Sons of Ireland: Sligo, 1973

April 6, 1973
Sligo, Republic of Ireland

In the end, it was Ciaran - or rather, his death - that impelled Beatrice's own personal rebellion. Her father had planted the seeds himself, whether he knew it or not, and Liam had nurtured them with gentle encouragement and good-natured teasing, but it was Ciaran - headstrong, rebellious, and a bit egocentric - that brought the seeds to fruition. He'd talked her into sticking with the rebellion in the north, and into joining the IRA, and into following him into the Provisional IRA when the split happened... and the one time she hadn't let him talk her into going, he was killed.

She suspected she'd upset Liam when he called to tell her the news; for a long moment, she couldn't summon words to answer him. The only thing that would come was grief and an empty, targetless rage. Eventually she summoned up words, to assure him she was fine, to find out the date for the wake and the funeral, but she wasn't fine and they both knew it.

That was around lunchtime. She didn't actually manage to eat lunch; she stood in the kitchen for a long while, staring at the fridge, but in the end she went upstairs and curled up on her bed with a photo album Brianna had given her for Christmas. She'd never really noticed Brianna with a camera, and yet the entire thing was full of photos of the four of them - and interspersed were black-and-white images of events they'd been to. Here were photos of Derry in 1969, and again in later years, and photos of Belfast, and of County Tyrone, and of battles in progress and about to start. This time through, though, Beatrice's eyes were drawn to images of Ciaran - here in the group, here alone - and especially to ones of herself and Ciaran. The shots of the two of them while they were dating made tears rise to her eyes - and the ones afterwards, where they had drifted back into being friends, were nearly as bad.

A car horn startled her out of her reverie just before dinnertime; she scrambled out of bed, dropping the album on the comforter, and clattered down the stairs as the horn went off again. She flung open the door to see Liam, leaning on the open door of his car. His hair was slicked back and wet, probably from a shower, and sadness had put tension into the set of his face. He was in a simple white button-down shirt and black slacks. "Ye'd best be after gettin' dressed, Beatrice, or ye're going to be missin' the wake," he greeted her, and the grief was putting a little something extra into his accent as well.

"Liam, I - "

"Don't ye dare be after tellin' me ye don't think ye're goin' t'go," he interrupted sternly. "There's no 'lady in th' tower' today - no, nor on Sunday either. Ye're goin' if I have t'come in there an' dress ye meself."

Beatrice shut her mouth with a snap and bowed her head slightly; he knew her too well. "I'm goin'," she said after a moment.

"An' hurry," Liam added. "I mean fer us t'be th' first ones there."

She turned on her heel and marched upstairs, leaving the door wide open in a moment of mild exasperation. There was no point in closing it, really, not if Liam intended to come barging in if she didn't move quickly enough - which she rather suspected he would. She had to rummage in her armoires a bit before she found a dark, calf-length dress that looked like it might suit; shoes and a purse were easy enough after that, and then she ran a brush through her hair and marched back downstairs.

Liam had retreated back into his car in the face of the chilly day; he barely let her get seated before he started the car moving. "His Da says they have t'cremate him," he said without preamble as they turned onto the road. "He was up in Belfast, got caught up in a riot, an' was too close t'a pipe bomb when it went off."

Beatrice closed her eyes and leaned her head against the seat. "He wanted me t'go," she answered, suddenly feeling guilty. "He was up here Monday, beggin' me t'go with him, an' I was too busy t'go."

"Too busy doin' what?"

"I had a manuscript t'finish." She shut her eyes tighter. "I should have gone."

Liam sighed and reached over to pat her hand. "Don't start blamin' yerself, Beatrice. If ye'd gone, who's t'say we wouldn't be buryin' two o'ye on Sunday?"

She sighed. "Aye, I know." A little corner of her mind, in a crystal-clear voice, answered the question with a simple, Sorceress. Her eyes opened slowly, until she stared at the ceiling of the car. She wasn't really seeing it, though; she was following the train of thought slowly. You're a mage, you stupid girl. You could have shielded him from shrapnel. You could have controlled the flame, sent it another direction. You could have slowed him in the air so he didn't even break a bone. And you stayed home instead...

