“Weeks,” said the boatwoman, collecting a coin from each of her passengers as they stepped aboard. “I’ve taken a fair few marked ones south in that time.”
“Yet no one from Creagairde, I suppose,” remarked Kaetha.
“Not that I recall,” she said.
Kaetha turned to Mairi and Donnan. “McDonn will actually refuse to give authority to a royal decree?” she said, astounded.
The boatwoman shrugged. “Might be McDonn’s happy enough for people to get riled up about protecting or attacking witches. Means their less likely to kick off about the extra taxes he’s been demanding from them.”
“Son of a devil,” said Kaetha.
“So,” the boatwoman held out her hand. “You lot coming too, then?”
“Aye,” said Mairi, retrieving the purse from her pocket.
“No,” said Kaetha, stopping Mairi’s hand. “Don’t you see? We can help them now. Asrid and Margaret and who knows who else!”
“And how do you suppose we defy a thane? Or that savage mob? No, we should go to your aunt’s house as planned. Or go with this lot to Hildervald,” she said, throwing her arms up, “even that has to be safer than going back to Creagairde.”
“If you don’t think we can do anything for Asrid and Margaret, you must have no hope for Pa.”
“What does it matter how much hope I have that I might see my husband again? It’s out of my control. All I can do is try to see that his headstrong daughter is safe. I won’t let you go, Kaetha.” She stepped onto the boat. “We’re going south as you wanted. Now come on.” She held out her hand to Kaetha and everyone on the boat was silent. “Donnan?” said Mairi pleadingly.
“Our chances of seeing Aedan again are slim, we all know that, Kit,” said Donnan. “But we have a better chance if we get there sooner.”
She hesitated. “I’m sorry. No. I cannot abandon them when this chance has come for me to help them. Pa wouldn’t want me to do that.”
“He would want you to be safe!” Mairi was growing redder in the face.
“I might so easily have been one of them. Asrid and Margaret, they showed us kindness when they didn’t have to. I must go back.”
“Foolish, foolish child!” screeched Mairi.
“You should be obedient to your mother, lass,” said one of the women on the boat.
“She’s not my mother.” In the quiet that followed, she saw how those words had cut Mairi like daggers. But she couldn’t take them back just as she couldn’t do what Mairi wished. “You two don’t need to come with me,” she said. “I’ll go alone.”
“No you won’t,” said Mairi as she stepped back onto the dock.
The sun was dropping low in the sky as they strode through a ghostly, empty square to Creagairde’s town hall. The bodies had been taken down from the gallows but the nooses swung in the wind, expectantly. The quiet was like the stillness before a storm. Come at dusk to see more witches hang, Thane McDonn had said, but perhaps they’d made it in time to change things.
“I saw you leave on the boat.” At the corner of the scaffold was the child whose brother had been hanged. Her eyes were rimmed with red, her lashes clumped together. “Why did you come back?”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help your brother. Do you know his friends, Asrid and Margaret?”
The child nodded.
“There’s a way I might be able to help them and others like your brother.”
“Are you going to kill Thane McDonn?” the child asked.
“Revenge would only lead to more chaos. But this is the king’s word,” she said, holding up the parchment. “It means we can force him to let them choose exile instead. They could leave tonight.”
“He was a day too late. Just a day.” She gripped Kaetha’s arm. “Save them. That’s what he’d want you to do.”
“I will.”
A guard opened the door. “What do you want?”
“We need to talk to Thane McDonn,” said Kaetha, keeping her chin high and hoping that he didn’t notice the quavering that threatened to steal into her voice.
“He’s at the trial. Be off with you.” He swung the door but Kaetha stopped it with her boot, trying to ignore the pain.
“We carry a message from King Svelrik himself – a new decree that has everything to do with this trial. I can’t imagine what punishment Thane McDonn would concoct for you for preventing the king’s justice. But you know him better than we do. Perhaps he’s a merciful man.”
They waited a few moments. Then the door swung wide.
“You’d better be telling the truth,” mumbled the guard. Kaetha, Donnan and Mairi stepped past him into the expansive hallway. They hurried down a corridor towards the sound of voices. Opening a heavy door onto a gathering of people, they were shushed and quietly joined the back of the crowd. Asrid stood at the other end of the room, in front of everyone, her hands bound behind her back, arms held by guards. Kaetha gripped Donnan’s arm when she saw the bruises on Asrid’s face and a patch of her hair matted with blood. Asrid had venom in her gaze as she stared at a gaunt faced man with a scar running down his bottom lip to his chin, his black robes trailing after him as he paced in front of her, addressing the jury.
“And, as we have heard, this woman does not even try to redeem herself by confessing to her crimes, loyal, as she is, only to darkness and evil. We have heard from witnesses how her curses have been enacted, causing fever in one, blindness in another, impotence in a third.” Chuckling rifled through the audience. The black-robed man turned his flinty
