Free The Last Stitch (The Chronicles of Eirie: 2) by Prue Batten

look, a small Raji oil lamp of the kind Aladdin would be sure to have held.
     
    Gallivant had been watching her, all the time puzzling how he could remove her from the room. One would think it would be easy for an Other, a mere question of a spell, mesmering her far away. But no, it was much more difficult because he couldn’t manage such large-scale glamour. Somehow he must mesmer the keys and get Adelina to the stable and the horses. But she would have to leave the robe and all her possessions behind. He shifted on the coffer. ‘Adelina, what did you plan as your retribution? How were you planning to avenge Liam and Kholi?’
    She looked up from examining the lamp. ‘On the good days , the naïve days, I hoped to somehow take her prisoner, deliver her to the Venichese Courts for judgement.’ Her face had the bleakest expression and the thunder continued outside, a grim accompaniment to her base words. ‘But on the bad days, the mad days which far outnumber anything else, I have visited every kind of rough justice on her that I know. It’s usually bloody and painful and as I think on it, my soul shrinks to a pinhead and I might as well be dead myself. Gallivant, I’m a Traveller, we’re kind folk, we sew. We do not kill and nor are we ever brutal.’ Panic slid across her face as once more he saw her teeter on the balance.
    ‘Hush now, hush.’ He brushed h er arm and stood to wipe his hand over the creased forehead, the mesmer a form of calming. ‘What have you there, is it what you need?’
    She glanced down at the tiny lamp lying in her palm. ‘Yes, yes it’s just what I need. A little polish to lift the tarnish and I can sew it on.’

 
    Chapter Ten
     
     
    A stormy dawn light tipped the edges of the sea-swell, casting the dark grey with a damascened edge. Phelim turned the dory slightly and the swift southerly scooped it up on wings and progressed it a goodly distance by the time Adelina had been taken to the garden. Far out on the western ocean the sailor passed Polcarrow, Zennor, Porthcawl and Mevagavinney and he settled into the rhythms of sea. The boat skimmed the surface as if it flew. Dolphins and flying fish kept pace and coastal birds flew in large flocks, colouring the sea even greyer with their shadow. He was coiling extra ropes neatly on the floor of the boat when he heard the faintest grumble. Hoisting himself up on the stern seat, an arm over the tiller, he concentrated his gaze on the starboard horizon.
    On the coast line, storm clouds swirled in an ugly tower. Black rolls layered upward into the cumulus that indicated a storm of malign proportions. Above the swish and sweep of wave and the singing of the southerly in the shrouds of the dory, thunder rumbled from the Styx, Huon’s lair. Phelim’s heartbeat quickened. The Wild Hunt. I have been marked. They know what I am and what I carry.
    He looked to the sails as they began to rattle and flap and hauled harder on the ropes, pulling the sails tighter, turning the boat a little more to try and catch the wind that had begun to die behind him. He cursed in unbidden Faeran. The wind drops out.
    The boat began to lollop. The sails flapped and the boom swung dangerously. Checking the east again, Phelim could see a faint line of shadow on the ocean and guessed that a weather change was about to overhaul with eldritch speed. With equal speed, a feeling of gross impending doom settled in his stomach, sparking a surge of urgency.
    He grabbed the oar and paddled as hard as he could on the starboard side and then pushed and pulled at the tiller, trying to turn the boat away from the oncoming windstorm. If it hit broadside he was finished; thus the mortal inside him reasoned as he struggled to shift the boat. The sails had begun to crackle crisply as the forerunner to the gale licked at them, but Phelim let them out a little more and the tickle of the wind flipped the boat with a snap so it was now facing hard west and the storm would hit dead astern.