"Whatever it is ye're after broodin' on over there, ye'd best quit it," Liam said suddenly, interrupting her line of self-accusation. "We'll be there in just a minute or two, an' ye're goin' to have to take off th' guilt face an' let the grief one show again or people are goin' t' think it's you that killed him."

Beatrice winced and lifted her head again. "Sorry, Liam, it's just..."

"Ye feel bad for not goin', sure," he finished. "An' I just told ye why ye shouldn't be." He turned down the driveway to Liam's father's house and then held a hand out to her. "He asked me t'go too, ye know? If ye're goin' t' be feelin' guilty, then I have t'do the same, right?"

She took his hand in hers without thinking about it. "Don't you start," she answered with a touch of a sad smile. "An' don't you make me repeat what you were just after tellin' me."

He returned her smile with one of his own, just as sadly. "That's better. D'ye figure Brianna's already here?"

"Aye, an' likely more broken up than th' two of us put together," she agreed quietly. "She told me once, right after Ciaran an' I stopped sleepin' together, that she was glad it had ended, that she'd always rather fancied him herself, an' that she planned t'marry him if she could ever get him t'see her as a girl an' not a friend."

Liam shook his head. "Oh, aye, I heard that story. Only after she an' I, we'd called it quits - of course." He parked in a grassy area next to the kennels and shut off the car.

"Of course." Beatrice turned to look at the house, and then turned back to Liam. "I'm not sure I'm ready for this..."

"I know." He sighed and leaned his forehead against the steering wheel for a moment. "Ahhh, Beatrice, we're too young to be losin' folks already," he whispered after a moment.

She quietly switched which hand was holding his and laid the other on his shoulder. "I know, Liam - believe me, I know..."

His hand tightened on hers. "Ye're still up t'that sort o'thing, aren't ye."

"I am," she answered softly.

He turned his head to look at her. "Ye're goin' to be careful, an' smarter than Ciaran - God rest his soul - am I right?" There was a fresh note of steel in his voice, buried deep in the quietness of it.

"Aye, ye're right." She understood the subtext that he'd put there for her to hear - that Ciaran wouldn't be there to protect her, and that Liam himself already had too much responsibility to spend more than the time he had already on the rebels and the North.

"Good. Let's be goin' in."

April 9, 1973

Beatrice was pacing.

She didn't like pacing, but it was better than talking to herself, which is what she'd been doing earlier. She had started in her room, and now it was a circuit: bedroom to hall, hall to stairs, take the stairs down, go left through the sitting room and the dining room and then another left to go down the cellar stairs, an abrupt about-face in the middle of the workspace and the circles on the floor, and then back the way she'd come.

Friday night had been bad. Liam insisted on staying until everyone else had left, which was somewhere around three in the morning; she'd eaten, somewhere in there, and had just enough to drink to be tipsy before Liam cut her off. She didn't blame him - she'd been on her way to being a rather foul-tempered drunk.

By the time she had made her way out of bed on Saturday, the grief was thoroughly entrenched. She kept seeing things - a t-shirt, a necklace, a bit of artwork - that Ciaran had given her or made for her, and in the end, she had to retreat outside to the stable to cry herself out. She did such a thorough job of it that she was sick in the sawdust and shavings of the one usable stall, and she only managed a bath before crawling into her bed shortly after sundown to sleep.

Sunday had dawned clear and crisp; she had worn her darkest and her best to the church, and she was so pale even without the dark contrast that she was asked more than once if she was about to pass out. She and Brianna and Liam sat together, holding hands through the mass and the eulogy and then through the internment in the graveyard outside. They had stayed there a while longer afterwards, quietly grieving; Liam was grim through the whole thing, even when the two girls rested their heads on his shoulders, and Brianna cried silently.

It had been late afternoon when Beatrice made it home. She had taken a walk down the hillsides behind her house, to the shore of the waters below, and sat skipping rocks in silence until it was too dark to see them cross the water. The moon overhead was waxing, but not yet halfway full, so she had made her way home by magelight. Again she had made it to bed hours before the usual, too sad to do more than make a sandwich to fill her stomach before she slept.

