“As God is my witness,” Rardove said into the sudden silence, “I will kill them both.”
“My lord,” Pentony murmured, “I have readied the men to search.”
Rardove barked in harsh laughter. “How in God’s name did she do it?”
“The men are at the gate, ready to be gone on your command.”
“She is a goddamned sorceress, I tell you, bedeviling plans years in the making. I had O’Melaghlin right here”—an angry flick of his finger indicated the cellars below—“and I would have had that damned recipe. Now he’s gone, and he’s got my dye witch.” Rardove cursed again. “Search her room. And send a contingent north to find them.”
Pentony took a step forward. “They may not be going north, my lord.”
Rardove rounded on him. “Not go north?” he shouted. “In which direction does the Irish king O’Fáil live? His foster father?”
“North.” Pentony said it flatly, as if not a single emotion was present. Which none was. It had been too long. “I am simply saying we ought not to underestimate O’Melaghlin. If you send a few men sou—”
“And where did they find that scrap of O’Melaghlin’s tunic?”
“Along the Bhean River. To the north.”
“Exactly. O’Melaghlin is chief councilor to the O’Fáil. He’s their spy, their negotiator, their goddamned battle commander. He’s their fycking head.” He flung his gloves on the table and snatched up a jug of wine. “He went north.”
He didn’t even bother pouring it into a cup, just lifted the fluted lip to his mouth and drank, then slammed the vessel back on the table.
“And if he finds out who Senna is, that she is the last in the line of Wishmé dyers…?” He smashed his fist on the table again, making plates skip. “And if King Edward finds out?”
This was asked rhetorically, Pentony assumed, or else he’d have given a reply. But they both knew quite well what the king of England would think if he found out Rardove had been keeping secrets. That he’d found a dye witch and was trying to make the recipe without the king’s knowledge.
Seeing as Edward had granted Rardove the land twenty-one years ago for this express purpose, on Rardove’s express promises, he would not be pleased at all.
Rardove never should have let King Edward in on the secrets of the dyes. Royalty was best enjoyed from a distance.
But then, without the promise of the dyes, King Edward would never have granted Rardove the land in the first place, not after the renegade Rardove had marched in and seized the land without royal permission. The promise of perfecting the Wishmés into weapons was the only thing that stayed the king’s hand and invested Rardove with the barony.
Now matters had turned desperate for the English king. The Scots were showing their rebellious side. Banding together, signing treaties of mutual aid with France, they were all but declaring war. The old inducements—burning, plunder, swords through the heart—all seemed to have lost their persuasive power. Edward needed a special weapon to herd the Scots back into the fold. Rardove was to give it to him.
The Wishmés were a battle commander’s alchemy. Awe-inducing in shade, they were also violently incendiary. Powdered and heated, they created an explosion that could burn so fast and hot it would incinerate a man. Or a building.
Or…Scotland.
There was no way Edward could win a long-lasting military victory against the Scots, not if the barbarians kept fleeing to the hills at the first sign of pitched battle.
But he could start blowing things up, in small batches, things like recalcitrant
nobles and native aspirants to the throne of Scotland.
He would not be pleased to discover Rardove was trying to perfect them as a weapon behind his back.
“What do we know about that other contingent of Irish?” Rardove snapped. “The one we captured?”
“He broke,” Pentony reported with distaste and, to his surprise, realized he didn’t know if the distaste was more for the breaking, or the means by which he was broken. “It seems that while you were…meeting…with O’Melaghlin, he was on his way to a rendezvous with Red. The outlaw.”
Rardove’s head snapped around. “While O’Melaghlin was here.”
“Drawing your eye.”
“You are suggesting he was here to distract me?”
Pentony shrugged. “Perhaps.”