by Shae Ford
“It wasn’t an adven — ow!”
She twisted Jonathan’s ear with one hand and swatted at Declan furiously with the other. Nothing Lysander said could convince her to call off her attack. Uncle Martin seemed more concerned with bending his mustache back in the right direction than anything else.
All Kael wanted was to go upstairs and sleep until supper — but the battle raging in the doorway made it impossible to get through.
At last, Jake stepped in. He brought his hands together and a sound like a thunder’s clap rent the air. “Now see here, Jonathan did a very brave thing for us. He was even kidnapped by bandits.”
Clairy cupped a hand around her ear. “What?”
“Something about having a nap,” Declan said loudly. He slapped the side of his head. “What’s that? What’s all that ringing?”
“There’s a bee in my ear!” Jonathan cried.
Uncle Martin swung his cane in an impatient arc. “Yes, yes — I hear you, Bimply! You can stop ringing that blasted lunch bell. Stop, I say!” He stormed into the mansion, shrilling at the tops of his lungs: “Cease your wails, you unrelenting harpy!”
“Why’s everybody yelling?” Elena said.
Kael wasn’t sure, but he’d been around Jake long enough to guess: “One of his spells must’ve gone wrong.”
And right on cue, Jake threw up his hands. “Oh, blast it all. I knew that spell wasn’t ready quite yet. I thought it might be a little less irritating than a whistle, but it appears I was wrong.” He leaned until he was an inch from Clairy’s ear. “I said Jonathan was kidnapped!”
Clairy gasped. “Kidnapped! Oh, you poor wee thing!”
The fiddler’s scruffy face disappeared into the crest of her bosom as she crushed him against her. “Is it safe to come out?” he called, his voice slightly muffled. “Am I forgiven?”
Clairy didn’t seem to hear him. She toted Jonathan through the door, yelling about how she planned to put some meat on those skinny wee bones, and the rest of their companions followed — slapping their ears and complaining loudly about all the ringing.
Jake sighed heavily. “I’m never going to be useful, am I? I suppose I ought to just stick with blowing things up.”
“I’d be all right with that,” Elena murmured.
“What?”
“I like to watch you destroy things. I like even better that you’re reluctant to destroy them —”
“I can’t hear you!”
“— because that means you’ve got a gentle heart.” She crossed her arms and eyed him from over the top of her mask. “I like you, Jake. And I trust you. You’re different from other men. One of these days I’m going to be able to tell you that, and I’m going to give you all the love you deserve.”
He squinted at her. “I can’t tell if you’re talking to me or not! Are you talking to me?”
She pulled her mask down so he could read her lips. “Lunch!” she said, pointing to the door.
“Ah! Oh, good!”
He shuffled inside, and Kael tried to follow him quickly.
But Elena caught him by the belt.
“If you ever speak a word about that to anybody,” she whispered, her dagger’s edge against his throat, “I will murder you in your sleep.”
Kael swore to keep his mouth shut.
*******
Though Lysander insisted they could stay as long as they wished, the giants were eager to return to the plains. And so the pirates readied a ship and took them off that very next morning.
Jonathan and Clairy sailed along with them. The fiddler kept his arms wrapped about her middle the whole way across the Bay — and his face planted very firmly against her chest.
To everybody’s great surprise, Declan chose to stay at the mansion. “I’ve not spent much time in the seas,” he said when they asked. “My men can find their way back without their General. Brend won’t need me right away. There’ll be no harm in staying here a while longer. I don’t understand why everybody’s going on about it.”
“No one’s going on about anything,” Lysander said with a smile. “We’re happy to have you.”
Kael thought Declan’s change of heart might’ve had less to do with spending time in the seas, and more to do with Nadine.
On the day they’d left the wildmen, her little flock of children had stood so miserably at the gates that Nadine hadn’t seemed able to stand it. She’d hardly taken two steps down the road before she’d run back and gathered them up in her arms.
“I cannot leave them — not yet. I will return with Kyleigh,” she’d promised.
Declan wasn’t at all happy about this. In fact, he’d brooded the whole way across the Valley and the seas. His eyes had slipped so deeply into the cleft of his brow that Kael had begun to wonder if they’d ever see them again. But for all he moped, it turned out to be a very good thing that Declan chose to stay behind.
In the time they’d been gone, the bump on Aerilyn’s stomach had swelled tremendously. She’d gone to throw her arms about Lysander’s neck when they first arrived and had very nearly knocked him off his feet. But as dangerous as her belly was, her moods were even worse.
One moment, she would be perfectly happy. A blink later, she was sobbing and wasn’t sure why. Then Uncle Martin would say something to try to cheer her up, and she’d laugh … until she cried. Most of the time her tears were completely harmless. But if Lysander caught her at the wrong moment, they’d pour out burning hot.
“This is your fault!” Aerilyn cried as she stormed into the library.
For once, Lysander was innocent. He’d been doing nothing but reading over the shipping log for the last three hours — Kael knew, because he’d have to glance up from his book every few minutes to answer one of the captain’s ridiculous questions.
“What’s my —?”
