Page 49 of A Highland Healer Captured
A woman from Balmachrie asked for ale casks for the singers, and Zander granted two and told her to keep the women’s purse separate from the men’s this year so the arguing didn’t start before the piping.
A boy from Burnfoot’s far croft asked if the keep would buy hare skins to patch a jerkin before the cold, and Zander bought four on the spot with a coin out of his own purse and told him to ask Marcus for an old cloak for his da while he was brave enough to do errands alone.
A shepherd from Glen Caillich in a burr so thick it could cut bread tried to convince the hall that midges were bigger this year and should be taxed like cattle, and even Mason threw up his hands. Zander leaned forward. “Friend, I caught three words there:midges, doom,andtupp.Try me again in Scots.”
Mason murmured, half-laughing, “He says the midges ate his best tup’s ears and he wants two measures of tar to smear on the flock.”
“Tar he shall have,” Zander said. “And a veil for his own face if he keeps calling doom into me hall before the sun’s set.”
That earned a burst of relieved laughter. The shepherd beamed, showing the gap where a tooth had gone to some earlier doom.
They were down to the last quarrel—a grazing path dispute between Glen Caillich drovers and an old widow from Achnadarroch who swore the track had skirted her plot since before kings had beards—when the great hall door slammed back hard enough to bang the wall.
A boy in the keep’s colors came pelting up the center with terror and speed in equal measure, hair plastered to his brow, breath out in great heaves. He managed a bow that nearly toppled him,then choked out, “Laird— the solar— Mistress Katie— she sent— quickly?—”
Zander was moving before the last word landed, all the easy patience of judgment thrown away. He took the dais steps in two, hit the flagstones at a stride, and the hall opened for him as water opens for a cut keel.
“I’ll handle the rest,” Mason called to his back, already stepping into the space Zander had left, his voice turning brisk and cheerful in the way that calmed folk and made them forget they’d been afraid. “Balmachrie, Glen Caillich, ears are yers till the bell.”
Zander didn’t waste breath on answer. He was already in the passage, already taking the stair three at a time, already tasting the particular metal of fear that belonged only to one room in the world.
The keep had a hundred corners that asked for a laird, but the solar had one small boy that asked for a father. He ran to that answer like a man who knew his whole name was written there.
16
There was no gentleness to the way it went, though.
Katie’s fists struck Skylar’s door hard enough to rattle the latch, and when Skylar yanked it open, the maid’s eyes were red and her breath came fast.
“Skylar—” The name broke in the middle. “It’s Grayson. He’s?—”
She didn’t wait for the end of the sentence. She was already moving, bare feet striking stone, hair still damp from washing before bed, and tying an apron knotted half-cocked around her waist.
The corridor blurred.
The solar door stood open like a mouth and the room beyond was all motion: Zander on the bed with the boy in his arms, Katie fumbling with a cloth, the fire throwing wild shadows.
Grayson’s small body was stiff as a pulled bow. His eyes had rolled white, so only crescent moons showed, and his hands jerked in sharp, ugly rhythms.
His breathing came all wrong—then it didn’t come—and then scraped in again. Skylar’s stomach dropped clean through her and found the floor.
“Move,” she said, not loud, not kind, and Zander moved. He laid the boy down exactly as she needed him to, propped, turned, space cleared around him. She slid a folded blanket under his head to keep it from striking, pulled his jaw forward to open his airway, and counted, counted, counted.
“Katie—boiled water. Now. A bowl. Salt. Mustard. The burnt bread from earlier—there is always burnt bread.”
“Aye—” Katie fled.
“Tell me,” Zander said, and his voice was flat with effort. His hands were open at his sides, fingers spread, the posture of a man restraining himself from grabbing the world and shaking it until it behaved.
Skylar didn’t answer him yet. She watched the boy’s skin. Not just flushed, he was flushedanddry.
She touched his cheek.Hot.
The pupils when the eyes flickered down, as if testing her, then rolled again were wide, too wide.
His mouth worked around an invisible bitterness.
And when he did cough, it was shallow and useless. A sheen slicked his lips, but the rest of him was dry. No sweat. No tears.
