And in the half-instant before it struck, in the perfect waiting silence of three hundred souls, a man’s voice rang out across the festival ground, raw with fury, pointed straight at her.
“There! Ye see it with yer own eyes! The Blythe witch takes up arms in the very heart of Cairn, and our Laird stands by and smiles. How many more of us should die afore ye ken what she is?”
The arrow hit the gold dead center.
Olivia heard it strike, a clean, hard thock in the waiting silence, and for half a breath, nobody moved at all. Faces turned from the target to her and back again, and the heckler’s words hung over the festival ground like smoke.
“The Blythe witch takes up arms in the heart of Cairn.”
She felt Ragnall stiffen beside her, felt him draw breath to answer it, to put the full cold weight of the Laird between her and the crowd the way he had done at the wedding, the way he would do until it got him killed.
She put her hand flat on his chest.
“Nay,” she whispered. “Nae this time. Ye cannae kill yer way to peace, Ragnall. Let me.”
She did not wait for his leave. She handed the bow back to the gaping Cairn man she had borrowed it from, and she walked out into the open space before the targets where both clans could see her, a woman alone between two clans and belonging to neitherone of them, and she pitched her voice to carry as her father had taught her in the years before he gave up and taught her brothers instead.
“Aye, I took up a bow,” she called. “I willnae deny it. Me maither spent twenty years tryin’ to make a lady out of me.” She found Elspeth’s face in the Blythe crowd without meaning to. “She’s stood right there, if any of ye want a look at her, and she’ll tell ye herself what a poor job she made of it.”
“Ashockin’job,” Elspeth called back, without moving from where she stood, and did not so much as blink.
Laughter rose around both banks at once, Cairn and Blythe together, and Olivia felt the ground shift slightly beneath her feet.
“Ye want to ken what I am? I will tell ye plainly. Since the man’s so keen, the whole glen should hear it.”
She turned slowly, taking them all in, both banks, both clans.
“I am the woman somebody tried to murder in her bed a month ago. I am the woman whose festival fire was burned in the night and whose colors were hung up to take the blame for it. I am the woman who’s stood here the whole day, a Blythe in a borrowed plaid, and watched yer two clans toss the caber together and haul each other through the mud and cheer a shepherd’s quick feet without a care for whose blood ran through his veins.”
“Ye want to ken what I am.” Her voice cracked and held. “I’ll tell ye what I am. I’m the only soul standin’ at this ford that has wept at both ends of it.”
Nobody laughed now.
“I buried me faither and me braither in Blythe ground, and there are Cairn men here who were happy about it. I ken yer faces, and I’ll ken them till the day I die.” She let that land, and she did not soften it. “I sat up in Cairn Castle with a lass whose bones me own braither broke. I held the bairn he’d have stolen. I watched Cairn women weep at gravesides for men that Blythe steel put in the ground, and I stood there in the middle of it with me own kin’s blood on me name, and nae one soul under that roof would look at me.”
Her hands were shaking. She did not hide them.
“There’s nae a person at this river who’s had both. Only me. So I’m the only one here who can tell ye the thing none of ye will believe.” She looked from bank to bank. “It’s thesame weeping. It’s the very same. A Cairn widow and a Blythe widow make the same sounds, and I have heard both of them, and I couldnae tell ye which was which if ye put a blade to me throat.”
The fire crackled in the silence.
“Somebody’s been feedin’ this. Aye. Yer Laird’s told ye so, and he’s right. But I’ll nae stand here and pretend that a wicked man is the whole reason, for he isnae. He only sparked it. We’ve been the ones feedin’ it for fifty years with our own hands and callin’it honor while we did it.” Her chin lifted. “I’m done. I’ve nothing left to put in that fire. I’ve nothing left to burn.”
The silence held a moment longer, taut as a drawn string.
It was not a man who broke it. It was a woman on the Cairn bank, gray-headed, with her arms folded, who had buried a husband at this river eleven years ago and had not spoken a civil word to a Blythe in all that time.
“Then put another in the gold, lass,” she called, “and let the whole glen watch ye do it.”
The festival ground erupted in a roar, both banks at once. The heckler’s voice was lost in it, and Olivia saw two of her brother’s men quietly take the man by the arms and draw him back out of the crowd.
She put another arrow in the gold. Of course she did. And the cheer that went up shook the birds out of the alders along the river.
When she walked back to Ragnall, her knees had weakened, the whole reckless courage of it draining out of her at once. The look on his face almost undid her right there in front of the entire glen.
Daenae look at me like that, ye great fool of a man. Ye will undo both of us. I can feel every eye in this place, and half of them already think I bewitched ye. But the truth is so much worse.The truth is ye’ve gone and bewitched me, and I rode the whole way here swearin’ I’d nae let ye.
“Ye were right,” he murmured. “About what ye said. I’d have been a fool to waste it.”
