The Stealers' War (45 page)

‘Guards am honour it,’ said Del-alass. ‘When Si-lishh
dead
.’

Jacob sized up the ogre down below. ‘The hell you say.’

‘I’ll do it,’ said Anna. ‘It’s my brother inside one of those cages.’

Jacob shook his head. ‘You’re not as fast as you used to be, Miss Kurtain, not after you got carved up in Midsburg.’

‘I can fight,’ she insisted.

‘And you can fail, and I’ll be surrounded by flames while trying to guess which one of the hundreds caged up down there is your brother,’ said Jacob. ‘You stay here and leave the slave master to me. If I die, at least you’ll have a chance of pulling your brother out of the cages.’

Anna’s face flushed with exasperation. ‘This is mine to do.’

‘No,’ growled Jacob. ‘His clan put Mary in the ground just for helping her students escape the sword. His clan carried away Carter and the boy’s friends and sold them off like cattle. Anyone too old or too young to serve as a slave, they left decapitated in the fields around Northhaven, discarded like so much butcher’s offal. Bad Marcus blessed the raid and Vandia paid for it, but that son-of-a-bitch was one of the demons who swung the sabre. So no, Miss Kurtain, this is very much mine to do.’ He stood up and gazed down into the slave pens. ‘I know you, Si-lishh. You held my son Carter Carnehan up here as a prisoner inside your stinking hold. When you sold him to the House of Skar as a miner, he promised you he’d be back here to kill you one day. He sends his apologies for being otherwise occupied right now. I’ve come to honour my boy’s word. I’ve come to offer you the charity of battle if you’ve got the guts to fight an old man with a knife.’

Si-lishh hissed sibilant laughter. ‘Groundling am not born to defeat Si-lishh.’

‘You stick a blade in me right, you’ll get your flying boat,’ said Jacob. ‘You can light out of here and find another damn bandit carrier who needs a murderer with a taste for whipping chained slaves. But if I slice you up, then your guards honour the duel and let these slaves live.’

‘Si-lishh am remembering your groundling son. Stupid as rock. Always trouble-making. With this father-blood, Si-lishh am finding madness-source.’

Jacob passed his pistols to Anna and raised his empty hands for the slave master to see. ‘A mad old man who needs killing, then. But who’s to do it?’

A Rodalian soldier passed Jacob an extra dagger as he walked down the stairs. The skel slavers parted for Jacob in the space between the cages. He could smell the stink of the corn ether rising from the fuel barrels.
Sweet saints, give me the strength and guile to win here. Nobody is getting out of here alive if these barrels are torched.
Si-lishh came forward and tossed his whip contemptuously aside to the floor. Jacob threw the spare dagger, watching Si-lishh catch it while Jacob drew his own blade. ‘This is for Northhaven. For everyone who died there. For everyone dragged to Vandia who never saw their home again.’

‘Si-lishh remember town. Fine raid. Old groundlings am beg for much-young groundlings’ lives. But weak groundlings not good for Si-lishh. Tiny groundlings worthless. Not able work sky mines, not able to survive. Chop chop chop. Skulls off. Boots am wet with groundling-blood that day.
Fine
raid. Take plenty!’

Jacob fought to master his fury. This was what the slave master wanted. To goad Jacob into a killing rage where he attacked without thought. Where Si-lishh could easily carve him into pieces. Jacob dropped into a guard position. ‘It’s never the ones you take who’ll kill you. It’s only the ones you leave alive.’

‘Am fix-mistake!’ Si-lishh rushed Jacob, slashing out with his blade. Jacob danced back trying to counter using a tight sabre-grip, but the skel blocked him with an arm the width of a tree trunk, then they warily circled each other. The skel attacked again, and Jacob tried a high cut to the skel’s forehead, put enough blood in his eyes to blind him. But wherever this skel had learnt to brawl, it wasn’t just taking his whip to chained slaves. Si-lishh pivoted and tried to put one in Jacob’s gut, but the Weylander just saw the move in time and blocked it. Stopping the skel from filleting Jacob was like taking a beating from an oak tree wielded by a giant. They continued their desperate duel, but the monster’s endurance started to wear on Jacob.
Old man. Proud old man. You’re not Quicksilver anymore. Not the young general that swept across the Burn. You’re just what’s left of him. Searching for a warm comfortable grave and maybe this time you’ve found it
.

