The Irish Warrior

“Aye. I know two things.” He held up two fingers.

An infinitesimal smile tipped up her mouth. “Which two?”

“I know they are sticky, and I know they are always behind us.”

“Sticky?”

“Aye. They stick, if ye let them, like pitch.”

First one cheekbone, then the other rounded and lifted into a much larger, genuine smile. “Indeed. They stick,” she echoed softly.

“But I also know they are not here. Not now.”

Her eyes were on his. “No,” she agreed. “They are not here, now,” and the husky, considering tone of her agreement was the most beautiful thing he thought he’d heard in decades of tossing awful things over his shoulder and walking on.

Morning sun lit up the side of her face. In the prisons, in the bailey, even in Rardove’s candlelit hall, she had been all reflected light and shadow. But here, as the sun rose and the shadows shortened, she was like a drop of dew on a flower, bright and glittering.

“Rardove is likely ruing his error in judgment about now,” he remarked, mostly to himself, for in the daylight, one could see what a jewel had been tossed aside.

She snorted. “For certes. He could have had a lucrative showing in the wool trade. Instead, he speaks to me of marriages and dyeing.” She shook her head.

Finian sat up straight. “Rardove spoke of dyeing?”

“Aye. Some mad notion of his.”

“The Wishmés?”

She was mid-nod before she stopped, abruptly. She looked at him with a new, considering regard. “The Irish know of the Wishmé indigo?”

“We know,” he said in a flat voice.

“Legend.” Her words tumbled out quickly. “Rumors, all. Wishmés. The Indigo Beaches. Rardove lands are not the Indigo Beaches of legend. Pah.” She pushed a length of hair behind her ear and picked up another stick.

“Now Rardove lands,” he said quietly, tamping down on the churning in his gut. “Upon a time, they were Irish lands.”

Indeed. Upon a time, they were his lands. His family’s.

Still, he ignored the urge to grab her by the shoulders and demand to know how much she knew and why she knew anything at all, because when it came to the Wishmés, the more one asked, the more one revealed. And it was worrying enough that this lick of English flame knew of them at all.

He resigned himself to saying simply, “The Wishmés have been forgotten for many years now.”

“But they are just legend.” Oddly, it sounded like a question.

Even more oddly, he answered it. “What do ye think, Senna? Do ye think Rardove would cause all this trouble for a lie?”

“I think Rardove is past mad.”

He laughed. “Be they truth or no, Senna, the Wishmés have a way of ruining people, and ye’re better off far away.”

She looked over at him. Her eyes shone in the morning sunlight. “I’ve seen them,” she admitted in a low voice. “I have seen the Wishmé dye.”

His heart sped up. “Have ye?”

She nodded. “Rardove had a sample, a piece of linen dyed with the indigo. Have you ever seen the color, Finian?” she asked, her voice low and eager. “’Tis the most astonishing shade of blue…”

“’Tis alchemy,” he replied, unable to stop himself.

Something like enthu