Caine tried to put Tonya down once they were inside, but she shook her head fiercely and buried her face in his neck. That put a wry smile on his beleaguered face. He shifted her to the side and held her up with one arm, like a mother with a babe on her hip. In his other hand, he carried a large jug by a loop over one finger. With practiced ease he moved it so it rested along the back of his forearm and tilted it to his mouth.
Shifting Tonya revealed his torso to the room. Both witch hunters' jaws dropped. They were accustomed to wounds, but not like this. Caine looked like he'd been through hell. Blood streaked his entire body. It looked like he'd hastily washed most of it off, but the brownish red tint still clung to the creases of his body. His pants and boots looked like they'd been badly dyed black and brown. Little dark flakes broke off them as he moved.
Mercy took a hesitant step forward, her trained eyes telling her more as her brain rebuked. It wasn't simply that he looked like he'd been through hell. He looked like he'd been there before, and kept going back. The multitude of scars on his torso were alarming on their own, but it was the fresher wounds that stole her breath. It wasn't just the extent of them. It was that they all looked old.
His whole body was covered in mottled bruises and partially healed cuts. One of his shoulders had three large, overlapping gashes covered in thick raised scabs. His opposite thigh was striped like an animal. A matched set of parallel wounds sat directly over his heart. It looked like he'd been cut and stabbed half a dozen times, and shot at least once, but somehow he was still hefting Tonya like she weighed nothing.
Had these wounds been hiding beneath his shirt when they'd arrived tonight? It seemed impossible. There was no way he could have fought off Hector while he was so badly injured. His face was definitely different, an odd combination of swollen and leaner. The split lip was definitely new, as was the lumpy looking blackened eye, and so was the sunkenness to his good eye socket, and his cheekbones.
Sister Victoria's horrified voice came unbidden, as if her words were escaping without her notice. "Warden's blood, what happened to you?"
"Got in a fight," Caine said flatly.
"With the whole Teach clan!?" Sister Victoria said in disbelief.
"Only the ones at the house," Caine clarified flatly as he limped towards what was left of the table Hector had shattered in their earlier fight.
"The house? Teach Manor? That place is a literal garrison full of pirates! There are four Teach ships docked right now, plus the household guards!" Sister Victoria said, aghast.
Janie crossed the room quickly and started securing the series of locks on Will's front door.
"Sounds about right," Caine said with a tired nod. "Two came in today, right? Seemed like about half of them weren't really prepared. Lucky timing for us."
"Lucky?" Sister Victoria said, shaking her head in confusion. "Nothing about tonight has been lucky."
"I still don't understand why any of this is happening," Sister Mercy added.
Caine sat down in Will's big chair. He tried to put Tonya down first but she hung on tighter, so he settled her into his lap and shifted her so she wasn't sitting on his more wounded leg. Painfully, he lifted the big jug to his lips and swilled the dark liquid down like water in big, thirsty gulps. Amber streams ran down the sides of his face and vanished into the bloody mess of his shirt. When the jug was empty his arm swung down limply, thumping the jug down into the broken wood surrounding the chair. He exhaled like he was deflating. "It's complicated."
"Clearly," Mercy said sarcastically.
Victoria gave her partner a look, warning her against irritating this volatile man. For what they had planned, they needed him amiable. "To say none of this is what we expected would be the understatement of our lives. We really would like to help, but we need to understand what we've landed in the middle of."
Caine looked at her skeptically. "Do you actually want to help, or do you just want to know what's really going on?"
Victoria looked like she was developing a headache. "What I'd really like to know is why you turn everything we say into a conflict."
Caine let out a mirthless laugh. Now that he wasn't moving, he could feel a warm numbness spreading through his body. It felt a little like floating. He wasn't sure if the fading pain was from the angel, or the rum, or both but it was the first time he felt relaxed since they'd taken refuge in the tower. It had been a long time since he'd been this exhausted. "Short version is, the Teach family is old family N'madi."
The witch hunters both looked surprised. Mercy even looked a bit ashamed. "Oh," Victoria said with a grimace. "I suppose that does explain some things."
"Yeah. They don't talk about it, or keep any of the old traditions, but the Old Man and most of his kids are survivors of the Purges. They hate the Magistrate. They came out here to get away from the church, but eventually you folks expanded all the way out here. By then, the Teach family had invested a lot in building a power base. They weren't about to lose their home to the Magistrate again."
