“Deer or rabbits, Marina?”
“Rabbits, my lord.” She grinned widely. “Though I’d not hold my arrow should a deer pop up.” She strode away as Keelan gaped. Once she was out of earshot, he glanced at his grandfather.
“Will she hit anything?”
“Oh, yes. Marina’s a very good shot.” Trovagh was hiding a smile at the look on the boy’s face. Let him think over all the implications. Keelan did.
First—that if a garthswoman could carry a bow freely, either Trovagh and Ciara were incredibly casual about their own safety, or their people were incredibly trustworthy. Second—that if a woman carried a bow, presumably so did the men. If she was a good shot, so presumably were the men. Why, at a pinch Trovagh had an army of archers here, he realized. No wonder Aiskeep had never been taken. That led to him questioning Harran.
“They say Aiskeep has never fallen?”
“Humph! Don’t let that make you overconfident, lad. There’s no Keep that can’t be taken if you’re prepared to spend enough time, men, and coin. But it’s true doing so here would ruin most lords.” He took the boy out to study the walls. “See, our lord doesn’t spend his money on fancy clothes. It goes into stone; see here—and here. That’s where we strengthened it after Yvian’s death. And here, that’s where we added the curtain wall inside the main one a few years before Pagar came to the throne in Kars.”
Keelan was amazed. The walls were massive, the most impressive structure he’d ever seen. Somehow he’d never really looked at them before. He went quiet, staying that way for days as he summed up what he was learning. He’d always felt that his clan was somehow wrong. Everyone in the Keep seemed unhappy, or happy in the wrong ways. The servants cringed when spoken to, the dogs cowered, and the inhabitants seemed to be plotting whenever they had a spare moment from drinking, or wenching.
He’d seen that no one got drunk here. Ciara and Trovagh drank wine with meals. Watered wine and only a reasonable few glasses. They treated each other with respect and a love that was evident in every word. His small sister wasn’t the brat Kirion had described. He took that one to Harran, too, who promptly and very forcefully gave the true story. Keelan was unhappily convinced by it. He knew his older brother too well not to believe. It also made sense of some of the more obscure comments Kirion had snarled while giving his version of events. Keelan snorted; no wonder his own arrival had been received with doubt.
The summer wore away slowly into an even better fall. Keelan was beginning to feel an acceptance here. As if it was home, a place to be yourself. A place where people might even like the self he was discovering. He’d heard that Kirion was barred from Aiskeep. That knowledge helped him relax further. Whatever else Kirion spoiled, he could not reach Keelan here. Gradually, Aisling had unbent toward this new brother. Ciara had spoken quietly to the girl, giving her a suggestion.
Aisling had acted on this, asking help of Keelan anytime there was something she could legitimately request.
“Keelan, could you reach that halter for me, you’re much taller?” He could and did, with a tiny feeling of pride.
“Can you open this salve, my wrists aren’t strong enough?” Keelan twisted the top open, handing it over with a pleased grin. The admiring look he received made his grin widen. Having a little sister was—why, it was pleasant. He almost strutted as he left the stable. He learned slowly that Aisling was intelligent, and interesting to talk to. That she listened to his own ideas with flattering attention. He fell into the habit of talking with her quite often. They began to ride together. Trovagh nodded to his wife at that.
“Nice job, dearling. The boy’s found Aisling to be real company once he’s got to know her. Plan one, I suppose?”
“Why not?” Ciara laughed softly. Her glance was affectionate. “He isn’t really bad, Tro. Not like Kirion. In fact, they have that in common, so Aisling tells me. Kirion’s played some pretty dangerous and vicious tricks on Keelan over the years. Aisha has always ignored it, but the boy’s been bullied within an inch of his life by his brother, spoiled rotten by his mother, and despised by just about everyone who dislikes Kirion and assumes Keelan is the same. I think a lot of his change here has been the knowledge that Kirion isn’t welcome. He feels as if Aiskeep is the one refuge he can’t be tracked to and made miserable in again.”
