“Rona will be back soon, and I must go down for the ritual. Eyvi, there is another puzzle. It is a strange and difficult one. It concerns a man hung up in a fishing net and left to die between land and water, a good man whom we welcomed to these islands. Have you a solution to that puzzle, too? I think I have, and mine is the same as King Engus’s.”

He nodded slowly. There was a look of misery in his eyes. “The manner of it suggests only one answer. Yet, at the time, Somerled was distraught. His shock and grief seemed entirely real.”

“Still, you said yourself, he made himself into the kind of man some folk admired. Perhaps, on that day, he made himself into the sort of man who mourns his brother’s death. Another game.”

“But there’s no proof,” Eyvind said. “Only that, because I know him well, I see something in the execution of it that points to one man only. A clever killing, all tracks covered, and the prophecy accounted for down to the last detail. I don’t want to believe I’m right, for this is a crime against blood, against kinship, against natural law.” His tone was hushed.

Nessa inclined her head. “But you do believe it,” she said. “This is what keeps you from going back, even now that you are regaining your strength. You fear to confront him with the truth.”

“How could any man perform such an act? It was surely a vengeance far too great, even if Ulf did use Somerled’s birthright to help pay for the journey here. After all, Somerled is well equipped to make his own way; indeed, that is what he prefers. I asked myself, would he do such a deed, take such a risk, simply to punish his brother for not loving him? And I remembered…”

“What, Eyvi?” She saw his hands shaking again and, without thinking, put her own out to take and steady them.