It was well creepy too. So quiet, the only sounds were their own breathing and footsteps. And Mal hitting his helmet on the ceiling, but he was getting better at avoiding that. Every now and then a jagged rock would stick up from the floor like a single broken tooth in the mouth of a monster, or a seam of lighter-coloured rock would flash in the light from their headlamps and make Mal think he’d seen a ghost.
Probably not a friendly one, if it was some long-dead smuggler who thought they were after his booty, and not in a sexy-times way. Or even if it was a murdered excise man, who’d sworn with his dying breath to haunt the smugglers for eternity.
Mal shivered. Didn’t they ought to be seeing daylight by now? “You sure this comes out somewhere?” he said, only half-joking. His voice was dry.
“Trust me,” Jory said, and right at that moment, they turned a tight bend in the tunnel, and there was more light than Mal knew what to do with. It was blinding, after the darkness underground. He half stumbled out of the tunnel after Jory and found himself walking on soft sand.
He blinked. They were on a tiny beach, in a perfect mini cove. The cliffs curved around the sand in a sort of granite hug, casting long shadows. Even in the shade, the air felt warm and fresh on his exposed skin, with barely a hint of breeze to cool it. Mal took a deep, heady breath.
“Like it?” Jory asked, smiling triumphantly.
Mal shook his head, grinning back. “Fuck me, did they do that on purpose? That hairpin bend just before the end?”
“I think they must have. If by they you mean the smugglers who first dug this tunnel. Probably something to do with lanterns not showing out to sea—I expect they used to douse them when they got to the bend, in case there were Revenue vessels out there instead of the cargo they were expecting.”
Mal turned round slowly, taking the place in. “It’s like . . . There’s no way in, is there? You can only get to this beach by sea or by that tunnel.”
“Well, given a minimum of gear, I could rappel down the cliffs easily enough. But generally speaking, no.” Jory’s smile seemed to grow as he pulled off his headlamp, leaving his hair sticking up in cute little tufts. “For all intents and purposes, this is our own private beach.”
“And there speaks a man who knows how to show a bloke a good time.” Shit, did that come over as suggestive? “Hey, you hungry? I brought sandwiches.” Mal took off his helmet and shoved up his sleeves to dive into his rucksack.
“Snap. I’ve got tuna mayo or cheese—how about you?”
“Yeah, I brought cheese too. But mine’s got pickle. And there’s ham. And pickle.” Mal grinned. “Jago’s gonna slaughter me next time they have a run on ploughman’s lunches.”
“Did you bring drinks? I’ve got a couple of bottles of Rattler.”
“I see your Rattler, mate, and I raise you a couple of packets of—ta-dah—bacon fries.” Mal pulled them out of his rucksack with a flourish.
Jory laughed. “Okay, I think we can agree we’ve hopelessly over-catered.” He sat down on the sand and pulled a couple of bottles of cider from his own pack, one of which he passed to Mal.
Mal took a long swallow, then breathed out in satisfaction. “Fuck me, that was like liquid gold going down.”
Jory gave him a sidelong look. “Except minus all the throat-searing agony you’d expect from actual liquid gold.”
Mal gave him the finger and took another gulp of cider. “Yeah, stuff’s never as good as it sounds, is it? Like, I used to wish Mum had called me Arthur. I mean, if she’s so into all them stories, why not name me after the hero, not the bloke who wrote ’em? Then I read Morte d’Arthur, and, well.” Mal sighed. “He’s a bit of a shit, ain’t he, Arthur? He’s a mass kiddie murderer for a start. There he is, supposed to be this hero, all chivalrous and stuff, but one of the first things he does is kill a bunch of kids—babies—cos Merlin tells him one of them’ll grow up and kill him in like twenty years’ time.”
“No, I never much liked the casual way Malory refers to that. But to be fair to Arthur, Merlin was correct.”
“Yeah, but he deserved it after that, didn’t he?” Mal took a bite out of a cheese and pickle sarnie. It was pretty good, if he said so himself.
“I always felt sorry for Mordred,” Jory said, grabbing a sarnie from the opened foil package. “He didn’t get a very good start in life. But then again, neither did Arthur, being taken from his mother’s arms at birth.”
Just like Dev, poor bastard. “Nah, Arthur was fine. His foster family all got top jobs after Arthur was crowned king, so they must have treated him right.”
“Still . . . it can be hard, growing up in a family you don’t quite feel you fit into.” Jory’s voice went quiet.
“Yeah, you don’t look much like your sister. Dev showed me a picture off the internet.”
“Bran’s very like her. In pictures of them as children, it’s actually hard to tell them apart.”
“Was your mum like a second wife or something?”
“Most people just ask if we had a particularly friendly milkman.”
Oops. Sore point there. Mal opened his mouth to apologise, but Jory got in again before he could speak, so Mal grabbed another sandwich instead.
“No, it’s simply a quirk of genetics. I look a lot like the portrait of my great-uncle Lochrin Roscarrock, as it happens, but the men on
