As the ship moved out into the open sea, Bee watched her mother on the pier. The Goddess stood holding her cloak closed, staring at the ship as it receded into the quickly gathering gloom.

  Not staring at the ship but watching me, Bee thought. She had no doubt her mother knew they were aboard, otherwise, why come to the pier.

  “Is that Rhiannon?” Ruirech asked.

  Bee nodded but said nothing. Her heart was once again in her mouth; the same longing she’d felt on the misty plain when her mother first appeared.

  “She doesn’t seem that scary,” Ruirech said with a grin.

  “Who would when so far away?” Eogan said.

  Bee looked at him. She’d not heard him arrive and had forgotten how quiet he was on his massive feet when he felt the need.

  “Ye sneaking up on me, Sailor Man?” she asked.

  “Come, Lass, we need to talk,” Eogan said.

  Bee nodded and followed him to his cabin at the front of the vessel. The cabin was spacious and airy. There were two cots, one on either side, built into the hulls, each piled high with animal hides, and Bee couldn’t remember the last time a cot had looked so inviting. Eogan pulled out a chair at the large table covered with sea charts and told Bee to sit as he poured grog into wooden cups. Sitting opposite, the captain took a long pull on the heady liquor. Wary of its strength, Bee took a sip, screwed up her face and shuddered.

  “What’s going on between you and Rhiannon?” he asked, wiping grog out of his beard with the back of a hand.

  “What did Goibniu tell you?”

  “Not much. He said you’re running, and I’m to see you safe to Camas while he goes to Danu and Dagda. He didn’t say what the report might be, now,” Eogan said with one cocked eyebrow.

  Bee watched him over her cup for several moments. He was a long-standing friend—a friend she had trusted. Now, though, with the Gods at war, she was no longer sure who she could trust, or even which side she was on. Her feelings for Rhiannon were unwarranted and scaring her. Something was affecting how she thought about her mother. At first, she thought it was Rhiannon using some power to influence her mind, but she was no longer convinced. Bee might say that her emotions in relation to the moon Goddess were triggered by Dorn telling them who Rhiannon was. If she did so, she would be lying to herself. The feelings had been there before Dorn said anything. The feelings were niggling at her, however subconsciously, since her mother’s appearance on the plains.

  Putting a hand on his wrist, Bee smiled and said, “If Goibniu thought it best to say nothing, then I should follow his lead. I hope ye don’t mind, Sailor Man?”

  “No, Lass, I don’t mind. Get yourself into a cot. You look dead on your feet. Come up on deck when you’re rested.”

  “How long will we be at sea?” she asked. Even more than sight of the cots, mention of how bad she looked seemed to have triggered an overriding exhaustion, and she yawned, fighting to keep her eyes open.

  “We’ll come in sight of Camas just in time for the sun to rise.”

  ***

  This time on the plains with the red roiling clouds, she knew it was a dream and yet not a dream. Bee was sitting cross-legged on the plain as she had before, however, no eyes were staring from the skies. More than staring. Searching. Forever searching. She didn’t have a notion what they were searching for, except that it wasn’t the Stone of Destiny. The talk of Lia Fáil had always had a false ring to it. Only Dagda knew where it was. To Bee’s mind, the Chief was no fool, so why would anyonebelieve he would tell her brother, of all people?

  No. No one would. No one is that ignorant, not even among the Higher Tuatha.

  “You seem sure,” an echoing voice said in her ear. It sounded like the speaker was talking into a metal urn or vase. Although she didn’t know the voice, Bee knew who she would see before she turned.

  Rhiannon was sitting beside her with her legs to her side. A chiffon dress, so light it was transparent, rippled in the slight breeze. Her skin was so pale, it reflected the red of the roiling afternoon sky. The Goddess was smiling, so Bee felt no fear. If anything, her mother seemed relaxed, not in the middle of some war of the Gods.

  “I don’t believe Lia Fáil ever had a part in the scéal,” she said. “Even before…” Bee hesitated, wondering how much the Goddess knew. How much she might accidentally reveal. “It just seems too obvious…”

  “And so it is, My Child.”

