Beatrix hadn't been to sea before. She stood looking at the small launch with caution. Clarence wondered if he should ask her if she was ok, but something in the way she looked at it made him hold his tongue. He pictured her resolutely facing down a monster. To be honest, the sea was monstrous. Beyond Bresco Bey white peaks of foam capped the dark green waves, and he knew that their crossing would be awful.
"No finer day for it," Pete commented and slapped Clarence on his arm as he jumped off the jetty into the launch and he held out his hand for Beatrix to climb in. Next to Clarence, Molly Buttercup stood with her hands on her hips as she sucked her teeth. "I'll do it," she told him. "Though don't expect me to run it the same way."
"I don't."
"And I'll be renting your room out Clarence so I'll put anything you own in the loft."
"Fine."
She slid her hands into her pockets. The weak sunlight was glinting off her red hair and lightly freckled skin. "Right then," she sniffed and turned to go. He caught her arm and turned her back. It wasn't often he saw her in the sunlight. Even though he could see every imperfection on her face she was more beautiful now than when the candles were lit.
"We had fun Molls," he told her and watched with something akin to a sad satisfaction as her eyes misted with tears.
"You ain't coming back."
He shook his head. "I don't suppose I can."
"Save Fred, he's a kind man, he doesn't deserve-"
Clarence pulled her towards him and kissed her. When he broke away she was smiling and crying at the same time. "Keep Beatrix safe," she whispered. "Fred'ud kill you if anything happened to her and I know you love her too. Don't forget it." She kissed him again to a chorus of wolf whistles from the sailors under Pete's command and walked backwards away from him. When he turned to climb into the boat Beatrix looked impatient bordering on furious, and Pete amused.
He settled in the centre of the boat, facing Beatrix. Pete issued orders and took his position at the tiller as the sailors cast off and rowed back to the Squid. The ship moored in the sheltered waters at the mouth of the bay where it was protected from the poor weather. It took about fifteen minutes to row to it, and it wasn't easy to climb up the ladder and alight onto the deck but Beatrix managed it without complaining or needing his help, already she was faring better than he had his first time at sea.
"Welcome to the Squid," Pete told her, hooking his fingers into his belt and looking around at the ship with pride. "Don't suppose from the look of stupidity on your face you know how this thing works. I'll spare you the lecture," His smile was only half-mocking. He didn't have much time for people who didn't know how to sail unless they could make him some money. Clarence's eyes tracked up into the rigging. Unfurled square sails and the crew scurrying around the ratlines now their captain was on board. They expected being told to get underway. Even as Clarence thought it he realised he could feel the anchor being winched from the way the wood vibrated under his feet.
"That back there is the captain's cabin." Pete pointed Beatrix towards the back of the ship. "You will sleep in there with Clarence. I'll bunk in with my first mate in the map room."
"Thanks Pete," Clarence collected his pack and hoisted it onto his shoulders, "We'll stay out your way."
"Good. Far as I'm concerned, you're both paying customers. I'll get us underway and I'll join you to talk this through."
Even in the bay the sway of the ship was alarming. Beatrix didn't seem to notice it, but he felt drunk. When they ducked under the poop deck and entered the small captain's cabin she crossed to the window seat and chucked her pack on the floor.
"It's taking too long. Scry for him again and tell me where they are."
Clarence placed his own pack next to hers, then he settled onto the seat and looked around. Pete's sailors had already hung two cots from the roof hooks for them to sleep in. All that remained in the room was an empty trunk for their belongings and a desk with a chair. It was sparse, hung with lanterns and cold. The windows were clear, but the glass was warped and Beatrix sat grinding her teeth as she looked for Fred's beard hair. She drew it from a small bottle and handed it to him. Clarence did as he was told, but as he expected he saw very little to tell him anything. Fred was still on the ship, a lantern hanging above him swung violently in the rough sea and then the vision ended. "Still at sea," he told her and handed the hair back. She made a tutting noise and got up to study the cots.
"Do we sleep in these?"
