Nicholas said, "Richard, tell me about the knife Rosalind was using."
"The bloody knife?" Richard smashed his fist on the table. "You're concerned about the bloody knife when what you should be thinking about is how to rid yourself of this vicious bitch before she murders you!"
"Cook has made some lovely toast and scrambled eggs, not to mention kippers and—" Block froze in his tracks at the violence he saw on his master's face, indeed felt in the air itself.
Nicholas rose slowly from his chair. "You will apologize to my wife, Richard, and you will do it now and with grace and sincerity."
Richard shot Rosalind a look. His voice was hairing as he managed to get out, "I am worried about my half brother. He does not seem concerned, and any intelligent man would be very concerned. We all came here to warn him, but—"
"You are mucking it up, Richard."
Richard cleared his throat. "I apologize, Rosalind . I do not know you so I cannot judge your character, but I had the vision and that is a fact."
"Do you know, Richard," she said, her voice emotionless, "I have never even been called a bitch, much less a vicious bitch. This vision of yours—"
"It is a portent," Miranda announced as she forked down scrambled eggs. "Visions don't lie."
A portent, Rosalind thought, and set to her own breakfast, surprised she was ravenous. She looked up to see Nicholas watching her. Surely he wasn't thinking she'd cut out his heart. But that vision of Richard's—
Nicholas said, "Richard, the knife. I ask you again, what did it look like?"
"It had a curved blade, and there were diamonds, rubies, and even sapphires embedded in the hilt."
Nicholas nodded. "I wish to show you something after breakfast."
"After breakfast," Miranda said, voice hard as the brass candlesticks in the middle of the table, "we are leaving Richard has delivered his warning. We have done our duty What happens to you now is on your own head, Nicholas."
Nicholas carefully laid down his knife. "I would like all of you to remain here for several days."
"So you believe me then?" As Richard spoke, he shot Rosalind a cold smile.
"Believe that Rosalind stabs me and cuts out my heart? No, but there are unanswered questions roiling about. Perhaps amongst all of us, we can figure out what is going on here."
"There is something else going on?" Aubrey asked, sitting forward, his eyes glittering. "Something better than Richard's bloody vision?"
"Oh, yes," Nicholas said, "much better."
43
Richard's voice was barely above a whisper. "Yes, yes, that is the knife I saw her plunge into your heart."
Rosalind saw herself holding that knife as it dripped blood—white blood. What if it was indeed a portent? What if something happened, something utterly catastrophic, and she did kill Nicholas? No, it wasn't possible, it simply wasn't. But what was possible, what was fact and she and Nicholas had to embrace it, was that there was magic at work here, ancient magic. She thought of all the Celtic names of the wizards and witches in the Pale. She thought of Taranis, the Dragon of the Sallas Pond, who'd been Sarimund's confidant of sorts. His was a Celtic god's name as well, and he'd claimed to be immortal. What if they were the same beings, but they'd somehow ended up in a different time, a different place? And somehow they'd spilled over into this world? Were they trying to come back, only something terrible had happened and they were stuck in the Blood Rock fortress? What if they wanted her to kill Nicholas because he'd descended from Captain Jared, who hadn't paid his debt to her?
How could such a thing be of help to them?
It didn't make sense. She'd been born almost three hundred years later, well beyond Captain Jared's time, surely a god would know that. But then again, maybe there were boundaries on ancient wizards and gods, restricting them to certain skills in a certain time, a certain place. Maybe they weren't all-powerful or omniscient.
It was time to act, she thought, time to discover what this debt was all about, time to learn who she really was, maybe what she really was. The possible what scared her to her toes.
She heard Richard Vail ask Nicholas, "What is the knife doing here?"
"This knife appears to have many incarnations," Nicholas said, and she admired his ambiguity.
"Lawks," Aubrey said, rubbing his hands together, "wait until I tell my friends at Oxford what is happening in my family—ghosts and knives in a vision that really exist. But wait, Richard, are you certain you never saw this knife before? It did belong to Grandfather; it was in this room when you were a boy, wasn't it?"
Richard still stared at the knife, as if mesmerized. "I don't think so, but that was a long time ago and I was young—" He shrugged and tried not to look frightened.
"Nicholas is not our family," Lancelot said to Aubrey, "not really. Our father detested him, claimed he was a bastard, but since he was the image of himself, he couldn't very well prove it, now could he?"