"What in God's Eye he is"

Achnacarry, Scotland – 1837

When he finally clambered back out of the cavern— body bathed in foul muck, blood and sweat— he was greeted with the back of Galabeg's head, still perched on the boulder where he left it. Penance sat down and somberly wiped the blade of his little knife on his breeches; he looked away from the fox head as he worked.

"Don't wanna talk to me right now, do you?" Penance muttered, turning his cleaned blade over in the moonlight. "I don't blame you."

Penance leapt down from the rocks, his bare feet touching down in Arkaig's shore. He nudged at the silt with his toes, shaking his head.

"It was stupid, and I should be dead. Deserve to be, even. But why I did it... you can understand that, at least?"

Penance looked up at the fox head on the boulder; it stared back at the boy with lifeless eyes.

The boy put his hands on his hips.

"Y'know, this whole silent-treatment thing is really mature of you..."

The boy took the fox head and stuffed it into the side of his breeches. He then turned and faced the black maw of the Dark Mile: the road to Achnacarry.

He looked over his shoulder at the glittering waters of the loch, and the wilds stretched beyond.

"If you won't talk to me," Penance mumbled, "then I guess I gotta work this out by myself, huh?"

Penance drew a breath and stared at the shoreline beneath his feet. By the time he looked up he'd decided on his destination.

But a voice in the shadows broke the silence before he could take his first step.

"Oi, there, wee lad!"

Penance started like a rabbit spotting a wolf. He faced the path to his left, glaring at a lumpy shadow. A man walked out of the darkness; he was rough-looking, face wrinkled and scarred with what looked like an equal mix of hard living and bar brawls. His jowls were thick and droopy like a bulldog's, and his pale, squinty eyes were far too small for his fat head, not to mention the almost comically-small bowler hat perched atop it.

"What's a li'l 'un doin' out 'n about in the wilds at the witchin' hour?"

"Minding my own business," Penance replied. "What're you doing?"

Mister Bulldog smiled, his rotted teeth beaming in all their yellow glory.

"Me? I'm out lookin' for a li'l 'un, meself. One in particular..."

The man held up a long, crooked cane. It had a gigantic wood knot at the top, good for a firm grip.

And it could double as a wicked club, in a pinch.

Penance narrowed his eyes and brandished his little knife, letting the blade gleam in the light of the moon.

"Probably not me," he grumbled.

The man pointed at the boy with a flabby, elephantine hand.

"Now, as a matter o' fact..."

Penance saw the bright flash in the woods before he ever heard the shot.

And he felt it not an instant later.

The boy stumbled backward, then faltered to his knees. He clutched at his groin, feeling the twisted mess beneath his breeches that used to be his genitals, hot blood pouring from his insides. He looked up at Mister Bulldog, eyes wide. His lips trembled in shock.

"O— ow!"

The second bullet tore straight through his forehead, laying him out cold on the tranquil shoreline. He was unconscious before his body hit the silt.

X

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X

By the time he stirred back to life his neck ached something fierce. Splinters dug into the tender skin along his throat, and when he tried to move his hands to protect his neck he found them completely unresponsive.

As his senses returned he discovered himself locked in the tight embrace of a cruel wooden stock. The board held his wrists to either side in a similar manner to his neck and it was a good two inches thick, at the very least. He lay on his back, his feet snugly bound, and when he tried to moan he discovered his mouth secured with cloth, a wad stuffed past his teeth and a ream wrapped about his lips.

Feet skidded on the boulders above him. Another man emerged from that little hidden cavern. Mister Bulldog waited atop the rocks with a small lantern, casting harsh yellow light on the other man's narrow face and buggy eyes. This man's silvery hair jutted from his head in several bundles of unkempt sprouts, like the bristles of a wire brush.

"Well then?" Mister Bulldog grumbled. "Any sign o' the boss?"

Mister Wire Brush quickly grabbed a small flask from Bulldog's open jacket, gulping down a hearty swig before answering.