  “Don’t believe what Credne told ye,” she blurted and then wondered why. “The God’s unable to open his eineach without lying.”

  Instead of responding to the warning, Rhiannon asked, “Why are you running from me?” There was no threat in the question. The Goddess couched it as simple curiosity, her head tilted, hands folded in her lap. Bee watched her for several moments before admitting she didn’t know why she was running. She’d taken the words of one suspicious character after another and not stopped to think, running on blindly. From one day to the next. Ever since she’d stumbled out of the portal and into the desert sun on that Dhuosnos-forsaken needle.

  Hardly the actions of Dagda’s High Priestess, she chided herself. “Ye’re dreaming, fool.”

  “Yes. You are dreaming. That does not mean I am not here. Ask me something.”

  “Like what?”

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  “Something you want to know. Something to convince you of my fealty.”

  “Who’s my father?”

  “Ask me something else.”

  Bee looked at her mother for some sign of why she wouldn’t answer her. There was nothing. Rhiannon kept eye contact but showed nothing in her expression. Her face might as well have been the ship’s hull in Eogan’s cabin. Relenting, Bee asked, “Where was Finn when I arrived at the Cave of Cats?”

  “Credne sent Finn. The Silversmith wanted the tracker to disrupt you as much as possible, without causing you any harm. When you arrived, he was getting rid of the body of Dagda’s tracker. After killing the tracker, Finn left the remains behind the rock, and then realised that you might do some exploring, so returned and brought it further into the desert the night before he came to you. Desert wolves took it.”

  “Are they not yer creatures?”

  “No. These wolves serve another.”

  “How do ye know this?”

  “I have been watching, Bechuille. Have you not seen me? I think you have.” Bee knew the Goddess was talking about the moon hanging in the sky, which had been a constant in the days since her mother appeared before her. Having her mother constantly watching her didn’t come as the most welcome news.

  I hope this is just a dream, she thought, to which her mother smiled.

  “So, Dornalai was right.” Rhiannon’s eyes flared at the words, the first time that Bee got a glimpse of the Goddess’s anger. The flash of her eyes put a different light on the dreamy scene, the idyll of mother and daughter sharing a moment.

  “You cannot trust The Smith,” she hissed.

  “No. I’m sure I can’t,” Bee said, which seemed to appease her mother. She turned away to gaze at the horizon, trying to decide whether it was the moon Goddess or her mind warning her.

  Putting a hand on Bee’s knee, Rhiannon said, “When you wake, My Child, remember who I am and who you are. Both of you. Think of me as a mother who is longing to be with her children.”

  Why does Bren have to be involved? she caught herself wondering. She was about to ask when the sound of feet running on wooden boards stopped her. When she turned back, Rhiannon had gone.

  ***

  Shouted orders and the stomping of boots on the deck woke her. The covered lantern on a hook above the table swayed gently in the sea swell, making the cabin’s shadows dance. It took Bee some time to remember what she was doing in Eogan’s bed. Slowly, she recalled arriving in Ceathru and Rhiannon watching them sail away.

  “Why am I running?” she asked the lantern.

  It was a question she couldn’t answer and suspected that was why it was in her dream. The rest, such as Finn’s arrival and the lack of an answer when she asked about her father, seemed to hint at her mind trying to unravel her enigmas. Lying in the cot, she watched the shadows dance and told herself that her mother couldn’t have visited her in the night. It had to be her subconscious giving her the answers she craved. If it were her subconscious, it was far cleverer than her waking mind, because she’d not considered the possibility that Finn murdered the tracker Dagda sent so he could take his place. It made sense, though. The dream also explained why no harm had come to her. According to the message in the dream, her mother, through Credne, had ordered her untouched.

  It is what you want to believe; what you need to believe.

  Judging by the noises on deck, she suspected the Sea Wolf was nearing Camas. The steady beat of the drummer kept the rowers in time. Bee listened to the swish each time they pulled the blades from the water for the backwards stroke. A seagull cawed a mighty screech, which Bee took as a signal. She rose and pulled on her boots before heading out on deck.

