Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2), page 53
“Meriel!” Owaine said sharply. “It’s fine. I’ll go with them.” He looked at Edana, whose hand had moved to her léine, where her Cloch Mór lay hidden. “Be calm,” he said, a bit too loudly. “I don’t want anyone hurt.”
“What accent is that?” the garda asked, his face suddenly suspicious. “That sounds Inish. Take him,” he said to the others. “Maybe we’ve just caught a spy.”
“No!” Meriel shouted. The situation seemed to be worsening with each second. The other gardai at the gate were looking over curiously now, and they found themselves in the midst of an open space at the center of the gate traffic, all the other travelers suddenly giving the confrontation wide berth. Meriel had an image of them having to fight their way out of here, of Edana and Owaine bringing their clochs into play, of fire and magic playing their deadly light over the area, of gardai rushing them with swords or sending a rain of arrows at them from the windows of the gate towers as they tried to flee. She wondered if she could grab her mam quickly enough, if Jenna and Doyle had the strength to run at all, and how far they would get before they were caught and brought down. It all ends now, before we even get into the city. She wanted to weep, wanted to undo it all and have just stayed back in Doire Coill, where at least they would have been safe. She didn’t know if she could stand seeing her mam cut down, or Owaine . . .
There was a sound behind the gardai, high on the tower: like two rocks slamming hard together. As the gardai turned to look, one of the gargoyles perched on the top ledge leaned forward. It tumbled down as people scattered, landing with a crash on the flagstones not ten feet from them, shards of gray stone ricocheting around the gate. One of the gardai clutched his wrist, a long bloody scratch appearing there, and there were cries of pain from other people around them as they were struck by stony shrapnel. There was another loud crack as the gargoyle next to the first broke away. “Someone must be up there!” the garda holding Owaine shouted. “Come on!”
The gardai rushed toward the tower as the second statue hit the pavement with another barrage of rock fragments. Someone in a dark clóca was standing alongside them suddenly. “Follow me!” he said, and moved quickly forward with the crush of people through the gate. “Hurry!” The voice seemed familiar though she couldn’t see his face, and Meriel heard Jenna—surprisingly—laugh. Owaine grasped Meriel’s arm and they were moving, half running and half walking, caught up in the flow away from the scene. Behind them, gardai were shouting to close the gates; they started to swing shut, but they were already through and the huge iron doors clanked into place behind them. People surged at the gate, but the gardai held them back with pikes, and more gardai were rushing from inside the city and along the walls toward the gate.
The man they’d followed turned and swept the hood back from his face. The features were familiar, but out of context, Meriel couldn’t find the name. Then it came to her, suddenly: Mahon MacBreen, the head of the Banrion’s personal gardai, always alongside or a little behind her mam whenever she appeared in public, his dark, keen eyes scanning those around them, his hand always near the hilt of his sword. Jenna smiled—the first time Meriel had seen that expression on her mam’s face in a long time. “Mahon, you’re the last person I’d expect to find in Falcarragh,” she said.
“I think I have at least one other about whom you’d say the same and more,” Mahon answered, returning the smile. “I came to bring you to them. If you’ll come with me . . .” He stopped, and Meriel heard him choke back the “Banrion” he wanted to add. “We still have a bit of a walk ahead of us, and I think we should leave this area.” He looked at them, his eyes narrowing as he saw Doyle and Edana. “This way,” he said.
He led them into Falcarragh through the swarm.
51
Meetings and Plans
“WE’VE been waiting for you for two days. The crow that came from the Protector of Doire Coill said that you’d be coming in from Lough Donn, so we’ve been watching Donn Gate. I almost didn’t recognize you until the gardai stopped you. Stay here a moment.”
Mahon MacBreen entered the door of a narrow building set in the warrens of Falcarragh. Meriel could see his gaze sweeping the room before he opened the door fully and allowed them to enter. He brought a chair over to the hearth for Jenna, helping her to sit and then crouching down in front of the banked fire to bring it back to life. “It’s not much, but we thought it best to attract as little attention as possible.”
“We?” Meriel asked, and Mahon grinned at her.
