Читать книгу Silver Flame - Hannah Howell - Страница 6

Scotland, 1380

Silently, cautiously, Sine Catriona Brodie led her half brothers, Beldane and Barre, toward the beckoning light of a small fire. She knew it was dangerous to approach a stranger’s camp, but she and the twins were hungry, cold, and afraid. The wood had been their hiding place for far too long, what sustenance they could find all too sparse for a young lass and growing three-year-olds. Sine Catriona could barely recall the last time they had slept with a fire to warm them, peacefully lost in their dreams. For them every shadow was an enemy.

But they could go no farther now. Driven by desperation, Sine Catriona studied the dark form of the man in front of the fire. His shoulder was to her, so she could see little—except that he was tall. Struggling to be brave, she left her brothers hidden in the shrubbery and stepped forward.

“We approach to request food and a place by your fire, kind sir,” she said.

The man turned and stared at her. One of his dark, long fingered hands rested on the hilt of a dagger but she did not immediately construe that as a threat. Whoever the man was he was handsome, gifted with all that was needed to make a woman swoon. Sine Catriona was young, barely twelve, but she knew that much. So too had she learned how much evil beauty could hide. However, he made no threatening move. Her hunger and that of her brothers persuaded her to take a gamble with him.

“Ye are welcome,” he answered in a deep, rich voice. “I have little but I sense that ’tis more than ye have tasted in many a day.”

“We are quite hungry, sir.” She motioned to her brothers to move closer to the fire.

“Twins?” he asked.

The boys nodded shyly. As they sat and introduced all three of themselves by their first names only, the man handed them some bread and cheese.

“No family name?”

“’Twould be best if our family name wasnae given,” Sine Catriona murmured.

“Child, while ye eat allow me to tell ye of myself. I am Farthing Magnus.”

“Farthing?” She frowned. “’Tis an odd name, sir.”

“My mother told me that a farthing was what it cost a mon to make me. My father was weel born. He tried to do weel by me, his bastard son, and trained me to the life of a warrior. ’Twasnae the life for me, I fear, and his legal family was unsettled by my presence. I thanked my father kindly for his generosity and left. Ye see before ye Farthing Magnus—conjurer and thief.”

“A conjurer,” she whispered, duly impressed.

“At your command, m’lady. And a thief.”

“We are no strangers to that sin ourselves.”

“One must needs survive—as long as ’tisnae from one poorer than oneself.”

“Aye for ye could leave a mon with naught to eat and that could weel mean that thievery becomes murder.”

“How old are ye, child?”

“I am twelve, and the lads are three.”

“So verra young to be roaming this wood unprotected. Where are your parents?”

“My beloved father is wrapped in the cold clay, sir. My mother still lives, curse her eyes.”

“Child, I believe ye have a tale to tell. ’Tis a long night that looms before us. I am but one mon, and one who swears that he would do ye no harm.”

“Nay? Not even for gold in your pocket?”

“I admit freely that I am a thief and that my tongue isnae often burdened by the truth, but I do hold dear to a principle or two. I am not a mon to deal in blood money.”

He did not flinch from her direct, probing look. A self-professed thief and liar could easily speak falsely with complete calm, yet Sine Catriona found that she trusted him. She also knew that, if he did prove traitorous, she and her brothers could not be caught and held by just one man.

In a quiet voice she told him of her mother, a woman twisted by greed and envy. She told him of the murders of her father and the twins’ mother, by hired brigands in the wood and of the poisoning of her grandmother—all at the hand of Arabel Brodie and her lover, Malise Brodie, a kinsman her father had once trusted implicitly. Sine Catriona’s father was barely dressed for burial when Arabel and Malise had wed. Sine Catriona spoke of the slow, painful realization that her own mother hated her, resented her youth and beauty, for Arabel’s own loveliness was beginning to fade. Sine Catriona told Farthing of how she had taken the twins and fled into the night when she discovered that she and the boys were to be her mother’s next victims. With their deaths, all the Brodie lands, fortune, and title would go to Arabel and Malise.

“So ye are left to wander in the woods amongst rogues, vagabonds, and wild beasts,” Farthing said.

“Aye. I could think of naught but escape.” Sine Catriona looked at the twins. “They are but wee bairns.” She smiled at Farthing. “Howbeit, we cannae hide in the woods forever. We search for one who would aid us, one who doesnae cower in his boots and has the armed men we need. There has to be such a knight somewhere and I will find him. Howbeit, ’twill mean some wandering. I ken that weel enough.”

“Aye, but I would guess that ye ken verra little of the wandering life.”

“I will learn.”

“That I dinnae doubt at all. ’Twould be best, how-somever, if ye had a teacher, a tutor.”

“And would ye be that tutor?”

“There could be none better.”

She bit her bottom lip, briefly revealing her fine white teeth. “I cannae wander too far afield for here is all that I must regain when the time is right.”

“There is many a place where I might ply my trade along this strip of land separating the Lowlands from the Highlands.”

“We are a danger to all who might aid us.”

“I may not like the thought of living by my sword, but I weel ken how to wield it.”

“The people we flee deal in poisons and daggers thrust from the shadows.”

“And who kens the shadows better than a thief? And that is what I shall teach ye.”

“Then we should like to wander with ye and, when I regain all that is mine by birthright, I shall reward ye weel.”

“I dinnae do this for reward.” Farthing smiled faintly.

“I thought not.” Sine Catriona frowned. “But then, what do ye do this for?”

“Mayhaps I am weary of being alone.”

“Ye will teach us to conjure?”

“Ye shall be my assistants.”

“And ye shall teach us to steal?”

“As none other can, may God forgive me.”

“It sounds much better than cowering in the wood awaiting my mother’s huntsmen.”

He nodded at the twins. “Do ye think that they understand?”

She ruffled each boy’s golden brown curls. “They understand what death is, Farthing Magnus.”

“That is enough for now.”