Echo City Page 29

  "Lady Fand," Taliesin greeted her. He went to one knee, taking her hand in his.

  She let him, but with more tolerance than appreciation. The sleek, modern pantsuit was gone, replaced by a high-necked dress that would not have been out of place in an old tapestry. She wore an enormous sheath at her belt, holding a knife the size of a machete. The hilt gleamed like a copper penny. I guessed it was bronze.

  "You are unwelcome in these lands, bard. And I did not bid you come here either, paladin," she said to me.

  "My lady," Taliesin began.

  "Do not speak," she ordered sharply. His lips moved anyway, but no sound emerged. "You may not drop your honeyed words on me. She will speak for both of you."

  I felt ill as the full force of her regard turned on me. I regretted now all the things I hadn't asked him on the trip, especially if there was some formality to open a conversation like this. I decided to fall back on honesty.

  "With respect, ma'am, we're here to see Muirin."

  "Is that so? I could send you away, you know. I could send your boat to the bottom of the ocean and keep you for my pet."

  An action-movie hero would have said You could try, but, well, she would try, and it would certainly work, since I was unarmed and outnumbered and probably couldn't beat her in a fair fight anyway. There's defiance and there's stupidity. However, after dealing with Muirin and now Gwyn, I could think of a reason why she might have to let me in, according to the rules of their world.

  "I did a favor for you once, ma'am," I said. "With the candy hearts and stuff. I think you owe me a favor in return, now."

  A flash of surprise crossed her lovely movie-star face. From the corner of my eye, I glimpsed Taliesin smile slightly.

  "You dare to presume upon me, in my place of power?" Fand asked, her fine brows drawing together.

  "No, no," I said quickly. "No presuming. All I want is to come in and talk to Muirin. That's it, a small favor for a service rendered." Taliesin gave me a small, approving nod.

  Fand's presence felt like a great weight pushing me down. I could only imagine what she might look like through my second sight. If Muirin was like a campfire, Fand was a forest fire, Drew had told me ...

  "And if I grant you this, the burden is discharged," Fand said.

  "Yes," I agreed, relief dropping the pit of my stomach. "Yes, completely."

  "Tell me then," she said, "what is your exact business here, and the terms of the bargain you offer."

  Oh dear. Taliesin was trying to mouth something at me; I had no idea what, but got the gist of it from the Danger, Kay Robinson! look on his face. "Can I ask for Muirin to come back with us?"

  "No," Fand said in a voice laced with ice.

  Worth a try. "May we see her, then?" I asked. "That's all. We'd like to come in and talk to her, and then, uh, leave."

  "Do you so bind yourself, by your word?"

  Uh-oh. Dealing with Muirin had given me a deep appreciation of how many ways there were to misuse the literal words of a promise. Taliesin spoke before I could. "In return for our word, do you guarantee us safety under your roof, and safe passage from your demesne?"

  "Should no harm befall me or mine at your hands, I do so guarantee."

  "I give my word then," I said, and, catching Taliesin's eye, "We do so give our word."

  "Then," she said, "you may enter, and do your business, and depart. And may that be the last of you I see, little mortal, in this world or any other."

  Chapter 24

  Under other circumstances, I would have loved to explore Manannán's palace, but all I got to see were stone corridors and a small chamber where Fand left me. Taliesin was taken off somewhere else. No one spoke to us or offered us refreshments, though I didn't think it would be wise to accept anything anyway.

  There was not much furniture in the room, just a couple of low couches or beds, and not much to look at except for the woven wall hangings. They weren't even pictorial tapestries, although they had intricate patterns in the warp and weft of their heavy wool yarn. Pretty, but not fascinating for more than a minute or two.

  From the window, I looked down at the moonlit harbor where wooden boats with furled sails jostled each other at the piers. Taliesin's sleek little cruiser was the only modern vessel in sight. At least Gwyn's barrow fortress had some touches of the modern world. Here, it appeared that little had changed since the Bronze Age.

  Didn't they ever crave something different? Weren't there fairies who went to the modern world and came back with iPhones and PS4s? I thought of Irmingard with her video games. Maybe they hid them guiltily and played with them under the covers, where the others couldn't see ...

