“Evan,” said Gull, “whatever transpires from this, tell me I can give Felix something other than soup tonight, will you? It’s going to be hard enough for him to sleep, after this.”

“You can try him on bread and milk. Don’t get up, Father. I’ll fetch it.” Evan looked at the exhausted, pallid Felix where he sat slumped on the bench beside Gull. I could imagine what my brother-in-law was thinking. At every turn, Felix had spoken of the rescue expedition as an enterprise in which he himself would take part. That looked nigh impossible.

“Muirrin,” I said as she and Evan went out, “thank you for speaking up.”

My sister smiled. “There’s no need to thank me for the truth, Sibeal.”

Then there were only Johnny, Gull, Felix and me left in the infirmary. I had expected Johnny to leave promptly. It was the middle of the night, and with the Connacht men on the island, he must be up early. But my cousin sat on awhile, deep in thought.

“You mean to go, whatever happens,” he said eventually, his eyes on Felix, assessing. “On your own, if it comes to that. Weak, sick, not much of a sailor, not much of a fighter, you would still do it. I can’t make up my mind whether you’re the bravest man I’ve ever met, or the maddest.”

Felix had begun to shake; whether it was from the relief of tension or sheer exhaustion, I did not know. To remember, to tell the story, to be half-believed—it was a great deal in one night. Not to speak of the fact that Knut had almost killed him. I knelt up beside him, holding both his hands in mine. Gull laid his cloak around Felix’s shoulders. Perhaps Felix did not look like much of a hero right now, but to me he seemed a beacon of courage, a lamp of truth.

“He must go,” I said to Johnny. “I know it can’t happen until Liadan gets back, and perhaps not for a while even then. But when it’s time, the runes have told us that Felix must be part of the rescue.” I remembered my divinations, both of them pointing to a mission the two of us would undertake together. I recalled Felix’s voice, soft and sure as he called me the flaming torch that led him forward. I saw in my mind Svala’s vision of the two of us, she and I, rowing a little boat across a trackless ocean and into the north. “Svala must go as well,” I said. “And so must I.”

CHAPTER 10

~Felix~