Page 57 of Fletcher

“’Twillnae end until I do.” He had never been close to the captain, but now sensed his deep affection as if he’d embraced him. Perhaps it was time to confide in him. “I cannae trust Connal or Fletcher with such. They’d allow me slay them while fighting for my life.”

“Then when the time arrives, I shall slay you,” Nyall said, putting his hands on his shoulders. “Swiftly and cleanly, before you harm anyone. Yet until that day comes, Brother, you cannae give in, nor end yourself in fear of such.” He stepped back and held out his hand. “I give you my word for yours.”

Shaw watched his stern features for a long moment, but he already knew how seriously the captain took his oaths. If they clasped hands, someday Nyall would serve as his executioner. That he should put such a burden on him made his gut clench, but he knew the captain was right. He needed to know someone would do what was necessary.

“For your pledge to end me when I lose the last of myself, I give you my word I shall live on until that end,” he finally said, and gripped his hand.

The captain leaned in to touch shoulders with him to seal the oath. “You’re stronger than you ken.”

“Aye, only I’m weary, lad.” He managed a crooked smile, and then nodded. “You, I ken shall do what’s needed, as ever you’ve done.”

He left the garrison hall to walk the gardens, enjoying the warmth of the sun on his hide, which as always made his skinwork burn as if he’d been branded instead of inked. That sensation usually came with a surge of fury, but the oath he’d made with Nyall had rendered the beast inside him still and silent.

Stay thus, and mayhap you and I shall see my brother wed.

Chapter Eighteen

Had they been on the mainland, Speal never would have permitted the other Cait Sith to again board the enchantress’s vessel. She had briefly considered running away with her sisters to find a place to hide on Insii Orc, but the low-lying island offered few places to conceal them for long. Since their confrontation, Dearg also never allowed her out of her sight or safe from her thoughts. Occasionally she imagined jumping over the railing of the boat into the sea with the rest of her sisters, which earned her a baleful look from their new leader, but no more.

The wee fiend needed them to sail the boat. Once she and Derdrui found the MacMar, then Speal imagined her usefulness to them would end, along with her life.

At the abandoned inn they had occupied since landing, Speal worked in the kitchens to prepare a morning meal for her sisters, who remained abed. They had been too weary to kill all of the mortals who had settled on the islands since the last time the Cait Sith had visited. She imagined her sisters had grown too heartsick over the loss of Fiacail and their own wretched situation to much care about such things now.

She’d watched others dear to her suffer in the same silent, wretched state. On the farm where she had been sold as a bairn, the master and his wife had worked her and the other slaves near to death in the fields, feeding them only enough to keep them alive. In the winters, the smallest and thinnest had always died of cold or sickness, their wee bodies tossed to the hogs. To this day Speal couldnae stomach pork.

“Why play you cook?” Teine asked as she trudged over to peer at the caldron Speal stirred. “And why make you fish pottage?”

“’Twill warm our bellies.” She added a handful of herbs to the pot before straightening and regarding the one-eyed Cait Sith as she made several gestures with her hands. “We sail with the tide.”

“You may tag after that clatty chib,” Teine said flatly as she returned the gestures with her own. “I’ll no’ lose the one eye left in my head serving a facking wee horror Fia needed long ago strangle.”

Knowing the anger she showed was quite real, Speal took out a bottle of whiskey, uncorked it, and then offered it to her. “You sail, or she guts you.”

Teine snatched the bottle, drank from it, and then took it with her as she stalked out. Behind her back she made a hand signal that she understood.

Once Speal set out the food she’d prepared in the front room of the inn, she wrapped a cloak around herself and left to acquire more stores for the boat. As she suspected Dearg slipped out of the inn to tag along after her, skipping along the muddy road like a happy bairn. She’d taken to shifting into the forms of every young mortal girl she’d slain, one after the other, as if she’d grown bored with remaining as only one. This morning she’d become a Pritani princess garbed in furs and covered with the intricate skinwork reserved for the tribe’s nobility.

“I miss the olden days, dinnae you?” Dearg asked as a terrified survivor peered through a gap of a shuttered window. “The first mortal folk, they’d pay proper tribute.”

“Aye, after you burned their villages and murdered their husbands, the females would bind a pretty youngling to an oak in the woods in hopes of appeasing you.” She nodded. “’Twas touching, how you’d slay their offering and then rejoin them pretending to be that very maiden, so you might torment them even more.”

“Och, I never deceived them for long.” She pouted. “You slew just as many lassies as I did in those days. Every wench you took as lover died at your hands, I reckon.”

“No’ my hands.” Speal stopped and kicked in the door to a trader’s shop, ignoring the screeching from the mortals hiding inside as she picked up a large basket and began filling it with fruit, bread and cheese. “Their kin slew them once they learned they’d bedded another female. Some died in exile for the same reason. Others ended themselves when they learned of my true nature.”

“You revealed yourself?” Dearg crowed, and then began to laugh.

“I loved no’ too often, yet when I did, ’twas with all my heart.” Speal reached into her skirt, and removed the purse of coins she carried, leaving enough on the counter to cover the cost of the stores she’d taken. “You’ve never loved anyone but yourself, so you wouldnae understand.”

“I ken what ’tis love,” Dearg said as she followed her out of the shop. “’Tis what fills my heart for our sovereign.”

She smiled sourly. “That I well believe.”

Crossing the commons, Speal went to the village forge. There a towering blacksmith stood in front of his darkened furnace, a sledge in one hand and a short sword in the other. Although he scowled at her, the moment he saw Dearg he paled.

“Get ye away, or I shall pound ye in the mud,” the big mortal warned, his voice shaking.

“I need weapons.” Speal saw a sizeable collection of worked blades on a nearby table, and tossed the remainder of her coin at his feet. “Put all those there in a barrow, and I shall trouble you no more.”