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Rogan gave a grunt of impatience, and Elisabeth surrendered, shoving the heavy wild mass back over her shoulders.
“How is he?”
“A bit the worse for wear, but still ornery as an ox. If he’s not careful, Croker’ll forget and stick him just to keep him quiet.”
“Maybe that’s what Brendan’s hoping for.”
Rogan’s expression darkened. “Enough talk. It’s time to go.”
She scrambled up the ladder. Passed through the companionway beneath the gaze of sullen, hard-eyed sailors. Climbed to the upper deck, where mist floated like smoke over a narrow estuary, trees rising thick and black to either side of them in the somber gray of predawn.
A dory had been lowered over the side, two men at the oars, two others seated in the bow. One in the stern. They moved like ghosts in the gauzy veil of morning fog.
“Down the ladder. I’ll not leave you with them.” Rogan glanced over his shoulder at the men still on board.
It didn’t take a mind reader to understand the danger to her if she remained. The crew stripped her with their eyes, whispered comments passing from sailor to sailor like an infection.
“Thank you,” she said, holding to her shredded dignity.
Rogan looked startled. Rubbed the back of his neck as he motioned her before him.
She stepped upon the first rung of the rope ladder, gripping it tightly as she swung out over the black water. Her slippers sliding against the wet footholds, her skirts getting in her way as she descended.
At the waterline, hands grabbed her about the waist, hauling her aboard the dory, where she was tossed into the stern beside the same pugnacious, jowly faced man she’d confronted yesterday, his pistol jammed hard in her ribs.
Brendan sat between two others, hands bound behind him, hair silvered with damp. Ugly purple and black bruises marred his sun-bronzed face, thin bloody slashes crisscrossing his face, and one eye was swollen shut. A dark red stain damped his shirt to his left shoulder.
She couldn’t help it. She started to tremble. Locking her knees together, she clamped her elbows against her sides to stifle the growing tremors. She hated being afraid. Being powerless. If only there was something she could do. Some way she could fight back.
Rogan stepped into the boat, taking a seat across from her, never once looking Brendan’s way, as if he didn’t exist. Dropping his coat around Elisabeth’s shoulders, he murmured, “Won’t do you getting a chill on top of everything else.”
The man with the gun gave a snort of crude laughter. “Such a gentleman. A chill’s the least of the bird’s worries.”
Rogan speared the man with a stony gaze over the top of Elisabeth’s head, a jackknife appearing in his hand as if conjured. “You keep your comments to yourself, Sams,” he snarled, “or I’ll see you regret them.”
Sams bristled, his face reddening. “You think so, Paddy? I’ll fucking blow your head off.”
“English bug!”
“Shut your yobs, the both of you,” Croker growled from his place beside Brendan. “If the excise tumbles to us, you can finish your arguing in Bodmin jail awaiting the assizes.”
The dory shoved off, the oarlocks muffled in cloth, the water sliding in swirls and eddies with each stroke as light spread somber and gray across the sky. Rain took the place of mist, speckling the water as the boat ground against the rocky shoreline.
Croker took command of Brendan while Sams grabbed Elisabeth, his fingers digging into her shoulder as he propelled her out onto the slimy rocks and up into the trees. Rogan trailing behind.
The group pushed through the scrub and deeper into the spinney. Ahead, a narrow lonely track. A closed coach. And an enormous, barrel-chested man, his wispy white hair barely covering the gray skin of his head, his eyes pale as marbles.
Elisabeth peered over her shoulder, but the river had vanished back into the swirling fog. Nothing to show a ship lay hidden only yards away. No sound but the crunch of trodden leaves, the mournful call of a nightingale from a nearby tree, and the pounding of her frightened heart.
The cottage sat back off the road in a shallow valley, green, rocky hills rising up behind it. Brendan took in hasty impressions as he was hustled from the carriage to the door. The isolation. The number of guards lounging about in various poses of idleness. The way the trees closed in to the west. The narrow track into the hills that lay out of sight of the guards in the yard. And finally, the magic saturating the air. Buzzing up through his center. Not just the dark energy he expected congealing like sludge in his head, but a force outside the cottage walls that singed his mind with war and fire and images of death.
He glanced at Rogan, the focal point of the energy, standing a few yards away with Elisabeth. He must still carry the Sh’vad Tual.
Brendan felt it whispering to him. It was as if he was expected. As if someone or something beyond Máelodor awaited his arrival.
Oss shoved Brendan forward, a guard moving to open the door and usher them through into the cottage’s surprisingly clean and comfortable interior. A tiny entry hall leading to a room at the back. A narrow set of stairs. Two front rooms to either side. One closed door. One open, from which someone called in dubious welcome.
“Back already, Oss? Do you bring us company?”