  Someone cleared their throat behind me. I spun around.

  I almost didn't recognize her. I'd never seen Muirin in anything but jeans and a jacket tossed over a stained T-shirt, usually with a trucker cap covering short brown hair that generally looked like it had been whacked off with dull hedge clippers. She was built like a compact brick wall, stocky and muscular, all hard angles with no softness to her anywhere.

  This Muirin wore a cascading dress, winter-gray with hints of blue. The color complimented her perfectly, enhancing the pallor of her skin—aside from a hint of sunburn on her bony nose, which offered me a little glimpse of the old Muirin—and lending a subtle touch of raincloud color to her pale gray eyes. Elaborate white embroidery picked out the bodice in delicate stitching and twined up a high neckline that lent an impression of length and grace to a neck that was normally better described by adjectives like "sturdy." Most unexpected of all, the dress's elegant tailoring and the layered fall of its skirts enhanced her round hips and the swell of her bosom. Muirin was actually buxom, something that startled me—hourglass-shaped, really, once you crammed her (possibly at arrowpoint) into something that narrowed her waist rather than hiding it.

  Her hair was still short, still the color of ditchwater, but pinned up and wound with strings of pearls, echoing the graceful curves of the stitching on the dress. Over her shoulders hung a cloak of white feathers.

  For the first time since I'd known her, she looked every inch of what she was. Fairy. Duane sí. Woman of the mounds.

  She was clearly as startled by me as I was by her, but then her brows knit together in a scowl, and suddenly she looked a lot more like the Muirin I knew. "What are you doing here?"

  I closed the distance between us so I could speak quietly. Though I'd grown used to our normal height difference, it really startled me this time to find myself looking down at her. The dress made her look taller. "I came here to rescue you."

  This startled a sudden bark of a laugh out of her.

  "Which," I said, "I'm guessing is not as much of a problem as we thought. Unless they're torturing you by making you wear dresses."

  This time her smile was a little less sharp. "No, they are not. Sit down, Kay."

  We sat on one of the low couches. Seeing her hairstyle up close, I couldn't help thinking it looked uncomfortable. She held her head stiffly, as if she was afraid that pearls would start falling out if she tilted it.

  "Are you here alone?" she asked.

  "Taliesin's here too."

  Her mouth twisted. "That figures. Like a bad penny, that one. Is Gwyn involved in this little reverse kidnapping attempt as well?"

  "Sort of," I said. "He knows we're here. He said he couldn't come on his own."

  "Thankfully. I can only imagine how that would have gone." She moved as if to tilt her head and then thought better of it. "How did you become involved in this?"

  "Uh, Gwyn sort of rescued me."

  She looked at me sharply. "Tell me you don't owe him a favor."

  "This is the favor I owe him, I think. It's a long story." So much had happened since she'd gone missing that the words all jumbled up into a verbal log jam. I finally landed on, "You're really not a prisoner?"

  "No. I am as I was before all of .... before. I am Fand's lady. What did they tell you of my history with Gwyn?" Her tone was cool.
>
  "Not the whole story," I said quickly. "Taliesin told me about Gwyn's hounds chasing you, and how you wanted him to help get your—uh, boyfriend? ... back from the dead. He said the rest of the story wasn't his to tell."

  "Taliesin is a nuisance. He's a vassal of Gwyn's, but he goes where he likes and talks to whomever he likes, and generally ... ahhh." She sighed, and started to nibble on a nail before hastily dropping her hand from her mouth. Her fingernails were nicely manicured for a change, though still very short. The skin was a bit ragged around some of them.

  "Did he tell you how Faolán came to be—an issue I needed Gwyn's help with?" she asked me eventually.

  "Taliesin said that he spied on Fand bathing—" I broke off, glancing around in case we were being eavesdropped on. You never knew how long fairykind could hold a grudge. "And Manannán had him killed for it."

  "Well, that is what I told Gwyn, certainly."

  "It's not what happened?"