"Wha's lefta 'im, more like." The man waved an unsteady hand back at the cavern. "Bleedin' 'orror show in there, what!" He motioned down to Penance's supine body. "'orror show all around, this is! Curse that damned wight 'n his coin purse: this is the Devil's bloody show, it is!"

"Oi: the Devil pays," Mister Bulldog nudged Wire Brush's chest with one of his massive, fat fingers, pushing the scrawny man back. "I'd sing in the pews every Sunday o' me life if God thought to ante up the coin ol' Kingey could muster!"

"Lassfevee..." Penance dreamily grunted to himself.

Bulldog shook his head, sighing. "An' if the damn fool hadn't jumped the gun then all'd be well; we told 'im we'd be liable to miss that carriage at Inverness!"

"Let's just forget the li'l wight 'n this whole bloody business!" Wire Brush motioned to Penance. "Let's weight 'im down in the loch and be done with the mess."

Penance quickly took to thrashing in his bonds, growling into his gag like a muzzled tiger.

"You daft?" Mister Bulldog grabbed Wire Brush's shirt, shaking the man back and forth. "Kingfisher 'ad 'imself a li'l 'contingency' planned for his wee wight kin, 'ere." Bulldog motioned to Penance with a curt nod of his head, "Should ol' Kingey shuffle off the ol' mortal coil for real, that is. The Gairlochy barn just south o' 'ere— the red one wi' the yellow fencepost around it: tha's where we take the wee wight. Ol' Kingey's to 'ave left a goodly pile 'o gold 'neath the troughs for us. We leave the wee one squirmin' at the barn door, make off wi' the gold, and we's in good standin' with any of ol' Kingy's wight kin what might 'av any more 'business' with us over this li'l incident. Hehehe! 'cept the wee one, there! Kingey's got someone at the barn to see to the li'l bugger. That, or somethin'."

Penance's struggles grew more fervent as Bulldog and Wire Brush clambered down from the boulder. They stood over the boy, Bulldog sneering at the child's futile escape efforts.

"I got the legs," he grumbled. "You, the 'ead."

Penance instinctively curled his bound legs up against his chest when Bulldog tried grabbing his ankles. He kicked at the man, missing him, and then Mister Bulldog kicked Penance in the ribs, causing him to nearly choke on the rag in his mouth. Bulldog knelt down and slapped Penance's face.

"Lissen 'ere, li'l wight," the man grumbled. "Kingfisher tasked us to deliver your unholy hide to Gairlochy, but 'e didn't say in how many pieces 'e wanted you there." The man took out a knife and rested the rusty blade against one of Penance's legs. "Misb'ave, lad, and I guarantee you'll fit nicely in a box!"

"Interesting. I was just thinking the same thing of you."

Bulldog's grizzled head came up with a start, tracking the sound of a mysterious new voice.

Gilbarta stood on the Dark Mile trail. The woman was still in her sleepwear, clad in a fine robe completely out of place for the rugged trail. Neither Bulldog or Wire Brush likely considered this at the time, though.

Their eyes were probably more focused on the massive double-barreled shotgun she held in her hands. She snapped weapon's break closed, the sound echoing through the night like a hammer on a coffin nail.

"This don't concern you, woman," Mister Bulldog grumbled. "Put that foolish thing down before—"

"I'll be putting you down, louse, should you do him any more violence."

Mister Wire Brush, standing nervously at Penance's head, took a few hesitant glances at his rifle resting against the boulder behind Mister Bulldog.

Bulldog sneered at her and quickly set his knife against Penance's chest.

"You shoot at me, woman, and I'll kill the precious bonny lad!"

Gilbarta slowly tilted her head, matching the man's sneer.

"You would kill him?"

"Indeed!"

Her lips twisted up with a devilish smile.

"How?"

Bulldog's leathery face drooped at this. He licked his lips, seemingly out of options.

That's when Mister Wire Brush decided to act.

