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straight away? It’ll be
months
if we have to wait for a new ship to be built, and that’s even if Morten Danson agrees to it, which he’s hardly likely to do, even if you abduct him –
especially
if you abduct him!’
    ‘Even Fenil is not such a fool. The sea freezes as far south as Whale Holm from Spirits’ Day to gone Firstsun: and beyond that they say the ice goes on to the top of the world. He’ll need an ice-breaker just as we do.’
    ‘But he’ll already have gone to Morten Danson . . .’
    ‘Tam says the shipyard’s taken in six months’ production of iron ore from the Eastern Isles.’
    ‘That’s more than’s needed for a single ice-breaker. If he binds that much iron to his ship the only course it’ll be taking is straight down to the Great Howe!’
    ‘I think the King’s shipmaker has plenty of orders on his hands. I suspect he may have turned down Da’s commission because of the rumours as to how the last King’s shipmaker perished.’
    He stated it as flatly as if it had been a goat Fent had skewered at the Allfair, rather than a man, and his sweetheart’s father to boot, Katla noted with surprise. Older and harder his face looked, too; more than ever like Aran’s. Halli was a man to be reckoned with, she realised with surprise; not a boy any more at all. Between the actions of their father and brother he’d lost every dream he’d ever cherished for himself – his own ship, the wherewithal to make a match with the girl he loved and the price of the farm on which they’d raise their stock and their family.
    ‘Jenna will come round in the end,’ she said softly. ‘She’s really very fond of you.’
    Halli’s head jerked as if she had hit him. ‘You know?’ he asked incredulously.
    ‘Fent told me. On the voyage back.’
    ‘But instead of telling me you thought you’d let me find out for myself,’ he said bitterly. ‘Why would she ever ally herself to the clan who killed her father?’
    ‘She doesn’t know for sure. No one does.’
    ‘And that makes it right, does it? I say Fent should be a man and declare the killing and offer blood-price to the Fairwater clan and take the years of exile for the manslaughter that he’s due.’
    ‘But Da won’t let him?’ Even as she said it Katla knew this to be so: Aran was so fixed on his dream of gold that he’d not let a small thing like law or principle stand in his way. Paying blood-price for the King’s shipmaker would ensure that the Rockfall clan would never afford another ship, even if anyone was willing to trade with them again.
    Halli shook his head wordlessly, his jaw rigid.
    Katla shrugged. ‘Easier to move mountains than to shift our father a knuckle-length when he’s set on something.’
    ‘I hate him.’ Dark blood suffused his face.
    ‘Da?’ Katla was taken aback.
    ‘Fent.’
    ‘He’s a hot-tempered—’ she started.
    ‘He’s a monster.’ Halli said it with a vehemence Katla had never heard from her mild-mannered sibling. ‘He’s as dangerous as a mad dog. At best he should be muzzled and tied to a post where his poisonous bite can do no one harm.’
    A curious expression – part avidity, part calculation – passed over Katla Aransen’s face like a high cloud above clear sea.
    ‘I have an idea,’ she said.
    By the height of second tide, the mummers’ ships were fully laden and the Rockfallers had come away from their various tasks and had trailed down to the harbour to wave them off on their voyage back to Halbo. Only three of those gathered on the quay knew that there was anything more to the venture than a simple return to the mainland, and one of those knew more than the other two. In a tight knot on the end of the seawall a little distance from the crowd, Aran Aranson, Halli Aranson and Tam Fox stood with their heads together, talking quietly.
    ‘Only his best oak will do for the keel,’ Aran said urgently to his son. ‘Don’t let him palm you off with anything but the finest single timber