Si-lishh came again, slashing out and Jacob turned, caught the hand, twisting it sideways to disarm the slave master. The skel’s dagger flew away, tumbling between a slave pen’s bars. Jacob tried to turn the caught arm into a lock-hold and slide his own dagger into the skel’s neck, but the demon wasn’t keeping still for his trick. Si-lishh pushed back, unbalancing Jacob, then Si-lishh booted Jacob in the abdomen and sent him sprawling to the floor in front of one of the cages. The slaves inside yelled desperate encouragement for the man who was trying to save them, but their pleas didn’t do much to balance out the uneven distribution of raw strength in this challenge. Jacob tried to roll over, but the massive skel was quicker, pinning him to the floor, one hand tightening around Jacob’s neck while the other snaked around to his belt on his back. The slave master suddenly flourished the weapon he had concealed behind him. It looked like a Vandian stick-grenade, its head replaced with coils of barbed wire, a bulbous primitive battery instead of a pin at the wooden handle’s end.

‘You truly are a sore loser,’ gasped Jacob, one hand trying to dislodge the skel’s fingers tightening around his neck, the other grasping near-uselessly at the skel’s weapon hand.

Si-lishh forced the cudgel slowly towards Jacob’s face, sparks flashing from its ugly wires, almost blinding the Weylander.
Too strong
. It was like trying to wrestle with a landslide coming down a mountain. Jacob’s vision began to spot with dark circles when he heard the grate of something spinning towards him. A second cudgel.

Del-alass
. The ground crewman tumbled as the guard he’d stolen the cudgel from plunged a dagger in the skel crewman’s ribs, but Jacob’s hand had already abandoned Si-lishh’s hand locked around his neck, dragging the cudgel in, then he drove the weapon’s head into the slave master’s ribs, sparks flashing as its charge emptied. The giant went limp and Jacob flipped the skel back into the slave pen, slamming him against the iron bars. Jacob seized the giant’s dropped weapon and shoved it against the cage, triggering a second burst of energy. Si-lishh spasmed, caught in the blaze of electricity, and when the skel’s own cudgel emptied of its charge, the bars lost their hold on the slave master and he fell smoking to the deck. Jacob stared down at the dead slave master.
I should feel something. Content. Happy.
Instead, he just felt hollowed out, dead and joyless.
What the hell am I now, that I can’t even savour the taste of a victory? I’m not Jacob Carnehan anymore. I’m not Jake Silver. I’m just a tired old man who keeps on playing the odds and cheating death for a little while longer.

Anna and the Rodalian soldiers had used the confusion of the challenge to storm the hold, carbines raised; keeping the skel guards honest in case they proved as shameless as their commander. The slave master was dead, and from his wounds, the ground crewman who’d kept the duel on an even keel looked set to follow him.

Jacob knelt beside the dying skel. ‘This was one game that wasn’t fixed.’

‘Am-charity-of-battle,’ coughed the Del-alass. ‘Am-final-father’s-battle.’ His hairless head fell back as his eyes closed.

‘Now, there’s a hell of a thing,’ said Anna.

‘That it was,’ said Jacob.

But Anna hadn’t heard. She was already dashing towards the slave pen opposite. The mob inside parted to allow James Kurtain to the front, and her brother shook the bars fit to dislodge them.

Jacob’s son had kept the oath he had given the slave-master. In a round-about way. And Jacob had paid Anna back a little for what he owed her. But there was another vow to keep now. The dark promise he had sworn over Mary Carnehan’s grave.

The soldier indicated the rows of kneeling skel prisoners to Jacob, Anna and her brother. The captured slavers lined up inside the
Razored Smile
’s fighter hangar. At least, the ones who had surrendered were held here. ‘What do we do with them, General Carnehan?’

‘You know what the penalty is for being taken as a slaver inside the Lanca. There’s only ever been one. You can sail down the coast and find the same sentence on the books of every nation for a hundred thousand miles.’

‘So many?’ said the soldier, hesitantly.

‘There are cages in this bird’s slave hold where the floor opens up like a bomb-bay, to make troublesome slaves walk the sky.’ Carter had described his captivity inside the slave pens in graphic detail to Jacob.
These are the scum who threw my son in one and made him fight to the death for their amusement.
‘We won’t need to waste a single bullet on any of these killers.’

Anna came forward. ‘You can’t!’