“You’ll know soon, Bantiarna MacEagan. Please, sit and rest. You all must be exhausted.” Mahon brought out bread, cheese, and water, and put a pot on the crane to boil for tea. As he bustled about, he told them how a crow had appeared at Dún Kiil Keep with a message wrapped about its leg from Keira, telling them that the Banrion was alive and intending to recover Lámh Shábhála, and that she and her companions were walking to Falcarragh dressed as peasants and would be there within a week. “You can imagine how Tiarna MacEagan and the Comhairle were in an uproar. He’d been fighting with them for days, with half the clans saying you were dead and we must name a new Rí, and Tiarna MacEagan and his contingent arguing just as forcefully that if you were dead, we would have learned of it, that the news would have reached us from our contacts within the Tuatha. He insisted you were still alive, despite the rumors that the Rí Ard’s Regent Guardian was holding Lámh Shábhála. He wanted to come here himself, but the Comhairle refused to allow it, naming him Regent and charging him with the preparations against the Rí Ard’s invasion fleet. But he sent—”
There was the scrape of a key at the door and suddenly Mahon’s blade was out. He crouched as the door opened, motioning the rest of them back, then sheathed the blade in one motion as a tall, gray-haired man entered. In shabby clothing, he looked very different, but both Owaine and Meriel shouted at the same time.
“Máister Kirwan!”
Mundy laughed, shaking his head and lifting a finger to his lips. “That’s not a title to use here,” he said. “Too many ears, and none of them friendly. But it’s good to see the two of you, safe after all this time. I worried, so often . . .” He looked at Doyle and Edana, then Jenna, huddled near the fire. “Jenna, it’s true, then, that the Regent Guardian has the cloch? I’m so sorry . . .”
Jenna’s mouth turned up in a quick, fleeting smile. “So am I, Mundy. I should have listened to you and Kyle, but then you always said I was too stubborn for my own good.”
“Aye, and it’s the same quality that made you a good Holder, and will make you one again.”
Jenna gave him the fleeting smile again, but Meriel saw none of that optimism in her mam’s eyes. “So now we know what happened at Donn Gate,” Meriel said to Mundy. “That was you.”
“A bit of slow magic, that’s all. Mahon and I thought that when you came we might need a bit of a diversion, and rather than unleash my Cloch Mór and alert all of the Riocha here that an Inish cloudmage was in their midst, I took the time to prepare a few spells.” Satisfaction widened his smile. “You should have stayed around to watch; they were still clambering all over the towers looking for intruders when I left. The gate’s in chaos, and I’ll bet there’s two hands of burly ‘suspicious characters’ already in custody. Someone in that guard shift is going to be in for an explanation to the Captains of the Gardai, and won’t like the experience. But we’ve got you into the city, and that’s the simplest part of the task, I’m afraid.” His face went serious, then. His gaze went back to Doyle and Edana. “I don’t know the two of you, but I can make a guess based on what I’ve heard and the lineage I see in your faces. You make unlikely allies, if you’re Doyle Mac Ard and Edana O Liathain.”
“You guess rightly,” Edana answered. Doyle slumped in his own chair, his head down. “In this, we’re on the same side. We want the Rí Ard’s Regent Guardian brought down.”
“And yourself installed as Banrion Ard?” Mundy asked, raising one eyebrow. “And who will hold Lámh Shábhála once it’s taken from Ó Riain?”
Doyle’s head lifted at that. “My sister will have it again, if she’s alive,” he answered Mundy. “I’ve given her my word on that already.”
Mundy nodded, a grim look on his face. “That’s the right answer,” he said. “And she will still be alive, if any of us are after this foolhardiness. Here’s what we bring to this: I have my Cloch Mór and any slow magic we can devise; Mahon brings a strong sword and sharp tactical mind. We also have a half dozen other men here in the city with us, none with clochs, however.”
“We have clochs to add, Má—” Owaine choked back the title as Mundy smiled. “I have the Cloch Mór Blaze and Edana has Demon-Caller. Meriel still has Treoraí’s Heart.”
Mundy’s gray eyebrows lifted again, and he looked to Jenna. Meriel knew what he was thinking: Why does Owaine have Blaze and not Meriel? But Jenna didn’t lift her head, and Meriel saw him close his mouth on the question he might have asked. “Three Clochs Mór, then,” Mundy said after a moment, “and a clochmion. And one other who is trained as a cloudmage.” He glanced at Doyle. “Though not perhaps as well trained as he could be at Inishfeirm.”
