Chapter Twelve
Beg to Differ
At first, I didn’t think I could bear it. Any of it. Everything that had happened in the last few weeks; all that I’d lost. Tanner, and Sorcha, and in an awful way that I couldn’t bring myself to examine, I knew I had lost Roy, too. The Roy I knew, at least.
At first, it was too much.
But as I had when my parents died, when Magnus left, I found day by day that I just – carried on. Because what other choice was there?
It didn’t hurt that the Kingsmen had yet to leave. Found, apparently, was not the same thing as caught – Roy was still out there somewhere. Still believed to be within the borders of Stormsby.
And Caelan was still charged with bringing him back to Kingsborough.
The night that Sorcha left, he’d explained to me how Roy had been caught.
The whole story that had been unravelling far beyond the quiet walls of The Mage and Rose.
The interviews they’d conducted across Stormsby - the interviews I’d been exempt from, for reasons I could only guess at – they had been so much more extensive than I realised.
Roy was not a Stormsby native, that much was common knowledge.
What I did not realise was that he’d bought his farm just a year after the Serpent’s escape.
That, alone, had not been enough to implicate him, but Caelan had been circling him for a while.
His name just kept coming up until finally, upon Johnny McAlpine’s death, his solicitor revealed that he’d been engaged in a land dispute with his neighbour – Roy.
And of course, Roy had been seen arguing with Tanner on that fateful Yule evening that now seemed a distant nightmare.
I remembered it, too. I’d thought nothing of it; Tanner had been gambling, and Roy had been furious with him.
At the time, we’d assumed it was because he knew his friend’s past troubles.
Now it looked as though he’d been fearful of Tanner calling the Kingsmen’s attention when Roy was so closely entwined in his life.
It made sense, if I made myself see it that way, but my mind fought to reject the idea. Thrashed against it in the same way my Flame would thrash beneath my skin, desperate for escape. I wanted to escape this reality.
I think Caelan could tell, too, because it was in a rare moment of transparency when it came to the hunt that he had handed me the one piece of irrefutable evidence he had.
Handed it to me figuratively, at least. Roy’s letter of confession, discovered in his empty farmhouse, was highly classified and had already been sent via messenger, with an escort of soldiers, to the King.
All I had were its contents, told secondhand to me by the Captain.
How Roy had moved to sleepy, dreary Stormsby, and hidden here for years.
How he’d killed Tanner in the heat of an argument, and it had nearly broken him.
How Johnny McAlpine had caught him out in the forgery of some legal document, and threatened to turn him in.
To hear Caelan tell it, his letter had sounded terrified; regretful.
It made sense. It really did. Didn’t it?
Not to Sorcha.
In the brief moment we’d been granted to say our goodbyes in the rain, she pushed past her tears to tell me as much, speaking in an urgent whisper.
“Brennan told me everything,” she said, glancing over my shoulder to where Caelan stood a few feet away with his back turned for our privacy.
Satisfied that he couldn’t hear us over the downpour, she met my eye – and I watched as hers hardened.
“Don’t give me that look, I know you know what I’m talking about. I know the Captain told you, too.”
There was no point lying. I was too tired to hold back, too weary. All I could do was nod, but apparently that gesture alone told Sorcha all she needed to know. Something dawned over her lovely face, something between triumph and regret. My chest gave a pang at the sight.
“You don’t believe it either. You don’t believe that Roy would do this.”
“I believe Caelan,” I said quickly, and then, ignoring the slight hitch in my voice; “We didn’t know him, Sorcha. Not like we thought.”
Sorcha’s eyes blazed hotter than a summer sky; she clearly wanted to say more, but her gaze darted over my shoulder again at the sound of Caelan’s approaching footsteps, and she suddenly yanked me into an embrace.
“Be careful,” she said in my ear. I heard the warning and the weight in the two whispered words. Then she kissed my cheek, and said no more.
Part of me wanted so desperately to believe it, a withered, wasted part that still clung to my youthful capacity for forgiveness – my capacity to believe in the best of people.
To believe that Roy would be found, and all would be set to rights.
He’d been framed, his letter an elaborate forgery.
There was an explanation, because there had to be.
And then there was the more cynical part of me.
