Stirling stood gazing down at the cake for long moments, its multitude of candles a disquieting sight against the backdrop of the grim barracks. The dip and flare of the flames echoed other fires, causing Trevor to recall stories about the explosion of '69, when half of Belfast had burned. He'd lost a great-uncle in the fighting, an idealistic Scots lad sent in by Britain to keep the peace. Young Trevor McArdle, his mother's only uncle, had been caught dead in the cross fire.

Now it was Trevor Stirling's turn.

Memory replayed, cuttingly, the moment four years previously, when Trevor had come home to his mother's cottage an hour outside Edinburgh, bursting with the news.

"I've just joined the Special Air Services!" he'd shouted, jubilant to be following a good half of his male progenitors.

She'd run into the bedroom, weeping.

He hadn't really understood why—until his unit was posted to Belfast.

Stirling glanced up from the cake to see Murdoch, cavorting as usual in his underwear and trading ribald jokes with Balfour and Hennessey, who were shouting out punch lines above the blare of music. Good men to have at one's back in a place like this, among the best in his command, in fact, and they hadn't forgotten his birthday, despite the rising tensions and sporadic outbreaks of violence. He supposed there were worse situations in which to find oneself. Nor was he afraid of the job he'd been sent here to do. He just wished somebody else had been sent to do it, since he couldn't see either side in the centuries-old feud backing off or seeing reason.

Stirling squinted back down at the flaming cake, attempting to count the improbable number of lit candles, and had just come to the conclusion there were seven too many, when Colonel Ogilvie sent the barracks-room door crashing back into the wall. Laughter and party uproar chopped off. Someone killed the music even as Stirling snapped around, blazing cake already forgotten. He blanched at the look on Ogilvie's face.