He nodded, and she kicked off her boots and climbed in. She wasn't graceful; she manoeuvred herself so she got her shoulders in first, then hooked a leg in and rolled. It worked, and she settled down. "It's quite comfortable," she said after a while as footsteps pounded on the deck above and the wind howled. Clarence crossed to his own and did the same, figuring that this would be one of the last times he slept in a comfortable bed. He got in with far more practice than she did.
"How many times have you been to sea?" she asked.
"Quite a lot actually," he told her. "I was safe on ships, you can't Jump on and off of them, too much rigging and movement, so when I worked on them I was free from Arthur and his people. Being a sailor is a hard life though. I was glad to settle in Gelding Town. The long voyages are awful and the novelty wears off pretty quickly."
"As with all things," she muttered, her voice as gloom ridden as their cabin.
"We will get him back, Beatrix," he told her. "We have to believe it."
She said nothing to that. His hopes were being sapped by her negativity but her thoughts had turned to something else. "Do you care that your parents are dead?"
It was an odd question. For a while he wasn't sure how to answer it. Did he care? Yes. Would he mourn them- he wasn't sure? He'd spent so long hating his Father and brother, but every child wants to love their parents. "I'm angry," he told her. "That's all."
"I just don't understand why you would rather run than take the crown. You could make so many things better for so many people."
"Kings don't run their kingdoms alone, Beatrix."
"They set the direction."
"Only if that direction is profitable to the ones that hold them up."
"What I'm trying to say is that you should let them take Fred to the Fortress and then demand that they let him go."
"If I do that, I will take the crown."
"And you don't want it? Even if it means Fred gets killed in some botched rescue attempt."
"If it comes to it, Beatrix, I would exchange my life for his, but I hope that there are other options first." He hoped she understood; that the deep frown on her face was not conveying anger towards him.
"He was ready to leave everything for you."
She was angry.
"I know," he told her. "To start again, but if I go back... " He couldn't finish what he wanted to say. He couldn't admit it to himself. "I will die for Fred, but I won't go home for him."
Beatrix sat up, her eyes drilling into his with such a depth of intrigue and pain that he felt his cheeks burn.
"I'm sorry, Beatrix."
"Whatever happened to you?" she saw more than he wanted and said more than he wanted. She always did, and she crawled out of her cot and left the room.
Raising the anchor always took a remarkably long time. The messenger cable wrapping around the trundle head of the capstan was under tension, the anchor cable attached to it was similarly so and as the messenger cable acted as a pulley system to winch the anchor up the cables needed to be constantly tied and untied to allow it to happen. It took hours to bring it up and most of the crew pushed against the bars whilst the top-men set the sail plan. Now Beatrix had left, Clarence could hear their songs below and he set off to help them.
The deck below was so cramped his head brushed the ceiling and was so dark that he could only work out where he was going by listening to the noises and picking out tiny enclosed swinging lanterns. When he joined the crew to push and sang along with them the ones who knew him nodded but nobody questioned his right to be with them. Except for Pete, the rest of the crew just saw him as a man who had once sailed with them and now won them money. They had no idea who he was. The very notion of him being a High Prince was akin to saying that their mother was made of moon dust and their father was starlight.
"Hay ho, row the man down." He sang as the capstan turned slowly and the ship shuddered under the weight of the thick anchor cable being drawn up into its hold. A boy started screaming somewhere down the ship, his hand caught in a nipper, and an older voice called for their physician. Clarence watched a man detach himself from the bars and dash off down ship. From what Pete had said about his ship's physician- he didn't hold out much hope for the child's fingers. Four hours later Clarence was shaking with exhaustion, his muscles burned and sweat dripped from his skin but they were underway.
"I don't rate this crossing," one sailor grumbled.
"You still got your sea legs, Ren?" another laughed, slapping Clarence on his back as he leaned against the now-defunct mound of the capstan and studied his blistered fingers.
"I don't have sailor's hands anymore," he said, to which the tar laughed and disappeared into the gloom. Clarence made his way back up on deck and watched as the sails got trimmed and set to catch the wind and the ship turned and edged towards the mouth of the bay. The motion had gone from steady to rocking, and soon they would toss around in the choppy sea, but Pete was at the tiller and he seemed confident in his weather gage so Clarence ducked into his cabin, wrapped himself in wool, leathers and his cloak and joined him.