‘You watch the slavers rain down over the mountains and then tell me that.’

‘Not all of the skels are like the devils that raided our homes. After your fight in the slave pens, you know it.’

‘What I know is the job that needs doing. What do you say, Mister Kurtain? You’ve suffered and sweated inside this dirty carrier for the best half of your life. In all those years, how many benighted souls did you see pass through the holds on their way to hell? Are you of the same mind as your sister when it comes to the best way to deal with slavers? You know this’ll be justice.’

‘Some of the worker skels aren’t all bad,’ said James. ‘They’re like us, that way.’

Jacob ignored the barb, if that was what it was. ‘I haven’t got the time for you to go through our prize fleet and pick out the slightly less murderous ones. I’d sell the skels in the same slave markets they traded our people, except nobody would want them. Although thinking about it, if we shipped the skels across to the Burn, the warlords would surely buy most of them for bayonet-fodder.’

‘We don’t execute prisoners of war. We don’t take slaves,’ insisted Anna. ‘That’s what makes us fit to be a member of the league.’

‘The other Lanca nations stood aside and watched our kingdom tear itself apart in civil war,’ said Jacob. ‘They’re cowards who aren’t fit to dictate the course of my war to me.’

‘Except that it isn’t your war,’ said a familiar-sounding voice entering the hangar. ‘This conflict belongs to all of the free people of Weyland.’

Prince Owen.
Jacob bridled. ‘What the hell are you doing up here? I ordered your royal neck kept safe in Hadra-Hareer!’

‘Our people are battling for their existence in Rodal. This is my place as much as it is yours,’ said Prince Owen. ‘If this raid failed, there wouldn’t be a parliament left to fight on inside of a month.’

On that point at least, the young aristocrat was correct. ‘You can take that new-found pragmatism and apply it to these bandits, Your Highness. We need their carriers to bring down your uncle’s regime. We don’t need prison camps filled with skels, sell-swords and bandits to feed when we can barely supply our own refugees. Executing slavers is only applying the kingdom’s law.’

‘The law can’t save us from ourselves,’ said Prince Owen. ‘I’ve broken my nation for the cause of liberty. I will not shatter it further with a massacre on such an atrocious scale.’

Jacob drew both pistols. ‘I shot you before in Midsburg. You think I won’t do it again?’

‘Then do it!’ shouted Prince Owen. ‘Put a bullet in my head this time and declare yourself the absolute leader of the north. You can select an agreeable warlord’s title for yourself like one of those pocket-sized kingdoms of the Burn where you bloodied your hands. Lord Protector of the National Assembly. Supreme General of the north. Grand God-Duke of Havenharl. Call yourself all of them if you wish, but I am not and will never be a royal puppet for you or anyone else. Kill me or let me live to guide parliament as I see fit. That’s your only choice today. And you will face it tomorrow and the day after. You may as well make your bloody decision now!’

Jacob’s pistols held steady in his hands, not a trace of a tremble. He was tempted, by the saints he was.
How many good people could I save by getting this done quick and right? Those radicals in the old assembly, they had a point, didn’t they? Keeping a hereditary monarch makes as much sense as employing a hereditary surgeon or hereditary architect.
Jacob could end that debate right here for the cost of a single round.
And what then? The country will end up with Bad Marcus on a throne in the south and Lord Quicksilver sitting on a throne in the north. Battlefield after battlefield. Corpse upon corpse. With a Weyland that will never run short of new enemies who need killing.
Jacob grunted in frustration and reluctantly holstered his guns.
A boy too weak to be king but too strong to be ruled. And the fates are punishing me by needing him alive to finish this.
‘I know what I am. And I know what you are, too. You’re a hell-damned young fool who hasn’t learnt a thing during this war.’

Prince Owen stepped back and gazed down the line of kneeling skels. If the boy knew how close he’d just come to dying, he masked his nerves well. Anna Kurtain slipped her own pistol slowly back behind her belt.
There’s gratitude for you.
Maybe she’d been foolish enough to think Jacob hadn’t noticed when she’d drawn on him. Or stupid enough to believe Jacob wasn’t swift enough to shoot her with his second gun while dropping the man she loved so deeply.

‘Then I’m a hell-damned young fool with an answer to our problem, General Carnehan,’ said Prince Owen. ‘Here are my orders concerning the prisoners’ fate . . .’

