A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [62]
“Well . . . I don’t know what horrible things happened to you before I met you, but after . . . well, you were dreadfully ill at the abbey.” I glanced covertly at him, but he seemed not to be bothered at the thought of Wentworth prison, and what had been done to him there that had caused the illness. “Hmm. And after Culloden—you said you had a terrible fever then, from your wounds, and thought you might die, only Jenny forced you—I mean, nursed you through it.”
“And then Laoghaire shot me,” he said wryly. “And you forced me through it. Likewise, when the snake bit me.” He considered for a moment.
“I had the smallpox when I was a wean, but I think I wasna in danger of dying then; they said it was a light case. So only four times, then.”
“What about the day I first met you?” I objected. “You nearly bled to death.”
“Oh, I did not,” he protested. “That was no but a wee scratch.”
I lifted one brow at him, and leaning over to the hearth, scooped a ladle of aromatic stew into a bowl. It was rich with the juices of rabbit and venison, swimming in a thick gravy spiced with rosemary, garlic, and onion. So far as my tastebuds were concerned, all was forgiven.
“Have it your way,” I said. “But wait—what about your head? When Dougal tried to kill you with an ax. Surely that’s five?”
He frowned, accepting the bowl.
“Aye, I suppose you’re right,” he said, seeming displeased. “Five, then.”
I regarded him gently over my own bowl of stew. He was very large, solid, and beautifully formed. And if he was a bit battered by circumstance, that merely added to his charm.
“You’re a very hard person to kill, I think,” I said. “That’s a great comfort to me.”
He smiled, reluctant, but then reached out and lifted his glass in salute, touching it first to his own lips, then to mine.
“We’ll drink to that, Sassenach, shall we?”
14
PEOPLE OF THE
SNOWBIRD
GUNS,” Bird-who-sings-in-the-morning said. “Tell your King we want guns.”
Jamie suppressed the urge to reply, “Who doesn’t?” for a moment, but then gave in to it, surprising the war chief into a blink of startlement, followed by a grin.
“Who, indeed?” Bird was a short man, shaped like a barrel, and young for his office—but shrewd, his affability no disguise to his intelligence. “They all tell you this, all the village war chiefs, eh? Of course they do. What do you tell them?”
“What I can.” Jamie lifted one shoulder, let it fall. “Trade goods are certain, knives are likely—guns are possible, but I cannot yet promise them.”
They were speaking a slightly unfamiliar dialect of Cherokee, and he hoped he had got right the manner of indicating probability. He did well enough with the usual tongue in casual matters of trade and hunting, but the matters he dealt in here would not be casual. He glanced briefly at Ian, who was listening closely, but evidently what he’d said was all right. Ian visited the villages near the Ridge frequently, and hunted with the young men; he shifted into the tongue of the Tsalagi as easily as he did into his native Gaelic.
“So, well enough.” Bird settled himself more comfortably. The pewter badge Jamie had given him as a present glinted on his breast, firelight flickering over the broadly amiable planes of his face. “Tell your King about the guns—and tell him why we need them, eh?”
“You wish me to tell him that, do you? Do you think he will be willing to send you guns with which to kill his own people?” Jamie asked dryly. The incursion of white settlers across the Treaty Line into the Cherokee lands was a sore point, and he risked something by alluding to it directly, rather than addressing Bird’s other needs for guns: to defend his village from raiders—or to go raiding himself.
Bird shrugged in reply.
“We can kill them without guns, if we want to.” One eyebrow lifted a little, and Bird’s lips pursed, waiting to see what Jamie made of this statement.
He supposed Bird meant to shock him. He merely nodded.
“Of course you can. You are wise enough not to.”
“Not yet.” Bird’s lips relaxed into a charming smile. “You tell the King