Ward climbed to the summit of the bluff and sat there watching the sea every spare moment he had now – this was not as often as he would have liked, for Jaggles kept him working like a drass all week. In his time away Ward had perhaps grown a little nostalgic about life on the island, but the resumption of his imprisonment obliterated that fancy. Jaggles, after his momentary admiration for the boy, seemed to be making up for the lapse by being more brutal than ever. But Ward was tougher now. He had seen and done things Jaggles could only dream of. And he was not alone. He had Fidelma. Jaggles didn't know about the dore, and Ward planned to keep it that way. Jaggles would, likely as not, put her in a stew.

He kept a close eye on Fidelma now in the fading light as she scampered ahead of him up the track to the bluff. Although Jaggles had been mostly successful in his attempt to kill every living thing on the island, including Ward himself, there were still a few vulpin left, and an eyr could swoop down and carry the dore off at any moment. His initial concern when he had first let her off was that she would run away, but this fear was unfounded: she had spent her life around people, and had quickly learned that Ward was her new protector. She was a smart little dore. So he set her free as often as he could, to forage for the insects and seeds and grasses that she liked to eat.

Two weeks passed.

Then, late one Sinday afternoon, a surprise was waiting for him when he reached the top of the bluff. When he looked down he saw a ship moored in the channel. The ship was dark, silhouetted by the sun that was setting behind it. It seemed to watch the island. Now a rowboat was leaving its side and crawling towards the mouth of the cove.

Ward scooped up Fidelma, put her in his pocket, and raced down the track, slewing down the steep parts carved by rain, grabbing at the tough grasses to slow his descent. The slope shallowed, then the path wound through some sheoaks, before finally emerging behind the shack. Ward crawled into the darkness beneath the shack. It had been built on pylons to survive abnormally high tides, so there was plenty of room underneath. He crawled towards the front of the shack, stopping beneath the door step to peer out at the jetty. Wavelets crumbled along the crescent-shaped beach, gulls cried, and a skrayl bleated like a lamb as it huddled on a pylon, its wings tucked in to its body.

The rowboat was already moored to the jetty. Someone in black clothes was clambering out of it like a spider. Ward caught a glimpse of a face under the shadow of a hood; the breeze off the ocean worried at the man's cloak, but it wasn't strong enough to blow off the hood.

A Brother. A Brother had come to the island.

The Brother came down the jetty and stopped before Jaggles. Ward saw the Brother's mouth moving, but the wind was blowing the wrong way and he couldn't hear him. Jaggles took his baccus from his mouth and gestured out to sea with it. Finally he stood, tapped out the baccus, and put it in his breast pocket, and the two men moved up the beach to the shack.

Ward crept back into the darkness. The ground was littered with jagged shells that crunched beneath his weight. He prayed the men wouldn't hear it. He heard their boots on the front porch and a low rumble of talk, then there was the creak of the door, and the clatter as it closed back into its warped jamb.

He heard Jaggles move towards the kitchen, probably to brew blackleaf. The Brother, he fancied, had taken a seat in the shadows upon one of the three-legged stools near the pot-bellied stove. When Ward looked up through a crack in the floorboards he saw the sole of a shoe.

There was a long silence, broken only by the familiar squeak of the billy as it swung over the fire, the faint roar of hot air in the flue, and the more distant roar of the ocean to the south.

"Whaddaya want?" Jaggles said, finally.

The Brother seemed to weigh his answer before speaking, but when he did, all he said was: "Information."

"What kind?"

"I'm following someone."

"You're a long way behind. He left two weeks back."

"Where was he going?"

"Didn't say."

The Brother's voice remained flat. "There is a kind of man who will lie about anything, whether it serves him or not. Such a man falls into the habit of lying. Before long he finds it as difficult to tell the truth as it is for an honest man to tell a lie."

A grunt was all Jaggles seemed capable of producing. There was a long, laden silence in the room above. A shell was digging into Ward's knee, but he didn't dare move.

"He went North," Jaggles said finally. "That's all I know."

"I hope that's true, for your sake. But you must be getting up to your light now. It's almost dark." Was that a hint of sarcasm in the Brother's voice? It was hard to tell.

"I'll come down and see you off," Jaggles said.

"I might have a look around first. If you don't mind?"

"Suit yourself."

The Brother left the shack. Ward heard him moving up the track he himself had come running down twenty minutes before. It occurred to him that the Brother might see his footprints, but there had been no rain for two weeks and the ground was firm.

Above him Jaggles snorted. "Go fall off a cliff you buzzard." His voice was not entirely steady.

Leave a comment below, you buzzards.