The Bloody Quarrel (The Complete Edition) (46 page)

Brendan looked more amused than angry but Bridgit reached out to grip her son’s shoulder and pull him back. Except he did not move back but withstood her grip to still face Brendan.

“When did you turn into such a little lion?” she asked.

“I won’t let you be hurt ever again,” Kerrin said, eyes boring into Brendan.

“It has been quite the journey for all of us,” Brendan said, without a smile. “But I can’t risk letting her go.”

Padraig pushed his way through the crowd and into the middle of them.

“Well, would you look at you?” he exclaimed, embracing her.

She smiled, not just to see her father again but because he looked so different. His face and body had filled out and his clothes were clean, but the biggest change was in his eyes, which sparkled with life again.

“It has been amazing,” he said, seeing her surprise. “You stop cooking and I put on weight and you lose it! Maybe we should get Fallon to move into the kitchen from now on!”

Everyone smiled at his flood of nonsense, but he reached out to both Kerrin and Brendan.

“Nobody is going to hurt your mam, lad,” he said. “And Brendan, you can let her go. Because she is going to wait with me, isn’t that right?”

Bridgit hesitated, then nodded. Brendan released her arm and Padraig hugged her again.

“By Aroaril it is good to see you,” he said hoarsely. “You have been through the fires – literally, for you look like bread sat too long on the toasting fork.”

“It is good to see you too, Father,” she said. “And see the real you, not a shell.”

“Well, to be sure I am the fine figure of a man now. Getting on for two men, even!” He released her and sighed. “We have much to tell you, but I have kept an eye on both Kerrin and Fallon, and kept them mostly safe for you. But what about you? What have you been doing?”

She did not know where to start, and was worried about saying too much in front of Kerrin, so merely patted him on the arm. “Maybe later. Now I want to know what Fallon is up to.”

Waiting there was not the hardest thing she had had to do in these past moons but it was still frustrating. And when Fallon finally returned, to tell everyone he was ready to make a new treaty with Kotterman, that bubbled over and she was unable to hold back her words.

“Are you an idiot?” Bridgit demanded. “You cannot trust a word he says!”

Fallon rubbed his face. “Can you keep your voice down a little? These people think that I am a wise and careful man, worthy of their trust, so they will accept this treaty when I tell them about it. Having my wife announce I am an idiot at the top of her voice is not helping!”

“Well, if you are going to be an idiot, then the people need to know! Keep the family but send him packing. He is bluffing. He would never risk his family,” she insisted.

Fallon turned away, ordering men to find scribes in the nearby warehouses, then waved to Gallagher for Feray to be brought over.

“Why are you asking her?” Bridgit demanded. Was the man going out of his way to annoy her?

“Because she is his wife and she knows him better than we ever could.”

“And you think she is going to help us?”

“I think she owes me something after I saved her life, and that of her sons,” he said, an edge to his voice.

But Feray appeared less than happy when she was escorted over. “What is going on?” she demanded.

Fallon swiftly explained. “I know I have no right to ask this but can you tell me if Prince Kemal will hold to a signed treaty?” he finished.

Bridgit looked at Feray closely. She was a graceful woman, with an intelligent face. It seemed open enough. Kemal might be used to disguising what he was thinking but she reckoned she might be able to see if Feray was trying to lie.

“If he signs a treaty then he will hold to it,” she said with a shrug. “He has always been an honorable man. And the Kotterman way is not to get something through trickery. They have never needed to resort to that, when threat and force are always more than enough.”

Bridgit could see nothing there to tell her the woman was lying. But that was not enough to risk the whole country on!

Fallon nodded his thanks but Bridgit grabbed his arm and pulled him away.

“You have listened to his wife; now you need to listen to your wife. Kemal wants you dead and probably thinks the same way about Kerrin and me. We cannot trust him. His family is the only leverage we have—”

“His family will give us nothing. The Emperor wants Gaelland for his empire and nothing is going to stop that,” Fallon interrupted. “If we threaten Kemal’s family then they will come and get them and turn our country into a smoking wreck. Our only chance is to make a new treaty with the Kottermanis, one where they do not rule here but we run the country. It will be like Baltimore, where we send a duty off to our Lord and they leave us to run things as we see fit.”

