Twenty-One

“Now what?” Toinette asked. She would have felt bad pressing Erik on the subject under other circumstances, but the men were watching, she knew they were asking the question in their minds, and it was best she be the one to give it voice.

Even so, she regretted the necessity. Erik looked gray and weary; since Toinette had a headache pounding at her temples and a mouth that tasted like the inside of a boot, she was sympathetic. She thought the spell had been a mite easier on them both than the scrying, which perhaps meant they were getting back into practice, but that was a low bar to clear.

“They didn’t cast the spell,” Erik said, gesturing to the skulls. “We’ll need to find the people who did—or their bones.”

“That means searching more of the island. Of course.” Toinette sighed.

Erik turned toward her, eyes narrowing. “Would you rather be trying to break the spell by ourselves? Wi’ nothing to give us an opening?”

“No,” she said. Even thinking about it made her headache worse. Nor could she truly accuse Erik of having engineered this, or even of taking pleasure in it. Still, she knew it would be a relief to him if he could tell Artair he’d looked as well as he possibly could. No sworn knight would lightly break off his mission, after all, and even escaping from a haunted island might count as light enough to trouble a man. Despite her angry words before they’d realized they were trapped—it seemed a lifetime ago now—she couldn’t fault the mission itself, either. With Balliol’s invasion, it had become clear that the English were acting out of vengeance now, and she could blame no man or country for wanting protection from that.

Toinette wanted to spit, and cleared her throat instead. “Same as before, then. We each take a day to go forward and a day to help build, or fish, or whatever’s needed.”

“Aye. I’ll take first,” said Erik, settling back into weary resignation. “Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow. First we’ll have the burials.” Toinette looked back at John and Samuel. They’d briefly been studying the landscape intently, as men did in proximity to an argument they wanted no part of, and the realization made her wince. She hid it with a smile and felt every muscle involved. “Think of it this way: the further in we go, the better chance we have of finding food besides nettles and roots and fish.”

“Do you think there might be a deer or two in there?” Samuel asked. “I’ve seen a few tracks that made me think so, but they were old.”

“If there was one, there might be more,” said Toinette. “I’ve seen squirrels enough that it’ll be worth getting good with a stone again.”

John blinked. “Were you once?”

“Once,” she said, only then realizing what weariness had led her to let slip. Before the island, that would have dismayed her. Since the men had seen her change into a dragon, it was harder to care. “I wasn’t a rich girl when I made the trip to Scotland. I walked a lot of it—and would have gotten taken up for poaching a time or two, likely, if I hadn’t been quick on my feet.”

“You and Raoul both, ay?” John grinned.

“The sea takes all sorts. You know that. But I was never caught.” Toinette felt Erik looking at her, shrugged, and stood. “And if you gentlemen will excuse me, I’m going to try to sleep this off.”

She wouldn’t be around them when she was tired enough to speak of the animals she’d truly learned to kill with stones, nor of the myriad other ways she’d earned daily bread as a girl, nor yet of the household she’d earned for. They knew enough of her past, Erik especially.

* * *

Another three graves sprouted on the beach, and Erik thought of trinities. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; morning, noon, and night; land, sea, and air; and what would the dead men have been? Gervase, Yakob, and Emrich: the joyful, the hard-working, and the quiet, he supposed, though he’d known none of them well. He knew nothing of the three Templars they buried now, save that they’d come to the island and died, and that they’d not cast the spell of imprisonment.

Would they—had they—disputed with their fellows about it? Had their deaths come about that way? Or had they died before the spell, with only circumstance leaving them so unconnected?

If there was a way of knowing, he didn’t have it. His training had been scant on ghosts.

Marcus’s Latin was getting better. He didn’t stumble over the phrasing at all when conducting his second funeral. God willing, that wouldn’t come up again—Erik thought of trinities once more, and sent up a silent prayer of aversion.

Around him, the men bowed their heads in more vocal prayer, and he joined them. Most of their Latin was off, too—they didn’t stumble, but the responses were too quick, the words jumbled together, as with all forms learned out of habit without knowledge behind them. Samuel’s and Sence’s were a shade more precise. Franz’s weren’t, but he looked the better as he said them, losing some of the haunted look that had been in his eyes ever since they’d discovered the spell.

Toinette, who had been trained better, who had at least learned Latin, slurred her responses anyhow, just as her crew did. She kept her head bent and her hands folded neatly in front of her. Her slashed dress said otherwise, but the posture was that of a respectable and pious merchant’s wife.

