Jaime was not a man who liked to be touched, but today, here, now, he threw himself into Cary’s arms and clung to him, immersing himself in the sense of being wanted. Cherished, Cary rocking him like a mother would, murmuring apologies for what he’d endured and prayers to his gods and to Jaime’s for their deliverance. Cary, alive and whole and here with him, now and forever.
As they walked back to the campsite shoulder to shoulder Jaime filled the gaps in Cary’s knowledge of the events as best as he was able. When he’d regained consciousness on a gravelly spit some five miles to the west, he had lain face down in the wet shoals and prayed to go back to sleep, hopefully forever. Nature had supplied the means of rousing him as his body went through its usual purging of the water he’d taken in. A tiresome business without Cary’s aid, but at last he had crawled up the nominal beach and lain down on the first dry flat place he found.
“I woke up with a little Huron child poking me with a stick. When I didn’t retaliate, she must have judged me harmless, and led me to her village on Elizabeth Bay, just north of here. Really impressive structures, those longhouses, for a people who choose not to build with stone. England wouldn’t have needed so many wars if they hadn’t had to keep paying for all those dratted castles.”
“That’s a leap of logic.”
“Am I rambling? I’m just so pleased to see you. For my sake and yours.” Pleased wasn’t the word for it. Restored, revived, blissful even, like a man pardoned on the eve of his execution. He hadn’t lost this precious gift, this holy man whose power he had barely begun to understand, who had put his own life second to keep Jaime safe. Later he would ask what had become of Cary’s debt to the duke now that Sandover was gone. Tomorrow, when he had the strength to hear the answer.
“What was it that you did to his nibs while you were in the water?” Cary asked as they came out of the woods onto the rocky shore where the going was easier. “When he had that little fit?”
“Made his blood boil. I think.”
“You did something to him, all right.”
“I didn’t like to do it. That’s more power than anyone should have.”
“It was him or you.”
“Or you. That’s what mattered. In the moment I think I could have ripped out his throat with my bare hands if it stopped him from harming you.”
“Do you know what happened to him?”
“Don’t you?”
“Things got a bit frantic. Me and him had squared off, but then the fight just went out of him. He was hissing and spitting, but wouldn’t cast. Screaming about blood oaths and prophecies, then one of that thing’s arms swept the deck and sent him flying.”
“I saw him fall.”
“Is he dead?”
“For his sake, I hope so. The black spawn got him. I don’t want to think of how it would feel to be consumed by all those little mouths.”
“He said he was unkillable.”
“Yes, his deal with Sir Death. He said a lot of things. Many of which proved meaningless or false. I’m not going to let his soul weigh on mine.”
The corner of the little bay was marked by a great mound of weathered rock that blocked their view. Coming around the rock they stopped as one on seeing a pulpy mat of dark weed clinging to the flat shelf of the shore. Others lay along the waterline and must have washed ashore sooner, their tendrils more shriveled, revealing their bodies’ tripartite shape, curling as they dried into a sort of hollow sphere. One had wrapped itself around Sandover’s pink and rumpled hat.
They approached the nearest with due caution. Five yards away they paused. The thing hadn’t stirred, its finger-like tendrils lying flat save around its mouth where they had closed in around it like the pursed bud of a thistle. They tossed a few pebbles at it to no result. Armed with larger, heavier stones, they drew closer but the thing didn’t stir.
“So they can’t breathe air, that’s a relief,” Jaime said, tossing aside his stones.
“You can’t assume it’s dead. I’ve seed toads buried in the mud six months or more come hopping out good as anything once the Wet started.”
“I know one thing,” Jaime said as Cary bustled them past the ominous blob. “I won’t be happy until we’re off this island.”
“Begs the question of how.”
The fire was burning cheerily when they reached the campsite, a fresh pot of coffee keeping warm on the side, but no sign of the duke’s man or the boys. Sandover’s tent stood on its own across the clearing from the rest. A pair of small trunks lay open in front, silk stockings and lace jabots spilling on the grass. The sound of ripping fabric emerged from the tent, followed by Patrice wearing Sandover’s blue coat with the lilies, the sleeves torn off to fit his muscular arms.
“Them big floppy wrist parts were getting in the way,” he grinned.
“For-mi-dable!” Gordo thrust his way out of the tent, one of Sandover’s tricorns mashed onto his sizeable head, his lordship’s red cloak pinned to the shoulders of his woolen plaid coat.
“You look like one of them muskrateer gars, in that book you read me,” Patrice said admiringly.
“It’s Musketeer, but damned if you aren’t right.” Thrusting back his shoulders, Gordo struck a heroic pose, his hands on his hips, chin high. Then he spied Jaime and Cary coming towards them. “Sacre cœur de Jesu!” he cried, grabbing the brim of his hat in both hands like it might fly away. “Boys, look who’s back!”
