The sea and sky had their own dangers, but she liked them well enough. Hunting at Loch Arach had been similar, but plodding along on a ground full of insects and clinging plants had Toinette swearing almost every step of the way, if only in her mind. She’d not spent much time wandering the wilderness since her journey to Loch Arach more than a century before, and then she’d mostly been walking on roads.
While they searched, they couldn’t even stay completely on what few game paths there were, or follow the more level and less overgrown ground beside the stream. Beasts were born and died, even ground shifted with the years, and so they went over the unexplored ground with slowness that made Toinette want to tear her hair out.
Marcus, never much fonder of the wild than she, surveyed the undergrowth with narrowed eyes. “These aren’t drinking our blood,” he said, his voice immediately undermining any attempt to look on the bright side. So did his next word: “Yet.”
“I’d almost rather they tried,” said Toinette. “A fight’s at least exciting. Do you see anything to the east, Sence?”
“A large tree. Larger than most around here.”
“And that’s saying a fair bit,” said Toinette, although in justice most of the trees on the island were a bit stunted by wind: not runts by any means, but not the towering sort she remembered from Scotland.
“I could climb it,” Sence said, turning to look back at them. He made the suggestion without any of the enthusiasm Raoul would have shown, nor Samuel’s curiosity, but also without John’s reluctance. The tree was there. He could climb it. That was a thing that could happen. “It might give us a better view, but still further under the other trees than you could manage flying.”
“Not a bad notion at all,” Marcus replied, then looked at Toinette and added, “Unless you want to do it. I’m too old.”
Falling might not be as much of a danger for her, but on the other hand… “I can’t climb trees,” she said. “Never learned. I could try to learn now.”
“It’d take too long,” said Sence. “Just help get us over there. I’ll do the rest.”
The plants were hell on the edge of her sword. The search parties spent time every evening with whetstones, and that night would be no different. None of them had come prepared to hack through forests. Toinette did hack, and swear, until she and the others arrived, sweaty and scratched, at the base of a tall pine. Its scent distracted Toinette from the worst of her bad mood, and she took Sence’s weapons with good cheer.
He grabbed the tree and quickly started up, so adeptly that Toinette raised her eyebrows. “And where did you come from?”
“The sea,” he said. “I’d imagine any of us could manage this—it’s better than the mast.”
“Ah,” said Toinette, making a rueful face. “Hadn’t thought of that.” She’d never learnedthatskill either. Coming on as the captain’s wife, then becoming captain herself, had meant skipping much of what common sailors learned. She knew the theory, but had scant practice. Nor had she ever been tempted. If she’d wanted heights, there was always the sky.
“You were always a city wench,” said Marcus. He picked up a spray of needles and began picking it apart.
“And you weren’t? Leaving aside ‘wench,’ which I’d be inclined to hold against you otherwise.”
“My family’s from the country. I know it well enough not to like it. But I can climb a tree, if I need to.”
“Why would you need to?”
“Apples. Birds’ nests. Bears.” At Toinette’s skeptical look, he admitted, “Not actually bears. But I liked the notion that Icouldget away from one, if I ever had to. It lent my life a note of adventure, until I ran off to sea.”
Toinette snorted. “That’d cure a man, sure enough.”
“Not entirely, or we’d none of us be here.” Marcus glanced upward to where Sence had paused to sit on a branch and rest his arms. “I’m surprised you never learned at your uncle’s.”
“I was too old. And he wasn’t my uncle. He’s Erik’s. No relation.”
“Ah, yes,” said Marcus. “It’d be rather awkward if he were, wouldn’t it?”
“How do you mean?” Toinette asked quietly, wondering just how much of the last night’s activities might have been overheard.
Marcus shook his head. “I know you, Captain. And it doesn’t take a soldier to spot a battlefield. You’d give all the treasure on this island for an hour with him between your legs.”
“I—” She felt the blood rush to her face, not at the phrasing but from horror of being discovered. “We haven’t found any treasure yet.”
“True.”
“And it’d… Do the men think so too?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. Nor, I’d guess, do they—or not enough of them that we’d have any trouble reminding them what’s their business and what isn’t.”
Toinette stared at him, not daring to shift her weight lest the ground suddenly tilt under her. “But I brought them here,” she said finally, staring at Marcus, “and it was because of Erik.”
