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laughed and when he did it usually boded ill for Cair Ghrian. Seamus took great delight in taking the young man down as many pegs as he felt was necessary to keep the prince grounded. That he had been given permission to do so by the queen didn’t sit well with Cair. The two were always in cahoots and that knowledge rankled. What one knew, the other knew, and there seemed to be no secrets between Queen Meg and her burly henchman from Astráil.
    Seamus was sitting at his desk with his booted feet propped atop, leaning back in the formfitting chair that had been Cair’s gift to his mentor on the older man’s sixtieth solar year. In front of Seamus’ desk was a large Vid-Com with an image frozen on replay.
    “It’s from a camera to the right of the wench’s door,” Seamus said. He thumbed the control in his hand and the image moved backward, pulling out until Cair could see the eggs laid out in front of the healer’s door.
    “Now watch this,” Seamus said with a giggle.
    The door opened and the healer took one step into the corridor before freezing. She looked down. The camera moved also and zoomed in on the healer’s shoe caked with egg yolk. Quickly, the camera lens shot upward to catch the look on Dr. Shanahan’s face.
    “Were you controlling the camera?” Cair asked.
    “Not me,” Seamus denied. “Young Freemohn was.”
    “Freeze it.”
    The lens was trained directly on Davan Shanahan’s face and the anger just beginning to build.
    “Actually, she’s a right nice-looking wench this morn,” Seamus said. “Got that hair of hers under control, she does.”
    Cair didn’t respond to his mentor’s remark although he had to admit the woman staring back at him was more attractive than when he’d first met her. 39
    Charlotte Boyett-Compo
    “She’s Cat McGregor’s kin,” Seamus said. “Did you know that?”
    Knowing all too well how Seamus had learned such information, Cair slowly turned his gaze from the Vid-Com to the old man’s grinning face. “No,” was all he said.
    “No you didn’t know or are you saying no to something else, lad?” Seamus inquired, his eyes twinkling.
    “Not her. Not Arlana. Not any woman,” Cair stated.
    Seamus shook his head. “Lad, you can be as stubborn as a Meicsiceo mule, you know that?”
    “You tell my mother to stop playing matchmaker, Seamus,” Cair warned, “or I swear to the Goddess I’ll join the monkhood!”
    A short of derision spluttered from Seamus’ rubbery lips. “Now you’re just plain being silly. Take a whiff of that little wench, lad, and if she ain’t to your liking, we’ll find you another.” The humor left his face. “Either way, you’ll be wed before you get off this ship or you’ll die here a bitter, old man.”
    “I don’t want a wife!” Cair shouted at the top of his lungs. “A Scythelord doesn’t need a wife!”
    Seamus ignored the outburst. He nodded toward the screen. “Look how she settled the matter and tell me that ain’t one resourceful little wench.”
    Despite the fury roiling in his gut, Cair looked back at the screen as the image began to play again. He saw the healer curse then hop back out of the camera’s range.
    “I near ‘bout split my sides when I saw what the little darling did next,” Seamus said and Cair could hear admiration in the old man’s gravelly voice. When next the healer appeared, she was carrying her uniform shoes in her hand and was wearing the hip waders Cair recognized as having belonged to Doc Rabishu. Oversized on the woman’s slender legs, she was having difficulty walking in them but had no problem at all stomping the eggs lying outside her door to smithereens. Every last one of them.
    “Ain’t that the rat’s pecker?” Seamus asked—laughing so hard he had to wipe tears from his eyes. “She squashed them all then look…”
    The healer glanced up at the camera as though seeing it for the first time and saluted it with the universally recognized symbol of defiance as she