Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
"Ye dinnae have tae look down," Lachlann said. "Just look at the step in front of ye."
"I'm nae looking down," Alba said. "I'm looking at the step in front of me. That's the problem. The step in front of me is very narrow."
"The wall is right there." He put her hand on the stone. "Ye can feel it."
"Aye, I can feel it. That daesnae make the step wider."
Captain the dog, who had decided to be at Alba’s side more often than not those past days, was three steps above them both, and glanced back with an expression of complete impatience and then continued upward, his claws clicking against the worn stone in a steady, cheerful rhythm that was, somehow, the most aggravating sound in the world.
"He's nae helpin’," she said.
Lachlann's hand was at her back, light, steady, present. "One more. Then there's a landin’."
She took the step.
The stairwell twisted upward in a tight spiral, the walls close on both sides, each step worn slightly concave in the center from centuries of feet before hers.
The torch in the bracket below them had already receded around the curve; above, there was a grey suggestion of the opening at the top, still too far away to be reassuring.
She gripped the rope guide along the inner wall and told herself she was not afraid.
"How often do ye come up here?" she asked, because talking made the steps shorter.
"Often enough." His voice was close behind her, unhurried. "Less in winter. The wind's unkind at the top this time of year."
"That's encouragin'."
"Ye asked."
"I wasnae lookin' fer honesty, I was lookin' fer comfort."
"Those are two different things," he said.
"I'm aware of that, Lachlann."
She heard something in his breath that might have been amusement, and she fixed her attention on the next step and the one after that, one hand on the rope and the other finding the wall whenever the curve of the stair brought it within reach.
The cold intensified as they climbed, seeping through the stone, carried on a thin draft from somewhere above.
Her skirts were not designed for this. Nothing about her was designed for it.
The loose step announced itself without warning.
Her foot came down and the stone shifted, just slightly, just enough, and her balance went with it. She gasped, lurched sideways, and then Lachlann's arm was around her waist, firm and immediate, pulling her back against him before she'd fully registered falling.
She gripped his arm with both hands and stayed there, her heart hammering, the stairwell very narrow and very cold around them.
"I have ye," he said, low and even. "Ye're all right."
"I ken," she said. Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "I ken, I just misstepped." She exhaled.
"I should have warned ye."
"Aye," she said. "Ye should have."
She was still gripping his arm. She was aware of this. She was also aware that he had not moved to increase the distance between them, and that his hand remained at her waist with a matter-of-fact solidity that was, at present, the most welcome thing in the world.
"Are ye ready tae continue?" he asked.
"Give me a moment."
"Take what ye need."
She took a breath. Then another.
The stone under her remaining foot was steady, and Lachlann was steady behind her, and above them Captain had paused on the landing and was peering down with his ears forward and his tail moving cautiously, as though he understood the situation called for a modified level of excitement.
The landing was three steps further. She reached it and put her back against the wall and breathed.
Lachlann came up beside her. He didn't say anything. He stood close, his shoulder warm against hers in the cold dark, and let her have the moment without commentary, which she was beginning to understand was one of the things she valued most about him.
Captain shoved his nose into her hand.
"I'm fine," she told the dog. "I wasnae talkin’ tae ye."
Lachlann said nothing, but she felt he was smiling.
"Dinnae," she said.
"I'm nae daeing anythin'," he said and offered her his hand for the remaining steps.
She took it.
The top of the tower opened onto her like a held breath releasing.
She had expected it to feel exposed. It did, the parapet came to her shoulders and the wind hit immediately, cold and carrying the smell of salt and heather and something else, something wide and clean that had no name except open.
But it was the view that stopped her.
The glen spread below them in every direction, silver-grey in the evening light, the hills folding into each other in long quiet lines.
To the west, the water caught what was left of the sky and held it, hammered pewter all the way to the headland, and beyond that, the darker suggestion of the sea. The village below was a scatter of warm lights. The fields were dark. Everything was very still.
"Oh," she said.
Lachlann came to stand beside her at the parapet. He didn't say anything for a moment, just looked out with her, and she was grateful for that, for the understanding that some things needed a moment before words were useful.
"There," he said finally, pointing west. "That's the headland I told ye about. On a clear mornin’ ye can see the far isle from here, just barely, but enough."
"And that?" She pointed to a cluster of darker shapes along the near hillside.
"The old settlement. Before me grandfaither's time. They moved down to the glen when the winters got harder." He paused. "There's still a chapel up there. The roof is mostly gone but the walls are standin’."
"Have ye been inside?"
"Many times." Something shifted in his voice, a slight change in register she had learned to listen for. "Me braither and I used tae climb up there when we were lads. We'd tell ourselves there were wolves in the hills and spend half the afternoon convincing each other we'd heard one."
