Cain’s gaze slid along the strong walls of Girnigoe, walls his father and grandfather had built to show the strength of the Sinclairs. In the days when Sinclairs still had to defend themselves from sieges and raids, murdering and striking fear into the hearts of other clans was the way to show strength. But those ways cost many lives, lives that could be used to create a strong Scotland. Cain saw past the petty problems of foolish neighbors to the larger issue of land-greedy countries like England, France, and Spain. If Scotland continued to tear itself apart instead of unifying, there would be no army of Scotland left to defend her borders.

When Cain didn’t say anything, Bàs continued. “Ye are nothing like Da,” he said. “And I am furiously happy about that. I would wager a guess that Gideon is, too.”

Cain looked at his youngest sibling. Bàs, with his quiet words and deep eyes, as if he felt every strike he laid into another person. He nodded. “I am doing things differently, and Joshua likes the old ways.”

“Send him to war in the northern isles while ye create alliances here,” Bàs said.

Cain rubbed the back of his neck and turned toward the keep beyond the bailey wall. Day was ending, and he could see candlelight in some of the windows high up. One would be the window of his chamber where Ella took her bath. “Aye. Perhaps I should.”

“Because right now,” Bàs said, motioning to several of the guards in the bailey to help with the grain, “ye have a lass to see, one that makes ye smile more than I have ever witnessed.”

Cain lowered his gaze back to him. “I smile?”

“Aye,” Bàs answered. “I never thought ye knew how.”

Cain laughed. “Little brother, it is a new world. One where Sinclairs do not massacre innocents, our sister has freedom enough to get herself into terrible trouble, and the chief smiles.”

Bàs walked with him toward the keep. Perhaps his youngest brother would stay the night instead of riding off to his cabin alone in the woods. “I did not know our mother,” Bàs said as they stepped through the entryway. “But, Cain,”—he stopped to look him in the eye—“I think she would smile, too.”

…

Ella held the small block of wood in her hand, turning it one way and then another to compare it to the picture she studied in a book on chess she found in the Girnigoe library.