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“Lad, ye can tell me.”
“We’re no’ to say.”
“Ewan!” I roared it at the woodpile, at the cottage, at the whole godsdamned island. “Ewan, come out!”
Nothing moved.
“Ewan. Now.”
Not so much as a breath, but the two lads glanced at each other uncertainly.
And gods below, in the middle of my terror, with my Mate’s fear still dragging at my ribs like a hook, I was proud of him. Weeks ago my lad had hidden in a filthy loft in a crofter’s hovel and had not made a single sound, because his mother had told him not to.
He had remembered.
I dropped to one knee in the mud.
“Oh, for fook’s sake.” I scrubbed a hand down my face. “I want a pickled beet.”
“Well, ye cannae have one,” Jean announced from somewhere behind me. “Ye ate the last of them a fortnight ago.”
But I cared not, because in front of me, the woodpile came apart.
Ewan came out of it headfirst, filthy and shaking, and hit my chest hard enough to rock me back. His arms went round my neck, and he was talking before he was fully out, the words coming in one long gasping run.
“He grabbed her, he grabbed Mama, he was hiding, he was behind the byre and she walked past and he came out and grabbed her arm and she made a noise—”
Oh, fook
“Easy, son. ‘Twas John?”
He nodded frantically. “She’s crying, Maardok—”
His terror was feeding my Kteer, and I had to struggle to keep it—my own urge to violence—under control.
“Ewan.” I got my hand on the back of his head. “Ye’re safe. I have ye. Tell me the rest.”
“I ran to help her.”
He was crying now and didn’t even seem to realize it.
“I ran and he reached for me and Mama yelled for me to hide, she yelled it twice, so I hid, and I stayed hid, and Brannok put the wood on me—”
“Ye did right.”
“I didn’t help her—”
He needed me to comfort him, but his mother needed me more.
“Ye did exactly right, and I’ll tell ye why after.”
I pulled him back far enough to see his face, and it near killed me to ask.
“Which way?”
He pointed west, toward the water. “That way. He was pulling her and she wouldn’t walk so he was pulling her.”
I was going to gut the bastard for daring to touch her, for daring to think he could take Ewan too.
