Chapter 2
One week earlier
Behind Ailm’s Keep, oak forest rises in an almost unbroken line up into the foothills of the Blackstairs, known as the Steps.
But just where the forest starts to thin and the bones of the earth shoulder their way to the surface, there’s a small, grassy plateau.
It sits sheltered in the lee of the Steps so that even in late winter, the grass still has growth on it, and the frost doesn’t linger long, even on the coldest mornings.
So it was that early one morning, a week before Ionáin’s Reckoning, with freezing mist still clinging to the trees, éadha was to be found guiding the Keep’s small flock down the avenue from the Keep before diverting off onto a forest trail and on up to graze on the plateau.
Cú, a half-grown wolfhound, loped alongside her, puffs of breath billowing out ahead of the two of them.
The sheep were skittish in the fog, but she and Cú were canny herders, and soon enough they’d cajoled them up onto the grass.
éadha was dressed for the cold in an old gray tunic, worn trews, her battered leather boots, and fingerless gloves, with a leather satchel slung across her body under her cloak.
All hand-me-downs from her uncle; it was one advantage of being tall for her age, even if it did mean people always thought her older than she was.
Seventeen now, just. Old enough to be expected to be of use, she chose herding like her uncle rather than work in the Keep like her aunt.
She chose the sky, with Cú and the sheep for company.
On their scramble up onto the plateau, Cú sniffed out some wolf droppings, but they were old, and éadha wasn’t worried; the ground up here was open enough to spot any predator from a good distance out.
At the eastern end there was a steep drop down into a disused quarry.
Centuries ago, men had quarried granite there, but stone-working by hand was forbidden after the Channellers came to power, with their ability to raise whole buildings from the earth.
The quarry had lain empty since then. éadha made sure none of the animals were grazing too close to the drop—there was no accounting for how stupid sheep could be—then clambered up onto a rocky outcrop so’s to have a good view over them all.
As she climbed, a falcon broke with a screech from a hidden perch on the overhang above, swooping directly above their heads.
éadha gripped her staff, ready to swing, while Cú let out a deep growl of warning; in lambing season the creatures could be a menace.
This time, though, it flew straight on, out over the forest in the direction of the Keep.
Something in the swoop of the falcon’s flight reminded éadha of the dragons she saw from time to time when she was out here herding on the Steps.
Flying so far above her they seemed to be little more than bright sparks blown on the wind, their wings reflecting the sunlight as they flew.
In her lifetime they’d done no more than that, for all the Channeller tales of fiery monsters liable to burn everyone out of their beds.
Flying on over her head, past Ailm’s Keep, mostly headed for the high peaks of the Blackstairs.
Sometimes, after she’d seen one etched against the blue sky and the black hills, it’d follow her into her dreams that night.
Dreams where she flew up alongside it into the bright air of morning to arrow across the icy peaks of the Blackstairs and away.
Away from the herding, and the sheep, and her uncle’s cottage, and the smallness of the life that lay ahead of her already at just seventeen.
Dreams so real that when she awoke, they ached like memories.
She told no one of these dreams, not even Ionáin.
She sat down cross-legged on the ledge and dug into her satchel to see what Béithe had given her.
She could feel two—no, three—apples, small, wrinkly, and tasting of summer, and underneath—oh joy—a small bannock of bread still warm from the Keep’s oven.
With no Channeller to channel grain crops like wheat, bread was a scarce, precious thing in the Keep.
Béithe must’ve been in a good mood this morning, she thought.
Leaving her hands wrapped around the little loaf for the last of its warmth, éadha kept watch until, just as the sun climbed to its highest point and the mists below finally cleared, a familiar tousle-haired figure appeared at the edge of the plateau.
Even from a distance éadha could see Ionáin was grinning widely.
Which meant that someone somewhere was annoyed with him.
She rolled her eyes even as Cú loped over to greet him, leaping up on two legs to lick his face.
Ionáin grabbed the huge dog in a bear hug so the two of them staggered and almost fell over, Cú yipping in excitement as if he were still a puppy.
éadha, on the other hand, didn’t move, only calling down to him from her rocky perch when he was close enough to hear—“Ionáin!”—putting as much exasperation as she could into that one word. Béithe would be proud of her.