  "Faolán was my lover, a very long time ago. He was a mortal chieftain, and completely infatuated with me ... strange, I still remember how devastating I found the idea that he was going to die, his life a brief candle compared to mine." Her voice was musing and abstracted. "In any case, I ... brought him home with me. Everything was lovely at first, but he was not happy. He missed his family, his mortal wife and children."

  It was one thing to read folktales about fairies being capricious and cruel, toying with the hearts of mortals. I had never thought of Muirin in that light.

  "I was still so young. I put his memories in a jar, thinking that he would be happy with me—and he was, for a time. But still he pined for the world, though he did not remember it. He knew something was missing. He searched and searched, until he found the jar and broke it, and then he demanded to go home."

  She drew a slow breath, her eyes distant.

  "I was very angry. I took his heart, with all his love for me, and burned it, and put the ashes in a box, that he would never love any other. And I sent him back."

  She touched the high collar of her gown, a gesture as reflexive as her constant efforts to stifle her nail-biting. Since I met her, Muirin had always worn a gold chain around her neck with a tiny, ornate box on it. The collar covered her neck, but I thought I detected the slightest hint of a bulge under the delicate embroidery.

  "But he had been with me for a very long time. Everyone he had ever known had grown old and died while he was gone. He wandered a world in which he did not belong. Food tasted as ashes to him. None loved him, nor could he love any, for I had taken his heart. In the end, he drowned himself.

  "The taste of my victory was as bitter as bile. I begged my lord to bring him back, but my lord would not. So I did the only other thing I could. I went to my lord's rival across the sea and attempted to use trickery to get him to do it for me."

  She was silent for long enough that I said, tentatively, "From what Taliesin said, I'm guessing that would have been a bad idea."

  Muirin snorted. "It was a terrible idea. War between the Irish and the Welsh gods of the dead was probably the least of the things that could have gone wrong. There were ... complications, that I'll not discuss, but Gwyn—" She caught her breath as if punched. "... in the end, threw me out, tricked me in return, betrayed me in ways I shall not discuss, and my liege lord and lady bound me to serve Faolán's descendants for all the days of their lives in punishment. As Faolán had wandered, so I would wander."

  In a way, she'd earned it, but I felt truly sorry for her. Two thousand years of punishment was a very, very long time.

  "But they've ... forgiven you?" I ventured, when she didn't say anything else.

  She dropped her hand from the collar of the dress and looked at me. "It is not a matter of forgiveness. My service is done, my debt paid, and my lady has taken me back."

  "And you're staying?"

  "Does it matter?"

  "Muirin ..." Truth for truth, one shared confidence for another.. "I lost the sword. I mean, it was stolen. And I know where it is, but I—"

  I'd been trying not to dwell on Lily-Bell's death. I hadn't even known her for more than a couple of weeks. But the memory of it was like a knife through the gut. I had to breathe steadily before I could continue. "It's in Shadow New York. I—I'm sorry, Muirin. I guess I wasn't a very good guardian for the sword."

  Her lips were tight, her eyes distant. "The sword is my past, Kay. I'm not bound to the O'Connors anymore."

  "Oh," I said. "I know. I just—"

  I just what? Muirin had been a prisoner for centuries, bound to the O'Connor family, the sword's keepers. Now she was free. And really, I should be free too. Tweed had the sword; so what? It wasn't any of my damn business.

  Except Tweed had killed my friend—no, my family. And Millie was a traitor, and my grandmother was in danger, and Fresca was a hostage, and there was work to be done, back in the world.

  Muirin's eyes came back from whatever distant place they'd been focused, and she looked at me, searching my face. "What happened?" she asked quietly.

  I told her about the missing sword, about Millie, about Lily-Bell. "Millie's a traitor," I said. "Someone has to warn the Gatekeepers."

  Muirin had started shaking her head before I finished the sentence. One of her strings of pearls came unlooped and hung down over her ear. "It's not a Gatekeeper problem," she said. "All of us have other loyalties, and we all understand that. If Millie is a Tiger, that's not an issue that affects the rest of us—of them," she corrected herself.

