Chapter 8: Standing on My Ticket

Verity left on the afternoon ferry.

She stood at the rail with her yellow coat buttoned to the neck and did not look back.

Alaric stayed on the pier until the boat was a grey smudge.

Then he turned and walked up to the inn, and I did not follow him.

I did not trust what I would say.

The storm came in that night.

It started as a hum in the rigging, and by ten it was a roar.

Every boat on the island needed lashing down.

Everyone who could pull a rope went to the harbour.

I went too, in oilskins, with Edith behind me complaining the whole way.

Alaric was already there.

He was soaked to the skin.

He had a rope in both fists and was hauling a fishing smack up the slip beside the ferry captain's nephew and the baker.

Nobody had told him to.

Nobody had told him not to, either.

He worked until the last boat was tied and the last net was stowed.

Then he stood in the rain with his chest heaving and looked at his hands.

The rope had torn the palm of the right one open.

"Back to the inn with you," the nephew said, not unkindly.

"The inn roof's gone," the innkeeper called from the door. "Water's coming in over the stairs."

Everyone looked at me.

"Don't," I said.

Edith had developed a sudden interest in her own bootlaces.

I put the king of the realm in my kitchen at midnight, because there was nowhere else to put him.

Biscuit lifted his head from the sill and took one look at him.

Then he did something I will never forgive him for.

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