Ever so gently, Niall folded back his mantle, revealing what had lain wrapped inside it. Wide brown eyes peered wonderingly at the world from a russet face, the newborn calf giving a plaintive moo.
So stricken she could not speak, Caitlin stared at the tiny animal, Fiona standing, frozen as well. Only Aniera bent down with a mother's instinct, stroking its silky head.
"Poor wee mite. Have you no mother to tend you?" she soothed.
"We will have to nurse her by hand with a rag soaked in milk. But we can raise her." Niall glanced from Caitlin's stricken face to Fiona's reddening one. Confusion creased his brow. "You need not fear. Someone will surely be willing to spare a bit of milk."
Fiona broke first, her wail more child than woman. "How could you do this to me, Niall? Have you not caused me enough grief?"
Niall climbed to his feet. His smile vanished. "What the devil is ailing you? Fiona, can you not see? This is the beginning of Daire's new herd. The herd you dreamed of starting. We will work together, you and I, and between us we will make Daire mightier than ever before."
"Why could you not have brought the calf yesterday?" Fiona cried. "Or a week ago? Now it is too late!" A sob broke from the girl's lips, and she fled into the darkness.
Niall took a step after her. Stopping, heturned to where Caitlin stood, her face white and strained in the light of the newborn moon.
"Aniera."
Niall stiffened. Caitlin's voice did not sound like her own.
"Could you take the calf inside, warm it near the fire? Perhaps soak a bit of oat cake in water and try to feed it?"
Only a little bemused by her daughter's strange reaction, Aniera gathered up the orphan. "It was joy made Fiona weep." Aniera tried to comfort her son. "She will tell you herself when she returns." Then, cuddling the calf close, she disappeared into the castle, singing an off-key lullaby.
Niall's blood chilled with foreboding in the dreadful silence left behind. Nay, it had not been joy that sent his sister running into the night sobbing.
"I do not understand," he said, unable to bear the clutching stillness at last. "I was sure the calf would please Fiona, and you... you would be satisfied to stay here at Daire with me."
"I want it more than life," Caitlin confessed so raggedly Niall dared to feel a faint reawakening of hope.
"Then why do you look at me thus, as if your heart were bleeding?"
She turned her face to the shadows, and Niall knew a moment of panic, as if she were somehow melting into the hills, bleeding into the land itself like theTuatha de Danaan. "There is something you must know," she began slowly. "Something happened today that changes things."
"Fiona up to some sort of mischief? Nothing we cannot sort out together, I am certain."
"I wish... hope that somehow we may."
"What is it,alannah?” Niall chuckled to fight off his unease. "Has she pierced the water skins with that spear I made for her? Has she dumped ashes on some poor wayfarer's head? Tonight I feel as if I could mend anything."
"This you cannot. And yet, if only there could be a way to—to make things right."
"What is it, my love? Tell me. Trust me." He cupped her cheeks in his rough warrior's hands, feeling as if she were as insubstantial as moonlight and as impossible to hold.
"The cow Fiona wanted..." Caitlin began.
"Aye, she was worse than a demon, tormenting me about it, and now she has one. A bit small, I admit, but give it time, and it will grow."
"Niall, she—she took it."
"She what?"
"She thought it was her right. Gormley had stolen so much from Daire. Fiona only thought she was taking back a piece of what was hers."
Niall felt a flare of heat in his belly, that creeping sensation of disaster about to fall down on his head. A sensation he would forevermore associate with his sister. "Tell me Fiona did not steal that cow!" he demanded, as if his own temper could keep it from being so. "Does the little fool have any idea what would happen to her if anyone discovered what she had done? Where the devil is the beast? I will drive it back across Daire's borders before anyone realizes—"
"It is too late. This—this loathsome man, Gormley, he came to Daire, ready to drag her off. God only knew what he planned to do to her."
Niall mustered a wan smile. "But the girl got away from him. Aye, Fiona would find a way to wriggle out of catastrophe. Thank the sea god she is as resourceful as she is infuriating. I will go to Gormley tomorrow, make amends so the girl is out of trouble."