“Trained well enough,” Doyle answered darkly. “The Order of Gabair has no fear of an Order whose time has passed. How many Clochs Mór do you still have, Máister?” The title dripped mockery. “The Order of Gabair has more, even now.”
“Stop it!” Meriel interjected as Mundy flushed and Mahon’s fingers curled around the hilt of his sword. “Our enemies are out there, not in here. Aye, we have a few clochs, but the Rí Ard commands a double hand of them and more, and enough men to bury us in simple numbers. If we’re to have any chance, any, then we need to work together here.”
“Aye,” Edana agreed, looking at Doyle. “Listen to Meriel; she brought us this far, when no one else could have.”
Mundy’s posture slowly relaxed; Doyle’s head dropped again. “You sound like your mam, Meriel,” Doyle said. “She’s taught you well.”
Jenna uttered a short, almost bitter laugh but said nothing. An uneasy silence settled in the room. Meriel could hear the crackling of the fire and the rattling boil of the water in the pot. Meriel moved the crane away from the flames and reached for the tea, putting the leaves in to steep. “So we have a small force here, but a real one. Is it enough?” she asked.
Mundy and Mahon shrugged simultaneously. “The Rí Ard and Ó Riain are in the Rí Keep on Sliabh Gabhar, and rarely come out. The keep’s garrison is large and well-trained, and several of the Tuathian mages are there also. We could set a diversion and hope to draw off some of the gardai, but a frontal assault on the keep would fail: too much resistance inside, and as soon as they realized there was an attack on the keep, the commanders of the army would come in full force. We’d be like a spider smashed against a wall, caught between those inside and out.”
“Are there hidden ways in?” Meriel asked. “Servants’ passageways, or old tunnels?”
“None that I’ve been able to learn of,” Mahon responded. “Perhaps the tiarna or bantiarna, who have been here before . . . ?”
Edana shook her head. “None that I know, either. I’ve been in the keep as a guest several times, but always entered through the main gates and saw very little of the keep beyond the Rí’s Hall and my own chambers.”
Doyle remained silent and Meriel looked at him. He finally stirred. “I’ve the same experience,” he said quietly. “Sorry.” There was something else in his eyes, and Meriel had the sense that he was holding something back, that he had thoughts or knowledge that he wasn’t sharing. Meriel wished she had Siúr Meagher’s clochmion here, to hear if Doyle’s words were false. She wondered again about his absence the night before—could Owaine have been right? Could he have gone to the tiarnas we saw on the road?
Doyle stared at her, his gaze almost challenging. She held his regard for a moment, then broke it abruptly. “Then we can’t do anything while they’re in the keep,” she said. “But they can’t stay there forever.”
“Aye,” Owaine said. “At the least, they’ll have to come out to board ship for Inishfeirm.”
“And when that happens, they’ll have an entire army close around them,” Mundy said. “We’d be in no better a situation then. It might actually be worse, considering that our first strike isn’t likely to take down Ó Riain unless the man’s incredibly stupid—and he’s already demonstrated that’s not the case. I don’t like the man at all, but he hasn’t gotten to where he is by being either foolish or incautious.”
“Three Clochs Mór might—might—be enough to take Lámh Shábhála, but Lámh Shábhála can hold off the three long enough for the other clochs in Falcarragh to come to its rescue.” Everyone turned with Jenna’s words. She looked at them with sunken, exhausted eyes. “I know better than anyone. Three Clochs Mór alone won’t be sufficient to bring Lámh Shábhála down quickly enough.”
“Then what can we do?” Meriel asked her mam. “What do we need to do?”
A shrug. Jenna’s head went back down. She pulled her shawl closer over her shoulders and turned back to the fire. Meriel went to her, stroking her hair.
“We’ll find a way to do this, Mam. We will,” she whispered. Sighing, she straightened again. “We need to isolate Ó Riain then, draw him out from behind his defenses and his people.” Doyle was staring at her, and she pressed her lips together. “That’s what you did with my mam, after all,” she said to him. “And I was the bait.”