“Except they want slaves as well,” Bridgit said flatly.

“One shipload of criminals a year. The ones we would be sentencing to death anyway,” Fallon replied.

She shook her head at him. “You need to speak to me before making these decisions.”

He laughed. “This is not about whether we get a new chair carved! This is the future of these people. Aidan warned me with his dying breath that my choices could doom Gaelland. I can’t risk that. You don’t understand what it is like, having so many depending on you—”

“Are you mad?” she demanded. “What do you think I have been doing? I risked everything to bring these people home, and I will not risk any of them being sent back! You have to tell me what is going on, so we can decide together.”

“What you went through was terrible. But you can’t compare it to what I am doing—”

“Oh, really?” she growled. She hadn’t been back for a turn of the hourglass and already he was driving her mad. She took a deep breath. “Put that aside. Listen to me. Nothing Kemal says is true.”

He looked at her strangely. “So are you pregnant or not, like he told me? And was he right in saying the baby is not his, nor any of his men’s?”

She staggered back, feeling as if she had taken a blow to the head. That was her special news, the thing she wanted to tell him quietly tonight, when everyone had gone away and definitely when Kerrin was asleep. Now Kemal had dared to tell Fallon? He had ruined what was an intensely intimate moment between her and Fallon. What they had gone through, what she had endured over the past twenty years had nearly broken her. It had created something between them, something nobody else could understand. It had nearly destroyed her this time. That was her news!

Some of that must have shown on her face because Fallon reached out for her. She knocked his hand away. This was too much.

“Yes, I am pregnant.” She managed to force the words out. “Maybe two moons in. Aroaril willing, we will have another child. I wanted to tell you tonight, when it was just us—”

She could say no more and he jumped in, ignoring her outthrust arm, and gathered her up.

“We will keep this one,” he said fiercely. “I know it.”

These thoughts were too painful, coming on top of everything else that she had endured. She could not answer him. It was all she could do not to lose all control.

“How dare he say that? How dare he take that from me?” she hissed.

“I am sorry. I cannot imagine what you have been going through, having that on top of everything else,” Fallon said gently. “And of course I trust you. But I have made so many mistakes, been so scared that I will make a decision that will destroy the country. I fear holding on to Feray might protect me but doom Gaelland. And I swore on Kerrin’s life to return them.”

“You vowed for Aroaril to take Kerrin if you break your word?” She clenched her fists at the thought. “How could you do such a thing?”

“I am sorry,” he said helplessly.

She closed eyes that burned with tears of many types. This was not a time to be making these sorts of decisions! “He has a fleet out there,” she said. “If we give him his family, he will return with them and seek revenge. You have to make him wait, make him reveal them. Once he has sent them back to Kotterman then you can give him his family and his treaty.”

He kissed her head and she felt the strength of that kiss travel all the way through her. “I shall look him in the eyes. I have broken him before and I will know when he is lying. Stay strong.”

*

Kemal watched impatiently as his agent, Abbas, rowed a small boat across the harbor to the far side of his vessel, then scrambled up a rope to get to the deck.

“I set off as soon as I saw your ship, high one,” Abbas puffed as he bowed.

“There is no time for that,” Kemal said irritably. “Tell me quickly, who rules here and what has been happening in my absence?”

He listened impatiently, one eye on the other ship, wondering when he would see Fallon reappear, while Abbas described the death of King Aidan, how the Duchess had first taken control but had now been restricted to a townhouse while Fallon ran the capital.

“He has been creating an army, high one. It is a rare day they do not train through the streets. They use the rooftops and plan to entangle any force in the tight streets,” Abbas explained.

“Interesting,” Kemal tugged on his beard. He remembered the streets of the capital and how tight and twisting they were. Even a small force could hold up a much larger one there.

