Mael Ruadh smiled. “I asked for justice.”
“No. You asked me to weaken my walls by sunset because you found a priestly word to dress ambition.”
His smile thinned.
Étaín stood behind the first pillar, and Aingeal knew without looking that her cousin was enjoying that wound more than she should.
Mael Ruadh lifted his voice to the hall. “This house shelters Reginald FitzUrse, killer of Archbishop Becket. A man cursed by Church and hated by God-fearing people. A man who came under a dead lord’s name and nearly tricked Lady Aingeal into marriage.”
Aingeal let the murmur rise. Then she spoke over it, not loudly, but with enough clarity that the hall chose to hear her. “This house does not shelter his lie. The lie was exposed here. Named here. Answered here. Donal O’Raida has been recoveredand honored here. Reginald FitzUrse remains here under his own name and under my judgment.”
“Your judgment?” Mael Ruadh’s brows lifted. “That is the matter in question.”
Brennach shifted near the wall.
Aingeal saw three men notice.
Mael Ruadh went on. “You were deceived once. Now you ask the north to trust you while the deceiver stands at your feet.”
Aingeal’s hands tightened once at her sides. Then she stepped down from the dais.
The whole hall altered, tightened.
Reginald turned slightly, only enough for her to see he had understood the risk.
She did not need protection from words. She crossed the open space until she stood before Mael Ruadh, close enough that he could not address the hall without first looking past her. “You burned Fintan’s holding,” she said.
“I did no such thing.”
“You sent men who did.”
“Border men have quarrels. Stock wanders. Fire spreads.”
“And children trap themselves in burning sheds by accident?”
The hall went cold.
Fintan stood among the villagers, face dark with grief and fury. His little daughter was not there; Aingeal had forbidden it. But her bandaged hands had become a story carried by every woman in the castle.
Mael Ruadh’s smile vanished. “Careful, my lady.”
“There it is,” Aingeal said softly.
He blinked.
“The holy concern sheds its cloak quickly when questioned.”
A murmur moved through the hall again. Different this time.
Then from beyond the outer wall came the sound they had been waiting for. A horn. One long note from the marsh road. Then another, cut short.
Mael Ruadh did not turn, but his eyes widened.
Reginald moved first. “Now.”
The hall erupted into motion.
Brennach seized Mael Ruadh’s nearest man before his sword cleared leather. Ciarán drove the butt of a spear into the second man’s knee and took him down with a fury that had perhaps been waiting for any honest target. Étaín hauled two children behind the pillar and shoved them toward the side passage. Father Cillian barred the chapel door to keep the panicked from flooding into it and trapping themselves there.