Doyle’s attention went to the window of the small room.
“I can be the bait here,” Edana said abruptly. Doyle spun about, glaring at her, and she looked placidly back at him. “It’s true, and you know it,” she said. “O Riain’s weakness right now is Enean—my brother’s the prop for his political power, and Enean will come to save me if he thinks I’m in trouble . . . and bring Ó Riain with him.”
“You can’t,” Doyle said quickly. “Edana, this isn’t anything you need to do.”
“No?” she asked him. “I think it is, if I have any thought of ever being with my brother again or of being what Da wanted me to be, or of either of us ever having the life together that we wanted.” She gestured with her chin to Meriel. “Look at her, Doyle. This isn’t anything she needs to do, either. Yet she’s the one most responsible for us being here.”
They were all looking at Meriel now, all except Jenna who still stared at the fire. Owaine moved closer to her and she took his hand in hers. They all seemed to be waiting for her to speak, as if her approval was necessary. Meriel found herself wondering just when everything had changed, when she had transcended her mam in their eyes. Owaine’s fingers pressed hers; Jenna stared blindly into the flames, lost in her interior agony.
“Then we’ll use that,” she said to Edana. “If you’re willing.”
Mundy and Mahon raised eyebrows when Meriel placed her and Owaine’s few things together in one of the tiny rooms, but when Jenna said nothing about the sleeping arrangements, they also remained silent.
The two of them snuggled together as the flames guttered low in the room’s hearth, Meriel enjoying the feel of lying close to Owaine. His finger trailed down the flank of her body and she shivered, half in delight and half at the tickling feel of it, and caught his hand as it reached her hip. She nestled her head on his chest, the chain of his Cloch Mór under her hair, the jewel itself large in her sight, only a hand’s breadth away. Treoraí’s Heart was a warm pebble caught between her breasts—neither of them would ever be entirely naked, not by choice. Their clochs would always be with them.
“What we’re doing—it’s not likely to work.” The words came low and warm out of the twilight of the room and she felt the fear in them. “If anything happened to you, Meriel, especially now . . .” She heard his breath, felt him swallow.
“I know,” she told him. “I’m terrified, too.”
“Thank you, at least, for giving me last night, and this.”
“Is that what you think it is? Some kind of gift? A reward?” She lifted her head to look at him. “Owaine, I would never do that. That wouldn’t be fair to either of us.” She stopped, knowing that he still doubted her feelings for him and wondering how she could tell him, how she could make him understand. “Mam . . . when I was inside her with the Heart, I could feel all her memories, and I saw how it was with Ennis—my real da—and her at first, how she didn’t realize for a long time what she truly felt for him. When she finally let herself open to him, they only had each other for a short time before she lost him. I don’t want the same thing to happen to me. To us. Mam never recovered from that loss, Owaine. Not really. All these years later, she’s still grieving for him. I always thought . . . I guess I just believed that most marriages were like hers: cordial and friendly but without any real passion. I thought that was what Mam wanted, thought she was happy with it. But . . .”
She took a breath. Another. She stroked Owaine’s cheek, sliding fingers through the wiry softness of his beard. In the dimness, she could see the marks of Treoraí’s Heart on her hand. “She lost the person she loved most, but then she shut herself off and never allowed herself to love that way again. My da—Kyle—is her friend but he doesn’t want more, either. But I look at Máister Kirwan and the way he watches my mam and talks to her, and I wonder if he doesn’t feel more for her even if he can’t or won’t show it. If Mam would open her eyes, if she’d see it too.”
“Mundy Kirwan? And your mam?”
“Is it stranger than you and me?”
He made no answer. Finally, in the quiet, she continued. “I wish I could show you, make you feel what I feel ...” She could feel Treoraí’s Heart: warm, so warm, and she knew. She found the clochmion and took it in her hand. She opened it in her mind and at the same moment she kissed Owaine. In the cloch-world, she fell into him, as if he were smoke and fog, finding her wrapped in soft layers of blue affection and red lust and black fear. She saw the white nodules of his doubt and she gathered them to herself. Here, she said to him with her cloch-voice. Here I am. Become me, Owaine. Become me and feel what I feel . . . She opened her mind to his, felt him touch her in surprise and delight. She held herself out to him. This is what I feel, she told him. All of it. I hide nothing from you . . .
