Chapter Twenty-Three
Twenty-three
Faolan
“Saoirse?”
I lurch upright in a bed far too still for comfort, clutching at sheets that are cold. Empty.
An ocean away from my wife.
“Dammit!” I fall back into the mattress—then swear soundly as my head meets the wooden frame. Moans filter through the wall behind me, drowning out my own pain. When I fumble for a candle and box of Bruidin flame, my hand meets a stiff puddle of wax instead. “Of all the—”
A knock comes seconds before the door cracks open, weak light hounding Lorcan inside.
“Captain? Is anything the matter?”
Blearily, I rub at my eyes and find grit.
Salt from crying.
Fantastic.
“No, it was just a…I mean, yes, I…” Saoirse’s words chase themselves round and round my head.
“Feck.” Holding up my palm, I glare in the semi-dark.
“Saoirse found me in my dreams, and she’s pissed off Maccus, who’s still out for her blood, mind you, and we’ve got to find that stupid potion-peddling piece of shite fast so we can turn this all around. ”
The lantern flame winks bright, belying Lorcan’s bewildered expression.
I throw off the blankets and roll to my feet. “We don’t have time to wait.”
“Right—except, Captain. It’s, ah, nowhere near dawn.”
“So?” My back wrenches as I crouch low to the ground, scrabbling for the boots I kicked off in the night. “I doubt any of the crew are sleeping.”
“No, but they’re…” Those moans from the other room climb into roiling screams. “Well, they’re occupied.”
I rip my shirt from the sheets as across the hall, a thumping starts up, sending dust scattering over the doorframe.
Lorcan’s smile flashes bright. “Mam’s right happy with the business.”
“I’m sure she is.” With one hand, I shove my shirt into my trousers as the other fumbles for the leather belt with my money pouch, dagger, and sword attached. “Rouse whoever you can find, then. I’ll fetch Rowan. We’re going to see the apothecary’s shop tonight.”
“Ah.” A shadow crosses Lorcan’s face as he lowers the lantern. “You’re forgetting what Nessa said.”
“About?”
“Our territory. Rian and his crew have claimed half the Docklands.”
He steps into the hall as those yowling screams dissolve into a few final grunts.
Small favors from absent gods.
I push past him, long-footing it over a woven rug. “We still have the other half, don’t we?”
“Aye. I think? But—” Lorcan trails after me, past doors painted like a damn menagerie captured in wood: ravens on the first, horses on the next. I’m reaching for the one carved with a solitary wolf when Lorcan stretches past my shoulder, flattening a hand to the wall. “Captain.”
A muffled groan chases the word, and I honestly can’t tell if it’s mine or one of the brothel’s patrons.
Either way, my bosun’s face twists as he looks at me.
“The way Rowan put it, your apothecary’s shop won’t be in the half we claimed.”
“So we’ll be quiet.”
“Normally I’d agree, but…” Lorcan’s smile’s all but memory now. “Brona isn’t here. Oona and Bowden neither. Nessa’s tucked herself away with a couple of Mam’s prized lads, and the rest of the crew we have is unfamiliar, not to mention—”
“I’ve been leashed to a bloody island for months now while the whole Crescent gossips that I’ve gone soft. Is that what you’re saying?”
Lorcan winces, the lantern flaring behind him as he shifts his weight.
“I’m only saying we shouldn’t act like nothing’s changed.”
“You’re right. We shouldn’t. Which is why after I found out my wife still intends to bleed for that stony son of a bitch, I’m rather motivated to move things along.” I drive a fist against the door, rings clacking upon the wood. “Stay behind if you like—”
“Shade’s breath, you stubborn bastard, I wasn’t saying that.”
A bit of relief settles on my shoulders, rolling them back down. “You can, though. If you want. Rules haven’t changed: I won’t force you to do anything.”
Lorcan’s smile returns, fierce and bright. “As if you could.”
The door swings open between one heavy knock and the next, Rowan glaring past a cloud of gold hair as she clutches a linen robe closed over her chest.
“You’d better have a damn good explanation for this.”
“We’re going out for a walk. Get dressed.”
I toss her a pouch of coins, then stride into the room as a figure convulses on the bed, swearing.
“Oi, whoever you are. Clear off. There’s Wolf business about.”
“Faolan!” Rowan snaps, and the figure goes as still as a doe scenting a hunter.
“Go on.” I clap my hands and the person startles, then lurches off the bed to grab up a bundle of cloth, shoving limbs into some of it. As they pass me by, head bowed, I dangle another coin in their path. “For your troubles. Spend it unwisely, and—winds o’ fury.”
Rí Aidan of Reborn Stalk glares back at me.
“You really are the world’s biggest arse. Do you know that?”