As well as the two small boxes, Sandover had two large trunks overflowing with his absurd clothes. An ornate wooden secretary inlaid with Sandover’s crest in gold lay on the ground. Recalling the cabin boy on the lake barge who had nearly choked after carelessly touching Sandover’s goods, Cary brought up a gust of wind to flip open the top, but the case proved to be empty.
“Are you looking for something in particular?” Jaime asked as Cary began rifling Sandover’s bedding. Cary grunted in reply and kept searching, and Jaime left him to it, for the smell of Sandover in the tent was making his teeth hurt.
“What a stroke of luck,” Gordo said as they sat about the fire in their new attire, drinking the tooth-meltingly strong coffee. “With all Mr. Fancy Fish Food left behind, we’ll make out all right for him not having paid us.”
“I may be able to offer you another job,” Jaime said, placing his nearly full mug on the ground between his feet, for the coffee had made his hands start shaking with the first sip. “I know someone who may wish to come back and—”
“Nope,” Gordo said, flinging up his hand. “Stop yourself and save your breath. No offence, boys, but this island can go suck eggs.”
The party soon broke up, the boys back to the tent to formally divide their plunder. Cary joined him on the log bench.
“Is that your plan, to come back?” he asked.
“Not if I have a say in it. But we ought to tell Dr Eckhart. He’s the local expert.”
“And then?”
“Then home,” he said, though the word evoked no sentiment. “I hope. Assuming Mrs Meldrum kept my room for me. Really, I need to see Adrian. I can’t imagine he’s let this pass.”
“You’ve mentioned him heaps. Who is he?”
“The first person who believed in me.”
He explained for the first time in detail his friendship with Lord Adrian Lear. A man with power to rival Sandover’s, and a heart of purest gold. “If I’d not left him that day in the park, after that horrible interview at Arbitration Hall, none of this would have happened. Or perhaps not to me. So there. If I seek the meaning in this sad venture, it’s that it brought me to you.”
Cary ducked his head, trying to hide his smile. “Sorry for, you know, the kidnapping and all,” he mumbled.
“I’m sorry for you. What’s going to happen to you?”
“Dunno. The duke’s man must have taken everything. Then again, it might not make a difference. They all might have been lying to me from the start.”
“If there’s anyone who’ll know, it’s Adrian. And I can’t imagine the magisters’ assembly as a whole is very pleased with this duke. Whether they do or not, Adrian has both the power and the will to seek justice. And I’d be happy for the company on the way.”
“Company?”
“You, Cary. Do you think I’m going to walk away from my best friend?” Not twice in one lifetime. Yet he felt, stronger than ever before, that he would see Adrian again. That these two men were meant to meet, his best and only friends, who had both put themselves in danger to protect him, to whom he owed his life.
After a comfortable night in their dear little tent, they took most of the next day to cross the twenty or so miles between Misery Bay and the trading post at Providence Bay. The boys had insisted on bringing the trunks, which made for an arduous journey through forest and sand-marsh, but which paid off handsomely when they were able to trade them for a stout canoe. Of the sort made for long voyages, it fit the seven of them more or less comfortably now that they didn’t have to contend with Sandover or his cargo.
“Tomorrow if we set out good and early we should be able to get youse as far as Fitzwilliam,” Gordo said, pointing to the landmarks on the map tacked to the trading house’s wall. “Then another day to Dyers, then who knows cause we gotta get around Cape Croker, and—”
“We can’t catch a steamer?” Cary grunted, frowning at the map.
“You got money for passage?” Gordo asked him. Cary’s brows lowered further, his eyes hooded.
“I might be able to help,” Jaime said. “Not with money, just with time.”
He put off Gordo’s questions, and after a much less comfortable night in a creaking iron bed in the only sanitary hotel in the vicinity, a two-storey wooden frame building with a cracked marble bar top and a distinct odor of smoked fish, he joined the crew at the jetty early the next morning. Mist swayed above the softly rippling water, birds trilling from every treetop as they boarded the canoe.
“I’ll need to sit there,” Jaime said as Cesar went to take his usual place at the prow. The wordless man looked at him hard but did not argue, taking the seat behind Jaime.
He waited until they had left the encircling arms of the little bay and gained open water. Then, feeling terribly self-conscious with everyone’s eyes upon his back, he set both hands on the curving wood of the gunwales. He closed his eyes, sending his senses down into the water. The current was in their favour, bearing southeastward, and he let his mind reach further, seeking the peaty tang of the river that had brought them to Georgian Bay.
“Start rowing,” he murmured.
“Paddling,” Cary grunted from halfway down the canoe.
Jaime didn’t reply, his awareness diffused, dissolved, spreading out through the water, the contour of the lakebed imposing itself on his enchanted senses so it seemed he could feel the shape of the rocks on his tongue, the current’s flow mapped to his veins.
As he had when at sea, he did not beg or command the waters. Simply asked: help us home. We don’t belong here and you know it. Take us home, and we will leave you in peace.