"What do you make of it?" he asked.
"Worst is yet to come," Pete sniffed. "We've a storm chasing us and it'll hit by the morning."
"I'm sorry we made you sail."
Pete shook his head, "If I didn't see sense in it I would have told you to bugger off." His eyes flicked up, and for a moment Clarence's heart stuck in his throat.
"What's she doing up there?"
"Helping. She'd make a good top-man, got up the rigging like she'd been up before and the sway of the ship ain't troubling her. I like's having women up top," He gave a crude laugh, but Clarence only felt terror.
"Light Pete," He pulled his cloak closer and squinted through the salt spray. "At least give her something to tie around her waist."
"Not on yu'r life, I've seen a man sheared in two by a safety rope."
Out of the shelter of the bay, the wind howled, sheets of spray and rain whipping across the deck. What warmth had been in the chilly air was replaced with ice like needles of water. Coupled with the roll of the ship which dipped, rose and shuddered with each crest of the waves it traversed, the entire journey became alarming. Clarence had been in worse seas with worse crews, but Beatrix had retreated from the rigging into the cabin and sat watching the horizon sway dangerously in the failing light.
"I wanted to jump," she told him, half talking to herself as the ship crashed into another trough. He staggered, a lit taper held out to light the lanterns in the room.
"Not to do myself harm," she added, helpfully in Clarence's opinion. "I could see for miles from the top and I had an overwhelming urge to launch myself off from it and into the water. If you fall from high up water is supposed to become like stone, did you know that?"
He blew out the taper and bit his lip. "I'm glad you didn't."
"Do you think he feels the same?" She was asking about Fred, and her voice still betrayed a certain level of anger towards him for not having the courage to become the king. "Do you think he knows we are coming for him?"
Clarence held out his hand, "Give me the hair again."
She did as he asked, and when he Scried he saw blood. A ship's doctor was operating on Fred, and Fred was awake and watching. He wished he hadn't done it, and the hopeful look Beatrix gave him made him feel sick.
"He's still on the ship," he said.
Beatrix tutted; she wasn't paying Clarence much attention, and he was thankful for it. Had she been, she would have noticed how pale he had gone, and how worried he looked.
"I thought they would have docked by now."
"These ships are slow," Clarence told her. "And dependent on the weather. A crossing to Bristol can take between half a day to five of them depending on the wind. In stormy weather like this, we can't use full sail if any at all."
"Why Bristol?"
"If they mean to go directly to the Capital, they will sail down to Stonedruid City on the Jurassic coast and then up the Great Canal into Salisbury City. I don't think they want us to catch them. They want me to go to Salisbury to bargain myself for his return. If I'm right, they will sail up the Bristol Channel and travel to Salisbury using uncommon paths."
The cut had been in Fred's leg; it was bleeding badly, and the surrounding people looked annoyed. Perhaps it would slow them down, perhaps that was why Fred had done it if he had done it to himself.
"How will we know?"
"The hair."
She nodded and closed her eyes. "Pete said that his cook would bring us food and he would eat with us. I'm going up on deck until it comes."
An enormous wave broke across the ship and sent water cascading under their door. He looked at her like she was mad, but her eyes were dead as she pulled on her cloak and left him in the cabin. He watched the door bang a few times before fear creeped into his skin. She had said she had contemplated jumping. What if she still thought about it now? He pulled his own cloak on and followed.
The storm had caught up with the ship; the sea formed valleys around them, lifting them and chucking them from peak to peak. Pete was still at the tiller, lashed to it with rope and he was shouting something to Clarence but his words were lost in the wind. He realised quickly what Pete was telling him: get Beatrix away from the side.
She was gripping a rope, looking out at the water as if it were mesmerising, but she wasn't paying attention to what was going on behind her. On the other side of the ship a wave was cascading towards them. Clarence acted without thinking. He grabbed a coil of rope and knotted it around himself, then launched across the deck. The wave struck. White water cascaded. Beatrix had gone. He hit the churning icy waves with a smash. She was screaming; he felt his muscles shiver as he sprinted to her. More white water. Where was she?
