Sophia told her. Alice shivered over the description of the castle, made properly repulsed noises at Albert’s appearance, and shook her head at the end of it all. “Vile excuse for a man. I agree with Lord MacAlasdair. The world’s better for not having him in it.”
“Yes,” Sophia said sincerely. She felt the weight of her deeds on her and suspected she ever would, that she would carry the memory of his screaming dissolution to her dying day. That was right. Albert had been a person once, and even good deeds shouldn’t happen lightly when they involved human life. But she meant what she’d said, and it was a comfort to her in itself.
She’d discovered a potion, and she’d pared away a bad part of the world. In doing so, she hoped, she’d made life better for Gilleis, Harry, and the frightened people of their lands as well. Whoever inherited could be no worse than Albert. Plenty of people had accomplished less in their lives.
Yet what she’d told Douglas was still true. Whatever came later, Sophia still had one great task immediately in front of her, and it was no trifle.
When she could leave her bed, she went to the laboratory. There, at the proper hours, she distilled and recalcified, measured and ground. There, at the proper hours, she prayed. There, in her brief free time, she ate and slept. Except for servants with trays of food, none disturbed her. “Douglas gave orders,” Alice said when she intercepted a servant and brought food. “And I wouldn’t defy that man for all the riches of the Orient.”
“I don’tneedthe riches of the Orient,” said Sophia, who was beginning to think of a few matters on which she’d risk Douglas’s displeasure.
* * *
Douglas’s orders were one of the reasons she was surprised to come out of her laboratory and find him standing there, calm and still. “Are you finished for the moment?” he asked. “I would speak with you.”
“Yes, of course,” she said, “though not inside… The mixture’s at a sensitive stage. Is Cathal all right? I know his method of coming to my aid was an unfamiliar one, and if there’s anything I can do—”
Douglas held up a hand. “No. That is, he’s hale enough to plague those nearby. He’s not a man for idleness, my brother. Though not a man for the wars these days either, I’m suspecting.”
The direction he was going was obvious. Sophia considered saying that Cathal hadn’t told her of a decision one way or the other, then thought that his proposal likely counted,thenwondered if he’d expect her to come on Crusade with him. All the while, remembering both the proposal and the circumstances surrounding it had her blushing fiercely, and she settled for just asking, “My lord?”
“Ach, for heaven’s sake. Marry the man.”
“I—”
“If he’s not asked yet, tell me and I’ll beat him until he finds the courage. I know damned well he wants to. The entirecastleknows it.”
Sophia bit her lip. “He has, my lord. I told him I wanted to, but I wished to give us both time to think. Him especially. It was…a situation in which I didn’t know that we were thinking clearly,” she said, feeling quite able to boil water on her face, “and I know that he has many duties.”
“Ha,” said Douglas, rolling his eyes. “He’s done more of his duty in the last five years than the rest of his life combined. If he marries a girl with a sound head and a good spirit, I’d call it a damned miracle. The castle will be in good hands, should he leave,” he added, and went on before Sophia could speak in Cathal’s defense, “and I’ll talk Artair around. Not that I’d imagine it’ll take much. The youngest child’s hand in marriageisgenerally the prize for services like yours in tales…but you’re not getting half our lands. They’re small enough as it is.”
He turned then, a man who’d discharged one duty on a list of fifty that day, and left Sophia stunned and blinking.
The next day she woke at dawn to the bath she’d requested, then to a white linen gown that was doubtless another of Agnes’s castoffs. Sophia didn’t bother taking this one in, simply rolling up the sleeves and kilting the skirt before she went back to the laboratory. She stopped a page on the way.
“Tell Sir Cathal he can expect me a little after noon,” she said, barely noticing how the Gaelic came from her lips now. “Assuming, of course, that nothing goes amiss.”
Sophia knew that he stared at her, and that he kept staring after she left, but the knowledge was remote and immaterial. The possibility ofamissworried her a good deal more, but she didn’t dare dwell on that either. She focused on the details instead: each breath and footstep, then the weight of mortar and pestle or the circulation of steam.
This time she was more careful of the angle when she poured the topaz into the potion, but it turned out that she didn’t need to be. The flame stayed low and spread out, covering the mouth of the goblet from edge to edge, and its heat wasn’t as fierce as the other had been.
This is right, she thought, knowing it as she’d known that this potion, alteredsoandthus, was the way to reintroduce Fergus’s soul to his body. Such knowing had been easier ever since she’d come back from the aether—no mysterious certainty, but rather as if she were a seamstress considering a dress, knowing that the line she wanted required such a set of the sleeves.
She wondered if that was how Cathal felt about battle. She wanted to ask him. There was, Sophia was finding, no end to the things she wanted to ask him.
When she carried the potion into Fergus’s room, Cathal’s face was briefly the only thing she saw.
Soon enough her mind recalled itself to her purpose. She looked to Fergus, pale and unconscious on the bed, and she thought of Douglas and Sithaeg waiting a few yards outside the door, just far enough for probable safety. Sithaeg had darted one look upward as Sophia passed. Her eyes had been frozen rivers, torrents forcibly held in abeyance.
Sithaeg’s expression was enough to damp the giddiness uncurling within Sophia’s chest, but only barely. Had she doubted, it might have hit harder, but she came to Fergus’s side with the cup in her hands and the craftsman’s certainty of his masterpiece.
It didn’t make her careless. She knelt slowly and smoothly. The potion rippled with her movements, and little waves hit the sides of the goblet, but not a drop spilled over. On the other side of the bed, Cathal propped Fergus up with equal concentration. Their movements took on a rhythm, a call-and-response. The narrow bed and the man within it became the center of a ritual no less formal than any official rite.
A wedding, for instance.
Sophia didn’t blush to think about it any longer, nor did she instantly reject the notion as impossible. The thought was there, and there it sat, while she tipped the goblet carefully forward, felt the potion’s weight shift within it, and watched Fergus’s throat to see that he swallowed and didn’t choke.
Halfway through, that all became much more difficult.