He darted for his rifle, but Penance predicted this. The boy rolled his body, making the wooden stock bump the man's leg. Wire Brush stumbled and ran headfirst into the boulder. He turned and reached out, desperate to get a hand on his rifle.

He got a face full of buckshot, instead.

Gilbarta's first shot turned Wire Brush's head into hamburger; the spread reached Bulldog's arm and shoulder, tearing it like shredded paper and knocking him on his ass.

With a cold sneer Gilbarta leveled the weapon at Bulldog's face; Bulldog's eyes widened in blind panic as he watched her pull the trigger.

Their expressions reversed when the shotgun hammer fell and struck a dud shell, making a tinny click.

Bulldog stumbled to his feet, screaming with hoarse rage, and he moved to close the distance between himself and Gilbarta, who was busily trying to load another shell in the shotgun. She got the shell in but failed to close the break before Bulldog was upon her.

He knocked her to the ground and tried forcing the weapon out of her hands with his remaining good arm. The pair struggled in the dirt, wrestling for control over the shotgun. At one point the break snapped shut, sealing that one good shell inside.

Penance's eyes widened as he stared at the gaping maw of the shotgun barrel pointing directly at him. The boy rolled to a prone position and started worming over the ground, struggling with his bound ankles and stocked arms. He got to the pair just as Bulldog managed to get atop Gilbarta. The man cemented his good hand around her throat, his leg pinning the shotgun to the ground.

Penance inched his body into position at their feet, exposing as much of the wooden stock as possible to the shotgun barrel. That was the easy part: now he had to get the woman's attention and let her know what he intended.

Surprisingly, however, when he looked up to Gilbarta— desperately trying to draw in air over Mister Bulldog's grip on her throat— she locked eyes with him in a moment of perfect understanding. She acted without emotion, and without any hesitation.

And when her finger found the trigger Penance's wooden stock blew apart like split matchsticks.

So did a goodly portion of his face and left shoulder, but there's a saying about eggshells and omelets, isn't there?

Penance dug one hand into the dirt and then sprang up with his tied legs, propelling himself onto Mister Bulldog's back. The boy's right wrist was still encased in a heavy chunk of wood and he put it to good use. The blows made a remarkably crisp and clean sound, more like cracking open a rock than smashing a brain. By the time Penance finished bashing the back of man's skull in the stock remains cracked off his wrist and his limb was free.

Two birds, one stone.

Even in his rage Penance found a bit of amusement at the contrasting idioms.

He really hoped neither of those two birds provided the egg for that omelet.

Maybe that wasn't very funny, but then again Penance currently had about half-a-dozen lead pellets embedded in his brain, so his sense of humor might be slightly askew.

The boy tossed the remains of the stock aside and collected his little knife from the dead man's belt. He freed his legs and stood up, glaring down at Mister Bulldog's corpse with his one intact eye. He spat out the remains of his gag and let out a primal roar at the body, flinging spit and a pool of frothy blood from his half-formed jaw.

By the time he collected himself he noticed Gilbarta lying in the dirt, staring up at the boy with cold terror in her eyes.

Penance quickly faced away from her, walking back to the shoreline. He stood facing the water, letting his face and shoulder slowly gel back into form. He took that time to get his breathing under control, crossing his arms over his chest to hide the shaking in his hands.

He didn't hear the slow footsteps behind him, but he did spin about, crouched low like a feral cat, when he felt a hand come to rest on his now-perfect shoulder.

Penance took a few halting steps back into the water. Again he tried calming himself, digging his toes into the silt.

"S— sorry," he mumbled.

"You don't handle captivity well, I suppose." Gilbarta awkwardly adjusted her robe as she spoke. "Few devilish boys do, at that."

He nodded, also awkwardly adjusting the remains of his breeches on his hips.

"Thank God for fallen women," he half-smiled. "They can handle shotguns just fine."

When the woman returned his small smile Penance found his cheeks flushing. A certain warm tingle traveled up the back of his spine. But the feeling didn't last; he put it out of his head and narrowed his eyes.

He still had business to take care of, after all.

