Arrival in Caithness
The land warned them long before a single Craik face could be seen. Caithness rose out of the world like the hull of a wreck, scoured bare by wind and salt, a hard gospel of peat, heather, and rock. The road dwindled into a track and then into nothing the map could reasonably claim. What remained were goat paths, sheep paths, and the deep, ancient scribing of burns that had cut their letters into the earth when kings were still boys.
Margaret Sinclair let the coach falter at Wick and would not ride in a farmer's saddle like a commoner; she took a lady's seat instead—side-saddle, spine straight, chin tilted—as if the north would break before she would. Powdered hair surrendered first, going damp at the roots, then the fur-trimmed cloak, heavy with blown spray. Even so, appearance held. Margaret had been taught that beauty is an argument and contempt a weapon. She wore both.
Robert Sinclair rode at an unhurried pace, which meant the hired men learned his rhythm before they learned his face. He had merchants' eyes—seeing not what was, but what it could be made to be. The kelp smoke downwind meant alkali that London glassworks would buy by the tun. The squat iron mouths of saltpans meant contracts and leverage. These were not merely Craik holdings; they were valves in a pipe that pushed coin to towns and men. Shut the valve and the line paid a penalty. He smiled thinly.
They topped the last rise above East Clyth as a gust ripped the sky open. Below: a huddle of tar-black roofs crouched behind low stone, a saw-tooth line of pits, brown ropes of kelp pegged to frames and greening to black in the wind. Further down, nearer the tide, the pans steamed—great iron pans on peat-fed fires, breath turning the harsh air into a faint sweetness of brine and iodine. Men and women moved among them with the economy of habit: fork, turn, skim, carry. It was not pretty, but it was beautiful in the way a heart is beautiful when it keeps time.
Margaret wrinkled her nose. "Midden-work," she said. "He hides in a midden."
Robert didn't look at her. "He hides where men can't be bought cheaply," he said, and noted where the path from the ridge broke into three. "And where wind tells you your mistakes before a man does."
They lodged at an inn in Wick whose shutters rattled like bad teeth. Robert sent coin ahead of food: two men to the fishers' cote, one to the factors' lodgings, another to the alehouse where the shoremen spent truth and coin with equal care. He said little, and what he said had weight. By nightfall, truth drifted back like weed on a tide.
"A ghost on the cliffs near Bruan," said the factor, trying not to watch Robert's hand on the purse.
"Tall," said the alewife, eyes scanning faces to see which would pay most for the next word. "Lean. A cough like tearing sail. Pistols on his belt. The big sword—aye."
"And a woman," growled a fisherman—proud, put out, admiring all at once. "Fiery hair. Craik. She runs those pans like a captain runs a ship."
"Keith's men test them," someone muttered. "They go home with broken heads."
Robert nodded as if this were weather noted in a log. He sent one more coin—larger—to a boy with bright-dog eyes. "Carry a word to Colin Keith," he said. "Say Robert Sinclair has questions that come with answers."
Keith came at dusk like weather, not like a guest.
He took the whisky Robert offered, rolled it in his mouth with the tact of a man who had learned diplomacy from hunger, and listened as Margaret's bright, cold voice sketched the shape of grievance. "He is my husband," she finished—Robert's small cough did not divert her—"and he dares me with scandal. He hides behind kelp smoke and a whore's apron."
Keith's eyes slid to Robert. "And your stake?"
"An accounting," Robert said. "Gunn defrauded my house, then ran. Law moves slowly; Caithness moves fast. You know the ground. We know how to shorten a line."
Keith did not take the bag that lay between them; he could weigh coin with his ear. "Gunn is old trouble," he said mildly. "He fights like a man who has already died once and didn't like it. You'll not buy him with paper."
"I don't intend to," said Robert.
Margaret's smile was fragile and bright. "Nor will I be satisfied until I see him on his knees."
Keith's mouth made the smallest curve. "Pride spends men badly." He drank the rest, set the glass down. "But if your coin will bleed for my ground, I'll not argue with arithmetic. You'll get your look at him."
A grip—short, hard, sufficient. The bargain smelled of tar and iron.
The Warning
The Craik boy came at a dead run, mouth open wide to loan air a way in. He'd been sent to Wick with a basket of smoked fish and returned with fear and the fish still on his shoulder, which told Agnes the news mattered more than coin.