“The Princess Feray has been staying at the former King’s castle and is never without a large guard. But my men have seen her out walking in the courtyard most days, while your sons play a game with Fallon’s son.”

Kemal found all this very useful. “So will Gaelland respect a treaty he makes?”

“He is honored and respected, high one. King Aidan had him kill your father’s three bodyguards, the ones Aidan wanted in the first place, and he revealed that their doings were part of the King’s plan. The people think him a hero.”

“And can he hold on to Berry? Or will Swane try to take it back?”

“I am sure the Prince will want to. But the people will stand with Fallon.”

Kemal dismissed the man with a nod. He had used a code with Feray to discover some of Fallon’s story was true but it was always good to have that confirmed. It was very interesting. The man was a peasant, yet he had risen to control the country. That was something his father would never let happen. Fallon and Bridgit were dangerous, for having overthrown one ruler, they would be naturally thinking of overthrowing any others. Although Fallon’s idea for a new treaty could work, he could not trust them to hold to any bargain.

But he had to get his family back.

Gokmen interrupted his thoughts politely. “High one, Fallon approaches again.”

Kemal saw the Gaelish leader standing defiantly on the other ship’s deck, arms crossed and no sign of a new treaty or, worse, his family.

“Watch him carefully,” Kemal ordered. He did not think this was a trap but, after what happened last time, did not plan to meet with Fallon without at least a company of archers to watch for treachery. He took a deep breath and crossed back onto the other ship. The last moon of worry and fear had been exhausting. Now to know his wife and sons were almost close enough to touch and yet out of reach was excruciating. Part of him wanted to order his soldiers forward, to take his family back by force. But the rest of him wanted to defeat Fallon himself, the way he did every night. Only then could he have peace. Kemal could never forget this was the man who had used a blacksmith’s hammer on his toes and then held a knife to Orhan’s eye. His foot gave a sympathetic twinge at the memory. “Have you drawn up the treaty yet?”

Fallon shook his head. “What about this fleet that you have waiting beyond the horizon? You need to send them home before we can sign anything.”

Kemal let nothing show on his face. “I have no fleet,” he said calmly. “I have two other ships, which were searching for your wife and the rest of your families, because I knew they had not taken enough food to last them the trip and nor did they have any maps showing them the way home. They know to meet up with me at a point a hundred miles away in the next quarter moon. If I do not appear by then, they will come here to see if something has happened to me. But what good are two ships to me? Do you really think I am so arrogant that I can take your entire country with so few? And we cannot wait for them to arrive here. Your winter is almost upon us. If we linger, we could all be lost. If that happens, then Gaelland will be utterly destroyed in the spring when my father comes to take revenge for my death. Your only chance is to get me back to Kotterman, healthy and happy, with your new treaty. Otherwise you will see the full fury of the Kotterman Empire.”

Fallon unfolded his arms but still made no move to produce either a treaty or Feray. “But that’s what you would say, if you had a fleet out there ready to take your revenge now.”

Kemal stepped closer and let some of his frustration and anger leak into his voice. “I am not playing games here,” he said. “I want my family back. I am willing to make a new treaty with you but do not make the mistake of thinking I will give you anything you want. You tricked me, tortured me and held my wife and children, remember? If you break the deal we made before, then I know I cannot trust you and any treaty you sign will be just to give you enough time to build a new army to defy us. So I am giving you a choice. Give me a treaty and my family and I will sail away and help preserve Gaelland. Or break our deal and I will sail back to my father and unleash a vengeance on you in the spring that will make every other province in our Empire shudder in fear. Choose now.”

He crossed his arms and stared at Fallon, letting some of his bitterness leak out of his eyes.

“And your family? What of them then?” Fallon asked.

“I shall mourn them on the way home, for I know that you will never let them go. And then I shall avenge them.”

He glared at Fallon, locking eyes with the man, just as he had done that fateful night when Fallon had held a knife to Orhan’s face. That night, Kemal had blinked and it was a memory that burned his soul. He would never do that again, no matter what it cost. But now, just as he feared he was going to have to sail away and mourn his family, the Gaelish leader was the one to blink.