There!
His hand closed around her wrist. He pulled her tight to him, but her eyes were closed, and her head was lolling. The rope tightened around his body, dragging him back to the ship. He felt it dig into his skin as they dragged him up, but he kept his grip on her. Even as his skin sliced away by the rough barnacles under the waterline, and the wood tore his clothes as they dragged him over the side he didn't let go.
Her hair was like a drowned banshee. He compressed her lungs and breathed into her mouth. She coughed, gasped and puked seawater and he grabbed her again and dragged her away from the deck.
Pete was swearing so much his face turned purple. He cursed her and threatened her, but she didn't make much motion to show she was listening. It enraged Pete more, and he stepped over her with his fist raised, but Clarence grabbed his hand and chucked him back. "How was she to know? She's never been to sea."
"I o'pe she knows how damned lucky she is Clarence," Pete cried. "There's no way in this weather I'd turn about to save her."
"She knows," Clarence growled. "She's grateful, we're both grateful."
Pete gave Beatrix another petulant look, "Better off dead, she is," he poked his finger at her. "Fred has gone and you as you are, should have let her drown."
Clarence drew himself to his full height, "Say that to me again and the Squid'll need a new captain."
Pete held his tongue, his mouth a furious line. "Keep her in her cabin." He turned and stormed out.
The storm blew itself out in the morning and left behind conditions for full sail. Beatrix was mute and shivered in her cot. Her clothes were soaked and she didn't carry spares. Whilst she was asleep he took his off and hung them over the chair to dry, but once back on the saltwater itched his skin and he knew he would have a rash the next day. He wasn't inclined to ask Pete for help. His was a cold and miserable, silent night, swaying in his cots and listening to the sounds of the waves and the wind. Even when it died down, he was so uncomfortable he couldn't find sleep. In the morning Clarence tried to warm up the only way he knew how- by exercising. Beatrix watched him with sunken eyes and lank hair, as if she were taking warmth from his movement. When he saw he stopped. She held out her hand to him; he got up and came over and he took it. Her skin was soft, her eyes glistening, and she rested her head on his chest as if it weighed too much for her to hold it up.
"Was it an accident?" he asked.
"Yes." She looked at him with confusion. "Of course."
His hand tightened in hers, "I will never let you get hurt, Bea," he told her. "I'll always protect you."
She shook, "Clarence, you will be so angry."
"Why?"
"The hair-"
"Fred?"
She raised her hands and let them fall. "It was in my pocket when I-" her voice broke, he fancied that she was so cold her hot tears steamed. He felt numb. Detached, but not angry. He pulled her closer to him and kissed the top of her head. Her arms snaked around him and she held on like he was her mother.
By midday the ship dropped its anchor at Lynmouth and Pete took Clarence and Beatrix across to the harbour in the launch. The storm had cleared the sky to a brilliant blue, but the wind stabbed and seagulls were unsteady as they flew above the fish stink of the docks. "We can sail you directly to the Fortress Clarence, you just need to say the word."
"The word's 'not on your life' Pete," Clarence told him, he was relieved that their argument the night before had not been taken personally.
"Well, you know my haunts if you need my services, I don't suppose I'll see you for a while, lad."
"I don't suppose."
Pete turned to Beatrix, and Clarence felt caution rise, but the captain held out his hand to her, "You'd make a fine top-man Beatrix, there's a job for you if you ever want to leave this idiot."
"I got washed overboard," she protested.
"Plenty has and all, good job you can swim, most can't."
Once they and their packs were out of the boat, Pete cast off. Clarence watched them row away until they were too small to see individually. Beatrix turned away first, but after a quick look around the port side village, she sat on her pack and ran a hand through her hair.
"This is Lynmouth. We need to find Hilltop Farm."
"What's there?"
"A friend, I hope." He knew he didn't sound too hopeful. Beatrix drew her tooth stick from her pocket and dug between her teeth. "Do you have to do that now?" he asked. "Come on."
