Foul Tide's Turning by Stephen Hunt

mistake to make. When you left to pursue the slavers, the Synod in Arcadia thought you as good as dead. For that matter, so did the order.’
    ‘Happy to disappoint,’ said Jacob.
    ‘Sadly, the bishop is not the only one disappointed,’ said the monk. ‘When the order discovered you lying half-dead on the beach all those years ago, surrounded by corpses and driftwood, our healing of you went far beyond your shattered body. You were almost dead, but in the end you were reborn. It was as much a miracle as any I have seen, heard, or read of. You came into our order as one soul and left as another.’
    ‘I’m still the same man,’ said Jacob.
    ‘I wish that were true.’ The monk indicated the pair of belted pistols hanging in the hall. ‘Those are not our tools. You should have left them buried in that false grave outside.’
    ‘These are dangerous times,’ said Jacob. He took the monk’s simple wooden begging bowl out of the man’s hands. ‘I’m not sure how far I would have travelled on that journey shaking one of these. I’d better fill it for you, though. I’m not sure how many others around the town will honour the old hospitality of salt and roof. Many people still feel forsaken after the raid. By the lords down here and the saints up there.’
    ‘Blood begets blood,’ warned Brother Frael. ‘I watched you reclaim your old guns from that coffin. I watched you dig them out, unroll them, strap them on before leaving to save Carter and the other children taken by the slavers. I said nothing then. Well, Carter is safe at home again. Is it not time to rebury those hideous instruments in the dirt?’
    ‘You said plenty, as I recall. Carter is home, but safe …?’ said Jacob. ‘Which of us can say that? That damn usurper of a king down in Arcadia is less than happy I returned with a member of his family with a better claim to the throne than his, or that we’ve made a lie of the story that Northhaven was sacked by the usual pirates from across the water.’
    ‘When has there not been trouble in this world?’ said the monk. ‘Princes who want to be kings and kings who want to be emperors. Bandits who want to be rich and nomads who want to be conquerors at the head of a horde. There is only one choice to make in this life. Whether you are to fight or whether you are to walk away.’
    ‘Sometimes the fight comes to you,’ said Jacob. ‘No matter how many cheeks you turn, it comes for you and keeps on coming.’
    ‘Those are not your tools,’ insisted the brother, turning away from the twin pistols. ‘They are Jake Silver’s. Let that man rest, as dead as the thousands he slaughtered.’
    ‘I left my guns below the dirt once,’ said Jacob. ‘What peace did it buy me? My first two children taken by the plague, my town fired, my wife murdered by the skels, and my last son stolen to be a beast of burden and treated worse than any animal by the Vandians. I watched helpless. Jacob Carnehan couldn’t save them. But Jake Silver could have. Except he was gone. Hiding under this .’ Jacob pulled off his priest’s collar from his shirt and hurled it angrily down to the floorboards.
    ‘And would Mary Carnehan have wanted such a path for you?’
    ‘She’s dead,’ said Jacob. ‘She doesn’t want anything.’
    ‘Is that true?’
    Jacob reached out to hang on to the banister of the staircase. He couldn’t walk into a room in the rectory without seeing her ghost. Feeling her presence. But his wife never whispered to him anymore; not like she had on the journey to rescue Carter. Maybe rescuing Carter brought her shade to peace ? ‘True enough, Brother.’
    ‘This is not your punishment, Jacob,’ said Brother Frael. ‘Neither God nor his saints are so cruel.’
    Maybe it only feels like it. ‘It’s not His vengeance I fear is coming upon us,’ said the pastor, ‘but a more temporal power.’
    ‘And how many graves do you intend to fill with your revenge?’ asked the monk, sadly. ‘How many