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“Sit up straight, lad,” the man says, and Fergus does.
He still keeps his hands on his knees, though, because the chair is carved with hounds and lions, and they look like they might chew his fingers off if he gets too close.
“Can you read?”
“Yes.”
Fergus is old enough to know this is unusual, and he can see, from the corner of his eye, the flash of surprise on the man’s face.
“I’m asking you if you can read long sentences, lad. Books, you ken. I don’t care that you recognize your own name on a piece of -”
“I can read.”
“Do not interrupt me.”
“I know English, French and Latin,” Fergus says, unable to help himself, because there is not much in his life he can be happy about, but this - this makes everything better.
Or, almost.
And also, he may be proud of his newfound abilities, but he knows he has to be careful, and that is why he won’t mention he thinks he can also read many other languages.
(All of them, probably.)
The man is getting angry. For the first time since he walked into the room, Fergus looks up, only for a second - if he’s about to get hit, he needs to be ready, to steel himself for the blow so he won’t snivel like a small child.
He’s here to ask for work, after all.
So he looks up, and what he sees makes him pause for a second.
Mother said it over and over again (spat it at him) - You look just like your father. But now he finally sees his father, Fergus thinks they look nothing alike.
Angus McLeod is old and fat, for one thing. You can see he used to have red hair, but only just, because the top of his head is completely bald. And he looks like a knotty oak, somehow. Weather-beaten and strong. Fergus wishes he looked strong. Instead, well - he doesn’t know exactly what his face looks like, but he’s short and thin and all the boys used to push him around and beat him up.
Before he learned to defend himself, that is.
Fergus keeps looking at the man, frowns. He wonders if he should try a light persuasion spell - just something that will make him appear a bit better than he is; like someone one could hire as a scullion, and not - not like the thing he is.
(Miserable, lost, unwanted. Cold.)
But mother always said using magic in front of people was a mistake.
If they burn you, I won’t save you. Good riddance, she’d said that time, dragging him away from the alley, broken glass creaking and complaining under their feet; and Fergus had woken up in the morning to find the trace of her fingers blooming on his arm like those drawings the Old People use to paint on their skins.
Suddenly, the man stands up, moves around with angry determination despite his ruined leg, half-drags himself to the bookcase.
Now, that Fergus has been looking at. The room is lined with them - tall, dark things which hold more books Fergus has ever seen in his life. He knows these are normal books, and mother would probably scoff at them, because there is more power in her tattered grimoire than in all the volumes Angus McLeod and his ancestors have collected in centuries, but still. There is another kind of power in them - feelings and people and birds from the other side of the world and knowledge and Fergus’ hands twitch on his naked knees in his need to read them.
The man puts a beefy hand on a shelf, easing the weight off his bad leg, then hesitates, as if wondering how best to prove Fergus’ lies. His other hand moves on the spines of the books, like someone petting a dog, and then stops on a thick, leather-bound volume.
“Here,” he says, dropping it in Fergus’ lap; and then he walks back behind his desk, sits back into his chair with a hiss of pain.
Fergus hadn’t seen the point in washing: his clothes are dirty, anyway, and they’re all he owns. Also, winter is setting in. Even when mother conjured up the blue flames, their room was very cold, and taking a bath was always a hassle. And now there are no more blue flames, and the snowy gale is already breathing down from the mountains. When he’d stepped out into the alley that morning, Fergus had felt his hair freeze against his scalp; had broken into a run to try and warm himself up.
Now, though, he’s worried he will get soot on this book, and the idea is very nearly unbearable. The thing sits very heavy on his legs, and the metal sigil on the cover blinks up at him, a bit sleepily. It’s like holding a big, friendly cat.
“What are you waiting for? Read,” his father says, and Fergus’ hands clench on the cover.
“From the beginning?” he asks, and there is an exasperated sigh.
“Just pick a bloody page and read, boy.”
With great caution, Fergus opens the book, roughly in the middle. He still remembers when he’d first tried to read mother’s grimoire - the thing had caught fire in his hands, singing his eyebrows and half his hair right off.
It’s your own damn fault, mother had said, when Fergus’ howls had woken her up. Never touch my things. Never. I swear, if you’ve ruined it -
(And the grimoire had been ruined. The page of defensive spells which had flared up in Fergus’ face was gone forever.
I should have drowned you in a bucket, mother had said, her back to him, and Fergus had heard the words before, but they stung every time. It was much better when she beat him. I wish you’d never been born at all.)
This book, though, is not warded. Fergus has read the words on the spine - Plutarchus, Vitae - and wishes he’d be allowed to read all of it, because he’s already wondering, and how could he not - whose lives? And what happened?
The page in front of him is unfriendly at first, the letters all black and spindly; but then, as it happened with the only books mother had left behind (a history of Rome, in Latin, and a French novel about giants), they give up under Fergus’ scrutiny.
“Thus they let their anger and fury take from them the sense of humanity,” he translates, slowly and carefully, “and demonstrated that no beast is more savage than man when possessed with power answerable to his rage.”
The man behind the desk - his father - grunts.
“How did you do that?”