"Strangers," he managed. "From the south. The woman—Margaret—calls herself Lady Gunn."
Seumas was close enough to hear the last two words. The name moved through his posture like a rip through canvas: the smallest give, then the line tight again.
Agnes dismissed the boy with a hand on his shoulder—good work noted—and took Seumas aside to the lee of the drying frames where the ropes hummed like gut strings. The air smelled of sea and cold iron. She told him what the boy had said. She left nothing out.
"Robert will be with her," Seumas said. He had learned to say the name like a diagnosis, not a curse. "He'll have men. He'll make the ground his clerk."
Agnes did not say we can run. It was not a sentence in her mouth.
That night the long fire put a red line under the camp. Seumas stood with the claymore planted like a staff and the targe hanging by its strap as if it were a second heart. Agnes stood shoulder to shoulder, not behind. The Craiks drew close—work-stiff hands, wind-brown faces, eyes ready.
"My name is Seumas mac Dhomhnaill ," he said. "Gunn." The word fell into the fire and did not go out. "I fought at Drummossie Moor. I lived when I meant to die. I fell south and made money and enemies; I rose north and found… this." His hand lifted, not grandly, and took in the kelp ropes, the pans, the faces. "A wife in the south tried to hire men to cut my name out of me. I left. She's come with her father to finish what failed in Aberdeen."
Silence, then the quiet strength of old women murmuring prayers—not because God listens more in Gaelic, but because the mouth fits courage better around the old words. Màiri spat into the dirt for luck and for contempt. Ewan took one half-step forward and stopped himself because he had learned that gestures cost and must be paid for.
"I won't bring the redcoats to your gate," Seumas said. "If I have to fight away from you, I will. But if you'll have me, I'll hold here."
Agnes let space do its work. Then: "Tha e aig an teine," she said. He belongs to the fire.
Ewan found his voice. "You taught me to breathe when my fear tried to spend my breath. I'll stand."
A murmur—agreement, a few prudent noes held back for the kitchen table. The feel of a line setting its feet.
"Then we hold," Agnes said, and the words took the weight they needed. "Cùm an loidhne."
Preparing for War
Work absorbed fear the way peat absorbs water—slowly, completely, with a darkness that could be burned later.
By daylight, Seumas turned the Craiks into a line. "Half-strokes," he said. "You don't cut trees; you stop men. Let the blade's weight do the work." He took targes down out of rafters where they had hung since the Disarming and gave them names again: club, wall, liar. "Wear it. Don't hold it."
He worked pistols at a bench by the seam: screws out; plate off; springs cleaned; frizzens kissed with oil; flints knapped sharp. Ewan learned the patience of a watchmaker and the economy of a fighter: "Powder, wad, ball, wad—count it like a psalm."
At dusk, Agnes moved coin like a knife. She leaned on the Wick factor until he bent and found, miraculously, one more keg of shot that had somehow not been promised to a man with four letters and a red waistcoat. She swapped salt for iron on a skiff in a cove no map had eyes for. She brought rope that hadn't existed that morning. The ledger in her head balanced because she beat it into doing so.
The ground learned their hands. Shallow pits were cut where a man would run and a foot would not see. Stakes went in at angles where a horse would lose the argument before its rider knew who he'd been arguing with. The tar barrels moved to where wind couldn't bully them and where an enemy thought he could reach them and couldn't. Buckets sat full by habit, not by heroics.
By night, they walked together. Sometimes they spoke.
"You'll put Tam on the south fence," Seumas said. "He reads ground like a fisher reads tide."
"And Seoras at the seam," Agnes answered. "He's quiet—good for the first cut. He won't grandstand." Her hand bumped his in the dark and stayed. "You'll not make courage of dying."
"I've already done that," he said. "Once."
The First Clash
Mist is a liar; men who love it die in it. The night came grey and thick, swallowing the edges of sheds, rounding the corners of the world. The sea's breath had the taste of wool.
The first flame licked a kelp stack like a child testing soup. A Craik girl flung a wet sack and snuffed it with the ease of someone who'd been drilled until she could do it in her sleep. Another tongue, and another sack. No heroics, only craft.
