Read Chapter 27: The Raid Reenacted

The rain had stopped by the time Iona reached the old MacTavish mustering ground, a flat stretch of moor beneath the shadow of Ben Loyal where her grandfather had once gathered two hundred men to drive English cattle south. Tonight, she would gather eight.

Tam stood at the edge of the clearing, his weathered face half-lit by the guttering torch he'd jammed into the earth. Beside him, three old soldiers she recognized from childhood—men who had carried her on their shoulders at harvest festivals, who had taught Lachlan to throw a dirk when he'd visited as a boy. They looked at her now with the same grim expectancy they must have worn forty years ago, waiting for orders that might get them killed.

"You brought soldiers," Iona said, dismounting. "I brought farmers."

Tam nodded toward the far tree line, where shapes moved in the dark. "Farmers who remember what MacAllister did to their cousins in the Clearances. They'll fight for more than wages."

Lachlan emerged from between two pines, his horse trailing behind him. His face was carved with exhaustion, but his eyes held the sharp focus she'd come to recognize—the look of a man who had made peace with a decision and would not be turned from it. He carried a rolled map under one arm and a canvas bag slung across his back.

"The Campbells are here," he said, nodding toward a cluster of men she couldn't quite make out. "Four of them. All former soldiers under my father. They've sworn to me, not to Donal."

"And not to the compact," Iona said quietly.

Lachlan's jaw tightened. "The compact is dead. It died the moment my father sold the land out from under us. What remains is something different."

Tam stepped forward, squinting at the map Lachlan unrolled. "You've been to this office before?"

"Twice," Lachlan said. "Once as a guest of Donal's, when he wanted to show off his acquisitions. Once as a thief." He looked at Iona, and something passed between them—the memory of Gregor's capture, the desperate flight through Edinburgh's alleys. "Neither time did I pay attention to the guards."

"I did." Iona knelt beside the map, tracing the route with her finger. The office sat above a counting house on the Cowgate, three floors of stone that had once belonged to a merchant prince. Donal had converted it into his private sanctum, where he kept the real ledgers, the ones that told the truth about every estate he'd swallowed whole. "There's a rear entrance through the stables. A sympathizer—a clerk named McTeer who watched Donal beat an old woman over a debt—will leave the door unlatched at midnight."

"And the documents?"

"McTeer will have them boxed and waiting. Deeds, correspondences with the London lord, transfer orders for the other estates. Everything Donal thinks is locked away safe."

Lachlan studied her. "You trust this man?"

"I trust that he hates Donal more than he fears him. That's enough for one night."

The Campbell soldiers drifted closer, forming a loose circle around the map. One of them—a grizzled sergeant with a scar splitting his eyebrow—spoke up. "This raid. It's not cattle we're after, then."

"No," Iona said. "We're stealing something worth more than a thousand head. We're stealing the truth."

The sergeant's eyes flickered to Lachlan, who nodded once. "She leads," Lachlan said. "I follow."

A murmur passed through the men. Iona felt the weight of their judgment, their uncertainty. A woman giving orders was strange enough in the lowlands, but here, in the bones of the highlands, it bordered on blasphemy. Yet no one spoke against her. Perhaps they saw what Tam saw—the same steel that had kept her alive through Edinburgh, through her father's arrest, through every moment she should have broken and hadn't.

"Here's the plan," Iona said, her finger jabbing the map. "We ride at dusk tomorrow, disguised as drovers moving cattle to the southern markets. Tam and I will enter through the stables with McTeer. Lachlan, you take the soldiers to the front gate and make enough noise to pull the guards away from the counting room. The Campbell men know Edinburgh's streets better than we do—they'll scatter after, creating false trails."

"And the MacTavish farmers?" Tam asked.

"They're the distraction," Iona said. "Before we reach the city, they'll stage a minor raid on the MacAllister tenant farms outside the walls. Nothing too damaging—a few fences broken, a sheep or two vanished. Just enough to draw Donal's local enforcers away from the office."

"Smart," Lachlan murmured. "He'll think it's retaliation for Alistair's arrest. He won't connect it to the office."

The sergeant grinned, showing a missing tooth. "I like this girl. She thinks like a raider."

Iona allowed herself a brief smile. "My grandfather once told me that a cattle raid succeeds on speed and audacity. Everything else is church talk."

They spent the next hour refining the plan, marking escape routes, assigning rendezvous points. The men dispersed into the dark with whispered oaths, melting back into the hills where they'd sleep until tomorrow's ride. Tam lingered, his face troubled.

"Iona," he said when the others were gone. "There's something you should know."

"What?"

"Your mother. Before she died, she wrote a letter. I found it years ago, hidden in the wall of the old bothy where she used to take you when you were small." He reached into his coat and pulled out a folded, yellowed paper, creased and fragile. "I never gave it to Alistair. I didn't trust what he might do with it. But you deserve to read it."

Iona's hands trembled as she took the letter. The seal was broken, the ink faded, but she recognized her mother's handwriting—the slanted, hurried script of a woman who had always been running out of time.

She unfolded it and read by torchlight.

The words blurred. She read them twice, three times, until their meaning settled like stones in her stomach.

"Iona," Lachlan said, watching her face. "What does it say?"

She looked up, and the plan she'd just built crumbled like sand.

"She knew." Iona's voice cracked. "My mother knew Donal was her half-brother. She knew what he was planning. She didn't die because she fell from the cliff—she was pushed, and the man who pushed her was Gregor's father. And Donal watched it happen."

Tam's face went pale. "Gregor's father?"

"Donal's bastard brother by blood. Gregor said his father was ruined, but he didn't know the whole truth." Iona clutched the letter. "My mother was trying to expose them both. That's why Donal has been so desperate to bury the past. It's not about the land at all. It's about her."

Lachlan swore softly. "If that becomes known, every MacAllister and MacTavish will be at war within a week."

"Then we make sure it becomes known at the right moment." Iona folded the letter carefully and tucked it into her bodice next to her heart. "This isn't just about clearing my father's name anymore. It's about giving my mother a voice from the grave."

She turned to face the dark moor, where her small army of farmers and old soldiers slept beneath the stars.

"And God help Donal MacAllister when she finally speaks."