Ciara looked up. “He’d do better to protect her from Kirion.”
“I’m not so sure he wouldn’t now. Harran says that with a few more months’ work the boy will be better with a sword than his brother. Apparently, Kirion is mostly style with no stamina. Good for short, flashy duels. Not good for a real grudge fight. I wouldn’t wager Keelan couldn’t take him if Harran thinks so.” He watched her brows rise. “Yes, I think now you should put plan two into action, my cunning love.”
“Plan two?” Ciara looked innocent.
“Plan two! I’ve known you too long not to know there’s a plan two.”
His wife grinned but said nothing. It was true, but she didn’t want Tro to let something slip. Keelan had sharp eyes. A knowing look at the wrong time might spoil her schemes.
She waited with as much patience as she had ever been capable of finding. One of the cats was due to kitten. Her last two litters had each contained a spare: one the mother decided to discard for reasons unknown to humans.
It happened again, to Ciara’s secret satisfaction. The kit was a female, tiny and pathetic. She brought it to Keelan quite casually.
“The mother doesn’t want it. If someone doesn’t look after it, the poor little thing will die.” She unloaded the tiny, shivering scrap into his hands.
She saw the uncertain glance up from the corner of his eye. From all she had pieced together, she could guess at his fear.
“If you can raise her, she’s yours. Not to be sold or given to anyone else. She can stay here or go with you, whatever you choose. She is unlikely to have kittens herself. We’ve found those we rear this way are often infertile.” She shrugged, “I’ll leave you to it. If you can’t be bothered, take it down to the stable and kill it. A quick, clean death. All right?” She registered the involuntarily protective movement of his hands with blank face but elated heart. “If you decide to rear it, talk to Aisling. She helped me with one of the others.” She strolled out, leaving Keelan to sit holding the faintly ‘yeeking’ baby.
He reared it. There were times when he considered that quick, clean death. Then he would look down at his troublesome, time-consuming charge and fall in love all over again. She needed him. In weeks she was stumbling on unsteady furry legs all about his room. A few weeks more and she was a skittering racing ball of fluff into everything and under his feet. He adored her. After long consideration, he’d named her Shosho. It was a dialect word for something that was everywhere, ubiquitous. She was certainly that.
At times he wondered despairingly if all kittens were this bad. That was after Shosho had fallen down the jakes. Luckily, it was immediately after the first hard frost. The muck at the bottom of the shaft was solid enough to bear her weight so she didn’t drown. But Keelan had to climb down a rope after her. The muck at the bottom hadn’t borne his weight. He appeared at the top of the shaft with a kitten that refused to know him any further until he bathed. The waiting humans made it clear they agreed. Keelan left grinning to seek a hot bath with plenty of soap.
Shosho forgave him once he was in the hot, soapy water. She demonstrated that by falling in with him, then climbing out using small frantic claws on some tender places.
His howls brought Ciara running, only to be passed by a very wet, virtually airborne kitten, which explained it all to her. She stifled her giggles and left again without Keelan’s being aware. That had happened to Ciara a few times before she started shutting her cats out when she bathed. She’d suggest it to Keelan sometime.
The boy was happy all that winter. Shosho grew steadily. She was going to be a magnificent cat with eyes of deep amber, and a thick plush coat of glossy black. She slept on his bed, brought her kills to him, and generally made it clear that Keelan was her human.
Slave might have been a better word. Not that Keelan minded. He was a lap whenever she wanted one, trailed string for her on demand, and loved her with all his heart. In loving her, he found the capacity to love others, too. He was Aisling’s lieutenant in many things that winter. Often now he would take a job away from her.
“That’s too heavy, let me lift it.”
Aisling graciously permitted him to help. Keelan discovered the joys of shared jokes, harmless tricks, and a family circle elastic enough to admit another one in.
Back in Iren Keep, Kirion had vaguely noticed that his younger brother was nowhere to be found. It did not matter. Kirion was too busy with his studies into forms of power. When he wanted Keelan, he’d find him. Right now he wanted only peace to read and privacy to experiment with some of what he learned.
When winter was over Keelan was still at Aiskeep. He was afraid to talk about it. If he said he wanted to stay here for good, perhaps they’d say he couldn’t. He said nothing, just in case. If he didn’t ask, he couldn’t be refused. He’d grown to love the Keep and his family here. Anyhow, he couldn’t leave. What would happen to Shosho? If he took her back to Iren, Kirion would find some way of hurting her. Keelan might be able to beat him in a fight now, but that wouldn’t heal Shosho if Kirion had injured her.
Apart from her, there was Aisling, Ciara, Trovagh, Harran, and old Hanion who told him stories about Keelan’s greatgrandfather. Jontar, who was always happy to talk about the bandits, and the host of garthspeople who greeted him now as if they were pleased to see him. They were. The consensus on the land was that the lad was training up quite well, and would make a reasonable lord one day. Had Kirion known any of this, he’d have spat blood. Since he did not, all was peaceful both at Aiskeep and at Iren Keep.
Aisling, too, was happy. She’d always wanted an older brother. A real one, not like Kirion. She celebrated her twelfth name day with Keelan assisting.
His name day would come in early spring. He would be eighteen. He hoped they’d mark it in some way, but he’d say nothing just in. case. There was an air of subdued excitement around, he thought some weeks later. But it was probably because spring was on the way. He noticed Aisling vanishing into her room a lot with the door shut. She appeared flushed when he knocked and the door was opened. He hoped harder. Always at Iren Keep his name days had been miserable with Kirion resenting the attention focused elsewhere.
Two days before Keelan’s name day, Kirion arrived. He’d run out of books he hadn’t read. Then it occurred to him that if the brat did have the power he believed, there might well be books on witchcraft in the old Aiskeep library. He rode there, casually confident that his grandparents hadn’t meant his banishment to last. He was disabused on arrival. It was Harran who glanced out, to recognize the approaching rider. By the time Kirion reached the gates, Ciara and Trovagh were there with their Armsmaster.
“Hail the gates, open for Kirion, Kirin’s son of Aiskeep.” Kirion slouched on his weary horse, waiting for the gates to swing open. Instead, a tart voice addressed him from above.
“You were told not to return unless we asked for you. You have not been asked here, you have our leave to depart.”
Kirion gaped upward. “You can’t do that!”
Trovagh took over. “We can, we have, and we like it that way. Take yourself and that poor animal to Teral, to Kars, or to Hades. You aren’t welcome here. Do I have to make it any plainer?”
He did. Kirion sat his mount, his voice rising to an infuriated whine as he pleaded, protested, and then ordered.
“I’m heir now that my father’s dead. You can’t keep me out.” That should get the truth told, he thought. Ciara eyed him. Something in the tone told her the boy knew he’d been formally disinherited. But then she didn’t have to confirm that. She leaned out.
“An heir has certain rights, that’s true. But automatic entry to his family Keep is not one of them. Not when all are in agreement he isn’t welcome. Go away, Kirion. Shut your mouth before you get snow in it.”