They walked out of the village and up into the hills. Clarence wasn't sure where he was going, so he asked a local boy who pointed to a cliff path. "Keep on up there, sir," he said as he took in Clarence's clothing. Nothing he wore marked him as a rich man, but his clothes were rags stained with salt and villages were close communities.
It took them the best part of an hour to walk the path up and then away from the cliffs, but eventually they came into a valley and saw a small farmhouse. Clarence put his pack down and blew hot air into his hands as Beatrix studied the house with her hands on her hips.
"Crofter?" she asked. "That's a turf roof, right?"
"Her brother built it."
"Another woman Clarence?" Beatrix sighed. "Another whore to whom you gifted a living once spreading her legs for you had run its course, is she?"
"I don't understand what you're saying to me," Clarence told her. "Your use of Joining Earth Standard is awful."
Beatrix laughed.
"No," he told her. "She's not, but she might not be pleased to see me."
They picked their way through sheep thinned grass. Clarence reached the low stone wall of her yard and opened the gate. He knocked twice on the door and stood back as it opened.
The woman inside was plain but beautiful. Her light brown hair was plaited down her back, and she held a baby lamb in her arms.
"I was expecting you," she said without smiling, and turned back inside. Half the bottom floor of her house was an animal pen, the other half had nothing but a wide table and a fire. Everything was functional but dirty and two sheepdogs lounged watching them with their tongues lolling from their mouths. A single ladder led up into an attic space where the woman presumably had her bedroom. Clarence dropped his pack and slid onto a bench and motioned for Beatrix to do the same.
"He's on his way back," she said from the gloom of the animal pen as she put the lamb down and pushed it back towards its mother. "I've been waiting for him for two weeks."
"How did you know we were coming?" Clarence asked her.
"Saw it," she told him, her voice was guarded and unfriendly. "Saw it all."
He sat a little straighter, "Rosa?" he asked. "What do you mean?"
"What I say." She told him. "What I'm cursed with. I saw the assassination, figured it would be only a matter of time till you showed up."
"You were there?" Beatrix asked.
"No." The woman, Rosa, stood up and took a cloak from the back of the farmhouse door. "Help yourself to pottage, I'll be back in an hour or so." The sheepdogs jumped up and ran from the room after their owner.
When the door banged closed Beatrix got up and went across to the fire to look in the cauldron, "It's brownish grey. I think it's got lamb in it. Don't you think it's cruel to cook it when there are live ones over there?"
Clarence thought she would want to ask questions, but hunger and exhaustion had distracted her. He pointed up on a shelf where he could see two wooden bowls.
Moments later they were poking at the pottage, which wasn't as bad as it looked. A hot meal was welcome, and the silence gave Clarence time to study Beatrix. Far from being a wreck over the loss of Fred's beard hair, she seemed relieved. He thought he understood why, the constant responsibility of needing to check, the urgency of having to catch them was so distant now, and the fact he was alive meant that they didn't wish to kill him. He knew she adjusted and accepted new realities easily, but it unnerved him sometimes. Especially when he was struggling to see how they would ever work out a way of getting to him now.
"Rosa's 'touched' by a thing called the Sight," Clarence told her. "Her father used to be the groundsman at Grovely Wood."
"Used to?"
"It's complicated," he wished he hadn't said that. Beatrix's head shot up, and she studied him with intrigue.
"We have time."
She was right; they had time and Clarence couldn't think of a reason not to talk about it, as long as he didn't talk about himself, or let her get too close to it all, it would just be a meaningless story.
"The Council of the Light is suspicious of magic that is not directly controlled by the hand that wields it. In our ancient history, the culling of anybody who channelled Old Magic was widely documented. You met the Green Wytch in the Outlaws camp. The Sight is similar. There hasn't been a reported case of the Sight in over seven hundred years. When Rosa had her first premonition, my mother agreed to a life debt to keep her secret. Her brother would be my servant, loyal to the day that he dies and Rosa would have her, and later my, protection."
"I don't suppose that worked?"
"Life debts are broken by death or an agreement from all parties, I'm still alive."
