He crossed to the brazier that should have lit the festival fire, and he thrust the corner of the plaid into the coals, and he held it while it caught, and he let the whole bright lie of it burn to nothing in his fist.
“A man burned our fire in the night and hung a stranger’s colors beside it,” he said over the rising murmurs. “A Cairn fire that Cairn hands and Blythe hands built together. He didnae do it for Cairn, and he didnae do it for Blythe. He did it because there is a man somewhere who grows fat on the two of us hatin’ each other and has done for longer than any feud can rightly explain. And I will say what I think of him.”
He ground the last smoking scrap of the plaid under his boot heel. “I think we should build the fire again. Now. Both of us, the one stack, in front of God and the whole glen. And we light it in the night, and we dance round it till the dawn, and we let him choke on the sight.”
Nobody moved.
So Ragnall turned his back on his own men, which no laird in that glen had done in living memory, and walked down the bank to the edge of the water. He stopped there and looked across the ford at Lucas Arran.
“I’ll nae ask yer men,” he said. “It isnae me place, and I’d nae have the right of it if I did. I’m askin’ye, Laird Blythe, afore yer clan and afore mine.”
The whole ford went silent enough to hear the water.
“Ye’ve every cause to refuse me,” Ragnall continued. “I killed yer faither. I killed yer braither. There’s nae a man livin’ who could stand where ye’re standin’ and be blamed for tellin’ me to go to the devil, and if ye do it, I’ll turn around and take me people home and I’ll nae come back at ye for it.” He reached out his hand across the shallow water. “But I’m askin’. One fire. Both banks. And whatever’s owed between us, we’ll say it out loud in the light instead of payin’ for it in the dark for another fifty years.”
Lucas stood for a long moment on the far bank with his father’s ring loose around his finger and three hundred faces waiting for him.
He was very young. Everyone there could see how young he was.
Then he stepped down into the ford in his good boots without so much as glancing at the water, and he waded out to the middle of it, and he took Ragnall’s hand in front of God and the whole glen.
“One fire,” he said. “And I’ll take the first log.”
Old Tavish spat on his hands and reached for it. Tavish, who had carried a Cairn spear at this ford before Ragnall was born, who had buried two sons in this feud, and who had told his Laird to his face not a month past that the clan would never warm up to a Blythe witch in the south tower. If Tavish moved, the clan moved. Every man on the bank knew it.
Then a Blythe man across the ford spat on his hands and reached for another, and it tipped, the way such moments did, all at once, and both banks of the river came down to the water to build a fire together.
Ragnall let out the breath he had been holding, looked up, and found Olivia watching him across the ford with an expression that undid more of him than the whole month apart had managed.
Daenae look at me like that, lassie. Nae here. I have a festival to hold together and a saboteur to hunt and a promise to keep, and I cannae do any one of them if ye look at me like I’ve just done somethin’ grand. I only did what was needed. That’s all a laird ever does.
The ford was just a stone’s throw wide, no more, and shallow enough in the middle to wet a man no higher than the knee. Across it, by the unspoken law that had lasted for three generations, no soul from either clan had set foot in the other’s territory peacefully in living memory.
Ragnall walked into the water.
He heard the inhale of three hundred people. He felt the cold of the river seep over his boots and soak the hem of his plaid, yet he did not slow down. He crossed the entire width of the river to the Blythe bank and stopped in front of his wife, close enough to touch, which he did not do because he had given his word.
“Welcome to the festival, me Lady,” he said quietly, for her and not the clans. The corner of his mouth, the scarred one, quirked up. “Ye look like ye rode in expectin’ a fight.”
“I rode in expectin’ to talk sense into three hundred fools,” she said, her voice not quite steady. The crack in her famous composure nearly broke him. “I see ye’ve done it for me. How disappointing. I’d sharpened me whole speech.”
“Ye could give it yet.”
“To whom?” She said it lightly, but it did not come out light at all. “I’m nae a Blythe, Ragnall. I gave that up in a kirk in front of a priest, and me braither’s Laird now, and he doesnae need his sister at his shoulder tellin’ him his business in front of his men.” She looked out at the two banks and the one fire and would not look at him. “And I’m nae a Cairn either. Ask any soul on yer side of the river. I’m the Blythe witch in the south tower, and I’ve the maids’ word on it.”
He said nothing. There was nothing to say that was not an insult to her intelligence.
“So I’ve nay clan at all,” she continued. “That’s the plain arithmetic of it. There are three hundred souls at this ford, and I’m the only one standin’ here who doesnae belong to a single one of them.” She lifted her chin. “It’s a rare position. I daenae recommend it.”
“Give it to me later. I’d nae waste a good speech of yers.” He let his eyes move over her face once, helpless, every freckle of it he had given a month over to trying to forget. “Ye’re well? Truly? How is yer shoulder?”
“Healed.” Her gaze had gone to the scar on his face, softened, and hardened again. “I am well, Ragnall. Ye need nae fuss.”
There it was again. His name on her lips, plain as a hand laid flat on his chest. He felt it go through him exactly as it had the last time—past every guard he had.
A piper struck a tune behind them on the Cairn bank, and cheers rose from both sides, and the festival, against every odd and every burned fire and every patient hand working in the dark, began.
“Come,” Ragnall said, and did not offer his arm because he did not trust himself to feel her hand on it. “There are folk on both banks who need to see their Laird and their Lady stand on the same ground and nae draw blood. Can ye manage that, lassie? A whole day at me side, and nae a single knife?”
