Something powerful is drawing Ward back to Devil's Island. Something he thought he had forgotten. He must evade vicious lighthouse keeper George Jaggles in order to rescue it, but Jaggles will soon be the least of his worries. Because an assassin is...
Lightfinger was the last person Ward expected to find in his cell.
The mute boy's face lit up when he saw Ward. There were manacles on his ankles and wrists (Ward had been spared this); Ward's first instinct after the bolts on the gates clunked home and the guards left was to pick the locks on the manacles. But there wasn't so much as a chicken bone to do it with. Besides, he had never been much good at picking locks.
Ward had seen no other inmates when he was brought in. Clearly this was a wing where prisoners were held temporarily. There was a single bed consisting of a stone bench topped with a piece of padded torpin, one thin woollen blanket, and a hole in the floor that served as a toilet and was sealed with an iron lid that was bolted to the stone floor. The cell had no window. Anyone kept here alone would go slowly mad.
Ward guessed they had been put in here because the prison guards hadn't known what to do with them. He had heard the rumours of life in the general prison population: of men knifed in their sleep, beaten by guards, and worse. Even if only half of it was true they wouldn't have survived in there long. Well Lightfinger maybe.
The guards had searched him and removed his shoelaces, but thankfully not his shoes. The pouch containing the dice was handed to the bald, ancient prison clerk. He had tipped the contents of the pouch into a tray on his desk, muttered "gambling paraphernalia," scratched something out on a ledger, then put the dice back inside the pouch and carried the tray out the back somewhere.
Ward was taken to the Warden, a heavyset man with cold blue eyes and an air of dormant violence that hung about him like a cloud. The Warden spoke softly to the guards, with only a few words, but said nothing to Ward at all – merely looking him over as an apothecary would a newly-acquired specimen. This was a man, Ward knew, who did not care if he lived or died.
The guards then took him to his cell.
Over the following hours Lightfinger gave Ward an update. The manacles, fastened together behind his back, prevented him from gesturing, so Ward had to guess his way along, Lightfinger guiding him with nods or shakes of his head. It was tiring and frustrating. At an impasse in their communication Lightfinger would get to his feet and walk agitatedly around the cell. In the end Ward got a rough idea what had happened.
Communicating his own story was easier. He did so in detail, but without mentioning the dice at all. Nor did he speak of his dream of the dying man, or his confrontation with the Author. He excluded these parts unconsciously, only realising there were gaping holes in his story after he had told it, and ignoring Lightfinger's questioning looks. Strange. There was no good reason he should have kept these secrets, and he wondered why he did. He couldn't exactly go back and retell it now though. So he let it be.
If only he had his dice! He wondered if he would have been able to take Lightfinger with him. He had taken Fidelma with him, after all. But a sly little voice in his head told him it would be a bad idea. Too risky. Better to leave Lightfinger behind and go get help. Safer.
He wondered when the Brothers would come. For surely they would – if not for Lightfinger, then certainly for him. They would soon discover who he was. Would they kill him on the spot, or would they want to execute him in public? The first seemed more likely – after all, the Brother he'd drowned had been trying to kill rather than capture him. In any event he figured the Brothers would question him first. He tried not to think about it.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