Beatrix observed him, her eyes full of concern but all too intelligent. He had the feeling she was looking right through him, seeing his memories through his eyes, and he had to look away from her. "Are these debts-" she thought of the word, "Do they have consequences if broken?"
"Yes, it's called a life debt for a reason," Clarence told her. "Bobbin, her older brother, was a friend to me until my mother passed, but my Stepmother was not kind to his family. I protected Rosa's secret, even when I ran. I gave them the means to start over. After that, I don't know what happened. I met Bobbin by chance around five years ago in Gibraltar when I was sailing with Pete. He was on a ship called the Doppelganger as the second mate of a privateer called Claus Hans. we spoke only briefly and he said where he had settled and that Rosa had a home he'd helped to build with his own hands."
"You grew up with them?"
"With Bobbin serving me. Everybody thought it was funny that I had a Human servant. Usually, my kind have the children of the world kings serving them, or political servants to strengthen their bonds with other kingdoms, everything they do is disseminated."
"How did you explain it?"
"My mother would laugh it off, as if I kept him as a fool for my amusement, and said that when I had a settled marriage arrangement, she would pick somebody suitable. She explained that it was good for her son to know the limitations of Humanity. In reality, the debt assured his loyalty. He was the one person I could count on."
Beatrix winced and poked at her lamb. "What happens to me if-" her eyes flicked up and back again. The fire cracked and spat hot sap onto the flagstones.
"You heard Pete."
"I also know he was happy to pimp his cousin."
Clarence reached out to her and smoothed his thumb across the back of her hand, "I mean it Bea. He'll sail you back to Gelding Town. In the document I drew up for Molly, it states that if you or Fred come back, she must give back the keys. I sent a copy to Cork to the Druids there too. They have your description and the security question is my birthday- the Twenty-Sixth of June, year of the Light Fifty Three Seventy."
Beatrix studied him, "When?" she asked. "When did you do that?"
"As soon as I realised that you would come with me."
Her face contorted into an ugly snarl and she pulled her hand away. "I told you, Clarence, we stick together."
"And If I die? What then?"
She hung her head.
"You don't need me to make a living. You don't need me at all," he pressed.
Beatrix got up and went back to the pottage. She spooned a little more out and ate it facing away from him. "I want you to stay with me," she said eventually and Clarence felt his heart break, he wasn't sure how he would ever achieve that, not if they would get Fred back alive.
Rosa came back at twilight, and the animal pen at the back of the house filled with sheep that were driven in from her fields. She kept herself so busy that he was sure she was avoiding conversation with them, and when it was too dark to see she gave them sheepskin rugs and told them to sleep on the table and she went up to her own bed. Beatrix snuggled into him for warmth, and he slept with his arm over her, listening to the sheep and the snoring dogs. He loved her, but he didn't want her to love him. Sometimes, the way she looked at him made him wonder what she felt, but he reminded himself of her words, that he was like a son to her and Fred. The three of them were family and very dear friends. That was what he was to her, that was what he wanted.
In the morning, a runner came from the village to say that they had sighted the Doppelganger. At lunchtime, Rosa left with a cart to fetch her brother from the village. Clarence picked at his nails as they waited for him to arrive, playing conversations over and over as he considered how he would request the help of a man he no longer knew. Beatrix picked up on his mood with her usual speed and she fussed with her pack and her salt ruined clothing as she waited silently for the door to open. The first they knew of his arrival was the rattle of the wooden cartwheels on the stones outside, the bark of the sheepdogs and a man say, "I'll fix that later Rosa."
"No, you won't," Rosa told him, her voice growing close. "You've a visitor."
She hadn't told him on the way up, Clarence realised, and then considered that had she said anything he might have got back on his ship and refused to come.
The door opened, Rosa ducked inside, and her brother followed her. He was older than Clarence and taller than him by a head. He'd been at sea for so long that the weather had tanned his skin deep brown. His hair was salt-curled and brushed his shoulders in thick dark ringlets. "Well," he said, his eyes resting on Clarence. If he felt surprised he was good at hiding it. "Welcome to our home, Your Highness."