TWELVE

A BOX FOR TEMMELL

A hot wind blew across the hills when Temmell called a halt to the small nomad convoy. Carter climbed down off his supply-laden wagon, joined by Sariel, Kerge and Sheplar Lesh. Rodal’s mountains were visible in the south, swirled with mist from the temperature differential between the icy heights and warm steppes. Perhaps a day’s ride away, now.

Temmell pointed to the series of jagged peaks in the distance. He glanced up at the sun, checked his pocket watch and smiled in satisfaction. ‘Their silhouettes are my map.’ The young sorcerer took a rusty iron shovel that had seen better days and started to dig, not trusting any of the Nijumeti to such delicate work. After ten minutes, he uncovered a case about half the size of a coffin. It was made of a material Carter didn’t recognize, dark and shining like an insect’s carapace.

‘You have more than a soul-sphere inside there,’ observed Sariel. ‘I didn’t need the gift of precognition to warn me our party was never going to be resupplied or reinforced again,’ said Temmell. He waved to a couple of their Nijumeti escort to drag the case from the dirt. ‘This was my insurance policy.’

‘Contraband?’ asked Sariel.

‘Let’s just say I wasn’t going to go down for want of a nail,’ said Temmell.

The nomads dragged the case out of the soil and on to the grass. They stepped back uneasily, as though they had been made to touch the flesh of a recently deceased family member.

‘Do you want to open it?’ asked Temmell in a teasing tone.

Sariel shook his head ruefully. ‘How big an explosion?’

Temmell knelt by the case and laid his hand on its surface. ‘Our reconstitution would take centuries. Let’s hope the canister still recognizes its creator.’

Carter hoped much the same.

Sheplar watched by Carter’s side. ‘It would be a sad end to have survived so much only to die from triggering an ancient tripwire.’

‘It is strange,’ noted Kerge, ‘but what I have recovered of my golden mean is lost in the presence of this case. Disrupted.’

‘Perhaps it means the future is not yet decided?’ said Carter.

‘It never is,’ said the gask, darkly.

The casket’s obsidian surface started to flow as though melting, lines of light emanating from Temmell’s hand. Its lid vanished in the glow, revealing an interior filled with objects that were probably devices, but nothing Carter recognized. Rods joined with crystals and strange bulbous shapes melded together like a metalworker’s offcuts soldered at random. Temmell gingerly lifted out a sphere, cloudy white glass the size of a fist. ‘How many of my lost memories are inside, I wonder?’

‘You need to find out,’ said Sariel.

Temmell wrapped both hands around the sphere and pushed inward, the glass responding by turning a cold blue colour. As he pushed into the globe it seemed to vibrate, cupped inside the man’s hands. Sariel’s young colleague sighed as though drinking deep and quenching a long, dry thirst.

‘Do you know where Eremee went?’ asked Sariel.

‘Oh, poor Eremee. Such a fool. Of course, she would head there.’

‘Where?’ demanded Sariel, sounding uncharacteristically desperate.

‘Wait,’ said Temmell. ‘I need to be certain about this. So,
that
is why.’

‘Why what?’ asked Carter.

Temmell swivelled on Carter and his three companions, flourishing a strange-looking rod-like instrument he had slipped out of the canister. ‘Why I sent the stealers the gate coordinates needed to ambush our party!’ Temmell lashed out with the rod, a fierce green spark leaping from its head and striking Sariel, knocking the old bard off his feet and sending him barrelling across the grass. Sariel sobbed, twisting on the ground as though tormented by a pack of invisible demons.

Carter’s hand dipped for his pistol holster, but their Nijumeti escorts seized his arms, a third nomad shoving a blade up to his throat; Sheplar and Kerge were practically bowled to the ground as their supposed protectors jumped them.

They were primed in advance for this
, realized Carter. ‘What in the saints’ name are you doing? I healed you, Temmell. You owe me your restored self !’

‘A debt between us?’ growled the sorcerer. ‘Only in your mind, turnip. I asked for none of this. I was content in my position. I
am
content in my position.’ Temmell grabbed a silver torc from the case, passing it to his warriors with a brusque command to seal it around Sariel’s neck. ‘A gift, my brothers, to tame the weirdling’s more troublesome impulses.’

‘I don’t understand!’ cried Carter. ‘Is one of those tools inside the case the great weapon? Do you want to steal it for yourself ?’

