Bravely(13)

Really, Merida thought, all the triplets had in common was the red hair and the mischief.

“It was a fair transaction,” Harris murmured now, in a very Harris-y way, silently moving a piece on the board. It was a winning move, though neither of his brothers had noticed it yet. “Any bad feeling would have simply been ego.”

This entire conversation had Merida feeling a little bad for the Cabbage. Lump or not, this all felt a little below the belt. “What about love?”

“Yes!” Leezie agreed, her voice dreamy. “What about love?”

“You can’t just say what I said,” Merida said.

“You don’t have to be mad,” Leezie replied, nearly dragging her sleeve through some gravy. Hubert hurriedly lifted it at the last minute (the urge to help her was so strong it extended even to the triplets, which was strong indeed). “I was agreeing with you. Why not wait for love?”

“You didn’t love the Cabbage?” all the triplets roared in unison, even Harris.

With a vague smile, Leezie squished one of her wedding buns into a flower shape. “I think I might have been bored, and that’s why I thought of getting married.”

“I’m sure the right young man will come along and sweep you off your feet. It simply wasn’t the right time,” Elinor said, and something about her words made Merida realize that the queen had known all along Leezie wouldn’t go through with the wedding.

What a load of tosh! Merida thought. Years ago, Merida had said she didn’t want to get married at that moment, and it had caused an enormous fight, the biggest fight, in fact, that she and her mother had ever had, the one that ended up with twenty-four hours of bad feeling, magical curses, and eventually a reconciliation. Merida wasn’t sorry it had happened, as it had improved their previously tense relationship immensely, but to see Leezie reaping the benefits of the chaos without having to live through it seemed very unfair.

“Those two heifers will definitely sweep the Cabbage off his feet,” snickered one of the triplets. The other two triplets snickered along with him.

“Boys,” Fergus said, but in that voice that meant he wished he could snicker, too.

From somewhere deeper in the castle, the dogs began to bark.

“What are they carrying on for?” Elinor mused.

This reminded Merida. She asked, “Who’s that new dog, by the way? The one who ate my Christmas present?”

“Harris!” admonished Elinor. “I’ve told you time and again that dog needs discipline! Your father traded a ewe for that spoon!”

Merida would’ve preferred a ewe with MERIDA shorn into it to yet another carved spoon, but she tried to look appropriately crushed.

“I’ve tried to teach him,” Harris said, a bit of a whinge to his voice. “Brionn’s untrainable.”

“Brionn is from good stock!” Fergus said. “Comgeall said he was pick of the litter out of Sneachda, and there’s no more faithful hound than her.” To Merida, he said, “Comgeall remembered how Harris liked his hounds when he visited here three years ago, can you imagine that? What a memory he has, mind like a trap! Sent Brionn this summer. What a lad.”

Harris gave Merida a persecuted look that meant he disagreed with some part of this story; it was just a hint of their old secret sibling conversations.

“I’ll get you another spoon,” Fergus said.

“Oh, you don’t have to,” Merida interjected quickly. “It’s not that munched. With a li’l bit of—”

“Ma’am, sir,” interrupted a familiar voice. The new girl, Ila, stood in the doorway of the common room, her gaze firmly fixed on Elinor and Fergus. She still looked catlike, only now she seemed more like when cats have their ears pressed back and tails set to thrashing warily. “There are some men here to talk to you. They demand it, ma’am.”

“Demand?” Merida’s mother raised a courtly eyebrow. “They can wait by the bonfire in the courtyard, and we will give them an audience before the feast.”

“They took the feast.” This voice came not from Ila, but from Aileen, who had joined Ila in the doorway. There was nothing Aileen liked less than coming out of the kitchen, so the situation couldn’t be good. Her hands tensely knotted and unknotted a kitchen rag as she explained, “They threw it to their dogs. Gille Peter got the castle dogs into the armory before there was a fight.”

Merida, Leezie, and the triplets all looked at each other. Hubert and Leezie’s faces wore two different genres of bewilderment. Hamish looked terrified, of course. Harris, to Merida’s surprise, appeared merely pensive.

Violence was not shocking by itself; the kingdom, for all its pleasures, was a dangerous place, as all wild, hard places are. But violence inside the castle? Unheard of.

Merida thought, First Feradach and then Leezie’s wedding and now this! Does this count as change?

But she knew what Feradach had said. External change wasn’t the same as internal change.

Fergus rose from his chair. “Did they say who sent them?”

“The Dásachtach, sir,” Aileen said. “About—”

Elinor swept the rest of the words away with her hand. “We will see them in the Great Hall. Aileen, please take the children to the tapestry room. Ila and Leezie, please let the other servants know where we are and tell them not to take orders from anyone but us.”