“What accent is that?” the garda asked, his face suddenly suspicious. “That sounds Inish. Take him,” he said to the others. “Maybe we’ve just caught a spy.”
“No!” Meriel shouted. The situation seemed to be worsening with each second. The other gardai at the gate were looking over curiously now, and they found themselves in the midst of an open space at the center of the gate traffic, all the other travelers suddenly giving the confrontation wide berth. Meriel had an image of them having to fight their way out of here, of Edana and Owaine bringing their clochs into play, of fire and magic playing their deadly light over the area, of gardai rushing them with swords or sending a rain of arrows at them from the windows of the gate towers as they tried to flee. She wondered if she could grab her mam quickly enough, if Jenna and Doyle had the strength to run at all, and how far they would get before they were caught and brought down. It all ends now, before we even get into the city. She wanted to weep, wanted to undo it all and have just stayed back in Doire Coill, where at least they would have been safe. She didn’t know if she could stand seeing her mam cut down, or Owaine . . .
There was a sound behind the gardai, high on the tower: like two rocks slamming hard together. As the gardai turned to look, one of the gargoyles perched on the top ledge leaned forward. It tumbled down as people scattered, landing with a crash on the flagstones not ten feet from them, shards of gray stone ricocheting around the gate. One of the gardai clutched his wrist, a long bloody scratch appearing there, and there were cries of pain from other people around them as they were struck by stony shrapnel. There was another loud crack as the gargoyle next to the first broke away. “Someone must be up there!” the garda holding Owaine shouted. “Come on!”
The gardai rushed toward the tower as the second statue hit the pavement with another barrage of rock fragments. Someone in a dark clóca was standing alongside them suddenly. “Follow me!” he said, and moved quickly forward with the crush of people through the gate. “Hurry!” The voice seemed familiar though she couldn’t see his face, and Meriel heard Jenna—surprisingly—laugh. Owaine grasped Meriel’s arm and they were moving, half running and half walking, caught up in the flow away from the scene. Behind them, gardai were shouting to close the gates; they started to swing shut, but they were already through and the huge iron doors clanked into place behind them. People surged at the gate, but the gardai held them back with pikes, and more gardai were rushing from inside the city and along the walls toward the gate.
The man they’d followed turned and swept the hood back from his face. The features were familiar, but out of context, Meriel couldn’t find the name. Then it came to her, suddenly: Mahon MacBreen, the head of the Banrion’s personal gardai, always alongside or a little behind her mam whenever she appeared in public, his dark, keen eyes scanning those around them, his hand always near the hilt of his sword. Jenna smiled—the first time Meriel had seen that expression on her mam’s face in a long time. “Mahon, you’re the last person I’d expect to find in Falcarragh,” she said.
“I think I have at least one other about whom you’d say the same and more,” Mahon answered, returning the smile. “I came to bring you to them. If you’ll come with me . . .” He stopped, and Meriel heard him choke back the “Banrion” he wanted to add. “We still have a bit of a walk ahead of us, and I think we should leave this area.” He looked at them, his eyes narrowing as he saw Doyle and Edana. “This way,” he said.
He led them into Falcarragh through the swarm.
51
Meetings and Plans
“WE’VE been waiting for you for two days. The crow that came from the Protector of Doire Coill said that you’d be coming in from Lough Donn, so we’ve been watching Donn Gate. I almost didn’t recognize you until the gardai stopped you. Stay here a moment.”
Mahon MacBreen entered the door of a narrow building set in the warrens of Falcarragh. Meriel could see his gaze sweeping the room before he opened the door fully and allowed them to enter. He brought a chair over to the hearth for Jenna, helping her to sit and then crouching down in front of the banked fire to bring it back to life. “It’s not much, but we thought it best to attract as little attention as possible.”
“We?” Meriel asked, and Mahon grinned at her.