Then feet where feet shouldn't be, the scuff of leather—too careful to be a Craik, not careful enough to be a fox. Seumas was already at the seam when the first man came. The targe met the mouth with a thud that sounded like an insult; the claymore's flat broke a wrist that had meant to be useful. The second man slipped and found a shallow pit where his ankle argued with the universe and lost.
Agnes took the south fence. She let it sag just enough; two men went into brine and came out cursing and coughing. Her short sword kissed one in the meat of the shoulder where he'd not lift a blade for a month; her shovel reminded the other that knees were privileges, not rights.
A ball hissed near Seumas's ear—a careful shot, not a panicked one. He felt the whisper of it and the cut of wind where it went on beyond him. He ducked on instinct that had been paid for at Drummossie and barked, "Down!" The boys went shadow; a second shot took a post instead of a head and the post did its duty without complaint.
MacRae blundered into Seumas the way magnets do: the men who have buried too many parts of themselves recognise one another even in mist. They touched steel in three short truths. MacRae found targe, found edge, found that steam off a ladle of brine will blind a blade if not a man. Seumas turned that small lesson into a strike with the iron boss under the ear. MacRae went down, cursing like a prayer, rolled, and saved his life because he'd trained it to.
Kerr hunted from height, found a ledge, sighted on the narrowest shape that mattered, and breathed. The ball took hair; Seumas learned the man's distance and decided to reduce it. He went up the burn and along a slick the sea had polished for its own uses. They met on a place that had room for one statement. Kerr lifted the gun; Seumas closed. The targe's iron boss introduced itself to Kerr's throat. The shot went skyward. Kerr tried to remember songs and found none suitable; the dirk found a place that ended decisions.
Below, men broke. Hirelings have a rule: if the day isn't worth the scar, go home. Keith's steadier lads made a clean withdrawal; they would come again. The Craiks held—line intact, pans steaming, buckets ready for the next bright idea.
"Count," Agnes said in the aftermath. Always the order. They counted people first, stores next, tools last. No dead. Bruises. Cuts. Stories to be told when winter had time to listen.
Seumas sat because the cough made him; Agnes put her hand flat at his sternum and counted his breathing into something that could be used later. "A-steach… a-mach… sin e," she murmured. In… out… that's it.
He caught her wrist and held it a second longer than medicine required. "You're my breath," he said, quiet, plain.
"Then breathe when I tell you," she said, and smiled like a flint throwing a spark.
The Confrontation
They came at noon because pride likes witnesses. Silhouettes on the ridge like ink strokes against the sky, then riders: Keith in the fore, not flashy; Robert in fur as if coin warmed; Margaret like a knife in brocade.
"Craik!" Keith called, voice carrying neat. "Gunn."
The name cut through work. Bodies stilled; hands tightened.
Margaret edged her horse down the slope until the pan heat put a blush on its flank. She looked at Seumas with the clean, unearned contempt of someone who had been told since childhood that the world should take her word for things.
"You sullied me," she said. "You slandered me before the city. You'll beg."
Seumas didn't waste words. "You tried to kill me. You tried to steal what wasn't yours. You lost."
Robert's tone was silk over wire. "You think these people will keep you? Coin decides where powder flows. Courts decide whose names are on deeds."
Agnes stepped forward, short sword at her hip, shovel a farmer's sceptre in her hand. "This is Craik ground," she said. "Our court is the work we do and the men who try to stop it. Come take it."
Keith's hand lifted—neither flourish nor apology. His men came down at a walk that said we'll test your line, not shatter it. The Craiks answered with a volley they had shaved smooth by practice—front rank, fire; second rank, step; front rank, bite cartridge and ram. Smoke bellowed; men flinched; Ewan grinned like a man discovering he has teeth.
Steel followed. Seumas and Keith met with the relieved courtesy of men who prefer to exhaust their honesty with a blade. Sparks hopped. Keith gave him a neat line along the ribs; Seumas returned a nick on the jaw. The targe lied; the claymore told a truth at half-length.
Near the fence, Margaret drew a pistol she should never have owned and aimed at Agnes with a hand not yet schooled by recoil. Agnes didn't flinch; she had no time for the habit. "You'll be his widow," Margaret tilted. "He gave you a ribbon. I'll take it as his shroud."