  Eogan was beside the tiller, steering the ship towards the cliffs of Camas Clochai. Even though she’d been to the smuggler’s underground lair many times, the approach always impressed her. It was as if the captain was tired of his existence and had determined to end it all on the rocks. The sun had already breached the Eastern horizon, and the golden rays were making the white cliffs of the Camas shine like a highly polished vambrace.

  Bee went to join Eogan, nodding at him when she arrived.

  “Did you sleep, Lass?” the captain asked, giving the tiller a tweak.

  “Aye. I needed it, so I did.”

  “Oars in!” Eogan called in a voice that the sailors heard on all four decks of the ship.

  Bee listened to the splashing as the rowers withdrew the blades and began throwing banter at each other, because, released from their duty, they now had breath to spare, leaving everything in the captain’s hands. She was always impressed by how Eogan steered the Sea Wolf between the cliffs that opened into the lagoon of Camas Clochai. The lagoon and the massive cave under the cliffs were invisible from the sea, and those not meant to, didn’t know it was there.

  The cave entrance was just big enough for the ship to fit through, and even a slight mistake on the tiller would have had catastrophic consequences. Bee always held her breath while Eogan steered the Sea Wolf to its berth. Watchfires illuminated a handmade wall with a glossy slime of wetness reflecting the orange flames. As Eogan steered the ship towards its berth, several sailors threw lines to the pier above and grabbed handholds to steady it. As soon as the Sea Wolf was rising and falling gently in the swell, Eogan dropped the tiller and leaped onto an iron ladder, which constant submersion in the rising and falling tides had turned to rust. Bee watched as the soles of the captain’s boots disappeared over the top of the wall. Although she couldn’t see anything of what was up there, she heard the noise of many people hard at work.

  Putting her hand on the ladder’s lowest rung, she turned to Bren and Ruirech and said, “Be careful in here, the pair of ye. This lot are pirates and unpredictable at best. Keep yer heads down and yer mouths shut.”

  When she reached the broad shelf of the pier, Bee hissed in an awed breath. She could see where the natural light didn’t penetrate because hundreds of sconces with burning torches lined the wall. Several dark tunnels led off the shelf, where men and women were stacking barrels in anticipation of the tide lifting the ship high enough for it to be loaded.

  “They’ll use a gangplank when the tide’s up,” she told Bren and Ruirech, who had followed her up the ladder.

  “In the in-between time,” Eogan said, “I have some grog in my rooms, and we can toast our voyage.”

  “I’d rather find The Smith, so I would,” Bee said.

  “I doubt he’s here, Bee. He’d have met us on the pier.”

  “What’s taking him?”

  “Now, to be fair, Lass, he has to travel from Tayvir. That’s where the portal—”

  “I know where the portal is,” Bee snapped. “I’ve used it often enough.”

  “Take it handy, Lass. I’m not to blame,” Eogan said, squeezing her shoulder, his eyebrows scrunched.

  “I’m sorry. I’m feeling the stress, so I am.”

  “Aye. I can see that. So, let’s relax and have a cup.”

  “No, Eogan. I must ride for Tayvir to meet him.”

  “That’s just foolish, Lass. It’s more than thirty leagues if you cut across Mag nAi and double that if you go by road. If you cut across, you’ve no chance of meeting, and if you go by road, what’s to say Goibniu hasn’t cut across? No. You wait here, and he’ll arrive before you know it.”

  “I can’t, Eogan. Sitting around waiting ain’t in me blood. If we miss each other, then so be it.”

  “Brenos, talk some sense into your sister,” Eogan hissed.

  Brenos shrugged. Bee wasn’t surprised because she knew he lacked patience in the same way that she did. Despite what she told Eogan, though, she didn’t think it was a lack of patience that was driving her decision. She had an overriding sensation she had to go to Tayvir and not wait in Camas. Something was meant to happen in the capital of North Kingdom. Something that might start giving her some answers instead of raising more questions.

  “We’re going, Eogan. Nothing ye say will stop us.”