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you be healthy would ye still be wanting it?"
"Aye," I said. "If a god came to me and offered a lir in exchange for an eye,
I would give him both of them."
"I am sorry," he said abruptly. "Prince or no, you are an honorable man and
due better treatment than this."
Hope rose. "Then you will let me send word to my father?'*
"No."
I reached for his throat; closed my fists on air and
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shook them in his face. "Gods, Erinnish, do you do this to torture me? You are
worse than the Ihlini!"
" Twould not serve my father," Liam declared, but I
saw the glint of anger in his eyes.
"Your father!" I spat. "That old fool? You yourself call him an old hound with
rotten teeth."
Uam caught my left arm in an iron grasp and shut off all the bloodflow. "In my
place, would you be allowing me to send to mine? Would you risk bringing an
army of shapeehangers into your land? I think not, puppy I
think not at all!" Liam shook me. It was a measure of his strength. It was a
measure of his anger. "Shea cannot be sending to Donal, or he leaves us open
to the arts you shapeehangers claim!"
"Gods, I wish I had them!" I shouted back. "I would break you like a rotten
piece of bone!"
A quiet voice intruded. But it was not Shea's familiar growl. "Sometimes I'm
wishing someone would break my brother. His arrogance knows no bounds."
Liam thrust me against the wall as he released my arm.
I winced as spine met stone, but stood upright almost immediately. I tried to
ignore the numbness in my arm.
Liam laughed aloud as he turned back to me and slumped against the wall, all
his anger banished. "She is back, lad. We'll be knowing no,peace at all." The
laugh-
ter died away. "She is Deirdre of Erinn, Niall. My sister/'
She was a feminine version of Liam, but lacking all the rough edges. Like him
she was tall, but in her his bulk was slendemess. The hair was the same
brilliant, brassy gold; unbound, the wind blew it away from her face. She wore
green to match her eyes and no jewelry at all. She
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"Deirdre comes and goes as she pleases," Liam said casually. "Shea gives her
inordinate freedom."
"For a woman?" she demanded. "He gives as much to you; more, being a man." Her
features were more mas-
culine than feminine, bearing the father's prominent stamp, but it did not
lessen her striking looks. It merely gave them a different quality. "Why
should I remain in this drafty pile of bricks and mortar when there is a world
to see?"
"The world being Erinn," Liam retorted. "Give it up, lass; while the war
lasts, you'll not be leaving the island."
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*This war will last forever." She pulled hair away from her eyes and clasped
it, forming a single thick plume.
Her nose bore two golden freckles. Her cheekbones were sharply angled as much
as Liam's, I thought, but his were mostly hidden in his beard and the wind
whipped color into her cream-fair Erinnish skin. She smiled a warm,
conspiratorial smile, as if we were boon compan-
ions embarked on a reckless childhood scheme. "Can you really break Liam for
me?" she asked. "Uke a piece of rotten bone?"
"Given the opportunity." And yet I knew I could not.
Defined brows rose consideringly- "Then I shall be seeing you get it." She
glanced at Liam. "This is the hostage prince?"
Liam winced. "Guest, Deudre . . . Niall is our guest."
She shrugged. "Hostage, guest, captive. . . ." Deirdre looked at me. "You are
Niall of Homana. My father told me you were here."
"Against my wishes, aye."
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She folded her amis beneath her breasts, tucking hair out of the wind's
insistent fingers. "He did not tell me why. Will you?"
Liam reached out a booted foot and gently tapped the toe of her slipper. "If
he was not telling you, lass, there is a reason for it."
"I am a woman. Shea forgets I am his daughter with as many wits as you." Her
teasing smile was fleet and fading; she reserved most of it for me. "Why are
you here, Niall of Homana?"
I wanted to answer sharply, bitterly; to strike out at another of Shea's proud
eagles. But I did not. This one was not deserving of it.
"I was shipwrecked. Shea keeps me because of my value to his enemy.'*
Her brows quirked. "To Alaric? What value would
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In her the lilting cadence was softer, more attractive, though I did not doubt
women longed to hear Liam's as well. "I am to wed his daughter."
"Ah," she said softly, as if in discovery. And then she laughed aloud, turning
into the wall to stare out at Atvia.
"So, my kinswoman will precede me into the marriage bed after all."
"Were you expecting otherwise?" Liam asked in af-
fected irritation. "You send all the suitors away."
"Are you formally betrothed?" Deirdre asked me, plainly ignoring her brother.
"I am proxy-wed."
She nodded thoughtfully. "I was betrothed, once. When
I was very young."
Liam growled deep in his throat. "You should have let me kill him, lass, for
breaking the betrothal."
"I wanted him to break it. His heart was lost to an-
other." She shrugged. "He went home to Ellas perfectly happy to leave me far
behind."
"EllasF I looked at her sharply. "He was EIlasian?"
"Evan," she said. "Brother to High King Lachlan. He came here because his
brother sent him, hoping to make an alliance. But there was another woman for
Evan. He wanted none of me."
"Evan wed a kinswoman of mine!" I told her. "Meghan.
Daughter to Finn, my father's uncle."
Deirdre watched me over an angled shoulder. She frowned a little, then
shrugged. "I'm not knowing the names. Someday you will have to tell me a
little of
Homanan history."
I laughed. "Lady, there will be no 'someday' if I have any say. I intend to go
to Atvia."
Deirdre smiled sympathetically. "A futile intention, I'm thinking. Shea will
never allow it."
"There is an alternative." Liam turned to face me squarely with the wall at
his back. "Make a new alliance, lad. One with Erinn instead."
I sighed. "I am proxy-wed, Liam. In Homanan law, it is the same as being truly
married . . . and we do not end proper marriages. If I did not wed Gisella
now, having already been proxy-wed to her representative, it would be
justification for Alaric to cry war and sail to Homana with every soldier he
can muster." I shook my head. "I
am not a fool, Erinnish."
Besides, there is the prophecy . . . if I were not to wed
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