“Do you really think that will work on me, boy?” the husk stepped towards him. “My home has been burned, my friends have been slain, I have been branded their slayer and the man responsible is sleeping peacefully within a bowshot of where we stand. If you think you can keep me from him, I will show you how mistaken you are.”

Jileen stepped between them. “Enough! Padric, put that down. Slouch, listen to me. Padric was there. He fought with the others. He tried to save us. Faabar trusted him…we can trust him.”

“I will not be a part of your murderous plot,” Padric told her.

“Murder?” the husk returned. “This is beyond that, beyond vengeance. Kederic must die if you do not want what has happened to these lands to occur across the whole of Airlann. If you do not trust my word, trust what is in front of you. The countryside burns, yet this fort remains untouched and the people who survive have no choice but to come here. He is master of more today than yesterday and much more than a moon’s turn before. Kederic’s own riders hunt the goblins but never find them. You say he distrusts the Fae, this we have known for years, but now he uses their greatest enemy against them. If the goblins put a throne under him, he need not love them. He owns them and he will use them to rid this isle of Fae-kind forever. Already, Faabar is dead and…”

“What?” Jileen pressed.

“I found Bulge Eye,” Slouch Hat said slowly. “While I was on the run. And I can tell you it was no goblin spear that I pulled from his corpse. I lived around the Thegn’s men long enough to know their arms.”

“And Deglan?” Padric found himself asking.

Slouch Hat shook his head. “I found no sign.”

Padric went cold. Kederic told him the gnome never made it to the fort and now he knew why. The villagers said Rosheen led them to safety, yet... The man had lied to him! They called him the Winetongue and Padric had become drunk on his words, senseless to the truth. He thought of Rosheen, hunted by the Thegn’s men, ridden down like an animal and pierced with cold iron. Was she lying out there now? Moldering in some lightless track of woods? Slouch Hat was wrong. This was not about the fate of the island.

Airlann could rot! Padric thirsted only for vengeance.

“We move now,” he told the husk. “Acwellen’s dogs are the only ones in the hall and stupefied with drink by now. He will never be more vulnerable.”

The husk nodded grimly and snuck quietly out of the stall. Padric made to follow when Jileen caught his arm. She said nothing but the meaning in her look was clear.