“Mother taught me,” Fergus says, because it’s better than the truth.
“And she thought I would take you in? Make you my heir? She always was a fool.”
Fergus knows there is no place for him here, Latin or no Latin. He thinks about that other time they’d come to this house, freezing and starving, and mother had begged from the kitchen.
Look at him, she’d said, shoving him in front of her; and then she’d closed a hand in his hair, dragged his head back. He’s the master’s son. You must help us.
They hadn’t been allowed inside, then. The cook had given them a basket of hard, misshapen turnips, and sent them on their way.
That had been one week ago.
And the next day, the bad man had come.
“Do you understand what you just read?” his father asks next, and Fergus reads the words again.
“Yes,” he says, with an edge of uncertainty. “Men are dangerous.”
He feels the weight of his father’s gaze on him, but he doesn’t look up.
“How old are you, boy?”
“Ten, sir. I think.”
There is a long pause.
“And what do you want, really?”
Fergus shrugs, shifts on the chair without touching the carved armrests. He’s answered this question already, at the very beginning, and he can’t help but feeling this is a trap of some kind.
“Work, sir,” he says, dutifully.
“And you think you will get it from me?”
Fergus shrugs again.
“Tell me where your mother is.”
“I don’t know.”
“Liar.”
Fergus is not lying. It’s been six days, now. Mother is - she’s gone.
She had forced him to dig the hole, that night, even if the ground was frozen solid, and Fergus only had his pocket knife. And then she’d pushed him aside, chanted and prayed, and next -
“I am not lying.”
“Are you contradicting me?”
“I -”
One moment, they’d been alone, the outline of the Monadhliath just barely visible against the black sky; and then, the man had been there, smiling at them both.
And what can I do for you on this fine evening? he’d said, and when mother had asked for true magic, his eyes had flashed red.
“You are lying. Your mother is a witch, and we will burn her, you ken. We’ve waited long enough already.”
Fergus twitches, and the metal on the cover of the book scratches his knee.
The man opens his mouth, closes it again; there are - things inside his heart, screaming to come out, but he swallows them instead.
“Fergus, lad - tell me where she is and I’ll take you in.”
Fergus almost sees the colours in those words. Heavy grey wool and the flickering of a fire and the very dark red of cooked meat.
He shrugs, helplessly.
“I don’t know.”
Magic is expensive, the man had said, looking mother up and down. How much can you pay?
You take souls, don’t you? So take mine.
The man had walked closer; reached out, passed his fingers through mother’s hair. He’d been much different from the people in the village. He’d worn very fine clothes, and his features had been clean, refined. He’d looked, most of all, like the statue of Saint Andrew that stood by the cemetery.
Your soul is damaged. It’s worth nothing to me, he’d said, almost happily, and mother had bowed her head, as if in prayer.
I have a son, she’d said next, after a long pause, and Fergus -
“My wife is dead. My herd is missing. I will have my revenge,” his father says, low and dangerous, and Fergus wonders if the time has come to use the hex bag in his pocket.
He’d thought he would be able to bear it, but now he realizes he can’t. He won’t be hit. Not again. Never again.
“Mother left,” he says; and then, very carefully, he closes the book on his lap. “I don’t think she will come back. Rent will be due soon, and I thought -”
“You thought wrong. You are no son of mine. I owe you nothing,” his father says, sitting back into his chair.
Fergus juts his chin out.
“I meant to ask for work, sir. Not charity.”
“You are no son of mine,” his father says again, and this time Fergus sees it clearly - the grief, the pain, the sense of humiliation; the rage.
This man won’t help him.
In fact, he would stab Fergus’ neck right now if he thought that would bring Rowena back.
And Fergus is worried and angry and disappointed, but not surprised.
He’s heard the rumours: mother did kill the man’s wife, after all.
“Get out of my sight.”
Fergus stands up, puts the heavy book on the desk, pats its cover, almost absently, wondering how the story inside ends, and the price he’s paid to find out.
It seems wrong that you’re getting nothing out of this, the man had said, and then he’d touched his hair as well; a slow, loving gesture that had left Fergus trembling.
What do you want, child? the man had asked next, his hand now cupping Fergus’ face, his thumb sliding across Fergus’ lower lip.
I wish I could read, Fergus had replied, and he’d almost tasted the man’s skin - a sweet, dangerous taste. I like stories.
The man had pushed his thumb inside Fergus’ mouth, then, and Fergus had looked at mother, hoping she would tell him what to do; had seen her walk away, not back towards the village, but South. Fergus could only just see her, because her dark clothes were already melting in the black winter’s night.
I will give you stories, the man had said, almost gently; and then he’d kneeled in front of Fergus and kissed him on the mouth.
Fergus had closed his eyes, and flashes of light and memories (not his own) had whispered and crowded inside his head.
(A shimmering blue lake which went on and on and disappeared against the horizon. A woman with white eyes. A place that was cold and blood and smiling shadows.
The blade of a knife.)
“Get out,” his father says, and Fergus looks around one last time - he’s in awe of the beauty of this room - of the framed paintings, and the statues, and the severe, tantalizing books - and then leaves.