Matthew thought about it. Lightning sizzled overhead, followed by a blast of thunder that he could feel vibrate in his bones. “You’re correct,” he said. He placed the barrel against Royce’s right knee. “I won’t kill you, but I’ll cripple you and leave you out here. How long do you think you would last?”
“Gunn told me you were supposed to be the law! You wouldn’t do such a thing!”
“Shall we put it to the test?” Matthew asked. And, truthfully, he was asking himself whether to go ahead and blast Royce’s knee or give the man another moment to decide, because Tobey was leaning against Abram and beginning to cough up blood.
Matthew’s resolve, and the decision that he would do what he threatened, must have shown in his face. Royce looked up at the stormy sky, then at the sword Quinn held and back again to Matthew. It occurred to Matthew that the killer was still seeking a way out of his situation.
“I’ll row,” said Royce, but something in his tone was yet arrogant and haughty; he was far from giving up.
“I don’t like it, suh,” Abram said to Matthew, as he supported his brother. “Man’s a fox.”
“Royce, clear those branches off the boat,” Matthew ordered. “Pull it out to the water.”
Royce gave a grunt and stood stock-still until Quinn suddenly nipped his right cheek with a quick motion of the blade. He looked at her in shock as blood crept down his face.
“He told you to do somethin’,” she said, her eyes dark and dangerous. “Best do it.”
Royce put his hand to his cheek and drew it away. He examined the blood on his fingers, and then without another word he turned and began to follow Matthew’s instructions, as Matthew stood close enough to wing him with a shot if he tried to run.
The boat was dragged into the river. Abram helped Tobey in, then his father, and he took up the oars.
“We’ll be all right,” Matthew said. “Get him in as fast as you can.”
Abram nodded and began to row downriver. Matthew directed Royce to the second boat with a motion of the pistol, and Royce obeyed. That boat, too, was pulled out of the mud and into the shallows. It took some maneuvering and some caution, but in a few minutes Matthew and Quinn were sitting together at the stern while Royce, facing them, sat on the middle plank seat and, with the oars in their locks, began to row them back toward the Green Sea.
Matthew kept the pistol trained on him. Lightning zigzagged across the dark sky and thunder echoed through the swamp. Quinn pressed close against Matthew, but she was also watching Royce for any trickery. Royce pulled steadily at the oars, his face impassive but his eyes narrowed and searching for a way out.
“Keep to the middle,” Matthew told him, as Royce began to let the boat drift toward the right bank. Up ahead, the boat carrying the runaways was rounding a bend and moving out of sight.
“Whatever you say,” Royce answered. “Man who’s got the gun calls the shots.”
Matthew was thinking. What to do about Quinn. Her Daniel would be leaving her, as soon as Royce was returned to the Green Sea and the runaways pardoned. It seemed to Matthew that it would be particularly cruel, for her to lose ‘Daniel’ again, but what could he possibly do about it? He was looking forward to a cleaning of his shoulder wound, a hot bath at the Carringtons’ inn, and as soon as he was able to travel he was taking a packet boat back home. This animal sitting before him, manning the oars, was not worth the rope it would take to hang him. How many had he killed besides Sarah Kincannon and Magnus Muldoon? And Joel Gunn, too? A lead ball to Royce’s head might be the more fitting end to him, but Matthew would have to let a court have the final word. He had no doubt what that word would—
Raindrops.
Rain had begun falling. The drops were few, but they were heavy. Lightning streaked, followed by the hollow boom of thunder. Royce kept rowing, unhurriedly. Maybe upon his face there was a thin and cunning smile. Matthew felt a sense of alarm; he knew the pistol’s flashpan cover was closed, but when the trigger was pulled the cover opened for the flint to ignite a small amount of powder at the touchhole…and rain was definitely not kind to gunpowder. If the powder at the flashpan became damp, the weapon would be useless except as a club.
Within a matter of seconds, the sky opened up and—Matthew’s worst fear—a torrent of rain descended.
The rain fell so heavily, in gray sheets, that he could hardly make out Royce sitting before them; the man was just a shape in the deluge. Rain beat down upon Matthew and Quinn, and the surface of the River of Souls was thrashed as if by the twistings of a thousand alligators.
Royce—or the blurred shape of Royce—ceased rowing.
Water streamed down Matthew’s face. “Keep rowing!” he shouted against the voice of the storm. He was aware that this torrent was also beating down upon the pistol and there was nothing he could do to prevent it. “Go on!” he demanded.
Royce didn’t answer. Slowly and deliberately, the man stood up. Through the curtain of rain Matthew saw him lift the oar on his right from its lock.
“Stop it!” Matthew shouted, but Royce would not stop. Matthew had no choice. The time had come. He aimed at Royce’s chest and pulled the trigger.
The trigger snapped.
The rain-soaked gun remained mute.
“I’ll be leavin’ now,” Royce said. He swung out with the oar and slammed it into the left side of Matthew’s head.
Matthew fell to his knees in the boat, bright and searing pain fogging his vision and filling his brain. He dropped the useless pistol, and did not see that Quinn was on her feet and slashing out with the sword. Royce turned the blade aside with the oar and followed that with a fist to Quinn’s face that brought the blood from her nostrils and sent her reeling back into the boat, which swayed precariously from side to side on the tortured river.
Under the driving rain, Matthew was aware that he had to fight back. Dazed, his vision cut to a dark haze, he found the knife in his waistband and drew it out, at the same time trying to get to his feet. A second blow of the oar, to almost the same place near the left temple of Matthew’s head, knocked the knife from his nerveless fingers and sent him over the side of the boat into the River of Souls.
He went down, his head full of fire. He had the sensation of drifting into a different realm, worlds away from…he could not remember from where, nor could he remember exactly where he was or why, but he realized he could not breathe and he must find air…and yet, this was a peaceful place, this darkness and quiet, and here he might find rest if he so chose.
In the boat, as the deluge continued to slam down, Royce grabbed Quinn by the hair with both hands and dragged her forward in preparation to throw her over the side. She had lost the sword. Her hands scrabbled at the bottom of the boat, seeking the weapon. Royce hauled her up and grinned in her bloodied face.
“Over you go, Rotbottom bitch,” he said, spitting water. “But first…I’ll take a kiss.”
He pressed his mouth against hers with a force that nearly broke her teeth.
Quinn kissed him hard, in return.
Her kiss was delivered by the knife that Matthew had dropped and her fingers had found, and deep into the heart this kiss was driven, and twisted for good measure and good fortune on the journey that Griffin Royce was about to undertake.
He gasped and pulled back, but the knife remained in his heart and Quinn’s hand held it firm as the life streamed out of him. His mouth opened and filled with rain. His green eyes blinked, shedding water. All the world, it seemed, had turned to a river without beginning or end. The haunted girl from Rotbottom and the animalish killer from the Green Sea stood together in a rowboat between shores obscured by the downpour, and above them thunder shouted like the voice of God condemning men for sins too foul to forgive.