The bereaved daughter. The abandoned sister of a man she’d never imagined a coward. The thirty-year-old woman with a wasted past and no real future to speak of. That part of me was louder, and it said that Roy had been harmless until the Kingsmen arrived.
That if you’re going to back a Serpent into a corner, you’d best be prepared for it to strike.
???
In the days that followed, I barely had a moment to miss Sorcha.
It was as though Stormsby as a whole were grieving, seeking each other out – and for once, it wasn’t gossip they wanted.
It was comfort. With the Kingsmen combing every inch of the village and its outskirts day and night, The Mage and Rose was the one place left to find that comfort.
And so, every day, half of Stormsby piled into my tavern to drink and talk and mourn.
It was strange to imagine that just few months ago, I would have done anything for this level of business.
This hard-worn livelihood that meant the difference between my parents’ legacy slowly rotting away, and my list of sorely needed repairs finally being addressed.
But now, watching the coin pile up day by day, that victory felt hollow.
Everything felt hollow really, my thoughts suppressed beneath the buzz of labour, my magic low and weak all day until almost the precise moment that Caelan stepped through the front door.
Tonight was no different. My Flame was flickering anxiously; it was hard to ignore, even with the long round of last-call pints to be pulled, the filthy, cluttered tables to be cleared, the crate of used glasses waiting to be loaded into the kitchen.
With every stutter of the magic in my chest, I couldn’t help but glance at the door.
Even when most of the patrons had cleared out, and my mind was half-engaged in a conversation with Ciara about her father’s delayed wake as she followed me about the tavern while I cleared tables.
“Father Murphy has a remembrance mass planned for Tanner that morning,” she was saying, depositing a few glasses into my crate, “but he thinks he can be here just before noon if –”
My heart gave a sudden leap with the whoosh of Flame that encased it, in the exact same moment that Ciara cut herself off. I knew before I turned that the door had swung open. And, as ever, Caelan was the first one through it.
It was clear at once that he was in a mood.
Clear to all, it seemed. The soldiers filing in behind him were silent as the dead, the scuffle of their feet on the doormat little more than a whisper to the clatter he made as he peeled off his armour and discarded it on a nearby chair.
Even Brennan, bringing up the rear to herd the last of the men through the door, offered barely more than an exhausted smile.
At the tangible chill in the air, Postmaster Ginny and her husband, who had been nursing lukewarm pints of cider, were quick to throw back the dregs of their drinks and amble to their feet.
All of this I noted from my periphery; because Caelan’s eyes had found mine and I was pinned in place by the vibrant, burning urgency there as he prowled toward me.
“Evening, Ciara.” He spared her a nod before his gaze snapped back to mine and he said in that low, rolling lilt that made my skin prickle with heat; “Rosie.”
“Erm – evening, Captain,” said Ciara’s voice at my side.
Ciara dropped the glass in her hands into my crate at once, the clatter of it breaching my warm hypnosis for just long enough to return her quiet goodnight. She made quick work of her cloak, and was out the door on Ginny’s shuffling heels within a moment.
Caelan considered me a moment longer, then took the crate from my hands and finally broke our crackling eye contact. The Captain turned to Brennan and said;
“I’m done. That concludes tonight’s orders. With the exception of this one: bed, now. Everyone.”
Then he turned away to clean up the tables, and I shot a glance at Brennan, who gave me something between a grimace and a shrug. Entirely unhelpful, but before I could press him, he pinched at his creased brow and turned to the throng of eerily silent soldiers shuffling around by the door.
“Alright lads, you heard your Captain. Get upstairs, we’ve an early start.”
The men filed out so quickly it was plain they’d been eagerly awaiting the command.
Brennan stood by as they passed him, and when they’d cleared the tavern, he glanced at his Captain’s back, turned one last small, oddly sad smile on me, and followed them out the door.
In the silence that followed, Caelan continued sweeping pints and half-eaten bowls of crackers into the crate.
Tension poured off his shoulders, but when he didn’t immediately turn, I left him to his space with a mental shrug and ducked back behind the bar to start cleaning up.
The second I did, he turned, frowning and setting down the heaving crate when he spotted me wiping down the counters.
Apparently my big strong Kingsman was content to brood in silence, but the extra two feet of distance between us was unacceptable.