The clearing might have been a good place, otherwise. With a wide swath of the plants slashed away, burnt, or eaten—or stored to be food or firewood later—the pines and moss-covered stones reminded Toinette of the forests around Loch Arach.
She’d been happy there, due only in part to better room and board. There she’d learned to control her body’s deadly potential. There too, for the first and last time in her life, she’d been among people who’d known all of what she was and taken it as not only acceptable but commonplace. Toinette’s life since had held its share of joy, but never had there been so little need for concealment.
The first night after she’d left Loch Arach, she’d curled herself up on a flea-ridden inn mattress and wept into her pillow, silently so that she wouldn’t wake the other guests. Shehadunderstood Artair’s decision, as she’d told Erik, just as she’d understood what Agnes had told her and why—but that understanding only deprived her of the comfort that anger would have provided.
Rage against heaven had never much appealed to her, and even if she took a liberal view of her own damnation, Godhadpresumably made Artair MacAlasdair a lord, and herself the bastard on his doorstep—not even one of his own get. To blame him for acting accordingly, and soundly by any practical view, was the sort of luxury men like Erik could afford. Toinette never let herself expect anything else.
She’d had years of good food and education. She had skills to be going on with and knowledge of her own powers.Bless the slack, she’d told herself.Don’t curse the drop. Everything ends.
The thought had been less balm than Toinette hoped, but time and the distractions of a new life had eased the ache of parting. She’d learned to be happy despite concealment—it wasn’t that difficult—and had put from her mind any chance of finding again the honesty she’d been able to practice at Loch Arach.
Two centuries later, she straightened up with an armful of wood and realized that shehadfound it again, and more. Little else about the situation, or the island itself, was good—but, through force of circumstance, Toinette hadn’t needed to bother hiding her nature from anyone since they’d landed.
She leaned against the cabin walls and laughed until Raoul poked his head around the corner. “Captain?”
“I’m fine,” she said, though the earnest concern on his young face made her want to keep laughing even as it touched her heart. Hemighthave been only worried that she’d run mad and would kill them all, or that she’d need to be taken care of, but his expression said otherwise. “I just… I realized how little I ever thought I’d wind up in a place like this, that’s all.”
Raoul laughed, nodding and clearly relaxing. The captain wasn’t having a hysterical fit, thank God. “Oui, I thought I’d taken my last sight of such houses,” he said, gesturing to the cabin, “and never that I’d be hunting for food again, or chopping wood. Though here there’s no bailiff’s wrath to fear—always a hidden blessing, my mother would say.”
“I was just thinking along those lines myself,” said Toinette. “Not about bailiffs, precisely.”
“No,” said Raoul, “I’d not imagine you ever feared anything from them.”
“Only because I didn’t live in the country.” She’d hidden from the constables on occasion as a child, though she’d not often resorted to picking pockets. “We’re none of us saints. I’m surely not.”
“Saints can come from all walks of life, so long as they repent.”
“Well—” Toinette began, intending a laughing remark on the subject of repentance, when an immense roar split the air.
She dropped the logs without a moment’s more thought and spun toward the source of the noise, sword already drawn. She heard crashing then, and a great deal of it—almost as much as she’d cause in dragon form.
Erik, she thought, and he had led Marcus and Franz northeast, where the noise was coming from. The roar hadn’t sounded like him, though: too guttural and somehow toowet.
Raoul and Samuel were by her side, Samuel with the ax he’d been using to chop wood and Raoul with his sword. “Go back,” she said to them. “Get everyone on the beach to shelter, and be ready to defend.”
“From what?” Samuel asked.
“I don’t know. I will soon enough.”
Twenty-Six
“The captain,” observed John, following Erik under an overhanging branch that had looked too much trouble to break, “isn’t at all Scottish, is she?”
“No.” Erik cut briars out of the way and stomped forward through the more amenable undergrowth. He didn’t look back at John when he answered, but kept alert for any sign: the white of old bone, the glint of metal, or more odd-looking plants. “One of yours, in fact. That is, she grew up in London until she came to us.”
“We don’t have dragons.”
Sence, bringing up the rear, snorted. “You know of everything in your nation?”
“We warred with the Scots. If we had dragons, we’d have used them. Although”—John’s voice became thoughtful—“if we don’t, I wonder that we won the first time. You’re hardly new.”
“No,” Erik said again. Up ahead, one of the pines lining the game path was split, one section curving down over the game trail in a twisted loop. It looked like the aftermath of a storm, with wind or lightning equally likely culprits, but he studied it for a long moment regardless, looking for signs of stranger things.
None came to mind. He marked the place in his memory, for good firewood later if nothing else, and went on in both body and speech. “I’ve not seen nor heard of Englishmen with our blood, and certainly none fighting on your side. And I think, if there were dragon-blooded in England, Toinette wouldn’t have come to us. You have other forms of magic. Some as deadly.”
“The spells you’ve been teaching us?”
“Some. We spoke often enough with the English wizards before the war, I hear, and traded tips as many a craftsman might. Since then—” He shrugged and swatted at an insect on his neck. “We only know what we’ve seen in battle. Your folk are more likely to use devices, or things summoned, to strike from afar. Nor do I doubt there’s scrying on both sides, though that’s always a chancy matter.”