And now it was Monday. She had crawled into a pair of well-worn jeans and one of Ciaran's t-shirts - green and white, emblazoned with "You are now entering Free Derry", the irony of which was not lost on her. And then she started thinking.

Beatrice knew that she thought too much. She knew it in an abstract way on her own, and Liam was fond of telling her the same thing. But she couldn't help herself; when something bad happened, she had to think it through, had to worry the sense out of it and find root causes.

Ciaran's death had been preventable, she knew that. All it would have taken was one moment of ignoring her father's rules for her to save him. She could have done it in just one spell - a flashy one, to be sure, but just one spell. Maybe it would have been a levitation spell. Or maybe it would have been the fire shield. It would have had to be a quick spell, though, so levitation would have worked better than the fire shield or a regular shield... He would have noticed it, of course, but she didn't have a way to prevent that, really. The best solution would have been to drop the fire shield on him and then heal him from any shrapnel.

Except that Beatrice didn't know any healing spells, because her father either didn't know any or refused to teach them to her.

Either way, it would have meant going with him. And she hadn't gone because of the manuscript, and because of the sudden conviction that her father was going to arrive soon. She knew that not being there when he arrived wasn't the best tactic to take; she'd tried it a few times, to varying - and uniformly unpleasant - consequences.

She stopped on the stairs finally and sat down, halfway up. "An' that's what it comes down to, isn't it?" she asked the empty house aloud. "Him. Me father. Prince Brand of Amber."

The house didn't answer, which she had expected, and neither did her father - which she was relieved by, as she'd halfway expected him to appear as though summoned by his name. She examined that bit of relief for a long moment, analyzing the irrationality of it, and then pushed it away in frustration at her own paranoia. "He's not a fae from one o'the old stories," she muttered under her breath. "He's just an arse with world-walking powers."

She leaned back on the steps and stared at the ceiling, immersing herself in her memories of him. She gathered them all together and flipped through them like they were a picture-book, one after another, faster and faster - seeing again the beauty and the terror of them... cooking in the middle of the night and verbal assaults for simple mistakes... moments of shared art and the ripping of canvases... lessons and lectures and impassioned rants... moments by fireside as she typed and he read, and moments of fire and fury...

It was the latter that was starting to seep into her. For all the variations of good and bad, there was a theme she could see - a theme that added up to the fact that she was still here and still relatively powerless, despite the fact that she'd come of age years before. With Power, she could have saved Ciaran... Hadn't her father told her something about probability...?

She summoned up the memory, an old one, and his voice and watched it warily. "Power over Shadow includes power over probability, Beatrice," he had said as they stood at the back door, watching the rain. "If something is probable, a properly instructed and empowered child of Amber can make it happen. It is probable that it will snow today, for example."

"But Father," the child that Beatrice had been objected. "It's not winter anymore."

He had looked down at her with a smile as fat white flakes had started to fall. "It is close enough to winter that snow is possible."

"Probablility," she murmured aloud. And then, louder, "Damn it. It was as probable as not that Ciaran would die. It was as probable as not that he would be hurt. I could have made it so he survived..." Her voice dropped again, to a whisper. "If I had the power to do it. If I had been there."

She shut her eyes, hot and angry tears burning in them. "Think it through. He's got t'be keepin' you here for a reason, right? Probably those siblings of his, th' ones he's always runnin' down." She frowned. "Th' ones that cannot possibly be as horrible as he tried t'tell me. They can't. Kings, they can be after lockin' up their own children if they're insane; surely me grandfather th' king would have done that instead o'lettin' them get power t'go where they would...

"Unless..." she continued after a moment, soft and low. "Unless he's as bad as they, which is what Father, he's been after tellin' me. Except there's no way that me father is always right, damn it." She shifted, and then turned to lay up the stairway, staring at the top step. "He doesn't know everythin', an' he canna possibly be always right. If he knew everythin', he'd have shown up by now an' I'd be gettin' an earful. An' if he doesna know everythin', he canna always be right. So if his siblings, they canna be that bad, why am I still without th' power he's promised is mine?"

