Chapter 11: Her Father's Father

I did not go to the water.

I stood at the top of the shingle in a borrowed coat.

His voice rolled over the sea at me.

"I won't ask twice," he called. "I have no weapon. Look at the ship."

"Count my men at the rail. Not one of them has a bow."

He was right. There were six men on the deck of the black ship, and their hands were empty.

"The guard doesn't stop you from talking," he said. "I only want to talk."

My heart was beating very hard.

I should have turned and run up the cliff to the pack house. I knew it.

But he was the man who had made me, and I had wondered what he looked like my whole life.

"Come ashore," I said. "Alone. Slowly."

He smiled.

He lowered a skiff and rowed it in himself, with long easy strokes.

He beached it a dozen paces from me and stepped out onto the stones with his hands open.

He was tall. He had dark hair streaked with grey and the same grey-green eyes I saw in every mirror.

That was the worst part. I knew his face at once.

"There she is," he said softly. "My daughter."

"You raped my mother."

The words came out flat and plain.

I had decided years ago that if I ever met him, I would not soften them.

His smile did not change.

"I took her at the border," he said. "She was the loveliest thing I had ever seen, and she ran."

"I like it when they run."

I could not speak.

"You can call it what you like. I don't pretend. It's why you will understand me, when your blood wakes."

"My blood has woken," I said.

"Has it?"

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