The Power (The Magnificent 12 4)

“—great-great-great-grandfather!”

Sean Patrick, to his credit, had recovered his composure, and you almost couldn’t see the spot where he had peed his breeches. He had not dropped his sword, and now he advanced with a step that was somewhere about halfway between a swagger and a mince.

“Yeah,” he said, but in Irish. “Take that. You monsters! I’m not afraid of you!”

And then, though his vision was pretty sketchy, Mack was sure he saw Stefan and Xiao walking toward them. With them was Boguslawa.

Boguslawa broke into a run. Stefan started to go after her, but Xiao held him back.

Boguslawa ran to Sean Patrick.

“You are so brave!”

“Go raibh maith agat,” Sean Patrick said. “Thanks.”

“I am now loving you,” she said, and looked shyly at Sean Patrick.

“I thought you thought I was a weakling and a coward,” Sean Patrick said. “That’s why I was going to break up with you. I couldn’t spend my life with someone who thought I was a coward.”

“Of course, when you were weak, scaredy not-a-man, I was contempting you. I am daughter of great Taras Bulba! I am Cossack princess! But now you are not coward, but brave like angry buffalo! So now I am loving you.”

Meanwhile, while all this was going on, Mack was dying of ant venom. In fact he wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t hallucinated the whole thing. It certainly was strange enough to be a hallucination. And how was it Sean Patrick could speak English now?

Xiao knelt beside him and spoke some Vargran words that he almost didn’t hear because his ears were swollen shut from the stings.

And then he was fine.

This is the excellent thing about magic as opposed to medicine: it works much faster.

“So you’ll marry Boguslawa?” Valin asked.

Sean Patrick shrugged. “If she’ll have me. I thought she despised me. I can’t marry someone who despises me.”

“I am not despising you, you are brave and handsome!” Boguslawa cried, and hugged him.

So it was happiness all over except for the fact that Sean Patrick, overcome with joy, started to say something. He started to say:

“This is wonderful. Now I can realize my dream of becoming a—”

And that’s when Xiao tripped and plowed into him in such a way that she accidentally punched him in the jaw.

“So sorry!” Xiao said. “But, moving on, such a happy day!”

Valin, suddenly very formal, said, “Mack MacAvoy, this resolves the feud that has existed between our families for—”

“A feud I knew nothing about and had nothing to do with!” Mack pointed out. If by “pointed out” you mean “angrily asserted.”

“I hereby declare the blood feud over!” Valin said.

“Oh no you . . . ,” Paddy “Nine Iron” said, and reached for his mask.

And breathed.

And breathed.

And breathed.

“Don’t!” And with that he raised his sword-cane, pointed it at Valin, and yelled, “Traitor!”