Of course, at the end, she stepped forward to take one of the shovels and the image shattered—but there had been that moment. And Erik, filling in one of the graves himself, watched her and wondered if she knew she was trying, and how hard she was trying, and why.

* * *

The groups had divided further. Marcus and Samuel stayed in relative safety on the beach, fishing and drying what they caught; Erik led John, Sence, and Raoul further into the forest, seeking any object that might anchor the spell; and in the clearing, Toinette and Franz hacked notches into pine logs. It was sweaty, exhausting work, but it was simple physical labor, with the clean scent of pine rising in the air as they cut, and Toinette gave thanks for it, much as she disliked the cause.

After cutting notches, they laid the first logs out in a rectangle, fitting them together at the corners. The next layer went on top, and so on: with two of them working, they could produce a cabin twice as tall as a man, and one that could fit all of them inside. It would be a bit close, but Toinette had seen farmers and poor city folk alike living in less space—and the more people inside, the warmer it would be come winter.

The walls were halfway done when Franz caught his breath and narrowed his eyes. Toinette worried that he’d seen another image, or was about to go all odd and prayerful again, but he actually looked both calculating and hopeful. “Captain,” he whispered, slowly reaching for the small bow on his back, “I think there’s a deer nearby.”

Almost immediately she could taste venison, and her mouth watered. And when she tried, she could smell the animal, though long habit kept her from saying as much: a shade muskier than the deer she remembered in Loch Arach, but it had been a long time since she’d hunted in the wilderness. “Go slowly,” she whispered back. “Remember this place is tricky.”

She hated to remind him and see the sudden fear in his face, but she would have hated more to see him die.

As Franz slowly walked forward, moving upwind with an arrow fitted to his bow, Toinette trailed behind. Even in human form, the scent of the dragon-blooded was generally enough to scare herd animals. It was hard to find a horse that would tolerate her, and the time in Morocco when she’d tried to ride a camel had become a running joke with Marcus and others of her crew.

She still thought she should have just eaten the creature.

Up ahead, the brush rustled, making far more noise than any normal deer or even a man would have caused. Franz stopped and raised his bow. Toinette put a hand to her sword, in case what came through wasn’t a deer.

They were both right.

Slowly, a long brown head with a pouched jaw pushed its way into view. It paused to shake massive flat antlers free from the surrounding trees and bit a shoot off a branch. Then the creature stepped forward, and Toinette stifled the urge to whistle. Its body was a bit like a deer’s in general shape—four long legs, a stubby tail, no claws or wings—but at the shoulder it was almost as tall as she was in dragon form, and the rest of it was proportional.

While she stared, gape-mouthed, Franz had no such moment of disbelief. He drew and shot quickly, sending an arrow deep into the creature’s neck.

It turned. Toinette briefly thought she saw surprise in its small dark eyes, but the shot was a clean one, and the arrow had sunk deep. The beast made a low grunting noise, then its legs sagged sideways and it fell, several small plants snapping beneath its dying weight. Its ribs heaved up and down a few times. Then all was still.

Toinette swore, quietly and in Italian, and stared back and forth between the creature and Franz. “You win the prize for archery. And for quick thinking. What in God’s name do you think that is?”

“Elk, that is,” said Franz, surprised but in no way uncertain. “With my grandfather I used to hunt them, though it was rare for us to catch one, and dangerous to try without many men and dogs.”

“I’d think so.”

“But I thought, here there are many more dangers, and we’ll need food. The meat keeps well. And you’re here.”

Toinette blinked, and smiled before she realized she was doing it. She’d known Franz for many years, long enough to tell that he was being sincere. She cleared her throat. “Well. Nicely done. That should set people’s minds at ease a bit about food, and it’ll make a damned fine change from fish.”

“That it will,” said Franz. He knelt, clasped his hands together quickly, and said a brief prayer in German. Toinette caught the name of Saint Hubert, patron of hunters, and she echoed Franz’s “Amen,” though the rest of the prayer was unfamiliar and her German spotty at best and mostly fit for taverns.

“I think our plans for today just shifted a touch,” she said, when he stood up again. “Do you know how to clean this thing? And can you tell me how to assist you?”

“Gladly so,” said Franz.

They were moving forward. It wasn’t in the direction Toinette would have liked, and she had to admit that it might not be for a long time, if ever, but it was forward all the same. She took comfort in that.