"What he gave me," Agnes said, raising her own pistol with the calm of a woman who had practiced in the shed when men thought she slept, "was the rest." She fired past Margaret's ear—deliberate, not mercy; a warning shot that proved aim. The mare danced; Margaret's face fractured and set again.
Keith pulled his men out short of the place where men start making up reasons after the fact. "Enough," he called, and they went—orderly, annoyed, alive. Robert lingered a beat too long to telegraph contempt and left none of it in the soil. Margaret smouldered like a wick cut close.
Seumas coughed blood into a cloth he did not show them. Agnes's hand was already pressing. "You will not do their work for them," she said.
"Not today," he agreed.
The Dark Tide
Steel having failed to break the day, coin took its turn.
A Wick factor discovered a better offer for the next keg of powder and remembered he had never liked Agnes's habit of counting every grain with her eyes. A rope-maker's boy was promised a debt forgiveness if a gate hung open on a windy night. A fisherman found a net slashed after refusing a bribe and knew precisely who had paid for the knife.
Agnes answered with stubborn arithmetic: paying a shilling above stupidity; paying in salt when coin went wandering; making sure men who leaned on her did not do so for free. "We are not poor," she told them. "We are short of time."
The second raid came under mist again, thicker, meaner—a hand over the mouth of the night. Keith's line moved like memory along the ridge; Robert's killers bled among them like ink in water.
Seumas felt the wrongness and shifted the line without explaining—Ewan to the seam; Tam to the fence; Seoras with the bucket line where a clever man would push flame. The first torches died with bad grace. The first blades found targe and learned the taste of iron.
Kerr's ball found Seumas's coat—then air. The second would have taken Agnes at the hip if Seumas hadn't already decided he hated the feeling of a loaded question. He went up and around, met Kerr on rock, and took him out of the sums with a single, unpleasant correction. When he came down again his sleeve was wet and his breath had gone off tempo. He made it learn again.
By first light, the Craiks were bruised, cut, upright. The pans steamed like beasts who had survived winter. The kelp pits breathed their low, patient fire. A girl with her hair tied back sang a working song without knowing she had begun it, and other voices made a low cord under it. "Thàinig mi dhachaigh, tro ghaoith is uisge…" I came home, through wind and rain.
Margaret and Robert rode down at noon as if they had slept through the same night as kings do—without the bother of it touching them. Keith's face was interested, not cruel; the way a man looks at weather that doesn't match the almanac.
"You cannot outlast coin," Margaret called, voice carrying clean.
Agnes tested the rim of a pan with her fingertip and didn't look up. "We outlasted men," she said. "Coin is only a story men tell when they're not strong enough to sing."
Robert lifted his pistol, weighed it, put it away. A man who keeps his powder dry knows when powder makes a worse story. "Your friends will betray you," he said conversationally. "Everyone has a price."
Seumas answered for the first time, voice rough, amused despite blood. "You've met only men who spend themselves. We hoard."
The twitch in Robert's cheek said the line had found bone. He turned his horse. Margaret, foolish with rage, fired.
Seumas moved faster than his cough deserved. The ball took him high in the shoulder with a hot punch; he swayed once and didn't fall because practice had taught him that falling is a choice. Agnes's pistol spoke once in answer; the shot removed Margaret's pistol from her hand and dignity from her posture. Keith's mouth quirked—not approval; acknowledgment of craft.
"Tha e gu leòr," Keith said under his breath, for his men—enough. They left the ridge bare.
Agnes bound Seumas's wound with hands steady as a bench. "You do not step into a ball for me," she said.
"I breathed into it," he said, and winced when her fingers did their work.
She kissed his brow because men were busy elsewhere and the sea is discrete. "Mo chridhe," she whispered. My heart.
He closed his eyes and let the old word be medicine.
Wind scoured the cliff. The pans hissed and simmered. Smoke from the kelp pits drifted like ink under a hard sky. On the ridge, three riders grew small: pride, coin, and a hawk's patience. Below, two figures stood shoulder to shoulder, and behind them a line of people who had learned that breath, counted together, is a weapon.
"A-màireach," Agnes said—tomorrow.
"Tomorrow," Seumas answered, and the sea—old judge, old friend—gave back its single verdict, in and out, forever, until it doesn't.