“Mm?”
I struggled to peel myself from delicious oblivion, even as something in the voice that called my name rose the hairs at the nape of my neck. The solid embrace around me was too soothing, the broad chest beneath my cheek too comfortable – until it shifted, and jerked.
“Shit,” Caelan hissed. “Rosie.”
The hands that had so gently coaxed me to sleep now curled around my arms to jerk me violently upright, and I snarled as my eyes finally wrenched open, squinting against the light.
The light.
Not the calm golden glow still pulsing at the centre of my chest, but watery, early morning sunlight spilling through the open door – where Sorcha stood watching us, eerily still.
I scrambled out of the Captain’s lap, yanking my sleeves back over my bare shoulders as I went, endlessly grateful that we’dnever quite gotten around to undressing as much as I’d wanted him to.
“Oh gods,” I groaned, staggering to my feet, off balance with my legs half-numb and my head still spinning with sleep. “Sorcha, this isn’t what it looks–”
I stopped dead.
“Sorcha?”
She remained entirely still, frozen on that threshold but for the slight wobble of her lower lip. Her eyes were rounder than ever, the bluest I’d ever seen them, swimming with tears.
I lurched for her.
“What is it? What happened? Are you alright?”
She shook her head, one quiet sob shuddering free with the movement. Her voice was so small and hoarse I strained to hear it, gathering her closer so I could bend my head to hers.
“I-it’s Tanner. I went out to check the letterbox and – f-found him. He’d been out there all night. There’s frost in his eyes, I-I –”
“Is he here? Is he –”
I don’t know why I asked. I knew the answer, really, and I wished at once that I hadn’t made her say it. My sob echoed hers before she even managed to force the words out.
“Roz,” she wept. “He’s dead.”
Chapter Eight
Mind Your Business
We held Tanner’s wake just two days later at The Mage and Rose. His casket took the place of the little Yule tree in the main tavern, with his estranged wife and grown son sitting at a nearby table, accepting the condolences of Stormsby locals with identical shell-shocked faces.
Roy had been among the first to amble over to their table. They’d received him politely enough, but it was plain that Tanner’s wife, who had been living in her home village for over thirty years now, had no idea who this quiet, solemn man had been to her warm and garrulous husband. The son greeted him with a vague flicker of recognition, but they exchanged only a few stoic words before Roy made way for the next mourner in line.
And then he had stood over Tanner’s casket for a very long time.
He sat now at the bar, with Tanner’s empty seat held open beside him. He had no family of his own, no wife nor heirs. Noone, really, to acknowledge the gravity of his loss. Even the fewMage and Roseregulars who came by the bar to clap his rounded shoulder and mutter a few words of comfort had been more Tanner’s friends than his own. Tanner had been all he had, such a lifeline to this quiet, isolated man.
It seemed that all of Stormsby had turned up to pay tribute. I wanted to be glad of it, but a bitter little voice within me said half of them were here to sniff out gossip like pigs after truffles. I could see it in the way their eyes flicked around as the few Kingsmen in attendance passed them by; in the way they clustered near the Captain, leaning toward him bit by bit while they carried on their pretend conversations. There was not a soul in Stormsby who hadn’t heard the rumour.
The Serpent had finally struck.
Nothing had been confirmed, but I’d been there when the Kingsmen on morning patrol had pulled Tanner’s frozen corpse from the snow and hauled him inside. Between Sorcha gasping and sobbing on my shoulder and the distant roar building in my ears, I hadn’t made out much of the conversation, but I’d heard enough. I’d heard the wordSerpentthrown back and forth, seen the dark look on the Captain’s face when silence finally fell among the men.
“We can’t rule it out,” he had said.
I couldn’t stop hearing it. Couldn’t stop seeing Tanner’s endless stare blurred with frost, no matter how wide a berth I gave his casket. All I could do was work myself to distraction, to exhaustion, to the point where I hadn’t the energy to think or remember. The tavern was almost as busy as it had been on Yule, and I’d convinced Sorcha to join Roy’s quiet vigil over Tanner’s old seat at the bar.
And then I went about my business, seeing to drinks orders of the mourners, the spread of food in the dining hall, and the requests of the local Priest when he turned up to perform the blessing. He stood at Tanner’s casket and a hush fell over the room as he began speaking in his low, rhythmic intone and all eyes fell to the unmoving form in the coffin.