“This!” she said, thrusting her favorite blue dress under his nose. “You did this to me, you horrible rogue! You’re the reason nothing fits!”
“Ah, well I don’t think that’s entirely my fault,” he said with a wink.
Aerilyn wasn’t amused. In fact, she slung the dress at his head. “How would you like it, Lysander? How would you feel if I made you carry something for months and months, and it just got heavier and more uncomfortable — while I skipped around drinking grog like there was nothing at all the matter?”
Lysander was still struggling to fight his way out from under the frilly skirts, so the panic in his voice was slightly muffled as he cried: “But we’re going to have a baby, my love! Think of how happy you’ll be once you have him.”
“Or her!” Aerilyn shrilled. “Quit talking about our baby as if it’s a boy. What if we have a little girl? She’ll come out thinking you don’t love her. And that’ll make me so … oh, I’ll just be so … so sad!”
Before they could do anything to stop it, she melted into tears.
Kael saw his own horror reflected on Lysander’s face: the good captain gaped and clutched the skirts to his chin. His mouth moved, but no words came out. They stood frozen under her sobs for several moments before Declan plodded in.
He took one look at Aerilyn before he snatched her around the arm and grunted: “Come on, let’s walk.”
She sniffed. “Where are we walking?”
“Around. You need to move those wee little legs and get to breathing some fresh air.”
“Why?”
He thrust a thick finger at her belly. “That’s coming out early. That’s why you keep sobbing and flinging things about. My wee baby brother came early. The old women had my mother walking through the fields every evening. Helped keep her head on straight.”
“You had a little brother?”
“Yeh. And if you promise to stop weeping for a clodded moment, I’ll tell you about him.”
Aerilyn dried her tears immediately and followed Declan out the door. Kael and Lysander watched in amazement from the window as the pair went nearly a full turn around the Bay without Aerilyn once dissolving into
tears.
She hung off Declan’s thick arm and he weathered her chatter — occasionally chiming in with a grunted yeh.
*******
A few weeks later, Kael hurried down the stairs for breakfast — only to nearly trip at its bottom. “Nadine!”
She stood in the middle of the grand circular room, smiling broadly — and surrounded by a horde of redheaded children. “There were too many of them. The wildmen could not manage them all. So I have brought some of the youngest along with me,” she explained when she saw his surprise.
“We’re happy to have them!” Uncle Martin strode in from one of the halls, grinning through his mustache. He waved the children on with his cane. “Come along, now. No, no — don’t be shy. We’ve got mounds of breakfast in there. More eggs than any man or beast could possibly devour. And while we eat, I can tell you about the time my dear brother stole the King’s favorite pair of knickers!”
They giggled at his chatter the whole way down the hall, and Nadine beamed at their backs.
Kael didn’t realize he’d been craning his neck over her shoulder until she grabbed his arm. “Kyleigh has gone to Whitebone. She promises she will not be long.”
Kael’s heart sank. “What could she possibly have to do in the blasted desert?”
“She says she must visit Asante. And she also says you are to keep your chin raised and not to scuff the floors with your moping.”
That sounded exactly like something Kyleigh would’ve said. So Kael grit his teeth and tried to be patient.
Fortunately, his companions provided him with plenty of distractions. If he wasn’t trying to stop Aerilyn from bludgeoning Lysander to death with one of her dresses, then he was fighting off Elena — who’d taken to hiding in various nooks and attacking him when he least expected it.
“Why?” he gasped as he tried to keep her arm from wrapping any tighter around his throat.
That particular afternoon, she’d ambushed him in the hallway on his way back from lunch. He should’ve noticed that one of the doors was slightly ajar. He should’ve realized that meant there was a masked forest woman waiting behind it to throttle him. But he didn’t.
Now she clung to his back like paste. Her legs crushed his innards and her arm won ground against his throat. Little black spots burst across his vision as she cut off the flow of his blood.
“Why can’t we just pass each other in the hall … like normal … people?”
“We’re whisperers. Fighting keeps us sharp,” she said, as if they were doing nothing more than discussing the weather. “Now hold still while I put you to sleep.”
Kael had no intention of doing that. She’d strangled him unconscious once before because he hadn’t remembered to check under his bed, and he’d woken with a nasty headache. Instead, he turned and slammed his back into the wall behind him, crushing her against it.
She didn’t let go, and so he slammed her again. “You are … the most … difficult —”
The wall behind him gave way with a crack and Kael held his breath. He knew very well which room was on the other side, but Elena didn’t.
Her arms snapped open and she coughed violently against the tang of magic as they fell flat into the spell room.
Kael leapt to his feet. “Sorry, Jake.”
The mage hardly glanced at him from over the top of his spectacles before going back to his reading. “It’s fine. Just mend it when you have a chance, will you?”
Kael bolted out of the hole in the wall before Elena could recover, promising he would.
After he’d so narrowly escaped getting strangled, he was hoping to have a few minutes to himself in the library. Unfortunately for him, it was already occupied.
Declan and Nadine had done nothing but argue since the day she’d returned. Any time he passed them, they were in the middle of some heated debate: they hissed as they walked, stood in corners with their arms crossed and growled. Even at meals, they scowled at each other from across the table.