Past his shoulder, Rowan widens her eyes with annoyance.
I narrow my own. “You’re meant to be in your own room, Your Majesty.”
“I sprung him out.” Rowan tips the coins into her palm with a bright rattle, shaking it once. “Stars of fire, you really do want that apothecary, don’t you?”
“Like I want my ship back. This goal just happens to be a bit more attainable.”
“Right. Give me five minutes.”
“Three.”
“ ’Til what?” Nessa emerges from behind Lorcan, flushed and loose-limbed as she tucks her shirt into her trousers, two lads staggering out of the room next to mine. I raise a brow at them and she lifts one right back. “ ’Til what, Captain?”
“ ’Til we hunt down the rat who carved up my wife’s back.”
—
“For a man who spent the night alone, you’ve a week’s worth of shadows under your eyes.”
I rub at one and twist my fingers in a gesture that makes Rowan snort as she leads us through the cobbled streets nearest the Docklands, home of the most brilliant artists and Painted Claw’s largest port.
It was designed in the early days of the gods as a way to honor Róisín, crafted of complex winding paths and clever nooks that are said to form her visage from the view of the island’s famed tuar ceatha.
Personally, I think the architects were just wildly drunk.
Even so, it’s a pretty thing that takes us past hundreds of different shops in the brief time it takes to walk through.
Glassmakers, potters, weavers, musicians—if any art exists, it’s well on its way to being perfected here by the talented cutthroats lucky enough to be chosen as apprentice or master.
Saoirse would absolutely love it.
We pass a florist surrounded by twinkling fireflies, and Aidan pauses to give a lurid pink flower a second look.
I grab him by the shoulder and shove him ahead. “No offense, but I don’t mean to carry you over my shoulder the next six hours.”
He frowns, lip plumping out in a manner so much like his sister. “It would put me to sleep?”
“Nothing so mundane as that.” Gripping his shoulder, I unsheathe one of my knives, using the point to draw the leaves up until he can see its jet-black stem.
“Painted Claw is home to many strange creatures, the emerald fang being one of them. When a female is ready for mating, she’ll wind her way through a patch of these and bite down on their stems so the pollen spreads far and wide with her scent.
It gets the job done but leaves them in a state. ”
I carefully lower the flower until it rests deep in the wooden vase once more. “They call it bean sídhe’s breath, for the way it freezes your very blood. One inhale would paralyze you until sundown. Two, and you’d be lucky to wake tomorrow with a single feeling left in your bones.”
“And if I tasted it?” Aidan’s eyeing the flower with more than a little disgust now.
I drag the flat of my blade across my own throat in an exaggerated arc, then slide it back into place. “Best not to find out.”
“Gods’ sake.” Aidan kicks an apple core from the cobbled path into a thicket laden with purple berries. “Maybe Kiara does have the right of it. Magic like this shouldn’t exist.”
“Careful, Your Highness.” Lorcan grins as he ducks below an overgrown awning, “That’s dangerously close to a show of support.”
Even in the scattered light of those flies, I can make out Aidan’s scowl. “I’m not Maccus’s man.”
Nessa butts her way in. “So you’ll side with Kiara, then?”
“I didn’t say that. I—”
“Shh.”
Rowan’s gone as still as a rabbit, head tipped toward a downhill path crowded on either side with feathery flowers and dull shopfronts that fade rapidly into a fog reeking of brine.
Any other visit would have me racing the wolves down the murky street to the jewel of the Docklands, a green lantern bobbing proudly above the tavern door.
Instead, I tug my hood lower and nudge Aidan down another side street tucked between buildings, walking on until packed clay gives way to slimy planks, water sloshing faintly below.
Call it pure instinct, or call it the smell of rot and the door hanging off its hinges, but I don’t have to be told to know which storefront belonged to Sionn.
When Rowan stops, I nudge her back and reach into my shirt for the same violet crystal I clutched the last time I ran into the apothecary, lighting our path into Rí Dermot’s keep.
It hangs off a leather cord now, illuminating the door as I push it aside with a forearm, wincing as it creaks.
Jars lay overturned across a wooden table at the shop’s center, most of them empty, save for one still dripping a thick green liquid straight through a widening hole in the table and onto the floor below.
At the back is a narrow bench stained dark red.
A few candles litter the rest of the surfaces, reeking of animal fat—though that smell could also be coming from the iron cage covered loosely by a netted cloth at the back, inside of which lay three large rats, their bodies taken over by insects and late-summer heat.
A retch sounds behind me as Aidan stumbles back. He’s pale again, pressing himself to the outside wall as Rowan casually leans beside him, lifting a pale golden brow. Her stomach, at least, is made of stronger stuff.