“What?” he said innocently, shielding his eyes from the sun overhead and grinning up at her.
“So who’ve you pissed off now?”
“Only Cousin Jarlath.”
“You know this is the bit where I’m supposed to chase you back down the mountain. Before Béithe realizes you’ve mitched off your lessons again.”
Ionáin laughed out loud. “With what? Will you flap your cloak at me like you’re shooing a goose? Shoo, Ionáin, go learn the history of the Channeller wars even though you already know it off by heart. Shoo.”
éadha snorted at the ridiculous image but sobered almost at once. “Come on, Ionáin, they just want to see you taking things seriously now…” She paused as she realized, too late, where that sentence was going. Ionáin finished it for her.
“Now Dara’s dead and I’m my Family’s last hope, you mean.”
éadha didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say to that unless she was prepared to lie.
Strictly speaking, of course, he wasn’t the only one facing a Reckoning in a few days’ time.
Everyone else who’d turned seventeen in the Keep or the village, including éadha, had to be reckoned, too, while the Masters were there for Ionáin’s big Reckoning ceremony.
But almost no one outside the Families was gifted these days.
Or, as Béithe liked to say, “That’s what centuries of Families only marrying each other gets you.
A shrinking pool of gifted ones and every one of them afraid to stick a toe outside it. ”
Ionáin, meanwhile, was clambering up beside her, his long fingers finding handholds, and pulling himself up with ease until he reached the stony ledge where she sat.
“Anyway, Mother’s so busy getting ready for the Reckoning she won’t even notice I’m gone, while Father’s too busy having flashbacks to his own failure to say anything. ”
He scrunched down, nudging her over with his hip to make room for him to squeeze in alongside her. They were, éadha realized with a small start, finally the same height. His head was level with her own, which, after a lifetime of her being the taller one, felt unsettling.
Beside her, Ionáin finished on a quieter note. “I just needed to get out for a bit. To breathe.”
éadha glanced sideways at him, her heart softening.
She’d get in trouble for this later, she knew.
Béithe would come to the cottage tonight and lecture her about letting the young master waste his time out herding with her again.
But that was tonight, and this was now, and he was here, and this was, after all, how it’d always been, all their lives until now.
The two of them together, and how could she give up on having just one more day like this?
So instead she butted Ionáin’s shoulder and held out her satchel toward him. “Be honest: This is what you came for, isn’t it?”
Immediately Ionáin began rummaging about inside until he pulled out the little loaf and brandished it in the air.
“Aha! So this is why you were so keen to get rid of me. Hmmm. I always knew you were Béithe’s favorite.”
éadha’s eyes flew open. “You must be joking,” she sputtered. He only laughed and tore off a small piece of bread before lying down with one hand over his eyes. Beside him, she drew up her legs, wrapped her arms around them, and rested her chin on her knees.
“They haven’t been the same, anyway,” he said.
“What?”
“The stupid lessons. They haven’t been the same since you stopped coming.
They were better then.” éadha gave him a small nudge.
In truth, most things were better then, back when Dara was still alive and his mother more inclined to indulge Ionáin, including when he insisted éadha be allowed to start lessons with him when they were both nine.
“You make her sleep in my room,” he’d said to úra, his small face determined, “so you can look after Dara when he’s sick at night and not have to worry about me. So it’s only fair she can do the lessons too.”
It meant she’d a basic grasp of reading, writing, and mapmaking, unlike most of the other Keep servants.
Mapmaking had been her favorite lesson, her nose almost on the page as she painstakingly traced the delicate blue of the Anála Sea, stippled with the black of the dragon archipelago off Westport.
But Ionáin’s tutor, Jarlath (a pompous, ungifted cousin from úra’s Debruin Family), had shaken his head in disapproval when he saw she’d sketched in a tiny dragon, all claws and wings, to mark their island domain.
“Art is the preserve of the Channellers and rightly so, for nothing we ungifted could ever draw could match the wonders of a Channeller’s illusions.
Your place is to support their gift. It is most certainly not to be drawing”—he pulled the sheet away from her, crumpling it up—“those awful creatures.”