Kingmaker's Sword (Rune Blades of Celi) by Ann Marston

their father as he dismounted in the courtyard, the youngest with a finger in her mouth.
    Medroch stepped forward to meet us as we mounted the steps. He held out his hands and Cullin put both of his into them, bowing slightly from the waist.
    “Welcome home, Cullin,” Medroch said, his voice deep and mellow. His eyes, grey as smoke, clear as water, turned to me. “Leydon’s son?” he asked.
    “Aye,” Cullin said. “I’ve brought him home.”
    Medroch searched me up and down in frank appraisal. “Ye favour your father,” he told me. “But you’ve your mother’s eyes. Be welcome here, Kian dav Leydon. This is your home.” He held out his hands to me.
    Following Cullin’s example, I placed my hands in his and bowed. “Thank you,” I said, and my voice sounded rusty and hoarse.
    Cullin greeted his brother warmly, placed a kiss on Linnet’s upturned cheek, then presented me to them. In a daze, I acknowledged the introductions and stood in a stupor as Linnet kissed my cheek and bid me welcome. When I turned again to Cullin, I found him standing with his arms around Gwynna, kissing her with a fervency and enthusiasm that belied his wry phrase, agreeing to disagree. He finally stepped away from her, bent to scoop up both children into his arms and brought them over to present them to me. They were shy, but both gave me smiles.
    “There’s a meal waiting,” Linnet said at last. “Cullin, take Kian to the bath house and both of you get cleaned up. We’ll serve the meal when you’re finished.”
    ***
    Cullin and Gwynna retired to their suite for three days, appearing only occasionally for meals. Again, it didn’t quite fit with Cullin’s ironic description of their marriage. When I commented on their absence the first evening Cullin and Gwynna failed to appear for dinner, Rhodri threw some light on it for me.
    “It’s a strange relationship, ye ken,” he said, smiling. “For the first while, they canna keep their hands off each other. Ye couldna get a sheet of parchment between them.” He laughed. “You wait. By the end of the fortnight, they’ll still be standing close, but it’ll be nose to nose and toe to toe, arguing about everything from the way Cullin trims his beard to the way Gwynna mends the girls’ smocks. They won’t admit it, but they love each other with a grand passion. They just canna live with the other for long.”
    I made a noncommittal reply and returned to my meal. But I smiled.
    ***
    Sympathetically aware of my sense of strangeness, everybody left me alone for the next few days, letting me adjust at my own speed. I wandered the Clanhold, exploring the rooms and corridors, studying the rows of portraits hanging in the Great Hall. I paused before one of them, a painting of a young man, redheaded, grey-eyed, with a smile very much like Cullin’s, but clean-shaven. He wore a bonnet with a sprig of rowan tucked behind the clan badge, the plaid secured at his shoulder by an ornate brooch fashioned to look like a leaping stag with a large, yellow stone glittering between its great rack of antlers.
    “My son, Leydon,” Medroch said at my shoulder, startling me. “Your father. That was done just before he left the Clanhold, about three years before you were born.”
    “Is there one of my mother?” I asked, still looking at the portrait. Even though I could see the likeness to myself in him, Leydon dav Medroch was a stranger. I could not remember him at all.
    “We have no portrait of Twyla,” Medroch said quietly. “She never wanted one done.”
    I nodded and he left me to continue my exploring.
    The language came back first. I don’t know when it was I suddenly realized that I not only understood everything being said around me, I was as fluent with Tyran as they. Cullin had used the language with me during our journey south, but I had stumbled and stuttered when I tried to speak it. Here at the Clanhold, it came naturally and easily, and I pondered that development in