“You’ll know soon, Bantiarna MacEagan. Please, sit and rest. You all must be exhausted.” Mahon brought out bread, cheese, and water, and put a pot on the crane to boil for tea. As he bustled about, he told them how a crow had appeared at Dún Kiil Keep with a message wrapped about its leg from Keira, telling them that the Banrion was alive and intending to recover Lámh Shábhála, and that she and her companions were walking to Falcarragh dressed as peasants and would be there within a week. “You can imagine how Tiarna MacEagan and the Comhairle were in an uproar. He’d been fighting with them for days, with half the clans saying you were dead and we must name a new Rí, and Tiarna MacEagan and his contingent arguing just as forcefully that if you were dead, we would have learned of it, that the news would have reached us from our contacts within the Tuatha. He insisted you were still alive, despite the rumors that the Rí Ard’s Regent Guardian was holding Lámh Shábhála. He wanted to come here himself, but the Comhairle refused to allow it, naming him Regent and charging him with the preparations against the Rí Ard’s invasion fleet. But he sent—”
There was the scrape of a key at the door and suddenly Mahon’s blade was out. He crouched as the door opened, motioning the rest of them back, then sheathed the blade in one motion as a tall, gray-haired man entered. In shabby clothing, he looked very different, but both Owaine and Meriel shouted at the same time.
“Máister Kirwan!”
Mundy laughed, shaking his head and lifting a finger to his lips. “That’s not a title to use here,” he said. “Too many ears, and none of them friendly. But it’s good to see the two of you, safe after all this time. I worried, so often . . .” He looked at Doyle and Edana, then Jenna, huddled near the fire. “Jenna, it’s true, then, that the Regent Guardian has the cloch? I’m so sorry . . .”
Jenna’s mouth turned up in a quick, fleeting smile. “So am I, Mundy. I should have listened to you and Kyle, but then you always said I was too stubborn for my own good.”
“Aye, and it’s the same quality that made you a good Holder, and will make you one again.”
Jenna gave him the fleeting smile again, but Meriel saw none of that optimism in her mam’s eyes. “So now we know what happened at Donn Gate,” Meriel said to Mundy. “That was you.”
“A bit of slow magic, that’s all. Mahon and I thought that when you came we might need a bit of a diversion, and rather than unleash my Cloch Mór and alert all of the Riocha here that an Inish cloudmage was in their midst, I took the time to prepare a few spells.” Satisfaction widened his smile. “You should have stayed around to watch; they were still clambering all over the towers looking for intruders when I left. The gate’s in chaos, and I’ll bet there’s two hands of burly ‘suspicious characters’ already in custody. Someone in that guard shift is going to be in for an explanation to the Captains of the Gardai, and won’t like the experience. But we’ve got you into the city, and that’s the simplest part of the task, I’m afraid.” His face went serious, then. His gaze went back to Doyle and Edana. “I don’t know the two of you, but I can make a guess based on what I’ve heard and the lineage I see in your faces. You make unlikely allies, if you’re Doyle Mac Ard and Edana O Liathain.”
“You guess rightly,” Edana answered. Doyle slumped in his own chair, his head down. “In this, we’re on the same side. We want the Rí Ard’s Regent Guardian brought down.”
“And yourself installed as Banrion Ard?” Mundy asked, raising one eyebrow. “And who will hold Lámh Shábhála once it’s taken from Ó Riain?”
Doyle’s head lifted at that. “My sister will have it again, if she’s alive,” he answered Mundy. “I’ve given her my word on that already.”
Mundy nodded, a grim look on his face. “That’s the right answer,” he said. “And she will still be alive, if any of us are after this foolhardiness. Here’s what we bring to this: I have my Cloch Mór and any slow magic we can devise; Mahon brings a strong sword and sharp tactical mind. We also have a half dozen other men here in the city with us, none with clochs, however.”
“We have clochs to add, Má—” Owaine choked back the title as Mundy smiled. “I have the Cloch Mór Blaze and Edana has Demon-Caller. Meriel still has Treoraí’s Heart.”
Mundy’s gray eyebrows lifted again, and he looked to Jenna. Meriel knew what he was thinking: Why does Owaine have Blaze and not Meriel? But Jenna didn’t lift her head, and Meriel saw him close his mouth on the question he might have asked. “Three Clochs Mór, then,” Mundy said after a moment, “and a clochmion. And one other who is trained as a cloudmage.” He glanced at Doyle. “Though not perhaps as well trained as he could be at Inishfeirm.”
