ear grin and a yell that made the guards at the gate straighten up in alarm before they saw her face.

It wasn’t just that she’d been away for more than twenty years. It wasn’t just that she was coming home victorious. The damn sky had opened for the last two days of her journey back. Her cloak had struggled valiantly before giving up and now hung like a giant sponge across her shoulders and down her back. Her mail would need hours of polishing, and the damp leather beneath the chain had been chafing her for the last ten miles. Her boots were squashy, and the fat, elderly plow horse she rode was up to her fat, elderly hocks in mud.

Even if Moiread wanted to abandon her men, she couldn’t have flown in that weather. Between the gusts of wind and not being able to see more than a foot in front of her face, she’d probably have ended up in Rome. And while dragon blood meant that cold and wet wouldn’t harm her like they would mortals, it didn’t make them more pleasant.

But up ahead were stone walls to keep out the rain, a roast turning on a roaring fire, and her room, full of clean, dry clothing, another fire, and—praise Christ and all the saints in heaven—a bed.

She grinned at the bowing guards as she passed them—too slowly for her tastes, but the horse had served her well and she didn’t want to strain it—waved to the servants in the great courtyard, and practically jumped out of the saddle with more spirit than she’d had since midway through Yorkshire.

“Have her rubbed down well and give her a hot mash,” she told the stableboy, a lanky redhead who’d probably been toddling when she left. “We’ve been a long time traveling.”

“Aye, Lady…Moiread?”

Clearly he’d picked up the name from the older grooms talking around him. Or he’d seen the soggy banner her men carried and realized there was only one MacAlasdair woman likely to ride in at the head of a company. Moiread laughed. “That’s the one, lad,” she said, and extracted a coin from her belt pouch. “Don’t worry… You’ll have a chance to get used to me this time.”

Now free of the horse, she made good speed to the inner door. A number of smells filled the staircase beyond, but the castle was clean, and food odors were the strongest: bread and meat. It was just past lambing season, Moiread remembered, and her stomach growled at the notion, sounding nearly as loud as her own roar could be in her other shape.

“Lady Moiread!”

One of the maids rushed up to her and dipped into a curtsy, the top of her blond head coming briefly to Moiread’s waist. It didn’t rise above her chest when the girl stood either. She was a short one, and Moiread was taller than most men.

“Aye,” she said, trying to remember how to talk to servants who weren’t also fighting men. The maid was a few years older than the stableboy, Moiread thought, but nonetheless young—nobody she’d have known ten years ago, and that visit had been a short one. “I’ll want a fire in my room and a bath.”

God’s wounds, but it was a relief to make such requests freely, knowing that she wasn’t condemning a brace of footmen to sudden and intense labor. At most of the places where she’d been quartered, from farmhouse to castle, baths meant dragging tin tubs up a flight or two of stairs, then heating buckets of water and carrying them as well. For the MacAlasdairs, sorcery made those matters considerably easier.

“Yes, m’lady. Your father’s given orders for both already.”

“Did he? Good man.” Her scouts would have given Artair warning, even without divination, but Moiread’s father was always busy and not always prompt about passing his knowledge on to the housekeeper. This time the dice seemed to have come up in Moiread’s favor.

The maid nodded. “Only he says to tell you, m’lady, that you’re to dine in the hall tonight.”

“Oh.”

Moiread shoved a splotch of wet hair off her forehead and thought less charitable, less filial things. I just got home! was one, and I hope he doesn’t expect three coherent words out of me another.

“There are guests, m’lady, from Wales.”

“And Artair doesn’t think he can entertain them by himself? The world may be ending.” The maid kept tactful silence on that. Moiread couldn’t blame her. “Very well. Tell the laird my father that I am, of course, at his service. I’ll even try to look civilized for the occasion, though I can’t promise not to fall asleep in my soup if it goes too late.”

“My lady,” the maid said and curtsied again before nipping off to tell Lord Artair a most likely heavily altered version of Moiread’s sentiments.

Artair would probably translate them back into the original adeptly enough. Being family for more than two centuries provided them with a private master language of their own.

Dripping her way up two flights of stairs, Moiread wondered idly what Welshmen were so important that Artair had demanded her company for the occasion. Her mother’s people had ties to the country, but Wales had been under English rule for decades, having lost to the same bastard excuse for a king who’d tried to take Moiread’s own country.

Longshanks must have spun in his grave when his stripling grandson signed the treaty with Scotland. The idea still made Moiread smile, the better part of a year later.

No, the prospect of a formal dinner couldn’t lower her mood, not with that memory fresh to take out and polish. She’d have that story to dine on, and she’d eat better than she had in months. Meanwhile, the fire in her hearth already warmed the room, a metal tub of water stood steaming in front of it, and two maids were waiting nearby.

Quickly, they plucked Moiread clean of cloak, belt, and boots. The mail gave them a moment of trouble—they were used to waiting on ladies, not soldiers—but they took instruction well and Moiread wore her hair short to some purpose. In little time, she was naked, ignoring the way the girls stared at her scars, and easing herself into the hot water.

“Welcome back, lady,” said one of the maids.

Moiread sighed with pleasure. Odd how being surrounded by water was so vile when it was cold and near bliss when it was hot. She flexed her toes against the end of the tub and leaned her head back on the other rim. “I am never leaving again.”

* * *

MacAlasdair Castle hadn’t changed a great deal in twenty years.