Clarence felt a stab of annoyance. "Ren," he corrected.
"Indeed." He still spoke like a noble. The education he had received had been the same as Clarences for the five years he'd been his man and it didn't appear he had tried to correct it to sound more native. "Why are you here Ren?"
"You know, I assume?"
"That the O'Leary's are dead, yes. That Grendal Innis now Stewards the Empire, yes. But not why you are here."
"They mean for me to go back."
"Good, a Humanist on the throne would do wonders for our cause."
Clarence tutted annoyance, how dare he press that again. Bobbin smiled, it didn't soften his square jaw and chiselled features.
"I'll not take it. They have kidnapped my friend to force me back to them, I mean to get him back before he reaches Salisbury."
"So Jump and get him, Leprechaun." Bobbin laughed, and Clarence saw Beatrix give Clarence a look as if to say see, he said it too.
"I don't know where they are."
"Why are you here Clarence?" Bobbin asked again, his humour slipping. "We've argued this time and time again. Humans will never get equality unless the change comes from the magical community, if you go back you can make that change."
"I can't. Think on the lengths my mother had to go to to keep your sister safe and think on the world rulers I would preside over. None of them would listen and if I pressed too hard, I'd cause a civil war."
Bobbin hooked his thumbs into his belt. "So why would I help you get your friend back? There's nothing in it for me."
"Grendal Innis is the low born second son of a country king. If he continues to be the Steward you get closer to your equality, anyway."
"You, of all people, are content to let that bastard take the throne?" That surprised Bobbin. Clarence could see him trying not to show it, but there it was all the same. Everybody expected him to be angry that his old tutor had been elevated to such heights, but he wasn't. It just made him more certain that he would never go back unless it was in a coffin.
"I just want my friend back Bobbin, and then I will go very far away and start again. In return, I'll give you information to help the Humanist cause."
"Because your information is so very current," Bobbin scoffed.
"When my stepmother found out about Rosa being a Witch who helped you get away? Who gave you the funds to start over and contacts for jobs? I need you, I need to reclaim the debt."
Bobbin's face went passive again, and he studied Clarence long and hard. "I'm an honourable man," he said.
"I know."
"But I don't see how you think I can help you."
"I need men, horses, and information. I have to track down Arthur Innisman and find out where he is heading and then I need to get in front of him and ambush him before he reaches Salisbury. If you help me, I will release you from the life debt."
Bobbin was stoic throughout, but the length of his silence showed Clarence he was thinking about it. "This your woman?" he asked.
"She's her own woman," Beatrix retorted and coloured when Rosa laughed. "And her name is Beatrix."
"Like a bee playing a trick," Rosa told her brother brightly. "Before anybody agrees to anything I need to tell you what I saw."
Rosa sat in a rocking chair by the fire, as she rocked she scratched behind her dog's ears. Bobbin sat next to Clarence, Beatrix opposite him, and the light came from the wide fire. Rosa built it up, so the flame was bright in the hut which had tiny windows and hardly enough natural light to see by. "I was standing on Pinnacle Hill overlooking the Grovely Wood estate. Next to me was an old man dressed in black and a woman obscured in a black carriage. The man held a black staff that made me feel sick and he drove it into the ground in front of him. I felt a shift in the atmosphere as if the staff was sucking everything towards it. As I watched storm clouds gathered above the estate, there was a flash of red light from the centre of them. Then he dropped the staff, and he brought out a spyglass. He said, 'They are thorough,' and the woman in the carriage laughed. Then later he said, 'The second son was not with them.' The woman replied, 'He's not a problem to us if the rumours are true. We'll make sure he can't move against us either way,' and the man laughed and got into the carriage." The creek of Rosa's chair was putting Clarence's hair on end.
"Who else knows this?"
"Only the people in this room. I don't go round shouting 'I'm touched by the Sight' do I? Light, it's hard enough to keep quiet about being a Witch. The back taxes alone would cripple my livelihood."
Clarence knew it was a dig. The reason they had dismissed her parents was the fact that the Leprechauns found out the daughter of their human groundsman was an undeclared Witch. A fact that meant the Human family should have been paying the fealty tax for the last seven years of her life for the privilege of another Empire's protection and employment.
