“Can’t be done in the sea,” the woman said. “Believe me, Doc, I know like nobody else. My lungs were bursting, and my sight went black and I passed out. Nobody was sure how long I was under, but someone had seen the bear and my fall. They came from the ville and smashed the ice all around as quickly as they could. And there I was, floating on my back, face like snow, my skirt drifting out all around me.”
“Ophelia,” Mildred whispered, but nobody took any notice of her.
“They got me out and bumped and pumped me. Stripped me and rushed me to a fire where they piled heaps of furs on me. I was in a coma. Is that the right word, Mildred?”
“Yeah. A coma. A long period of unconsciousness. It would figure.”
“I was in that black sleep for a week. When I recovered I found I had the power.”
“Did you tell people?” Ryan asked.
“Not exactly. I couldn’t help saying things as they came to me. There was talk of burning me as a witch. I could see both past and future. Father helped me to escape before they came for me with their ropes and their smoking torches.”
“Where did you go?” Jak took the glass from her hand and put it back on the table.
“South. To get away from the cold. I don’t think they pursued me. Glad to be rid of the witch. I know they were all frightened of me.” She sighed. “Wandered for a few months, toward the Shens, doing kitchen work and taking what came along.”
“Where in the Shens?” Ryan asked.
“All around. Into the Smokies. Finally found myself in the ville of a baron called Paddy Clancy. I got work in his kitchen, but he saw me. Had a big appetite did Clancy. Specially for tender young females.” Her voice was bitter and cold.
“Heard of him,” J.B. said. “Visited him with Trader. Remember, Ryan?”
“Tall man with red hair and a pair of matched Navy Colts? That him?”
“Yeah. ‘Course he was younger when we visited him. Only been baron for a few months. After his father died.”
Emma nodded. “I saw the death when I was first in the baron’s company. He killed his father.”
“Thought the old man was trampled to death by a stallion,” J.B. commented.
“Supposed to think that. I ‘saw’ his son with a club that had an iron horseshoe nailed to its end. Used it to batter his father to the dirt. Puddled his brains.”
“You didn’t let on you saw this?” Mildred said. “No, of course not. Stupe question.”
Emma was silent.
“You let baron find out you knew chilled own father?” Jak said disbelievingly. “How? Why?”
She was on the brink of tears, talking only to the albino, her golden eyes locked to his ruby eyes. “You don’t understand what it’s like being a mutie, Jak. I keep telling you all that I can’t control it. What I see and when I see it. Comes in a flash without warning. So I can’t get ready for it, ready to try to conceal my emotions at what I see.”
“The murder came to you out of the blue,” Krysty said. “That it?”
“Sure did. Clancy wasn’t a bad baron, and I saw enough to figure his father deserved the killing. And he wasn’t the sort of man to have his sec guards tie you naked to a bed while he fucks you from midnight to tomorrow.”
“But?”
“There’s always a ‘but,’ isn’t there, Ryan? He said he wanted to marry me. Said it out in front of half his family. We’d ridden to a picnic, on horseback. Paddy had a fine stallion called Bluegrass Prince. When he said he wanted to marry me and be as good a husband as he’d tried to be a son, I saw it all.”
“The killing?” Dean asked breathlessly, carried along by the bizarre tale.
Emma sounded tired. “Yeah, yeah. Paddy stood there in front of me, offering a glass of elderberry wine. Brothers and aunts and nieces and all, around him. But I saw another guest at the picnic. Another Paddy Clancy, gripping the metal-tipped club he’d made, oh, so secret. Blood on the horseshoe. Blood and brains splattered all over his white shirt and across his face and all down his arms. Matted in his red hair.”