Tears were running openly down her cheeks. Medraut, visibly stricken, drew her close, his tenderness and care so open and honest, a low hum ran through the assembly, softening expressions and defusing much of the tension that had tightened so dangerously through the room. Clinoch of Strathclyde stood silently for long moments, jaw clenched as he, too, fought powerful emotion. Children, Stirling realized with a pang, these three passionate souls deciding the fate of all Britain, are mere children. Clinoch was barely fifteen, Medraut and Keelin no more than sixteen and seventeen. It was, perhaps, only fitting that the future of Britain rested in the grief and pride and courage of her children.
In a gesture that surprised everyone, perhaps except Stirling, Princess Iona of Ynys Weith rose with outstretched hands, clasping Keelin's trembling fingers in her own. "I know the grief you feel, know it to the depth of my heart. The Saxons have wounded us deeply. I, Princess Iona of Ynys Weith, formally greet you as sister."
She embraced the trembling Irishwoman, kissed her cheek, then turned and faced Clinoch of Strathclyde. "Your father is but a few weeks in the ground, Clinoch, but remember that it was not Dalriada who murdered him."
"If the Irish had not driven the Picts from their homeland—"
"You would not now be king, faced with a choice that will affect your grandchildren's grandchildren. Would you throw away the chance to stop war between them and Keelin's great-grandchildren? When you have been given the chance to build peace, instead? To strengthen your borders against enemies of both Strathclyde and Dalriada? To pull men needed badly elsewhere away from a border that no longer needs guarding? You have younger sisters, do you not?"
He nodded, face a mask of anguish.
"Would you have them grow to womanhood, wed, and watch their sons march to war, knowing that you could have spoken the word that would send them north as kinsmen and guests, instead?"
Bright water glistened in his eyes. "Would you have me forget the wrongs done us?"
"Would you have me forget the butchery of my family? It was in my hands, the fate of Cerdic and all his kinsmen. A man who drank ale from my father's skull and laughed while he did so."
Clinoch flinched. So did many others listening in silent judgement.
"Clinoch," Iona stepped toward him, hand extended, "I know the pain you hold in your heart. But I will never sink to the level of my family's murderers. That victory, I will not grant them. My soul is too precious to stain it with hatred and murder. And Clinoch, it is not the Scotti of Dalriada who have done your family, your people their greatest harm. Please, remember that and think long and hard on the way your answer here, today, will harm or stain your soul, and the souls of those who look to you for their best protection."
The brightness in the boy's eyes had spilled over, tracking down his face. He gulped once, fighting to retain control, no longer a child, not yet a man, with the weight of decision cruel and heavy on his young shoulders. He looked into Iona's eyes, looked into Keelin's and Medraut's, sipped air, willfully stilled his unsteady lips. "It is not in my heart to inflict war on my people. I have not your strength, Iona, to greet them as kinsmen, but for the sake of Strathclyde, for the sake of my people, I will give this alliance a chance."
Iona embraced him gently, while Keelin's eyelids came clenching down over more tears.
In such a highly charged atmosphere, not even those most adamantly opposed to alliance could cheapen the gesture made by Clinoch and Iona. The voting went swiftly. Ganhumara sent Keelin a dark look of utter jealousy, but under the eyes of all Britain—and her husband—even she voted to let the alliance stand. Morgana seemed stunned by the outcome, clearly having expected to be censured, at the very least, if not convicted of treason during time of war. More heated wine went round, with Covianna Nim once again carrying a goblet to Artorius. Toasts were made and answered, congratulations offered on the marriage, and articles of treaty debated and ratified, providing for trade, exchange of artisans, even the establishment of missions by Briton Christian priests.
As the final details were recorded, Artorius called once again for the council's attention.
"We have one final order of business. Bring the traitor, Lailoken."
He was hauled forward by his guards, eyes downcast.
"Have you anything to say in your defense, Saxon?"
The man looked up, eyes wild with fear. "It was the demon made me do it! The demon in my head, whispering secrets, promising revenge on the Irish butchers who murdered my wife, my children..."
"He's mad," someone muttered.
Stirling watched with a chill in his blood, pitying the Briton minstrel whose life had been shattered by the Orangeman from sixteen centuries in Lailoken's future. Ancelotis, too, felt a complex blend of pity and revulsion, having had his own life wrenched inside out by Stirling's arrival. The look in Morgana's eyes was ghastly. She rose to her feet and spoke, gaze locked on the minstrel as though facing Grendel.
"Cedric Banning," she said in coldly in English, causing Stirling to suppress a gasp, "what have you to say to me?"
The man's head jerked up, as though wrenched by a giant, unseen hand. Shock washed across Lailoken's face. Then he snarled, hatred twisting his features. "Filthy Irish bitch!I should have broken your neck that night in the lab!"
She held his gaze levelly, neither speaking nor moving.
Banning spat at her, eyes mad with a sparking insanity that left Stirling ill. "I'm only sorry I hadn't the chance to poison every well in Ireland!" Banning laughed, the sound wild and mad. "Get home if you can, McEgan. And if you can't, take your exile as a last gift of the Orangemen of Ulster!"
Stirling, rising swiftly to stand beside her, said softly, "Who do you think told the IRA and the SAS to hunt for you?"
The denial balanced on Banning's lips died there when Stirling held his gaze levelly, staring down at Banning with all the loathing he could summon. He saw it form, the realization that his own had betrayed him, the slipping of what little solid ground remained under the man's feet. The caved-in, sick look in Banning's eyes, might, under other circumstances, have moved him to pity. But Banning had chosen hatred and death at every step along his life's path, had allowed his anger and desire for revenge to fester until he'd murdered his own sanity with it. Faced with such a creature, there was only one humane course open to Stirling—or to anyone else in like circumstances.
Voice soft in the uncertain hush of the council chamber, Stirling said, "In the name of His Majesty's British government, I charge you with terrorism and mass murder, Cedric Banning. If I had access to a gun, I would consider ordering you shot by firing squad. That is the way the Orange paramilitaries deal with traitors to their own, isn't it?"
A terrible sound broke loose, timbers cracking under the weight of a glacier. Banning began to tremble violently. His lips, wet and quivering, glistened horribly in the light. The looks of utter revulsion sent his way by the silent, stunned audience were lost on the man, whose gaze had not left Stirling's face.