‘That should be straightforward enough,’ said Elenya, her voice tightening. ‘After all, getting the first one was a piece of piss!’

Va bared his teeth and growled like a wolf. ‘You can go home if you want. I will not rest. Now get Akisi on his feet. We’ve a walk ahead of us.’

She cupped her hands around her mouth. ‘You, Kenyan. Up.’ Then to Va: ‘Where are we going?’

‘To see a man about a boat. A man called Rory macShiel.’

They took the boat across the mouth of the river and started the climb up the valley. Solomon Akisi followed reluctantly, alternately pushed and pulled when his speed dropped below what the two Rus thought acceptable.

Halfway up, during one of his frequent rests, he spotted a group of horsemen on the wrong side of the estuary. He opened his mouth to call out, and felt something sharp prick his neck.

‘Crouch down, Akisi. And if you make a sound, I’ll stick you like a pig and leave you to bleed.’ Elenya put her other hand on his shoulder and showed him the way to the ground.

The horsemen wheeled around aimlessly, then one of them spotted the abandoned rowing boat on the far shore.

‘I should have set it adrift,’ said Va. ‘Fortunately the river’s too wide for them to cross.’

‘The nearest bridge could be just upstream.’

‘It doesn’t mean that they’ll come back here. They might take the road, or follow the river.’

‘What would you do?’

‘Split up and cover as much ground as possible.’

‘Which is what they’re going to do. They’re not stupid.’ She watched the men ride off inland with renewed urgency. When they were far enough away, she pulled her knife away from the African’s throat. ‘Careful how you go, Akisi. The cliffs are high, and you might trip.’

They gained the top of the hill and started along the edge where the land met the sky. The sea boomed below, and the wind whipped up the sheer rock face.

‘Cold?’ asked Elenya of Akisi.

‘Miserably so. Cold, hungry, tired. I need to rest again.’

‘We don’t have the time. If you want to stay warm, walk faster.’

‘Why are you doing this to me? Him,’ said Akisi, jabbing his tied hands at Va, ‘him I can understand. He’s a fanatic. Nothing else is in his head. But you – you’re not like him at all and I don’t see why you’re helping him. You could have a much better life than this, I’m certain.’

‘You understand nothing at all,’ she said, ‘because you’ve never felt what I feel about him. He is my sun, and I revolve around him whether I choose to or not. I might hate myself for it, to be used in such a way by someone who swears never to return my love. I help him because I can’t help myself.’

‘You’re mad.’

‘You pointed that out to me earlier. But I won’t take your pity. Where he goes, I follow. And for the moment so do you.’

She pushed him on again, to where Va was waiting.

‘We’re here,’ said Va.

Akisi stopped sharply. ‘It’s An Rinn. Why did you bring me back here?’

Va scanned the church, the collection of houses, the windmill. ‘I can’t see any of Ardhal’s men below.’

‘I won’t go,’ said Akisi. He dug his heels in.

Elenya spun the knife in her hand. ‘If you’re worried that they’ll find out you killed their priest; they already know.’ She kicked him in the gut, then threw him down the slope.

A boy sitting in a tree spotted them coming. They saw him climb down and race along the road and through the village as fast as his legs would carry him. As he passed, people came out of their houses, and after looking at each other, they shielded their eyes and looked up the steep slope to the east.

CHAPTER 25

RORY MACSHIEL HAD a harpoon, and looked as if he wanted to use it. He only hesitated because of the presence of Va and Elenya.

‘You dare come back here, Solomon Akisi? After all that you’ve done?’

Akisi looked surprised, shocked even, at the reaction of macShiel and the half-dozen other men behind him.

‘My friends, I can explain everything.’

Incensed, macShiel made to stab the Kenyan, and was dragged back at the very last moment by Brendan macFinn’s father. The point of the spear brushed Akisi’s chest, forcing him back against Va.

‘Let go of me, macFinn – you hate him just as much as I do,’ macShiel managed between the flurry of arms and legs. ‘What did you do, Akisi, put your fingers around his neck and squeeze the life out of him? Then bashed his brains out with a rock while he was helpless?’

Va jerked Akisi upright, and Elenya stood in front, ready for when macShiel struggled harder and broke free.

‘Who else but a stranger would kill a priest? No one on this holy island would even think about such a heinous act.’ He jabbed his finger at Akisi in lieu of his harpoon, which he’d lost in the melee. ‘I accuse him of murder. All the time he was here, he knew what he’d done. He even took over the church. He planned it all from the start, damn his cold heart.’

‘You can’t have him, Rory.’ Elenya stepped aside, and for the first time macShiel realized that Akisi’s hands were already tied. ‘He has to come with us.’

‘What is this? What else has this murderer done?’ The hands that held him fell away, and he stepped forward.

‘We told you we were looking for books stolen from a monastery. We found one.’ She asked Va to bring out the book from under its cover.

Brendan macFinn, at the back of the crowd, jumped up and down. ‘That’s it. That’s what I found in Master Solomon’s trunk. See?’

‘He knows where the others are. He might be able to help us get them back. We need him alive. For the moment.’ Elenya patted macShiel’s arm. ‘Sorry, Rory, but this is important. Va thinks that the world will end if we don’t take them all back to the patriarch.’

macShiel’s shoulders slumped, the fight suddenly gone out of him. ‘Will it?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Willing to risk it?’

‘But what about Father Padi?’

‘Akisi stole two volumes of the book from the emperor of Kenya. I imagine he’ll get what’s coming to him. He’s also complicit in the murder of forty monks, so we could always take him back to the tsar when we’re finished with him.’ She linked arms with macShiel and walked him away, leaving Va holding Akisi by the scruff of the neck.

Va had understood little of the exchange between macShiel and Elenya, but he knew this for certain: if the people of An Rinn wanted to hang Akisi, there was little he could do to stop it.

But it must not happen. He needed to know what he’d done with the second book. He pulled the cover over the one he had managed to retrieve and wondered what had happened to the wolf fur that had previously wrapped it.

Rose naMoira barged her way through. Akisi appealed to her, and she deliberately turned her head away, shunning him with tight-lipped disappointment. She spoke directly to Va; Elenya was still talking to macShiel. He was on his own.

‘I don’t understand you. Little words and slower, please,’ he asked.

‘You must go from An Rinn. Now.’

‘We will. But why?’

Rose struggled with the problem of reducing her speech down to the level of a child. ‘We are cursed.’

‘Cursed?’ Va wasn’t sure he’d heard right.

‘This man, his book, that woman, you. All cursed. Bad things happen here now. You go, and God smiles on us again.’ She stamped her feet and strode through the crowd of villagers.

Then macFinn stepped forward. ‘What will you do with him?’

‘Only he can say what he has done with the book. He will tell us and we will get it.’

‘He’ll lie and cheat all the time.’

‘I know lying and cheating,’ said Va. ‘Listen, King Ardhal is Akisi’s friend. We stole Akisi. Ardhal will want him.’

macFinn snorted. ‘After what he’s done? A priest killer?’