‘Oh, turnip, your brain is too limited to grasp anything more than your brute existence,’ smiled Temmell. He indicated Sariel twisting in agony on the ground. As the torc was fitted around Sariel’s neck, it seemed to act as a balm of sorts, the old vagrant’s palsy-like shakes slowing. Temmell nodded in satisfaction. ‘My intentions are far purer than
his
. I want the great weapon left well alone. Used by no one; in neither side’s hands.’

‘Where is it, then?’ said Carter. Sariel was dragged to his feet by the warriors.

Temmell tapped the side of his head. ‘Where it has always been. When our party set out, we each carried a segment of the great weapon . . . it is a spell which gives the lower ethreaal such power that even the higher-gods would hesitate to use it. Each member’s portion was encrypted as a cypher and stored within our minds. If we collectively reached the conclusion the threat the stealers posed was so serious that we must act, our expedition was to combine the segments and deploy the great weapon. Sariel didn’t come looking for an old friend, he came searching for my share of the great weapon.’

‘You are wrong, Temmell, I came for you and it both,’ croaked Sariel, feeling the restraining device around his neck. ‘Why, man? Why did you betray us to the stealers?’

‘I just want the war to end,’ said Temmell. ‘I am tired of it. Eternal conflict, shadow and light, light and shadow. The balance is finally tipping in the stealers’ favour. Let them have their victory. At least the war will finally be over. The philosophical difference between both sides is paper-thin at best. Life will out in the end, we have to believe that.’

‘I will not allow the stealers to defeat us!’ gasped Sariel.

‘Ever a true believer, even after all these years. But you have very little choice in the matter. Events have overtaken us. We were doomed from the start.’

‘How can you still support the stealers? They betrayed you! They attacked you and Eremee at the gate.’

‘Of course they attacked me. I foresaw their double-cross, for all the good the knowledge did me. It allowed myself and Eremee to survive a few days longer than the rest of you. The stealers required the threat against them neutralized,’ said Temmell. ‘Even our own side didn’t dare to trust a sole lower ethreaal with such power. We were never meant to be gods, however much we act like them. If our own side couldn’t trust a single individual with the ultimate power, why should the stealers? Needless to say, the stealers treated us as plague carriers and cleansed us all. Giving up myself and losing my memories was a blessing.’

‘And Eremee, did she support you in your treachery?’

‘Which of us ever knew what she believed?’ said Temmell, not directly answering the question.

A droning started to sound across the steppes, low at first, barely perceptible, and then swelling to the dark hum of a locust swarm. Carter gazed up into the sky, blinking towards the sun. An aerial invasion force heading south. Kani Yargul’s new skyguard being sent into operation, plane after plane, flying wings towing gull-winged gliders behind them. Carter imagined the packed holds of those flimsy wooden engine-less craft. Horses and men eager for plunder.

Temmell has betrayed us twice. The bastard never had any intention of dispatching the horde against Persdad at the far end of the steppes
.

‘What have you done?’ roared Sheplar Lesh.

Temmell indicated the aerial armada passing overhead. ‘I have set my people free . . . I have given them Rodal. The much-vaunted walls of the league. Well, a rampart faces in both directions; it all depends on who walks it.’

‘Our winds will claw you out of the sky,’ swore Sheplar.

‘No, my little aviator serf, not this time,’ said Temmell. ‘I procured a copy of your high temple’s holy Deb-rlung’rta. My pilots know precisely where the safe winds are, every secret, shielded route your people take to flit around Rodal while you’re taming storms and hurling them at your enemies. The priests inside your precious wind temples can do nothing to stop my invasion. Your skyguard now shares exactly the same air as my warriors. It would hardly be fair combat otherwise, would it?’

‘No, you can’t unleash the horde against Rodal,’ pleaded Sariel. ‘What are you playing at here, Temmell Longgate?’

‘Aren’t we both playing at being human?’ sighed Temmell. ‘You have your pawns and I have mine.’

‘None of this will matter,’ said Sariel, half begging, half accusing. ‘Not the horde’s invasion, not your intervention for the clans.’

‘But none of it ever did,’ said Temmell. ‘When you realize that, you stop asking
why
and start asking
why not
instead. The Nijumeti are my children after a fashion. I set them off riding to Arak-natikh once upon a time. I intend to free them across the board and see what game is left to me.’

