Bloodstone by Gillian Philip

belonging drags
on your scalp.
    I’d been starting to drown. I knew that now.
    I was grinning as I dismounted and led the roan and Branndair into the copse of rowans between two hills. Me grinning was not a sight beloved of everyone, so I wasn’t too surprised when
the flat of a blade tilted my chin up. Its quivering edge tickled my throat.
    ‘What’s so funny, Murlainn?’
    ‘Eili.’ I put a finger between the blade and my jugular and eased it away. ‘It’s nice to see you too.’
    ‘Well, you can’t expect me to recognise you. It’s been that long.’
    ‘Ha ha. Where’s Conal?’
    Sionnach had come to my side, silently, and with a reproachful sidelong glance at me, he took his sister’s hand and pressed it to his forehead. Formalities over, she hugged him, then
extended the same hand to me. Absolutely impassive.
    Bloody hell. I greeted her properly, but with a very bad grace.
    Now she was smiling. Her dark red hair was still cropped short, and it still looked as if she cut it herself, in the dark, with one of the two swords on her back; but even in a filthy mood, she
was as beautiful as she always was. She looked beyond us, to where Torc was holding the horses.
    Finn and Jed had dismounted with wildly different degrees of grace. Jed positively thudded to the ground, his knees nearly buckling. He wore a thuggishly murderous scowl: in other words, he
looked terrified.
    ‘First things first,’ I said. ‘Do something about her hand, will you? I’m in enough trouble as it is.’
    Eili strode up to Finn, seized her wrist and examined the bloodily ripped hand. ‘You’re not kidding, Murlainn. Your horse had her, did it? Cù Chaorach’s going to love
that.’
    Torc gave Finn a bewildered look. ‘You know her?’
    ‘I know who she is.’ Eili smiled, not very pleasantly. ‘I’ve had the pants bored off me looking at photographs.’
    ‘Oh no.’ Torc paled.
    Eili’s grip looked light, but I could see Finn trying and failing to wrench her hand away, panic starting to spark in her eyes. I was about to object – honestly I was – when
Eili rubbed her thumb hard across the ugly half-congealed wound, splitting it open.
    Finn’s eyes widened as the blood flowed, but was clearly too shocked even to squeak – until Eili pinched the gaping rip hard with her fingertips. Then she gave a howl of pain.
    I winced in sympathy. True healing hurt, and Eili’s bedside manner did leave a lot to be desired.
    Finn recovered fast though, clamping her lips together, blinking back tears, staring at the sealed wound. ‘Thanks,’ she muttered shakily. ‘I think.’
    ‘Don’t mention it,’ said Eili. ‘That was easy enough. Well, Seth, I’ll leave you to explain this one to your brother. She’s your Finn.’
    ‘She bloody is not,’ I retorted automatically.
    I regretted my tactlessness, but ‘Too right I’m not,’ Finn snapped, snatching her hand out of Eili’s.
    ‘And don’t worry yourself sick about my fate at the hands of Cù Chaorach,’ I added spitefully. ‘I’m dead already.’
    Torc snorted a laugh; Eili gave a cold little smile. ‘Ah yes. ‘Stella’.’
    ‘She’ll understand,’ said Torc, still grinning.
    ‘She’ll understand,’ I said. ‘And then she’ll cut my throat.’
    ‘Good.’ Finn shot me a look of pure loathing.
    Eili folded her arms and nodded at Jed, who was goggling in disbelief at Finn’s hand. ‘What are we going to do with him?’
    ‘Take him along.’ Sionnach shrugged.
    ‘You bloody will not.’ Jed’s head snapped up, as if he’d woken for the first time since the Reids’ steading. He backed off a step, then two, shaking off
Torc’s steadying hand. ‘What is this place? I need to go home. Show me how
now
.’
    ‘Not possible,’ I told him silkily. ‘Maybe later. If you’re good.’
    Even in the darkness I saw him pale with rage. ‘I saw that farm. I saw what was there!’
    ‘Your powers of observation slay me.’
    ‘Shut up, you snake.’