Riona Read Online Free PDF Page A

prayer. While her banishment to the dairy wasn’t intentional on her part, penance proved a blessing in disguise. At least if mischief sneaked up on her again and she found herself absently humming a bawdy bardic tune she’d learned from cousin Bran, neither cow nor calf would mind.
    “Leila wants you to tell us that story again.”
    Startled from her milking, Riona realized the rascal Mischief had used her own reflections to its end. She crossed herself in remorse. Truly she’d intended to repeat the morning prayers that had been so abruptly interrupted when her six-year-old bedmate wet the bed. And there were thanks to offer that the orphan’s regressions happened less and less, now that she and her homeless siblings were growing used to the abbey.
    “Does she now?” she asked, looking past Liex, Leila’s six-year-old twin brother, to his feminine version.
    The only time Leila spoke it was in a childish tongue to her twin and an imaginary friend named Seargal. Only Liex understood her. The children belonged to gleemen, entertainers who traveled the country performing in the markets and courts for their livelihood. At her parents’ death, they’d been run out of the village for carrying thedreaded disease into its midst, the wagon that had been their home torched.
    They wandered into the abbey, trusting neither God nor man. It was Riona’s hope to teach them faith for comfort and the skills to provide for themselves with hard work rather than the thievery they’d been reduced to. Even now, their elder brother, Fynn, worked with Brother Clemens, learning that knives, in addition to being thrown to amuse an audience, could be used to create useful items, such as trenchers and cups.
    “I think that somewhere behind those twitching lips there lies the voice of an angel who longs to sing and speak. Do you think she’d sing with us? Or mayhap Seargal. Do you think he’d sing?”
    Leila cast her pale, gray gaze toward the loft of the milking shed.
    “So he’s up there today, is he?”
    Ignoring Riona, Leila murmured something to her brother.
    “Seargal wants to listen,” Liex translated. He stood the shovel he’d been cleaning the stalls with against the barrow of manure he’d collected.
    Clearly, he wanted to tease Leila, but Riona had chided both him and Fynn for antagonizing their sister. There was something special about Leila, she told them, something God would reveal to them when the time was right. When a calf was crippled at birth and Domnall, one of the abbey’s brothers, was going to kill it as was the custom, Leila refused to leave the animal. She rubbed its twisted leg and prayed ceaselessly, so that even crusty Brother Domnall was reluctant to intervene. He gave her one night for her miracle—and that was all it took. The following morning, the calf was walking like the others.
    “Bring Nessa over for a drink,” Riona offered, smiling at the pink-nosed calfling that had become Leila’s shadow.
    “Don’t forget the song,” Liex reminded her.
    Riona cleared the dust from her throat. Would that it would clear from her skirts as easily as Nessa greedily suckled the milk cow. “Remember, if you or Seargal can chime in, I’d be glad for help.”
    Riona opened her mouth to sing a ballad when a voice chortled from the loft, more startling than melodic.
    Fourteen-year-old Fynn jumped down to the dirt floor and rolled into Liex. The twin went down with a howl and in a flash entangled in a brawl with his dark-haired sibling. Nessa darted beneath the milk cow, which, with a bellow, bolted as far as its rope tie would allow.
    “Boys, enough!” Riona snatched up the teetering pail of milk before wide-eyed Nessa plowed over it. The milk was saved, but the calf struck Riona with such force as to send her sprawling backward into the burrow—which was nicely mounded with manure.
    “Ach, Father save us,” she cried as the milk sloshed up on her face and chest.
    The words, as close to an oath as the