“Come on, then.”
Her head came through first, but she chose not to look until she had come onto the landing. In all his time looking after her, he had let her into his own room only twice. She could not remember them clearly, but her mind told her that the room looked exactly as it had those years ago. Scaa came up and stood beside her, watching her face.
“I will not cry. I am fine.”
Scaa huffed defensively. “Of course. Silly of me to worry.”
Óraithe walked the room, looking at things. It was a small space with two of the walls covered in books. She browsed the titles, knowing she had only read a few dozen of what must have been a thousand or more. Well-kept but for the dust that had settled on them. He gave them to her when he decided she needed to know the lessons held in them. So many in the old tongue. A pair of those books would have bought him a home among the highborn. He’d never have even entertained the notion in jest. There was no value in things, he’d have said. There was value only in knowledge. Óraithe pulled her hands along the books.
“When we have finished with all this… if I live, I will read every one.” She said the words to Cosain, hoping he would hear somehow. “I will learn their lessons.”
She turned away from the shelf and sighed. A sealed letter sat on a nightstand beside a small, simple bed. She looked at it with curious eyes. There was a silver necklace there. She had never seen it before. A hollow spiral of silver metal, pointed at one end and curved to a bulb shape at the other. It had not tarnished, so not silver. She touched it, putting a fingernail to the metal. Platinum. Such a rare and expensive thing. She looked at the paper. Black wax pressed with flat wood, not Cosain’s official seal. She picked it up.
“To you?” Scaa asked.
Óraithe shook her head. “I do not know.” She flipped the paper. It had no name. “Should I…?”
“If you do not, no one ever will.”
She pulled the wax apart and opened the letter. It began with her name.
Óraithe,
I know not whether you will ever find this paper, nor why I write these words upon it. I have been stern with you, as your mother had always said I ought to be and I fear, even now, that this letter betrays that all. She wished for you to live as she had not. To die old and happy and untouched by the cold world that she and your father could not ignore. She imagined that I could turn you from the nature they feared they had passed to you.
It occurs to me now, as I sit here writing these words, that I have failed her. I have failed to keep you safe. And so, I am left with nothing.
You are all in this world that gives me reason to move this wretched body from bed each morning. All that brings meaning to the life of an old man who the world has rightly forgotten.
With your face in my mind, I know there is one last thing I can do. One last lesson. You always loved them, didn’t you, Óraithe? Though you pretended to protest.
Magairlín, Síl. I’ve failed you both. Your girl was born to her ways. I wish you could have seen her.
Óraithe. The necklace was your mother’s. Stolen from my shop years before you were born. She said I should give it to you when you were grown. I am stubborn in my age and would never admit such a thing, I fear, and so it has come to this.
There is more I would say, but time draws short now.
Take your lessons, my precious child, and do not shy from them. Neither mistrust them nor hesitate to use them. They will not fail you.
I loved you as my own blood. I regret I never said the words from my own lips.
I must go now.
Cosain
Óraithe sat on the bed, quietly re-reading the letter. Her heart ached, flushed full with a torrent of conflicted emotions. She hated the man for leaving such a horrible trap for her to find. She hated herself for not knowing. For what she’d forced of him. For so many things. She could not cry. Not for Cosain. He would not have wanted it. He’d have slapped the top of her head and told her that she would learn nothing from tears. And she’d have cursed him. For being an old man. For not understanding. For always being right.
R
Rianaire
Rianaire had awoken feeling awful. Not a strange thing considering how much time she’d been spending in cups of ale and mead and wine and whatever else. The need to see herself free of the boredom of her travels and the bother of her station was ever present of late. She blamed the colleges and Síocháin’s ever souring attitude. Stoic as she was, there had been an edge to her since at least Spárálaí’s folly. Rianaire had made efforts to speak to her, to have her open herself about whatever it was that irked her so, at least subtly. It would come out in time she knew. And she hoped sooner than later. As prickly as Síocháin could be, her advice was without peer.
A morning bath would help clear some of the clutter from her mind and some of the ache from her joints. Inney sat in a chair across from her but Síocháin was nowhere to be seen in the room.
“What a lovely morning,” Rianaire groaned, moving to the edge of the bed. “Where is the light of my life?”
“Am I
