Page 112 of The Pirate Queen

His eyes widen in surprise, then pink foam bubbles at his throat. He gulps, trying to draw air into his lungs, but there is only a whistling and he falls face forward into the grass.

She moves on to the second man.

Same question.

Same silence.

Same blade.

But now there is blood running down her wrist and she scowls at the second dead man with disgust.

Grace looks to The MacMahon, then peers into the small church. Thirty of them to her sixty. “I will not leave here without answers,” she tells them, then turns to the third man. He has already dropped to his knees, accepted his fate. “Why?”

“Because no woman should be chieftain,” he answers, his familiar words a hiss of spittle.

“It was you in the church? At my father’s funeral?” she asks.

“You stupid fecking cun—”

She cuts his throat as well.

Grace wipes her blade—first one side, then the other—on the grass. Then she takes three steps toward MacMahon. “I want you to remember this the next time you think to meddle in my affairs.”

“Are you ever going to tell her?” Murray demands.

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“If she asks.”

Murray looks at his brother in the waning light. He likes having a twin. Is glad to know what his own face looks like. So few mirrors in their world. But he doesn’t like the expression on Finn’s face now. Jealousy and hatred and a kind of bitterness that makes him uneasy.

“You think she’s going to come to you one day and ask, ‘Hey, Finn, did you send your ugly feck of a brother to Achill to kill the man I wanted to bed?’ Is that what you think she’s going to do?”

“No.”

“So you’re never going to tell her.”

Silence is his answer.

Some time later Murray says, “You think she needs protecting from everything. But you’re wrong.”

“Not everything. Only herself.”

They stand beneath the mainsail, their voices covered by the wind and snapping canvas. There’s more that Finn has to say, and Murray is happy enough to let him think it through. After a while, once all the light is gone and both their faces are hidden entirely, his brother speaks again.

“De Lacy was a spy for the MacMahons. He was going to bed her, then he was going to betray her. Or worse.”

“I know.”

“I couldn’t let it happen.”

“I never said you should. Put the arrow through that fecker myself, didn’t I?”

“And I thank you for it.”

Murray shrugs. “Wasn’t a hardship. He was too pretty. Can’t trust a pretty man.”