She contemplated that for a while in silence. When she did speak again, it was vehement. "There is no bloody reason!" She half-rose and half-flung herself to her feet and resumed her pacing, angry now. "There's only so much that can be done with th' sorcery, an' how many times has he told me that? An' th' cards, the Trumps, they're not goin' t' work until I've th' power. There's nothin' else he could be after teachin' me that's not goin' t'need that."

She turned the corner into the cellar stairway and swore quietly. "An' I know he's clever enough t'be after sneakin' me in if he really wanted t'keep me away from his brothers an' sisters an' th' grandfather. So he's just doin' it because he can, because he's after likin' th' control; I canna see another reason for it. Bastard!" All her pent-up emotion fell into the word, and it was louder than she had intended; it echoed in the big stone room and she stopped short and flinched at it. "Tuilli, that's what th' old folks would be after sayin'," she muttered after a moment. "An' that's not nearly so satisfyin' a word."

Beatrice stood there for a moment, just in the center of the area where she'd always had lessons. "He has t'know that I'm goin' to be after figurin' this out," she told the circles on the floor. "He's made it no secret that he knows I'm intelligent, an' that he takes it int'account. He has t'know that I'm more eager than not t'take the trial an' be free of him." She started moving again, walking around and around in the space between the circles. "Which means..." she said slowly, "that he's got some need t'keep me under control. Some use for me."

She stopped short again, staring at the worktable and its oddments without really seeing them. "We've always been after fightin' about th' battle spells," she told the room in a quiet voice. "He hates it, he does, that I don't want t'be learnin' them. I learned a few because I knew I had to, an' I've improvised a few more... But that means that, as like as not, I've made a right mess of any plans he had t'use me as artillery... Not that he'd be after needin' me for that; he's more than able t'be destroyin' things his own self."

She walked a couple of steps and stopped again as another thought struck. "He is a Prince, an' he says that me grandfather, he hasn't been after choosin' anyone t'be followin' him onto th' throne. Maybe he's after thinkin' that if he has an heir, he'd be able t'get that..." She frowned. "Only he's been after mentionin' cousins once or twice, though he won't tell me more than that. An' th' way he talks about th' aunts that aren't Fiona, I'm not goin' t'be tellin' meself that he thinks I'm an appropriate heir..."

Again she started walking, and it was a long while later before she stopped circling to stare off into space. "I don't know enough about what he's after doin' when he's not here. There could be a million things he's thinkin' I'd be useful for." She wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly ill at ease. "He could be after thinkin' of sacrificin' me somewhere..."

She stood still a while longer. "I don't think I'm after bein' used," she whispered finally. "No," and that was stronger. "I'm not after bein' used." And then, "Damn him. Bastard!" And that was as vehement as the earlier one - but this time she didn't flinch.

"Can I..." she faltered there, and moved to sit down. She sat in the wooden chair that had always been hers - and then, in a flare of rebelliousness, made a noise that was almost a snarl, rose, and flopped down carelessly across the much softer chair that her father always sat in. She threw her legs across one arm, leaned back against the other, and contemplated a spot in the air somewhat above and past her knees. "Askin', it hasn't gotten me anywhere. No, not even if I begged. So I'm goin' to have t'convince him another way..."

Her head tipped just slightly to one side as she considered ways of doing just that. "Physical, that's not goin' to be an option. He's made sure o'that." It was a softly bitter statement, and she shook her head slightly. "I can't just run... He'll follow, an' those I run to, they'll be hurt." She shook her head again. "Magic..."

Silence again, as she reviewed the spells she knew. "A binding," she said slowly, "that's not goin' to work for long. An' I canna convince him of anythin' if I'm just hidin' behind shields. If I'm after attackin'..." She bowed her head slightly for a moment, and then her chin came up angrily as the rebellious feeling came flooding back. "Maybe I'll be after provin' that I'm ready. Or maybe I'll chase him off. An' that, it's goin' to be no bad thing. Th' bastard," and she took a certain pleasure in saying the word again, "he doesn't need t'be here. He let me be born here, an' let me grow up here - it's me own world. An' if it stays that way, if I canna ever leave... so be it."

She ran her mind back over the spells again, and again, considering which to use and which to not use, her anger building and fading over and over again like a tidal wave. A long while later, she rose and went outside to improvise a ward on the property, to let her know just when her father arrived again...