“Then, I have not lived up to my laird’s expectation.”
Cían laughed nervously, scratching at his neck. “I didnae mean it like that.”
“You’ll have to forgive my brother,” said Jor, “Better with a sword than he is his head.”
“The womb gives each its own,” said the druid. He glanced again at Cían’s radiant locks, then to Jor’s earthy tones and recalled the Banrigh Ghaoire’s peppery strands. “With such contrast between the seed, it is sure one takes after the mother and one the father. Which, I wonder, is which?”
Jor smiled. “Our mother was so kind as to bless him with her better looks.”
“Not her shoulders, though,” said Cían. “Mine are braw.”
The druid smiled, if only somewhat. “I have met good Lady Merah, yet I am afraid I still know little of the queen who came before me.”
“It oft is,” said Jor, wisely, yet the bitterness crept in. “A queen’s duty is to her husband. Even if she should outlive him, the power once held is passed and the kingdom forgets.” The druid was quiet and let him continue. “The day that one was born…” Jor nodded to the Vaich. “My mother wept. Not for time—it’d be twenty years till my father would die—but it was the idea of its certainty, I suppose.”
“We all shall die,” said the druid. “It is known from the first breath.”
“Then it is different,” said Jor, “not to ken its coming.”
The druid had confronted death perhaps too many times. And each time he had expected to welcome it, only to recoil from its grasp. Even now, he was fighting against the thought of a war that might claim them all.
It was not the way he was taught.
Life was a simple, fleeting thing. Neither to be coveted, nor lamented. But if he should learn that he would die tomorrow… what might he make of today? Would he dance? Would he weep?
He glanced out to the floor where the men romped about. The Vaich danced with a pretty alewife. Round and round he spun her till her dark hair was a storm and his smile faded beneath its cloud. He kissed her.
Would he love?
“I said, what is the matter, druid?”
He stirred, drawing his eyes up to Jor, who looked, perhaps, concerned. Cían had gone off to find a girl of his own and the two remained there alone.
“I am sorry, I must have gone adrift.”
“Aye,” said Jor, “but that is nothing to be sorry for. You think,deeply. I like it. I know it was you who forced the Vaich’s hand. He’d never do such a thing without telling. You have power over him, and that’s no small feat.”
“Is that of interest?”
“I think I have made my position clear to you,Your Majesty. But if it’s an appeal you wish, then I must do. The king’s no good for his country. And you have his ear.”
The druid was sure there were limits to how much he could sway the Vaich. Guilt, he thought, had a short loan. Perhaps shorter with a man like that.
But he did not tell that to Jor.
“You see merit in my cause—in my worth,” the prince continued. “I will be watching the king carefully. But should things become… troublesome, I should like to think the Queen will choose rationally.”
“I should not wish to choose at all,” said the druid.
“Yet, if you truly believed that, you wouldn’t have given him my name. You did give it, and here I stand. Because you are clever—and we both know it.”
“You misunderstand,” said the druid, feeling the press of those words.
Jor cocked his head. “Did I?”
“I wish to sew bonds, not break them,” said the druid.
Jor nodded, and drained his horn. Then, simply, he said, “As do I.” His eyes were like cooling embers, flickering with renewed fire. “My father taught me a great deal in his time. He’d had tutors of his own, of course, during his days at Righnach’Dúir. Sanctioned puppets of the An’Atherin. They taught him how to sit and eat. They taught him how to fight and kill. They taught him the right way to be a king. But there was nothing, he said, that would prepare him for the world, but to have his skull bashed in by life.”
