Page 158 of The Pirate Queen

Her arms are heavy.

She leans back against the doorframe and finds that her head has never weighed so much.

“Can these feckers not handle a single battle without me?” she asks no one in particular.

“Gráinne?” Gutty’s hand, warm on her shoulder. “You’re not well.”

Well, no fecking wonder, I’ve just had my body torn in half, she thinks.

“Kill as many as you can,” she tells him. “Throw the survivors overboard. Then take the…” She cannot read the name of the galley lashed to Niamh. “Take the…”

“Sahara,” he tells her.

“That is a stupid name for a ship,” Grace says. Shakes her head because it suddenly feels heavy. “I will call her the Róisín Dubh. She comes with ussshhh…”

Grace hears that last word slurring. It sounds wrong and it feels wrong. There is a heavy thump and metallic clang as her weapons drop to the deck.

“Gráinne!”

Oh. Gutty sounds young again, like a child, like he did in Moycullen the first time he ever saw a man die. The way he calls her name makes her want to reach for him, like he is her own son.

Wobbling.

Her knees are wobbling.

And then she’s falling. Sliding, really, down the door.

The last thing that Grace feels, before everything goes dark, is Gutty’s arms around her, the heave of his body, his grunt, as he lifts her off her useless feet.

Gutty helps Finn carry Gráinne into the cabin. They see the naked, bloody, squalling child at the same time. It is thrashing on the bed, warbling its fury at having been left alone in this awful place.

“Feck, feck, feck,” Gutty tells him. “What do we do?”

“Put her on the bed. Check her pulse. Then get”—he leans over the baby to see what it is—“him to her breast.”

For all her fury and height, Gráinne is not heavy. It’s very little trouble to get her into the bed, to lay her on her side. Finn puts a hand to her throat and notes the steady thrum of her pulse.

“I think she’s just exhausted,” he says. “I hope so, at least.”

Gutty lifts the babe and turns in a circle, searching for something. Finally he takes the corner of the blanket and begins wiping the tiny thing’s face. This only enrages the baby. They look at each other, knowing what needs to be done but both terrified to do it.

Finn grinds his teeth together, then reaches with trembling hands to untie Gráinne’s leine. He pushes it off her shoulder, exposing her full left breast.

“She’ll fucking kill us,” Gutty mutters.

“Only if we let the báb die,” Finn tells him, then motions him closer.

“I’ll hold him,” Gutty says, his eyes bouncing around the room, desperately unwilling to settle on Gráinne’s bare breast.

Together they maneuver the baby closer, but he gasps and slurps and cannot latch on for all his screaming.

“If she comes at me with that dagger,” Finn says, “I expect you to defend me.”

Finn cradles the baby’s head in one hand, pulling it closer to Gráinne’s breast, then uses the other to guide her nipple into its mouth. Finally the tiny boy clamps on and he and Gutty freeze, terrified to break the contact.

“What do we do now?” Gutty asks.

“We do this until we get back to Rockfleet.”