Page 8 of MacAlister's Hope
“Annis, prepare another oatmeal poultice,” she said without looking at her assistant. She did not want to see the woman calculating how she could use the indiscretion she had walked in on to her best advantage. Fia put the rag down and reached for the cup. Habit had her lifting it to her nose to check the strength. She was about to help the chief drink it when she stopped and sniffed it again.
Something wasn’t right. She sipped it, let it lie on her tongue for a moment, then swallowed.
“Annis,” she turned to find the woman staring at her. “What did you put in this?”
“Only what you told me,” she answered, her lip quivering and her eyes not quite meeting Fia’s.
“Nay, you did not.” Fia poured a little of the contents of the cup into her hand, examining the color. “It looks right, but the scent is off, as if you did not use enough birch, and there is no willow in here, either, for it does not tighten the tongue.”
“I made it just as you taught me, nothing more, nothing less,” Annis said, but Fia could tell the girl lied, though she could not fathom why she would endanger the chief’s health.
“Do you wish the chief to remain ill, to be in pain?” Fia snapped quietly, not wanting the chief to hear, though even in his waking moments he seemed unaware of most of what went on around him. She stepped closer to her assistant. All her doubt, frustration, and fatigue gathered, making her words harsh and erasing any ease she had found in Kieron’s arms. “For that is what you consign him to with this!” She dumped the liquid from her hand onto the floor and the contents of the cup with it.
A lone tear trickled down Annis’s cheek, as she turned beseeching eyes to Kieron who had joined them. “I did not—”
“Surely she would not seek to hurt the chief on purpose, Fia,” he said his voice full of concern and for a moment Fia felt abandoned by her one ally here, until he gave her a quick wink. It was only then that Fia noticed he once more had the palm-sized, perfectly round milky stone in his hand, as he had the day he had come to take her away from Kilmartin. He closed the distance between himself and Annis.
“I did not want to do this, for to do so will weaken the power of this magic stone, but it seems the time has come,” he said. He balanced the stone in his palm in front of her. “Take it,” he commanded, and Annis plucked it from his hand, holding it between her thumb and forefinger as if she did not like the touch of it.
“If you place this in a bowl of water fresh from a fast-running burn just as the sun peeks over the horizon,” he continued, “and let it sit in the sun until sunset, watching over it every minute lest any animal or person drink from it, or any leaf or bug fall into it, the water will ease his pain.”
Fia started to ask why he did not use this magical stone before now, but she remembered the wink. Kieron was not abandoning her, he was aiding her in discovering the truth, though not in the way most people would go about it.
“But there is no sun today,” Annis whined, holding the stone out for Kieron to take, but he let her hold it there between them.
“Then you must make the brew again and I will let you use the stone when there is sun. Can you make it correctly this time?”
It took all of Fia’s will not to speak against this, but she was intrigued by Kieron’s approach and let him finish with Annis.
“I made it correctly this time!” Annis said, but now she did not meet the eyes of either of them.
Fia gasped, but covered it with a cough. The stone, milky when Kieron had handed it to Annis, now had faint dark ribbons running through it, as if it had been colored by the refuse of the privies.
Kieron shook his head. “She lies.”
“Nay, I do not,” Annis said, holding the still darkly ribboned stone out and shaking it as if that would force Kieron to take it. Fia looked at the stone, then at Kieron, then back at the stone. Brown, almost black, and he said she lied as if he knew it for a truth.
“Did you use exactly what I told you, and in the exact amounts?” Fia asked, testing her theory.
“Aye,” Annis replied, holding out the still dark hued stone to Kieron who made no move to take it from her.
“Annis, you did not,” Fia said, still not sure that what she saw in the stone reflected what she thought it did. “Why?”
Annis closed her eyes for a moment, then sighed. “I spilled the willow in the fire. ’Twas all burned up before I could think what to do.” Annis scrunched up her nose, as if she smelled something rotten, clearly displeased that her lie had been uncovered.
The stone shone a faint pink now, but still a thread of brown woven through it. Pink, like when Elena and she had held it before…truth? But with a lie still woven into it?
“Why did you not get more from my supply?” Fia asked, determined to find the whole truth.
The lass swallowed hard and laced her fingers together so fiercely her knuckles turned white. “I was pouring it directly from the bag when it spilled, though I ken well ’tis not the way you like it done. I sneezed and the entire bag emptied into the fire. There is no more.”
Still pink with a thread of brown.
Fia narrowed her eyes at the girl, trying to figure out where the lie still lay. She considered the chief, and how he seemed in more pain the last few hours than he had been before. She had thought it only that his condition worsened, for it clearly had not improved, but perhaps…
“When did you burn up the willow supply?” she asked, sure now that she had found the heart of the lie.
Annis looked at her feet and spoke so softly Fia almost couldn’t hear her. “When I went to make the brew in the middle of the night.”
