The Empire and the Wolf King (Kaitlyn and the Highlander #21)

44. Chapter 44 - James

CHAPTER 44 - JAMES

BALLOCH CASTLE - 1710

I stepped out into the courtyard to see Quentin working near our loads once again. He had been down here for hours every day, this time he had Mookie beside him, looking up at him adoringly, with Saddle the chicken perched on Mookie’s back.

Some of the women had refused Mookie’s entrance into the nursery, and I couldn’t really blame them, so the pig was down here now, a witness to Quentin’s fixation.

Quentin was using a ratchet clamp to tie down a box. He looked hot and bothered as he did it, and what was especially concerning was that he had done this already many times before. The load was counted, secured, waiting.

But we were freaking out.

Me too, but I was pretending this was normal because I was trying to keep Sophie calm — Junior had cried again all night and I was losing my mind.

It was normal, I had heard a baby cry at night, and all the women acted as if this was just a thing babies do, but all I kept thinking was, I was in the eighteenth century, in a castle that had been built in the sixteenth century and didn’t have electricity or running water. There wasn’t a flushing toilet coming for centuries. All I had was a first-aid kit and a box of medicine that I would need Google to know how to use.

My time travel vessel didn’t work.

I had a growing sense of panic… growing.

And rescue hadn’t come. It kept on not coming.

I said, “Hey, Quennie, whatcha doing? Tying down the boxes for the tenth time?”

He wiped his brow, but kept ratcheting the strap down, I am not…” He grunted, then said, “This isn’t tight enough, going to need to do it again. Should I break down this pallet? Maybe smaller boxes would be better.” He tossed the end of the strap over it. “Yeah, that’s what I’m going to do.” He opened the clamp and began pulling it from the strap, undoing it for the eleventh time in three days.

“Who ya talking to, Quennie? Is someone in your head telling you to take yet another inventory?”

“Nope, not one person here to tell me what to do. I know what to do. I gotta inventory these weapons and supplies and be ready for when the rescue comes.” He yanked the strap free of the load and tossed it to the side.

“Yet you’re making the load less ready, right now, the rescue might come any minute now.”

He huffed, yanked a box off the top, put it beside the load, and then used his dirk to slice through the tape. “I’m going to inventory this load, one more time, and break it into smaller boxes.”

“We got smaller boxes?”

“We got knives and cardboard, grab a tape dispenser.”

“Dammit, so your mind has ridden off the track and is careening into the stands and I have to come along for the ride?”

“What else you got to do?”

“Nothing, waiting for rescue to come, or the vessel to turn back on, that’s it. You checked the vessel this hour?”

“Yeah, not working.”

“Great, who’s working on our rescue you think?”

He remained quiet as he pulled cans of food from the box and stacked them beside it, organizing them into proteins and vegetables.

I worked quietly for a moment then said, “Really, who’s coming?”

He shoved the box away, tipping it over so that cans rolled out, and said, “No one! Fucking get it in your head, no one is coming!”

“What the hell? You need to calm your ass down. You’re going to freak out the natives.” One of the guards looked over the wall at us. I waved a hand. “It’s cool, we’re fine.”

Quentin righted the box. “They aren’t coming, you see that, right?”

“I don’t see anything like that. We are at Magnus’s family castle, you’re Magnus’s colonel, I’ve got a baby for fuck’s sake. We are going to get rescued! As soon as they can come, they will . You sound like a quitter.”

“I’m not quitting. I’m just saying we have to get used to the idea that they are not coming.”

I put my hands on my hips and exhaled. “Well I don’t like that idea at all. Why would they not be coming?”

“Maybe no one can fix this.”

“You mean we’ve been thoroughly beaten? I don’t think so, we have Magnus, Fraoch, Lochinvar, me and you, come on — Chef Zach.”

He laughed.

“Of course we are going to be rescued, we are too important, plus I have a baby. I can’t believe the world could be that fucked up.”

He was quiet, using his blade to cut the cardboard to build another box. “So you don’t believe we are thoroughly beaten?”

“Nope. Can’t possibly have happened. Take in a deep breath. Do you feel like a medieval man or do you feel like a modern man who time travels?”

“A modern man who time travels.”

“See? They’re coming.”

“So who is coming?”

“I got money on Fraoch. I bet you this can of pineapple that it’s Fraoch who rescues us all.”

“Alright, I’m putting my can of beans on Lady Mairead.”

I laughed. “We don’t think Magnus?”

“Nope, not this time.”

I straightened up and twisted to crack my back. “Man, I am exhausted, maybe while you do this rearranging I might sleep here on the boxes.”

He pulled a long piece of tape out and sealed the bottom of a box and began putting some cans inside.

Then I said, “Have you thought about the possibility that once Fraoch kicks ass, that they might rescue us earlier? Like a do-over?”

He leveled his eyes. “It’s all I am thinking about.”

“Great, I hoped I was just crazy, now the insane guy is agreeing with me.”

“It would be a lot easier to rescue all of us when we are together at one time in one place and things are going well. I can’t have been the only person to think of it.”

“What would happen to us?”

He shrugged. “The uncertainty is driving my current obsession with inventory and box strapping.”

I reached out, he passed me the tape dispenser. I drew tape across the top of the box of cans. “Like, are we just here forever?”

“Nah, or I don’t know… maybe? But it’s probably not that big a deal, alternate timeline and all.”

“I guess we wouldn’t know it, we wouldn’t feel it and would have no idea. It’d be like leaving dandruff flakes somewhere, right? Part of yourself, not your self.”

“Yeah, but also, gross.”

“Okay, so this is a possibility, we agree. Are you telling Beaty?”

Quentin looked to the right and left. “Of course not.” He pressed his finger to his lips and said to the pig, “And no squealing.”

Mookie grunted.

Quentin asked, “You telling Sophie?”

“Definitely not, all she can do right now is sleep and nurse. She cannot handle this existential crisis too.”

I put a check beside the finished box on his list and pulled another box down to open. “If they are going to do a do-over, when do you think they will choose to do it? We all need to be together. They could intervene when we all fled to Riaghalbane when we realized Ash had been kidnapped.”

“But Ash had already been kidnapped, we’d have to rescue her again. That leaves a lot to chance.”

“So the weekend before, when Junior was born.”

He nodded. “The night of Ben’s birthday would be good, you know?”

Quentin said, “Now I hope you’re right about Fraoch being in charge of the rescue, I don’t know if my bet ‘Lady Mairead’ will have good instincts for doing it right.”

“If she’s in charge she would probably pick a date that suits her and just go with it.”

“So what do we do?”

“We wait for what comes. There will be shenanigans as Kaitlyn would say, we just gotta roll with it.”

We both gulped.

Then we both started working on the boxes again. We made the project last most of the day.