Trovagh agreed. “I’ll tell you something else, too, beloved. A man needs something to protect. What has the boy ever had? Anything he’s cared for his brother has taken away. That makes Keelan feel bad for losing it and helpless because he couldn’t prevent the loss. With Aisling he’s being a big brother at last.” He grinned as he looked over at Ciara. “Harran tells me the boy is really working at weapons training. He’s let it slip that if bandits come again he’s going to be sure Aisling is safe.”
Ciara looked up. “He’d do better to protect her from Kirion.”
“I’m not so sure he wouldn’t now. Harran says that with a few more months’ work the boy will be better with a sword than his brother. Apparently, Kirion is mostly style with no stamina. Good for short, flashy duels. Not good for a real grudge fight. I wouldn’t wager Keelan couldn’t take him if Harran thinks so.” He watched her brows rise. “Yes, I think now you should put plan two into action, my cunning love.”
“Plan two?” Ciara looked innocent.
“Plan two! I’ve known you too long not to know there’s a plan two.”
His wife grinned but said nothing. It was true, but she didn’t want Tro to let something slip. Keelan had sharp eyes. A knowing look at the wrong time might spoil her schemes.
She waited with as much patience as she had ever been capable of finding. One of the cats was due to kitten. Her last two litters had each contained a spare: one the mother decided to discard for reasons unknown to humans.
It happened again, to Ciara’s secret satisfaction. The kit was a female, tiny and pathetic. She brought it to Keelan quite casually.
“The mother doesn’t want it. If someone doesn’t look after it, the poor little thing will die.” She unloaded the tiny, shivering scrap into his hands.
She saw the uncertain glance up from the corner of his eye. From all she had pieced together, she could guess at his fear.
“If you can raise her, she’s yours. Not to be sold or given to anyone else. She can stay here or go with you, whatever you choose. She is unlikely to have kittens herself. We’ve found those we rear this way are often infertile.” She shrugged, “I’ll leave you to it. If you can’t be bothered, take it down to the stable and kill it. A quick, clean death. All right?” She registered the involuntarily protective movement of his hands with blank face but elated heart. “If you decide to rear it, talk to Aisling. She helped me with one of the others.” She strolled out, leaving Keelan to sit holding the faintly ‘yeeking’ baby.
He reared it. There were times when he considered that quick, clean death. Then he would look down at his troublesome, time-consuming charge and fall in love all over again. She needed him. In weeks she was stumbling on unsteady furry legs all about his room. A few weeks more and she was a skittering racing ball of fluff into everything and under his feet. He adored her. After long consideration, he’d named her Shosho. It was a dialect word for something that was everywhere, ubiquitous. She was certainly that.
At times he wondered despairingly if all kittens were this bad. That was after Shosho had fallen down the jakes. Luckily, it was immediately after the first hard frost. The muck at the bottom of the shaft was solid enough to bear her weight so she didn’t drown. But Keelan had to climb down a rope after her. The muck at the bottom hadn’t borne his weight. He appeared at the top of the shaft with a kitten that refused to know him any further until he bathed. The waiting humans made it clear they agreed. Keelan left grinning to seek a hot bath with plenty of soap.
Shosho forgave him once he was in the hot, soapy water. She demonstrated that by falling in with him, then climbing out using small frantic claws on some tender places.
 
; His howls brought Ciara running, only to be passed by a very wet, virtually airborne kitten, which explained it all to her. She stifled her giggles and left again without Keelan’s being aware. That had happened to Ciara a few times before she started shutting her cats out when she bathed. She’d suggest it to Keelan sometime.
The boy was happy all that winter. Shosho grew steadily. She was going to be a magnificent cat with eyes of deep amber, and a thick plush coat of glossy black. She slept on his bed, brought her kills to him, and generally made it clear that Keelan was her human.
Slave might have been a better word. Not that Keelan minded. He was a lap whenever she wanted one, trailed string for her on demand, and loved her with all his heart. In loving her, he found the capacity to love others, too. He was Aisling’s lieutenant in many things that winter. Often now he would take a job away from her.
“That’s too heavy, let me lift it.”
