LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Good,” he replied. We walked farther in silence, until we reached a river beneath the trees. This seemed to be our talking ground. The day before, he had found me here among the moss and currents, revealing that he had secretly married his wife in this lush place, long ago.

      “Have you had any more memory shifts, Brienna?” he asked.

      I should have expected this question, yet I still felt surprised by it.

      “No, I have not,” I responded, looking to the river. I thought about the six memories I had inherited from Tristan Allenach.

      The first had been brought on by an old book of Cartier’s, which happened to have belonged to Tristan over a century ago. I had read the same passage as Tristan had, which had created a bond between us that not even time could break.

      I had been so bewildered by the experience, I had not fully understood what was happening to me, and as a result, I told no one about it.

      But it had happened again when Merei had played a Maevan-inspired song, the ancient sounds of her music vaguely linking me to Tristan as he had been searching for a place to hide the stone.

      His six memories had come to me so randomly, it had taken me a while to finally theorize how and why this was happening to me. Ancestral memory was not too rare of a phenomenon; Cartier himself had once told me about it, this idea that all of us hold memories from our ancestors but only a select few of us actually experience them manifesting. So once I had acknowledged that I was one of those few people to have the manifestations, I began to understand them better.

      There had to be a bond made between me and Tristan through one of the senses. I had to see or feel, hear or taste or smell something he had once experienced.

      The bond was the doorway between us. The how of it all.

      As far as the why … I came to surmise that all the memories he had passed down to me were centered on the Stone of Eventide, or else I would have most likely inherited more memories from him. Tristan had been the one to steal the stone, to hide it, to begin the decline of the Maevan queens, to be the author of magic’s dormancy. And so I was the one destined to find and reclaim the stone, to give it back to the Kavanaghs, to let magic flourish again.

      “Do you think you will inherit any more memories from him?” Jourdain asked.

      “No,” I replied after a moment, looking up from the water to meet his concerned gaze. “All of his memories pertained to the Stone of Eventide. Which has been found and given back to the queen.”

      But Jourdain did not appear convinced, and to be honest, neither was I.

      “Well, let us hope that the memories have come to an end,” Jourdain said, clearing his throat. His hand went to his pocket, which I thought was a nervous habit for him until he withdrew a sheathed dirk. “I want you to wear this again,” he said, holding the blade out to me.

      I recognized it. This was the same small dagger he had given me before I crossed the channel to set our revolution into action.

      “You think it necessary?” I asked, accepting it, my thumb touching the buckle that would hold it fast to my thigh.

      He sighed. “It would ease my mind if you wore it, Brienna.”

      I watched him frown—he suddenly appeared so much older in this light. There were more threads of gray in his russet hair and deeper lines in his brow, and suddenly I was the one to feel worried about losing him when I had just gained him as a father.

      “Of course, Father,” I said, tucking the dirk away into my pocket.

      I thought that was all he needed to say to me, and we would begin to walk back to the castle. But Jourdain continued to stand before me, the sunlight dappling his shoulders, and I sensed the words were caught in his throat.

      I braced myself. “Is there something else?”

      “Yes. The grievances.” He paused and took a breath. “I was informed this morning that a large portion of the MacQuinns, mainly those younger than twenty-five, are illiterate.”

      “Illiterate?” I echoed, stunned.

      Jourdain was quiet, but his eyes remained on mine. And then I realized the cause of it.

      “Oh. Brendan Allenach forbid them education?”

      He nodded. “It would be of great help to me if you could begin to gather grievances for the trial. I worry that we will run out of time to appropriately collect and sort them. I have asked Luc to approach the men, and I thought perhaps you could scribe for the women. I understand if it is too much to ask of you, and I—”

      “It is not too much to ask,” I gently interrupted him, sensing his apprehension.

      “I made an announcement at breakfast this morning, for my people to begin to think about if they had any grievances, if they wanted them to be made known at the trial. I believe some will remain quiet, but I know others will wish to have them recorded.”

      I reached out to take his hand. “Whatever I can do to help you, Father.”

      He raised our hands to kiss the backs of my knuckles, and I was touched by the simple act of affection, something that we had not quite reached yet as father and daughter.

      “Thank you,” he rasped, tucking my fingers in the crook of his elbow.

      We walked side by side back along the path, the castle coming into view. I was comfortable with the silence between us—neither of us were known as avid conversationalists—but Jourdain suddenly pointed to a large building on the eastern edge of the demesne, and I squinted against the sun to see it.

      “That’s the loom house,” he explained, glancing down at me. “Most of the MacQuinn women will be there. That is where I would have you start.”

      I did as he asked, only returning to the castle to gather my writing tools. My mind was swarming as I walked the path and approached the loom house; the greatest of my thoughts was hung upon the fact that all of the young MacQuinn people were illiterate, and how devastating that was. Here I had hopes and dreams of beginning a House of Knowledge among them, but in truth, I would need to change my tactic. I would need to offer reading and writing lessons before I even attempted to educate on passion.

      I stopped in the grass before the loom house. It was a long, rectangular structure built of stone, with a shingled roof and beautiful filigreed windows. The back side offered a sharp view of the valley below, where boys were herding sheep. The front door was cracked open, but it did not feel very inviting to me.

      I took a deep breath and roused my courage and stepped into an antechamber. The floors were caked with mud and lined with boots, the walls crowded with hanging scarves and tattered cloaks.

      I could hear the women talking farther inside. I followed the threads of their voices down a narrow corridor, nearly reaching the room in which they were working when I heard my name.

      “Her name is Brienna, not Brianna,” one of the women was saying. I stopped short at the sound, just before the threshold. “I believe she is part Valenian. Her mother’s side.”

      “That explains it, then,” said another woman in a rougher tone.

      That explains what? I thought, my mouth going dry.

      “She’s very pretty,” a dulcet voice stated.

      “Sweet Neeve. You think everyone is pretty.”

      “But it’s truth! I wish I had a cloak like hers.”

      “That’s a passion cloak, love. You would have to go to Valenia and purchase one.”

      “You don’t purchase them. You earn them.”

      My face flushed from eavesdropping, but I could hardly move.

      “Well, at least she doesn’t look like him,” the rough-hewn

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