Bravely(41)

Ila had been carefully and thoroughly wiping the soot out of the carvings around the fireplace, a process that took forever and only had to be repeated the moment the fire was set again, but she put her duster down and said, “Thank you, ma’am.”

Elinor gave the room a look.

This happened every time Ila was polite, which was always. It was as if Elinor would have very much liked to have said, See, children, this is how polite you could be, but knew how insufferable it would sound, so instead, she just did the look.

Harris rolled his eyes and went back to writing something in small letters at his place before the fire.

Hamish’s mouth made a very upside-down smile shape and he sulked off toward the music room, where petulant harp noises began to sound.

Merida let out a breath so that her lips went phbbbbbbbt.

Elinor pretended none of this had happened. She just said, “Leezie, are you taking some air with us as well? We’re going to the wall.”

Leezie was lying on her stomach in a slovenly way, dress dangerously close to the hearth, slowly turning the pages in a book Elinor had pressed flowers in and studying each page. Her hair was curled prettily all around her face from where she’d splashed water on it. Every so often she reached to take a honey-covered almond from a tray beside her, licking her fingertips after each one. Merida had never seen someone who looked less likely to go on a walk.

Leezie said, “Take my spirit with you; she’s all that has energy. Tell me how many doves you see between you and the moon, though. I need it for my records.”

They did not take Leezie’s spirit, but they did take some warm spiced bread from the kitchen on their way out. Merida held hers to her cheek as they headed out. Ila cupped hers in her hands. Elinor tore hers into small pieces and ate it on their way to the guard tower that offered access to the top of the wall.

“Spring is finally here after all,” Elinor said, gazing out as they emerged at the top of the stairs. This was less a remark on the chill, which was still quite present, and more on the light, which remained even this late in the day. The brief winter days were slowly stretching into the lovely eternal, elastic things they’d become by midsummer, and it felt nice, like being given more time overall. “I always manage to forget how good the view is from up here.”

The wall, which partially surrounded the accessible side of DunBroch, had been built by long-ago defenders to repel long-ago invaders, and all along it was a high protected walkway meant to be patrolled by guards. Now it was more often patrolled by red squirrels and stoats. And Elinor. When the weather was kind (meaning the wind was not so vigorous that one would be knocked askew), Elinor walked the wall to “take some air.” Elinor’s mother had died of some illness that had come about from not taking air, apparently, and so Elinor took literal steps to avoid the same fate.

She used to insist the triplets come as well, but they groaned so much about the length of the walk that she eventually gave in. It was true that once you began, you were somewhat of a prisoner of the walkway. There were guard towers every hundred yards or so, but they had not been cleaned out in decades, so the stairs inside them were masses of brambles and bracken and the creatures that lived in brambles and bracken. Only one tower at each end was kept tidy enough for human passage.

“This weather will be very good for journeying,” Ila said. She was still holding her bread, uneaten. Merida squished hers into different shapes. Aileen would have been annoyed that she wasn’t enjoying how light and airy she’d managed to make the buns, but Merida preferred these spiced ones when they were gummy and dense.

“Yes, you will have a good time, I think,” Elinor said.

Merida walked on for several yards before the phrasing of this struck her. “I’ll have a good time?”

Elinor inhaled deeply, taking in the earthy scent of the wall, which was all moss and soaked ivy. “Yes, I think so.”

Merida repeated, tone a little more dangerous, “I’ll have a good time? You’re going, too.”

Elinor’s tone was precisely the same as she continued strolling. “I know you heard us discussing this. Your father and I decided that one of us needs to stay behind to run all the affairs of the kingdom; it’s just too busy a season to delegate to someone else for that amount of time.”

This was a trick, Merida knew, just as clever as one of the Cailleach’s. “I definitely did not. You knew it was going to be this season when you agreed!”

“I was hopeful,” Elinor said. “Optimistic, really. But then reality set in.”

“Perhaps, ma’am, you could go and the king could stay,” Ila said. “I would watch your things for you.”

Elinor laughed gently and hooked her elbow in Ila’s as they walked. “That’s very kind of you, Ila. But the king loves Kinlochy and I wouldn’t take this trip from him.”

This was what Elinor always did. She always made it sound inevitable. Merida should have remembered what happened with the Spain trip. Instead she’d been thinking of the last trip she’d taken with her mother, to the shielings.

The trip had happened quite a while ago, when she was about the same age as the triplets were now. Merida had spent plenty of time riding in the countryside, but none living in it. She didn’t know anything about the subjects her parents ruled: the crofters, the fishermen, the dairymen, and the weavers. Back then, Merida had thought perhaps everyone lived in a castle. She’d never seen anything else, and for all she knew, everyone who worked in and around the castle went back to their own castles.