"I have somewhere I need to go," he waded out of the shoreline and walked back up to the path.

"Where?" Gilbarta asked.

"Gairlochy."

Gilbarta blinked in confusion, following the boy up the path.

"But why—"

The woman abruptly stopped speaking, cutting herself off so quickly that Penance had to look back at her, for curiosity if nothing else. She stared at the ground, shaking her head.

"At supper I asked you a question: whether you've Iberian blood in you. Do you remember?"

Penance nodded.

"And right now I was to ask you what you intend to do at Gairlochy."

Again the boy nodded.

The woman looked up at him.

"What if one were to say she has no interest in those questions? In any questions at all. If she'd pledge to never hold any interest. Would you think her sincere?"

Penance waited for his breathing to finally reach a normal level before answering. He smirked at her.

"Begging your ladyship's pardon, but I think a woman like that would be a fool, wouldn't she?"

"One's been called worse," Gilbarta returned the smirk.

The boy looked over at Bulldog and Wire Brush's bodies.

"They're not a question that needs answering," Gilbarta said. "Coin and influence have their advantages; these wretches' remains won't be reaching the constabulary's hands."

Penance nodded appreciatively at this.

"And where will you go. After Gairlochy?" Gilbarta slowly closed the distance between them. "Will you run?"

Penance scoffed, drawing a stuttering breath.

"'Run'?" He shook his head. "A slow jog, at best. A body's so tired..."

He took half-a-dozen steps before Gilbarta called out to him.

"Those linens up at the house are still fresh..."

The boy stopped walking; he didn't look back at the woman.

"Albeit you're considerably less so," Gilbarta said. "And coin and influence have more advantages than you might think. They can hide a body, in more ways than one..."

Penance slowly faced the woman, meeting her dark green eyes with difficulty. He didn't know what to say to this, so Gilbarta answered for him, smiling gently.

"I suppose, though, we'd both be fools for even trying, wouldn't we?"

He opened his mouth, ready to let all that was unspoken between them be said. Ready to question her about what he could possibly mean to her: whether he was just a convenient replacement for her loss, hastily taken in with little thought or reasoning, or whether it was something to do with honor, and she thought she owed him.

Or even if she thought he owed her, in a way...

He was ready with a dozen questions, at least.

But before he spoke he reconsidered, and then he closed his mouth.

"Right now," the boy whispered, "I was about to ask your ladyship a lot of things."

"And?" The woman asked.

Penance again faced away from her.

"You might be right," he said, walking back up the path. "We might both be fools..."

He broke into a jog, leaving the woman at the water's dark shore.

X

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X

Gairlochy didn't take long.

Penance walked up a twisty backroad, slowly making his way up to Achnacarry. The first hint of dawn's light nipped at the horizon, but the sun was still a long way off.

The boy slowed his walk as he noticed the faint outline of the house's baronial spires peeking over a steep hill. When he crested that hill he found himself walking through a dilapidated, overgrown field of ancestral graves and tombs, the markers ranging from crude stone pillars to ornate marblework.

His eyes were drawn to one memorial, in particular: a squat and narrow mausoleum. It was weathered and besieged by lichen, but upon closer inspection the thing was hewn of once-polished sandstone, and crude as the structure was it must've been very pretty in its day, before time ravaged it to ruin.

The boy ran his hand along the stone, wondering to himself what its 'day' was, exactly.

He wondered how old he'd been when these stones were still fresh and polished to a shine. And they could always be polished, again; time only ravages the outside of a stone, after all.

He smiled at this thought, wistfully comparing the smooth white skin of his hand to the rough, lichen-infested stone.

The boy stepped inside the cramped confines of the mausoleum, examining the stone sarcophagus at the far end. There was some kind of cutting hewn in the wall above it. The cold predawn light exposed just enough of the wall for Penance to make it out: a cross delicately etched into the rock.