A few of the tapestries in the great hall had been replaced; a hunting scene now hung where Madoc remembered the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. Outside was rainy late spring rather than snowy early spring, with brave buds beginning to show themselves on the trees, but that was due to the time of year rather than the years gone past.

The long, dark-walled hall with its high ceiling was the same, of course, as were the heavy tables lining it. Those probably hadn’t changed in generations, let alone mere decades. A fire roared in the hearth, necessary for most of Scotland’s year. The people also looked the same: mostly small and dark, a few outliers, brisk and busy and talking quickly in Gaelic the whole time.

Most dressed in the léine, the long shirt, and trews, with plaid cloaks pinned around their necks. Except for the reds and blues of the plaids themselves, their clothing was dark or undyed wool. On the dais beside Madoc, Artair and Douglas were brighter figures, their layers of robes and the fur at the neck and wrists proclaiming their wealth, but their clothing was as it might have been for half a century, without the changes Madoc had heard about from the French court.

Well that might be. The MacAlasdairs’ blood had mingled with that of a dragon’s far in the past, and fifty years could be a blink of an eye even to Douglas. It certainly was to his sire. Madoc didn’t remember a time when he hadn’t heard of Artair and his brood, and he himself aged slower than most men, though without the MacAlasdairs’ other gifts.

Artair—immense, gaunt, and white-topped, like a mountain taken human shape—was a change. He’d not been present in person on Madoc’s last visit and now sat at the head of the table, rarely speaking but nonetheless holding all eyes either on him or ready to glance his way at a moment’s notice. His younger son, Cathal, and the woman Cathal had taken to wife were absent, off in France, as was the lady Douglas had taken hostage during the first and least successful bout of their war with England.

In almost all other respects, the castle was as it had been, and Madoc was glad of it. Change was as inevitable and as obvious as a spring flood almost everywhere else, and while he bent to it, he welcomed the chance to linger in a steadier place.

“Oh yes,” he replied to Douglas, drawing himself back from memory and picking up their conversation again. “It’s been that wet the last few summers. We’ve had a struggle getting any sort of stores in, and the crops themselves have been poorly. My father’s for clearing more of the forest. He says that way we can maybe sell the wood, and the land opened up may be richer.”

“Could be,” said Douglas, “but forest land is a tricky sort, even without the trees. Here it’s half rocks, best kept for pigs and deer.”

Neither he nor Artair said so, but Madoc suspected it also gave them concealment. Men like Artair wouldn’t want their villeins seeing all they did—or all they were.

Even without those considerations, he’d have preferred to believe Douglas. Lord Rhys, Madoc’s father, was probably right. Opening the forest to more fields was the practical thing to do and best for their people…and yet Madoc had too many memories of playing in the forest as a child or hunting in it as a young man. He loved its twisting pathways, the shadows beneath the trees, and he could never quite be easy with the idea of diminishing them, however slightly.

But this is no easy world, is it?

He sighed and distracted himself by spearing a slice of pork as the platter came by. The MacAlasdairs hadn’t stinted on their hospitality during his last visit, in the middle of war and soon after winter, and the changes since had been for the better.

Madoc was about to say as much, phrased more diplomatically, when movement from the lower tables caught his eye. Those seated were turning, a few nudging their neighbors to take their attention from food or conversation, all looking toward a tall, slim figure striding up the hall toward the dais. Thus alerted, his companions on the dais turned as well, and Artair smiled. “Ah, good.”

Paternal affection suited his predator’s face oddly, but it was also unmistakable.

Just as unmistakably, the woman approaching was of his line. She almost had Madoc’s height. He thought they would see eye to eye, or nearly, and he was a tall man for any people but the MacAlasdairs. For a woman, she was broad-shouldered, with full breasts and slim hips, and she carried herself like one used to bearing the weight of armor. Just then, she wore only linen and wool: a blue-gray kirtle and a rich, blue overgown embroidered with white flowers. Above the fabric, her skin was winter pale but with shades of olive, her hair glossy dark brown and short as a page’s, curling slightly below her ears.

“My younger daughter,” said Artair, rising as the woman reached the dais and curtsied. “Moiread, lass, ’tis well to have you back home.”

He gave her a quick embrace, kissing each cheek. Douglas, farther away, stood and bowed, smiling warmly.

“It’s good to be back, Father.” She had a pleasant, smooth soprano voice. She also had Artair’s ice-blue eyes, but her gaze was both amused and weary. “Douglas, you’re looking well. And my lord”—she curtsied to Madoc—“I take it you’re the reason I’m keeping myself awake for a few hours.”

“Madoc, heir to Avondos,” said Artair, while Madoc was trying to decide whether Moiread had meant to be suggestive. If she hadn’t spoken so straightforwardly, and if her father and her brother hadn’t been so close at hand, his thoughts could well have gone along those lines in a more decided fashion.

Hastily, he made his bow to her. “And honored to be your father’s guest, Lady Moiread, and to have the pleasure of meeting you as well.”

“Aye,” she said, and a cynical smile spread across her strong-boned face. “You honor us with your presence. But…” She sat down and began to pile food onto her trencher, speaking at the same time. “Fine company as I’m certain you are, I misdoubt my father called me to this dinner only for that, not when I’ve barely had a moment to wash the dust from my boots and the blood from my hands.”

“You’ve grown no less prone to exaggeration, I see,” said Douglas.

“God’s not so pleased with you as that,” Moiread replied easily. “And so, I pray you, one of you reveal the purpose of this meeting before I recall how weary I am.”