  My mouth hung open. "But," I said. "But she betrayed—"

  "She personally betrayed you," Muirin said. "That's not a Gatekeeper problem."

  "She stole the sword!"

  "Again, not a Gatekeeper problem. It is possible that some individuals might help out of friendship. But it's not their affair."

  "But if Millie—" I swallowed. Hard. No matter what she'd done, the idea of siccing the Gatekeepers on Millie in their official capacity turned my stomach. And yet, if it was the only option to stop her ... "Muirin, what if Millie is really dangerous? Because I think she might be. I know she can draw energy like the other Tigers do. That night when we all went to Seth's and he noticed that Irmingard and I had been tapped out—I don't think it was just the Tiger at the hotel doing it. I think it was Millie, too."

  Madame St. Clair had told me that drawing energy hurt, and it had been after the fight at the hotel that I'd seen Millie shooting up. I had thought Millie was an addict. What I hadn't considered was that the heroin, morphine or whatever had been in that needle might be nothing but a side effect of the real addiction.

  "Who knows what the long-term effects could be? She might be really hurting Irmingard. And you guys are always talking about damaging the magical ecology. I don't see what could be more damaging than what she's doing."

  I was unleashing the dogs of war on my friend. Former friend. But, damn it—she was a traitor, and she had tried to kill me, and Lily would still be alive if not for her.

  "I don't know." Muirin looked troubled. "We'd have to call a conference, see how the others feel. But as long as she stays in Shadow New York where she belongs, she's definitely out of the Gatekeepers' purview. Even if she is a threat, she's only a threat when she's in the mortal world."

  "A threat to the ecosystem," I said.

  "Yes."

  I got up and paced, too wound up to stay still. "Muirin, I can't ask you to come back. Well, hell, okay, I guess I can ask you, because I don't know if I can do this by myself. I came here to break you out of prison, but you're not in prison, are you? Can you leave if you want, come back to help and then ..." She nodded, but I had begun to recognize why it wasn't that simple. "You can't just come and go. If you go with me, you have to choose once and for all."

  "I don't know," Muirin said.

  I stopped pacing and looked at her. She gazed off into the middle distance, her legs tucked under her skirts. It was still so weird seeing Muirin like that.

  "There were so many
years when I dreamed of nothing but coming home," she said quietly. "All I wanted was to be again what I once was. And yet. I—I don't—"

  "You don't belong," I said quietly.

  Muirin made a slight motion of her head—an affirmative.

  "Face it. You miss driving the dump truck."

  The corner of her mouth quirked.

  "I'm not going to ask you to give up everything to help me," I said. "If you can come with me without burning your bridges behind you, I'd really appreciate it. If you can't, I'd like it if you could give me some ideas for how to get to the sword and maybe talk the Gatekeepers into backing me up. That's about it, I guess."

  "You're going to do this," Muirin said. "Whether I come with you or not."

  "Yes," I said. And probably it made me a Grade-A fool, because this was my chance. I could just walk away, leave the sword behind, go back to my life in Ithaca. Let Tweed have the sword, let Millie go on doing her thing, let everyone live their lives while I lived mine.

  But I couldn't. Fresca was right: I couldn't just walk away, even if I wanted to.

  "Right." Muirin brushed down her skirts and rose. "You came by sea, I believe? Let us go, then."

  "You're coming back with me?" I hadn't dared hope. "Do you need to, uh—do something first? Do you need to pack?"

  "That which I am wearing will do." The distracted, melancholy look was back on her face. "There is nothing else here that I want to take."

  Chapter 25

  Fresca and, unexpectedly, Gwyn met us at the subterranean boat launch in Annwn. Gwyn gave me a hand out of the boat, his grip so powerful that he lifted me without effort, practically levitating me onto the dock. Fresca threw her arms around me and spun me around. Over her shoulder, I saw Gwyn offer similar assistance to Muirin, who ignored him, tucked up her skirts and stepped onto the dock all by her lonesome.

  "You did it!" Fresca crowed. She leaned in close to whisper to me, her breath tickling my ear, "I never thought I'd be so happy to see Old Stoneface again. What is she wearing?"