He scowled, turning on his heels and making to leave the place, but his foot bumped into the busted remains of a small stone statue, once attached to a perch beside the entrance. He dismissively nudged the thing to one side with his foot, ready to step over it, when he noticed its outline in the growing light: the figure it depicted wore a mantle over its head and shoulders.

He got to his knees, gently picking up the Mary statue. He turned it over in his hands until the statue faced him, but then he quickly looked away, sitting up uncomfortably. He found the piece of rock where it had broken off of and carefully set the statue's busted base upon it, nudging it into just the right place, careful to make sure it was steady before removing his hand.

He slowly got to his feet and faced the far wall of the mausoleum, glaring at the cross with a cold scowl.

"Y'know, I've never asked what I am to You, exactly," he said. "If I'm a plaything, or just an amusement. Always figured it didn't matter." He paced around the cramped space, arms crossed. "I named myself after something I thought should be my goal, but You wanna know something?" The boy stopped pacing. "I don't think it's something I'll ever be able to give You. Not the way You want it, at least."

He looked out the mausoleum entrance, watching the sky grow brighter with the coming dawn.

"I owe a debt, maybe. From my first life. And for Cadha... and Struana..." He stared up at the unremarkable ceiling of the mausoleum. "And yeah: even that asshole Uallas, too." He returned his icy gaze to the cross. "But I've been a 'good boy'; I've kept my head down— had to, anyway. I've lived in the shadows of countless others' lives, always moving on, stuck crawling out the doors of homes and back into the muck every season or so. I never put down so much as one root in the ground, for fear of who might come to pull it out. And when they do come? I run."

He glared at the wall with a gaze so vicious he might've shot his eyes out at it, if he could.

"But not today."

He clenched and unclenched his fists, twisting his head to one side and popping vertebrae.

"So You can add Kingfisher to my debts, if You have to. And You wanna know something? It was worth it. You can try spooking me— put a tingle in my spine, and a flutter in my heart. You can make every bone in my body scream 'flee'..."

The boy slammed one naked foot down on the mossy floor.

"...but maybe You don't even know what I am, exactly. They'll come for me if I stay; I know that's true. They'll learn about me, somehow, and they'll come here to take me. And when they do?"

Penance closed the distance between himself and the wall, looking up at the etched cross with dangerous eyes.

"I'll kill 'em. All of 'em. Yeah, even him, too, if he comes. You can add them all to my debts."

The boy smirked, crossing his arms.

"Good luck collecting from the insolvent, anyway..."

He turned on his heels and tromped out of the mausoleum, looking over his shoulder one last time.

"I'm done asking You for the things that You're not willing to give me," he said. "All I want now is for You to stay the hell out of my way!"

He moved outside, his breaths coming in angry huffs. When he felt a trickle down one cheek he angrily wiped at his face, growling with irritation.

Galabeg stared up at him from its resting place in the waist of the boy's breeches.

"I know," Penance mumbled. "What kind of person tells off the Almighty?"

He looked to the end of the path. Achnacarry's mighty stone walls loomed in the distance, its parapets barely touched by the first hard rays of dawn.

"God knows what kind of person," Penance said, "I'm sure..."

X

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She'd sat at the table in the drawing room for nearly an hour, watching the morning sun begin to scour the lands beyond the bay window. Only a cup of tea rested before her, now too cold to give off any vapors. She wore a new robe and nightdress, giving her staff no explanation as to her previous garments' fate. She gave her staff no statements at all, in fact, except for one:

Breakfast would not be served until all were seated at table.

Staring at the empty chair across from her, and then at her cup of lukewarm tea, Gilbarta's face grew leaden. Footsteps in the main hall— no doubt the butler coming to check on her again— didn't improve her mood.

Only when she noticed the light, crisp cadence of those footsteps did she look up.

Penance stood in the door, now clad in an old robe and slippers. The boy crossed the room and came to the empty seat, sitting down across from her. They exchanged small smiles, a knowing glint to their eyes, but no words passed between them.

After all, what was there to talk about right now?

And when the staff brought them their breakfast the pair ate in a comfortable silence, proper and dignified.