“Dear God, what are you saying?” James could no longer hide his fear at the man’s words—the worst things a man could hear: a woman that could shrink his potency, kill his children. “I know her! This isn’t possible for a woman like her. It isn’t possible for any mortal woman!”

“You can say that, Priest,” the man said, his voice low. “You can say that who has never seen her naked, who has never touched her warm skin, who has never longed for her. But the taste of her mouth is like drinking henbane—she makes you thirsty for more and more, and then she drives you mad.”

“I’m no priest,” James said, quickly, ignoring what Alinor’s husband said about the woman he loved.

Zachary’s lip curled. “As you wish,” he said coldly. “But something stinks of incense here and it’s not me.”

There was a silence between the two men.

“Anyway,” James said, trying to recover his authority, trying to banish the image of Alinor whoring to a faerie lord, “I have no time for this nonsense. I am offering you a voyage or arrest. Which will it be?”

“Twenty crowns to take the trade out, to a meeting of your saying. Twenty crowns to bring you back?”

“Yes,” James said.

“And we never speak of this again, and you take that boy back to her and tell her that you never saw me?”

“I can’t make him lie, but I can make up some excuse.”

“So that she does not look for me?”

“She would not come looking for you.”

“She has the sight, fool. She can see me if she pleases, unless there is the deep sea between us. She cannot see me through deep water, I know that. She’s afraid of deep water because she has no power over it. But if I ever sail into Tidelands again the mire will boil beneath my keel and throw me up like sea wrack before her door, and she will destroy me with one look.”

“You speak like a madman.”

“What d’you think killed her sister-in-law?” the man suddenly demanded.

“What?” James was thrown off course again. “What sister-in-law?”

“See how little you know her?” He turned and shouted over his shoulder for another drink. The landlord brought it in silence, and silently James waited for him to pour, and for Zachary to take a thoughtful swig.

“Go on,” James said through his teeth.

“So you don’t know that either! Her sister-in-law. Ned’s wife. Her that she didn’t like. What killed her, d’you know?”

“I didn’t even know . . .”

“Exactly. You know nothing. She struck her dead from jealousy. So the poor mortal woman would not bear the child in her womb.”

“She would never do such a thing.”

“She did. I know it. For it was my child.”

“You put Edward Ferryman’s wife with child?”

“Yes, and my wife killed it, for spite.”

There was a long silence. Zachary drained his mug and pushed it towards James, hoping for more.