‘There will be nothing left to you!’

‘How many thousands of years have you hungered for a true death? That’s the trouble with living so long. Nobody ever warned us what it would really be like. I’m curious, frankly. Will a true death be the same as forgetting?’ Temmell stared up at the sky with satisfaction, the blue heavens filled with his aerial invasion force. ‘Rodal belongs to the Nijumeti now. You restored me, turnip. I shall repay you with two gifts: your worthless existence as a free man and the memory of being witness to the end of the Lancean League. Nation after nation falling to the horde. We will ride forever.’

‘Willow!’ croaked Carter.
My father
.

‘My people,’ said Sheplar, his voice shorn of all emotion.

‘History makes dust of it all in the end,’ said Temmell, triumphantly. ‘Sariel, I must retain you as my clan-guest. In your current state, you are a danger to Pellas. Perhaps I will incinerate you anew and keep what reforms half-insane for a thrall. The rest of you shall be freed tomorrow morning. Climb the mountains if you will. Every inch of soil you touch now belongs to the clans, perhaps every foot you will ever cross again.’

Willow sorted her possessions spread across the room. The lodgings inside this Northhaven boarding house hadn’t come cheap, but then, being the recently widowed inheritor of the Wallingbeck estate carried a few advantages. Her slow, waddling gait, looking down flushed over her swollen belly, wasn’t one of them.
How much food will I need to carry to make the journey into Rodal? How much silver to pay smugglers to help me across the front line?
There were rumours circulating through Northhaven that Bad Marcus was surveying his re-conquered prefectures on a victory progress. When the usurper arrived, the number of soldiers in the town and surrounding territory would treble at least. Willow wanted to be well out of here before the capricious monarch showed up and decided that a retrial would be due justice for her.
And how much of my wanting to flee is guilt?
She had tried to visit Duncan in the army surgical tents, only to be refused access by the guards. Her brother was dying. A surgeon she had bribed had told her he thought the blade was poisoned. Willow had realized too late what the real plan had been. The same plan it had always been.

There was scraping at the door and it opened, revealing Leyla Holten. The woman was accompanied by the landlord, the key to Willow’s room still in his hand. Leyla passed him a handful of metal coins and he left, not meeting Willow’s indignant gaze.

Think about the devil and the devil appears.
‘What the hell are you doing here? Get out, Holten!’

‘So, you still believe you’ve beaten me?’ said Leyla. ‘Freed by trial. But free to do what?’

Willow ignored the question. The answer should be evident from the supplies she had purchased, scattered about the room. ‘You shouldn’t have given me so much time languishing inside a cell, Holten. Time to realize who would benefit most if Duncan died during the trial. One less warm body in your way to claiming the Landor estate. Two less, after the executioner strung me up at the gallows.’

‘Always such a clever girl,’ smiled Leyla, coldly. ‘But there’s more to succeeding in life than a sharp mind. Sometimes you have to apply a little brute force to the situation.’ She stepped aside and Nocks entered the room grinning. Willow sprinted to the side of the chamber and threw open the window, looking to leap out, but the ugly squat little brute dragged her back, punching her once hard in the spine. She nearly fell, grasping a candlestick from the sideboard and tried to smash it into his scarred face.

‘You don’t want to exert yourself,’ leered Nocks as he ducked the blow and grabbed her. ‘Not a woman in your delicate condition.’

Willow cursed her slow, tired body.
I need to be strong. To be quick.
‘What did you promise your cur Wallingbeck, Holten?’

Leyla laughed. ‘Not so much what I promised him as what I gave him. Such a waste. William was always so amusing between the sheets. I can only trust the royal army will yield up a few suitable distractions, now the rebellion is crushed and Rodal close to collapse. All the southern gentlemen seem to be up here, playing at soldier.’

‘What’s to do?’ growled Nocks.

‘Take her deep into the wilds,’ commanded Leyla. ‘You may take your gratification with the brat, but the body must never be discovered. Not in Northhaven or anywhere else. Let everyone think she ran away to re-join the Carnehans. Hadra-Hareer will be ashes soon enough. Nobody will poke the ashes very hard searching for remains.’

Willow stamped her boot hard against Nocks’ foot and he cursed her while she struggled against his tight grip. ‘Holten! You can’t! I’m carrying Wallingbeck’s child. He was your friend.’