"Thing is," Rosa continued, "I don't get these premonitions without reason, and I've half a mind to come with you to see why."
Bobbin's hand slipped from under his chin, "You- what?"
"I'm going with them," Rosa told him. "I've got it planned out, the labourers can work the farm for me whilst I'm gone and they can move into the farmhouse, they can pay their rent directly to the Druid Bank and I'll leave instructions for their eviction if they cannot do it."
"It's a terrible idea."
"You're not the only one who gets to go out there, Bob," Rosa told him, poking her finger at the wall to show the wider world. "I've never trained my powers, I can't control the Sight and I'm wasting my life playing Human when things are shifting like sand around us."
Bobbin's jaw clenched. Clarence knew he would silently curse Clarence and Beatrix for bringing this on.
"This isn't wasting your life woman, it's having one."
"It's ignoring the bloody obvious-" Rosa argued back, tapping the side of her head. "You lot go on about how you hate the Council of the Light and all it stands for, don't forget what it destroyed to gain control. What I have is old, and I don't understand it at all, but maybe it can help, and maybe if I listen to it, things will happen."
"Like a death sentence after a Necromancers torture at the hands of the Council of the Light," Bobbin sneered at her.
Clarence closed his eyes and sunk his head onto the table. He didn't remember them arguing like this before. Rosa had been a meek insignificant thing like a mouse frightened to come out of its hole and Bobbin had been the archetype of a stoic and wise big brother.
"What else have you seen?" Beatrix asked, which shut everybody up. Rosa turned her light brown eyes to meet Beatrix's dark ones, and she scratched behind the dog's ears again.
"The fall of the White Queen Serena of Lumane that heralded the end of the last great war, that was twenty years ago now. Sometimes I see things I care about- like a dog dying the day before it happens. Sometimes things are shown to me and then when they happen they are slightly different, like time changes the warning. I saw a great storm and seven ships sinking, then the next week Bobbin comes home and tells me he's sailing with an armada of trade ships, seven of them in total and I tell him. Six ships sink, but his turns and runs before the storm. Sometimes I see things that make no sense at all, diamond portal stones and monsters that can't be real. I think I must see things happening on the Fringe. Those never make sense and nothing comes to pass."
"I can see why the farm isn't enough," Beatrix muttered. Bobbin tutted, but Rosa looked more appreciative.
"I wish my thick-headed brother did."
"Your thick-headed brother wants to keep you alive."
Rosa rocked up from her chair, "I've got work to be getting on with." She motioned to their packs, "I've seen what you brought with you and it's no good for travelling, my brother will sort you out."
"Will he?" Bobbin looked at his sister with mild alarm.
"We can pay for ourselves," Beatrix told him.
Rosa nodded once and left them alone in the farmhouse. Bobbin got up and chucked fuel on the fire. Then he settled into her rocking chair and studied both of them. "You look like shit," he said after a long time.
"We went swimming," Beatrix told him.
Bobbin didn't misunderstand her at all, "It was an awful storm," he said. "What was the name of the ship that took your friend?"
"Arthur Innisman always sailed on the Aurora Star though we don't know for sure he used it to run from Ireland."
Bobbin sniffed, "That's a private charter, two-masted square sailed brig, right?"
"You know it?"
"It's a world runner. Innis and back through the Scandi sea stones usually. The Captain gets on all right with ours and the men have a reputation for sailing well."
"Do you think you can find out where it docked?"
Bobbin laughed, "Maybe if we head to Bridgewater we'll get news, but only if they came in on this coastline. If they are intent on reaching Salisbury before you Clarence they will sail down to-"
"Stonedruid city, I know."
"If they did that you don't have a hope of catching them unless you Jump."
Clarence bit his lip, "I still think they'll avoid it. The canal is exposed. It would be easy for me to ambush them. All I have to do is carve a path to Fred and I can jump him elsewhere. No," Clarence might as well have been speaking to himself. "They won't do that." But doubts clawed at him, and he might have already been too late.