She looked at him. The wind moved over the parapet between them, lifting a strand of her hair across her face. "Were there ever wolves?"
"Nay. Nae fer a long time." He smiled slightly, still looking at the settlement. "We kent that perfectly well. It didnae matter."
She leaned her forearms on the parapet and looked out where he was looking, trying to see it. Two boys on that hillside in the long summer light, inventing wolves, entirely unconcerned with everything that would come after.
He spoke about his brother simply, not braced against the subject, but careful with it, the way you were careful with something that had weight.
"He was three years younger than me. Louder than me. Better company at a table." The corner of his mouth moved. "Everyone liked him better."
"I doubt that."
"It's true. I was never particularly easy tae like." He glanced at her. "Ye can agree."
"I'm nae goin' tae agree with that," she said.
"Diplomatic."
"Accurate." She held his gaze for a moment. "Ye're nae easy at first. That's different from nae being worth the effort."
He looked at her steadily, and she had the sense, as she sometimes did, that she'd said something that landed somewhere in him that he hadn't been expecting.
He looked back at the horizon without answering, which was its own kind of answer.
Captain wedged himself between them with the complete absence of self-consciousness that was his defining characteristic, and they made room for him on either side without discussing it.
Alba put her hand on his back and felt Lachlann's fingers brush hers as he did the same.
Neither of them moved their hands.
"Did ye come up her with Eòin?" she asked.
"Aye. More times than I can count." He looked west, toward the old settlement. "He used tae run the stairs. I told him every time he'd go headfirst off a step and break his neck, and he'd dae it faster the next time just tae irritate me."
"And did he? Ever fall?"
"Once." He paused. "Broke his wrist. Told me faither he'd slipped in the yard." Another pause, quieter. "I never asked him tae cover for me. He just did."
She was quiet a moment. "Ye miss him."
"Every day." He said it simply, without apology or performance.
She understood it was the kind of grief that had been carried long enough to become part of the way he moved through the world, present, but no longer sharp enough to stop him.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"Ye dinnae have tae be sorry."
"I ken I dinnae have tae be." She glanced at him sideways. "I can be sorry fer somethin' without it bein' required of me."
"Is that so." His voice had the low quality it got when she'd said something that landed.
"It is," she said. "Ye should try it sometime. Feelin' things that havenae been formally requested."
He looked at her then, and she looked back, and the wind moved between them, and she was almost certain, from the particular quality of his expression, that he was about to say something she would need to remember.
But he looked away instead, back to the water, and she let it go.
The wind came again, stronger this time, and she leaned slightly into Lachlann's shoulder without thinking about it. He shifted almost imperceptibly, giving her his weight to lean against, and she stayed there and looked at the water.
It was the most peaceful she had felt in weeks.
She was aware of how rarely she had that.
The sensation of simply being somewhere, without dread in front of it or guilt behind it, without the constant low hum of Torquil and the Council.
Up there it was just the wind and the glen and Lachlann's shoulder and the dog pressed warm between them.
She turned to say something, she wasn't sure what, something small and true, and found Lachlann no longer looking at her.
He was looking at the sea.
She followed his gaze, and it took her a moment to find what he was seeing. Shapes on the water, still distant, moving against the wind with a steadiness that was not natural drift. Three of them, maybe four, hulls dark against the pewter surface.
His face had changed.
She had seen Lachlann's face in many arrangements over those weeks. She had seen it careful, and warm, and furious, and closed. She had never seen it look quite like that, something hard and very clear settling into it, the way stone settled.
"Lachlann."
"I see them." His voice had dropped, gone flat in a way that raised the hair on the back of her neck.
"What ships are those?"
"Torquil's." He said it with a certainty that left no room for question or comfort. He was already moving, stepping back from the parapet, turning. "We need tae go down. Now."
"How dae ye ken it’s theirs? Be careful Lachlann."
"Alba." He took her hand and his grip was firm and immediate, the same grip he'd used on the stairs, but nothing like it. "Now. Come."
Captain was already at the stairwell entrance, reading something in Lachlann's bearing that had bypassed words entirely, his tail still and his body low.
She didn't argue.
She took the first step down and Lachlann was right behind her, his hand at her back, no longer light and steady but urgent, pressing her forward, navigating the curve of the stair with a speed that made the walls feel closer.
"The loose step," she said.
"I have ye. Keep movin’."
She kept moving.
The torch below came back around the curve and the landing disappeared above them and the stairwell wound tightly downward.
Alba moved through it with her hand on the rope and Lachlann's hand at her back and her heart somewhere in her throat. She did not look down, she did not stumble, and she did not let herself think yet about what four dark ships on the pewter water meant.
There would be time for that at the bottom.
She hoped there would be time for that at the bottom.