"The church wasn't stupid though. They knew this place had become a pirate haven. After the Barcolan's kicked the Magistrate navy off this island, the Teach family moved in. They had two generations to cement themselves here before the Magistrate came back with six gunships and two companies of Legionnaires. Even with that force, it was a standoff. The Teach family had enough of a force that the Magistrate backed off. They left two hundred soldiers and craftsmen behind, and increased their naval presence, but they didn't start a war. The old family heads knew better than to push their luck, but the younger generation wanted payback for what the Magistrate did during the Purges. That argument was the beginning of the family schism that led to now."
"First it was just occasional random violence. Then people started turning up dead on both sides. Things started to escalate fast, but before they could spiral out of control the Old Man and the Prelate came up with an arrangement that mostly kept the peace. It wasn't popular with a lot of the younger Teach kids, but it worked for a long time. Then the Old Man started losing his mind. The whole family has been getting more aggressive for about a generation now. His firstborn kids and grandkids don't come to the island much anymore. They're too busy leading their own little armadas in an arms race against each other while they wait for the Old Man to die. His great-grandkids hold down the fort here, but they've pretty much stopped caring about the Old Man's rules. They're used to feeling powerful because their family runs things here, and they want revenge for the things your people did to theirs. They think the Old Man went soft by allowing the Magistrate to be here at all. It's been a powder keg for years."
"All of that fits with the information we have about this area, but what does any of it have to do with you?" Sister Victoria asked.
Caine let his head roll back and closed his eyes. "I just lit the match."
Sister Mercy looked pained. Sister Victoria sat down in one of Will's other chairs. "What, exactly, does that mean?"
Caine opened one eye like it was the last thing in the world he wanted to do. "Old Man Teach is dead."
"Warden's blood," Sister Victoria swore under her breath.
"You just started a war!" Sister Mercy said, horrified.
"Yeah," Caine agreed.
"Why!" Sister Victoria demanded.
"The Prelate asked me to," Caine said with a barely perceptible shrug. "I didn't ask her reasons."
The pair of Inquisitors were flabbergasted. They looked at each other, both looking for insights from the other and finding only dumbfounded shock.
"What is she thinking," Sister Mercy muttered darkly.
"Building a peace in this region has taken fifty years!" Sister Victoria snapped. "This is going to turn into another Barcola!"
Caine let out a rough laugh. "Maybe you should stop kicking your way into other people's homes and telling them what to do?"
"The Barcolans worship demons!" Sister Mercy said fiercely. "This island is a lawless pirates' nest!"
"That's a bit hyperbolic," Caine said wryly, still not bothering to open his eyes.
"It certainly is not! If anything, it's an understatement. They have been after you for weeks! How can you still defend them?" Sister Mercy retorted angrily.
"Because I know them. Sure, there's some assholes, but that's true everywhere. I don't have the right to put a boot on everyone's neck just because some of them piss me off." Caine said. "It ain't your right either."
"That's not what we do," Sister Victoria said, trying to get a word in.
"Tell that to the Barcolans," Caine countered.
"The Magistrate protects people! We bring law and peace, and drive out dark forces!" Mercy said angrily.
"Whether they like it or not," Caine said with a derisive snort.
"Yes!" Mercy said fiercely. "When we have to. The doctor doesn't consider how a boil feels before lancing it from the body!"
Caine opened his eyes and turned his head to give Mercy a baleful look, but before he could open his mouth, Janie stepped in between them. "This is going nowhere. Do you have the answers you need?"
"He just murdered a pirate lord and broke a peace we've worked for years to maintain!" Sister Mercy said angrily, refusing to back down.
"Technically it was a duel," Caine corrected.
"He just told you he was acting under orders from the Prelate," Jaine said sternly. "Take it up with her."
"And he was the one who challenged me," Caine said, holding up one swaying finger.
Mercy turned on him again, but Janie held up her hand. Surprisingly, Mercy paused.
"Caine?" Janie asked.
"Yeah?" he said, opening one eye and looking at her sidelong.
"You're goading them on purpose," Janie said gently. "Quiet."
Caine gave her a small smile and closed his eye again.
"This doesn't make sense!" Sister Mercy said, turning her anger to Janie. "Surely you can grasp why this is important to understand?!"
"Yes, but we do not have any more time to bicker," Janie said to the inquisitors in exasperation.
"So what happens next?" Tonya muttered against Caine's chest. She sounded exhausted.
A long silence followed. All eyes were on Caine. He looked like he was trying to sleep.
"Of course now he decides to keep his mouth shut," Sister Mercy muttered.
His lips twitched into a small smirk.
Victoria looked pained again. "Miss Castilian told him to be quiet."
"Amazing," Mercy said flatly. "He can be a disrespectful cad without uttering a word."
Janie rolled her eyes in exasperation. "And yet you still need his help. We all do. Can you heal him?" she asked Sister Mercy.
