Foul Tide's Turning by Stephen Hunt Page A

will it take to punish those who slew your pretty wife and burned your beautiful town?’
    ‘And buried half my parishioners. If we’re keeping count, let’s not forget all our dead friends out there where my guns used to lie. All those good people whose houses you used to rattle your begging bowl in front of. Weyland is as wide as it is tall,’ said Jacob, ‘I reckon we’ve got space for a few extra tombstones, as long as the right boots get to fill them.’
    ‘And will you choose the feet inside those boots?’
    ‘No,’ sighed Jacob. ‘I reckon they’ll more or less select themselves when it comes to it.’ At least, that’s how it’s been working to date.
    ‘Put Weyland behind you,’ urged Brother Frael. ‘Cross the border and return to the monastery with me.’
    ‘If I do, trouble will only follow me,’ said Jacob. ‘I can promise you that.’
    ‘Our deaths are the rapids which await each of us behind the final bend of life’s course. All a mortal may navigate is how we choose to meet our end. The order’s offer is not unconsidered of the dangers your presence would bring. When death comes, let us meet it serenely. Let us meet it mindfully together, without fear.’
    ‘My fate isn’t something I can discard behind me like some old coat. I’ll never forget what you did for me. How the order saved me … and I won’t be the misbegotten soul who brings destruction down on Geru Peak. I forgot the world for nigh on twenty-five years, but it remembered me in the end. It stole into Northhaven and took everything from me.’
    ‘If you believe that, then perhaps it has taken everything.’
    Jacob reached out, feeling the reassuring heft of the ivory-handled pistols. No, not quite everything . Six reasons apiece in each pistol’s rotating chamber; that made twelve reasons for going on. ‘I don’t fear death, Brother.’
    ‘Then you fear something worse. You fear life .’
    ‘Fear it?’ Jacob snorted. ‘I don’t even feel it anymore.’
    ‘Is that not precisely why you must return with me?’
    ‘A foul tide is washing in, brother,’ said Jacob. He walked from the hall into the pantry in search of a meal for the monk. Something for Frael to take on the road with him, for the brother wouldn’t want to spend the night under this roof after he’d heard what the pastor had to say. ‘Jacob Carnehan can’t turn it. But I figure Jake Silver is a man who might.’
    ‘There are always stealers ready to worm into our soul and hollow it out from the inside,’ said the monk. ‘Please—’
    ‘Maybe I could turn and run,’ said Jacob. ‘Forget who I am – was – again. But could my son? Could the woman he loves? Could the hundreds of Weylanders who escaped the sky mines as slaves? Is your monastery big enough to hold everyone in the whole nation? Because that’s where this particular cart is rattling.’
    ‘I can only save one soul at a time.’
    ‘Then save someone else’s,’ said Jacob. ‘Because I’m never going to lose my son again.’
    ‘If you plunge down this path you surely will, and take how many other widows and widowers with you?’
    Jacob handed back the bowl, full of salt meat and dried fruits. ‘I’ve filled your bowl, Brother. Let fate fill its own as it will. I’m not going to run and hide and watch like a coward for a second time.’
    ‘Then you’ve chosen.’
    ‘Life’s chosen for me, old friend. Fate’s chosen.’ Jacob raised his hands open. ‘I’m just here waiting on the tide.’
    ‘Fare you well then, Quicksilver . It seems my brother has already departed.’

    Eleanor Kaylock stared back up the hill’s stepped grass slope. The windows of the big house were orange with lamp light, warm and inviting compared to the biting cold outside. Hedges ran up either side of the hill, carefully trimmed to resemble ramparts in shape and size. They made the manor house up high look even more like a castle. Rows of trees behind the hedge stood sentry, bare of leaf and