Aisling graciously permitted him to help. Keelan discovered the joys of shared jokes, harmless tricks, and a family circle elastic enough to admit another one in.
* * *
Back in Iren Keep, Kirion had vaguely noticed that his younger brother was nowhere to be found. It did not matter. Kirion was too busy with his studies into forms of power. When he wanted Keelan, he’d find him. Right now he wanted only peace to read and privacy to experiment with some of what he learned.
When winter was over Keelan was still at Aiskeep. He was afraid to talk about it. If he said he wanted to stay here for good, perhaps they’d say he couldn’t. He said nothing, just in case. If he didn’t ask, he couldn’t be refused. He’d grown to love the Keep and his family here. Anyhow, he couldn’t leave. What would happen to Shosho? If he took her back to Iren, Kirion would find some way of hurting her. Keelan might be able to beat him in a fight now, but that wouldn’t heal Shosho if Kirion had injured her.
Apart from her, there was Aisling, Ciara, Trovagh, Harran, and old Hanion who told him stories about Keelan’s great-grandfather. Jontar, who was always happy to talk about the bandits, and the host of garthspeople who greeted him now as if they were pleased to see him. They were. The consensus on the land was that the lad was training up quite well, and would make a reasonable lord one day. Had Kirion known any of this, he’d have spat blood. Since he did not, all was peaceful both at Aiskeep and at Iren Keep.
Aisling, too, was happy. She’d always wanted an older brother. A real one, not like Kirion. She celebrated her twelfth name day with Keelan assisting.
His name day would come in early spring. He would be eighteen. He hoped they’d mark it in some way, but he’d say nothing just in case. There was an air of subdued excitement around, he thought some weeks later. But it was probably because spring was on the way. He noticed Aisling vanishing into her room a lot with the door shut. She appeared flushed when he knocked and the door was opened. He hoped harder. Always at Iren Keep his name days had been miserable with Kirion resenting the attention focused elsewhere.
Two days before Keelan’s name day, Kirion arrived. He’d run out of books he hadn’t read. Then it occurred to him that if the brat did have the power he believed, there might well be books on witchcraft in the old Aiskeep library. He rode there, casually confident that his grandparents hadn’t meant his banishment to last. He was disabused on arrival. It was Harran who glanced out, to recognize the approaching rider. By the time Kirion reached the gates, Ciara and Trovagh were there with their Armsmaster.
“Hail the gates, open for Kirion, Kirin’s son of Aiskeep.” Kirion slouched on his weary horse, waiting for the gates to swing open. Instead, a tart voice addressed him from above.
“You were told not to return unless we asked for you. You have not been asked here, you have our leave to depart.”
Kirion gaped upward. “You can’t do that!”
Trovagh took over. “We can, we have, and we like it that way. Take yourself and that poor animal to Teral, to Kars, or to Hades. You aren’t welcome here. Do I have to make it any plainer?”
He did. Kirion sat his mount, his voice rising to an infuriated whine as he pleaded, protested, and then ordered.
“I’m heir now that my father’s dead. You can’t keep me out.” That should get the truth told, he thought. Ciara eyed him. Something in the tone told her the boy knew he’d been formally disinherited. But then she didn’t have to confirm that. She leaned out.
“An heir has certain rights, that’s true. But automatic entry to his family Keep is not one of them. Not when all are in agreement he isn’t welcome. Go away, Kirion. Shut your mouth before you get snow in it.”
Aisling heard that last comment. She had been listening, seeing the man who’d become an ogre in her mind so discomforted. She stooped, rolled snow into a loose snowball, then flung it. The snowball took Kirion square in the face as he began another plea. He spluttered, choking on snow, wiping it in fury from his face and neck. Behind the wall he could hear the howls of laughter. Even his grandmother had a broad grin. Kirion tightened his grip on the reins, swinging his unwilling beast away from the Keep.
It would do no good to remain. Mentally he notched up another score against Aisling. He spent the days riding back to Iren Keep in a foul mood. Some of that he worked off on his mount, some on oaths of what he would do if he ever got Aisling into his hands. He returned to study, paying more than his mother could afford for moldering books and documents that might give Kirion the power he craved. He continued to cultivate Shandro. The man was an idiot, but a very well-connected one. He’d make the perfect figurehead duke if Kirion ever unlocked power to raise the fool to that position.