They kept their voices so hushed that he wasn’t sure what exactly it was that they argued over. But he knew he didn’t want to get involved.
“Well then, maybe we need another ear on this,” Declan growled. He reached over and snatched Kael before he could escape through the door. “Tell the sandbeater I know what I’m doing, rat. Tell her she knows full well they’d be better off somewhere open.”
“It is about the children,” Nadine explained when Kael sputtered. Then she turned back to Declan. “They are happy here! The Uncle has taken them out for fishing and a picnic.”
“They’re excited, is all,” he said back. “Did you not see their mountains? They need somewhere to run and stretch their legs. The wee mice could never be happy packed onto some great floating tinderbox. Look at this one!” he said, rattling Kael by the shoulder. “Look at how wild he is! You can’t force such hearty folk to sit trapped for long — it’ll hobble them.”
Nadine stamped her tiny foot. “You are wrong!”
“Am I? All right, then — tell us which you’d prefer, rat. Would you rather grow up on land or on a ship?”
Kael would’ve preferred not to be dragged into the middle of it. But as they were both scowling at him, waiting for an answer, he supposed he ought to be honest. “Land,” he said firmly. “I don’t mind spending a few weeks on a ship, but I’m much happier on land.”
Declan thrust a thick arm at him. “See? There you have it.”
Nadine’s eyes shone fiercely. “What would you have me do? I am an exile. Kyleigh has given me a place in her village — I have no other home to offer them.”
Declan’s glare went shallow. There was something hidden in the depths of his steely gray eyes that Kael hadn’t remembered seeing before, something that reminded him of the way the wynns had bowed to Gwen — a surrender that put him on his belly.
“They’d be welcome in my home, among my clan,” he said quietly. “I’d teach them all I know about horses, about how to till the earth and raise their food from seed to sprout. They could chase the sun from one end to the next, if they wanted. I’d never see them hobbled.”
Nadine’s lips parted for a moment before hardening once more. “I will not leave them.”
Declan leaned forward. “Well, then … I suppose you’d better come with us.”
They stared at each other for such a long moment that Kael began to sweat. He would’ve bolted straight for the door, had Declan’s meaty hand not been clamped so tightly about his arm.
Finally, Nadine’s head dipped in a nod.
“Yeh?”
“Yes.”
Relieved smiles crept across both of their faces. Declan leaned closer. Nadine came up on her toes. Kael could see what was coming and tried madly to escape, but Declan’s grip was far too tight. Just when he thought he would be forced to endure it, Uncle Martin came to his rescue:
“It’s started! It’s happening!”
He slung his picnic basket into one of the stuffed chairs and the little redheaded children swarmed in behind him. Their curls were still sopping from the waves. Several carried armfuls of shells. All were burnt an alarming shade of red.
“You have kept them out too long!” Nadine said when she saw them. She swore in her strange tongue and pressed her hands against their reddened cheeks.
“Eh, a little sun is good for them. It’ll give them a nice crust,” Declan said.
Uncle Martin waved his cane impatiently. “Quite right! Take them straight to the kitchen and have Bimply give them a salve — and tell that cake-snatching shrew to send my favorite decanter to the library. We’ll soon have reason to celebrate!”
The children squealed in mock terror as Declan scooped up an armful of them and marched for the door. Nadine led the others out in a chain behind him. Kael had meant to follow, but now he was curious.
“What are we celebrating?”
Uncle Martin’s eyes gleamed over the top of his mustache. “It’s time, Sir Wright. Aerilyn’s gone to her chambers — I
’ll be a great-uncle by evening!”
Chapter 50
A Dangerous Proposal
“How much longer?” Lysander moaned.
It had been hours since Uncle Martin had burst into the library. Now evening had come and gone, the day had passed wholly into night — and there was still no news of Aerilyn.
No sooner had word slipped out the mansion’s front doors than midwives had marched in from the village and taken over Aerilyn’s care. They’d shut her chamber doors and absolutely refused to allow any man above the spiral staircase. Consequently, the men of Gravy Bay had gathered in the library to worry together.
“I never thought it would take so long,” Uncle Martin said with a sigh. His decanter sat before him, unopened. The way the glass bent around its amber contents made the sag of his frown impossibly steep, and his eye impossibly large. “I never imagined that Aerilyn would have any trouble — she has the perfect birthing hips!”
“Yeh,” Declan grunted from the hearth.
“Can we please not discuss my wife as if she’s some sort of … pasture animal?” Lysander mumbled.
He dragged his hands down his face — something he’d done so often in the last hour that his skin had actually begun to stay red. His wavy hair stood on end. The sleeves of his white tunic were rolled up to his elbows, the buttons at his collar undone. His trouser pockets were considerably rumpled from where he kept drying his palms.
His stormy eyes traveled to Thelred, who shook his head firmly. He stood before the door, arms crossed. “Don’t do it, Captain.”
“Just for a moment?” Lysander pleaded.
“No. The desert woman is in there with her, and the forest woman said she’d come get us if something happens. There’s no point in you hiking up there, Captain. The midwives won’t let you in, and you’ll only get upset.”