“Trained well enough,” Doyle answered darkly. “The Order of Gabair has no fear of an Order whose time has passed. How many Clochs Mór do you still have, Máister?” The title dripped mockery. “The Order of Gabair has more, even now.”
“Stop it!” Meriel interjected as Mundy flushed and Mahon’s fingers curled around the hilt of his sword. “Our enemies are out there, not in here. Aye, we have a few clochs, but the Rí Ard commands a double hand of them and more, and enough men to bury us in simple numbers. If we’re to have any chance, any, then we need to work together here.”
“Aye,” Edana agreed, looking at Doyle. “Listen to Meriel; she brought us this far, when no one else could have.”
Mundy’s posture slowly relaxed; Doyle’s head dropped again. “You sound like your mam, Meriel,” Doyle said. “She’s taught you well.”
Jenna uttered a short, almost bitter laugh but said nothing. An uneasy silence settled in the room. Meriel could hear the crackling of the fire and the rattling boil of the water in the pot. Meriel moved the crane away from the flames and reached for the tea, putting the leaves in to steep. “So we have a small force here, but a real one. Is it enough?” she asked.
Mundy and Mahon shrugged simultaneously. “The Rí Ard and Ó Riain are in the Rí Keep on Sliabh Gabhar, and rarely come out. The keep’s garrison is large and well-trained, and several of the Tuathian mages are there also. We could set a diversion and hope to draw off some of the gardai, but a frontal assault on the keep would fail: too much resistance inside, and as soon as they realized there was an attack on the keep, the commanders of the army would come in full force. We’d be like a spider smashed against a wall, caught between those inside and out.”
“Are there hidden ways in?” Meriel asked. “Servants’ passageways, or old tunnels?”
“None that I’ve been able to learn of,” Mahon responded. “Perhaps the tiarna or bantiarna, who have been here before . . . ?”
Edana shook her head. “None that I know, either. I’ve been in the keep as a guest several times, but always entered through the main gates and saw very little of the keep beyond the Rí’s Hall and my own chambers.”
Doyle remained silent and Meriel looked at him. He finally stirred. “I’ve the same experience,” he said quietly. “Sorry.” There was something else in his eyes, and Meriel had the sense that he was holding something back, that he had thoughts or knowledge that he wasn’t sharing. Meriel wished she had Siúr Meagher’s clochmion here, to hear if Doyle’s words were false. She wondered again about his absence the night before—could Owaine have been right? Could he have gone to the tiarnas we saw on the road?
Doyle stared at her, his gaze almost challenging. She held his regard for a moment, then broke it abruptly. “Then we can’t do anything while they’re in the keep,” she said. “But they can’t stay there forever.”
“Aye,” Owaine said. “At the least, they’ll have to come out to board ship for Inishfeirm.”
“And when that happens, they’ll have an entire army close around them,” Mundy said. “We’d be in no better a situation then. It might actually be worse, considering that our first strike isn’t likely to take down Ó Riain unless the man’s incredibly stupid—and he’s already demonstrated that’s not the case. I don’t like the man at all, but he hasn’t gotten to where he is by being either foolish or incautious.”
“Three Clochs Mór might—might—be enough to take Lámh Shábhála, but Lámh Shábhála can hold off the three long enough for the other clochs in Falcarragh to come to its rescue.” Everyone turned with Jenna’s words. She looked at them with sunken, exhausted eyes. “I know better than anyone. Three Clochs Mór alone won’t be sufficient to bring Lámh Shábhála down quickly enough.”
“Then what can we do?” Meriel asked her mam. “What do we need to do?”
A shrug. Jenna’s head went back down. She pulled her shawl closer over her shoulders and turned back to the fire. Meriel went to her, stroking her hair.
“We’ll find a way to do this, Mam. We will,” she whispered. Sighing, she straightened again. “We need to isolate Ó Riain then, draw him out from behind his defenses and his people.” Doyle was staring at her, and she pressed her lips together. “That’s what you did with my mam, after all,” she said to him. “And I was the bait.”
Doyle’s attention went to the window of the small room.