It did occur to him several times that he hadn’t seen his younger brother at all of late, not for months, in fact. Kirion ignored that. He’d found what he felt was a promising trail to the knowledge he sought. Whatever Keelan was doing, he’d come to heel as soon as he was called. Kirion persuaded more coin from his mother and vanished into increasingly unsavory places in his search. As he saw it, he was having quite a good—and possibly profitable—time.
12
K eelan’s eighteenth name day was a success. Ciara had made one of her hangings for his room. If you looked at it up close it was merely color. But from the doorway across his room it became Keelan, with Aiskeep in the background. Shosho was included in the work, sitting at his feet gazing up. Aisling produced a saddle and bridle. They were plain, but the leather work was of the finest quality. Elanor marched in with several packages, which proved to contain her usual offering of robe and slippers in the Keep colors of gold and mulberry. To these she’d added a saddle blanket of rabbit furs, winter ones dyed the same colors. It looked magnificent.
Hanion appeared with Harran. Their gift was a joint one of a fine bow in a bow case of oiled gut, and a matching quiver of arrows that were examples of the fletcher’s art. Keelan found he was standing there, gifts scattered about him, tears in his eyes, and quite unable to speak. These were the people his mother had always condemned as mean, arrogant, and provincial. If Aiskeep was mean, what did that make her? he wondered. He’d never had gifts like these from his mother. If they were arrogant, how was it they’d accepted him?
As for provincial . . . He looked at them. Maybe they were, by her standards. Their clothes were warm and comfortable, not the gaudy fashions of Kars. Their skin was browned by sun, burned by wind, not the pallid shade favored by the fashionable. Their eyes were alive with life and interest in life. He found his face stretching into a slow, wide grin. Provincial? If that was provincial, then he’d take the provinces any day. Aisha could have Kars, she could have dear Kirion, and she could do what she pleased with both. Keelan would stay here, forever, if he was permitted.
It took him several days to come down from the delights of that day. When he did, he shut himself away for the afternoon to think. He feared asking if he could remain permanently. What if they refused? Ciara and Trovagh guessed, both at his desire and his fears. They left him alone. They, too, had thought much about this
. Their decision had been made so long as Keelan plucked up enough courage to ask. That would be the final test.
The boy spent the night thinking. He must know. He marched down to the hall the next morning, terrified but resolute. It was silly in a way. His grandparents had shown no signs of wanting him to leave. Why then did he have this need for a formal permission and agreement?
He found Trovagh and Ciara alone. Elanor always broke her fast in her room these days. She was becoming frail and slept late. Aisling had been and gone, encouraged by Ciara to an errand in the upper valley.
Keelan arrived with the air of one who goes to the stake bravely. “Grandmother, Grandfather.” He bowed politely. “I would speak with you.”
Trovagh nodded, “Sit then and speak.”
Neither of them would have betrayed it for anything, but those Keelan faced were deeply amused by the scene. The lad was trying so hard to be formal. Instead, he gave the impression of a badly strung puppet. Keelan talked. He managed to make it brief, just that he’d like to remain here, to make his home at Aiskeep.
Ciara spoke gently. “Have we made you feel you may not?”
“No, Grandmother. But in view of the way Kirion acted, I’d prefer to have everything clear before I send for my belongings. I don’t wish you to feel I am taking Aiskeep for granted.”
It was a good point, Trovagh considered. The Gods knew that Kirion had done so . . . until a snowball made it clear how wrong he was. The memory almost made him smile, but he must not. The boy would think it was aimed at him. He collected Ciara with a glance and they both stood. Trovagh spoke as Keelan waited.
“It is our decision that you may remain for so long as you wish to live at Aiskeep. It would please us that you learn of the land and the people. We shall make you an allowance for necessities.” He broke into a grin as Keelan stared. “What, boy, did you think to be tossed out? Are we both so frightening?”