“I can be the bait here,” Edana said abruptly. Doyle spun about, glaring at her, and she looked placidly back at him. “It’s true, and you know it,” she said. “O Riain’s weakness right now is Enean—my brother’s the prop for his political power, and Enean will come to save me if he thinks I’m in trouble . . . and bring Ó Riain with him.”
“You can’t,” Doyle said quickly. “Edana, this isn’t anything you need to do.”
“No?” she asked him. “I think it is, if I have any thought of ever being with my brother again or of being what Da wanted me to be, or of either of us ever having the life together that we wanted.” She gestured with her chin to Meriel. “Look at her, Doyle. This isn’t anything she needs to do, either. Yet she’s the one most responsible for us being here.”
They were all looking at Meriel now, all except Jenna who still stared at the fire. Owaine moved closer to her and she took his hand in hers. They all seemed to be waiting for her to speak, as if her approval was necessary. Meriel found herself wondering just when everything had changed, when she had transcended her mam in their eyes. Owaine’s fingers pressed hers; Jenna stared blindly into the flames, lost in her interior agony.
“Then we’ll use that,” she said to Edana. “If you’re willing.”
Mundy and Mahon raised eyebrows when Meriel placed her and Owaine’s few things together in one of the tiny rooms, but when Jenna said nothing about the sleeping arrangements, they also remained silent.
The two of them snuggled together as the flames guttered low in the room’s hearth, Meriel enjoying the feel of lying close to Owaine. His finger trailed down the flank of her body and she shivered, half in delight and half at the tickling feel of it, and caught his hand as it reached her hip. She nestled her head on his chest, the chain of his Cloch Mór under her hair, the jewel itself large in her sight, only a hand’s breadth away. Treoraí’s Heart was a warm pebble caught between her breasts—neither of them would ever be entirely naked, not by choice. Their clochs would always be with them.
“What we’re doing—it’s not likely to work.” The words came low and warm out of the twilight of the room and she felt the fear in them. “If anything happened to you, Meriel, especially now . . .” She heard his breath, felt him swallow.
“I know,” she told him. “I’m terrified, too.”
“Thank you, at least, for giving me last night, and this.”
“Is that what you think it is? Some kind of gift? A reward?” She lifted her head to look at him. “Owaine, I would never do that. That wouldn’t be fair to either of us.” She stopped, knowing that he still doubted her feelings for him and wondering how she could tell him, how she could make him understand. “Mam . . . when I was inside her with the Heart, I could feel all her memories, and I saw how it was with Ennis—my real da—and her at first, how she didn’t realize for a long time what she truly felt for him. When she finally let herself open to him, they only had each other for a short time before she lost him. I don’t want the same thing to happen to me. To us. Mam never recovered from that loss, Owaine. Not really. All these years later, she’s still grieving for him. I always thought . . . I guess I just believed that most marriages were like hers: cordial and friendly but without any real passion. I thought that was what Mam wanted, thought she was happy with it. But . . .”
She took a breath. Another. She stroked Owaine’s cheek, sliding fingers through the wiry softness of his beard. In the dimness, she could see the marks of Treoraí’s Heart on her hand. “She lost the person she loved most, but then she shut herself off and never allowed herself to love that way again. My da—Kyle—is her friend but he doesn’t want more, either. But I look at Máister Kirwan and the way he watches my mam and talks to her, and I wonder if he doesn’t feel more for her even if he can’t or won’t show it. If Mam would open her eyes, if she’d see it too.”
“Mundy Kirwan? And your mam?”
“Is it stranger than you and me?”
He made no answer. Finally, in the quiet, she continued. “I wish I could show you, make you feel what I feel ...” She could feel Treoraí’s Heart: warm, so warm, and she knew. She found the clochmion and took it in her hand. She opened it in her mind and at the same moment she kissed Owaine. In the cloch-world, she fell into him, as if he were smoke and fog, finding her wrapped in soft layers of blue affection and red lust and black fear. She saw the white nodules of his doubt and she gathered them to herself. Here, she said to him with her cloch-voice. Here I am. Become me, Owaine. Become me and feel what I feel . . . She opened her mind to his, felt him touch her in surprise and delight. She held herself out to him. This is what I feel, she told him. All of it. I hide nothing from you . . .
