Shadows and Light (16 page)

He started scanning names instead of titles. All men. Where were the women authors? Was Nolan in the process of rearranging shelves? Why would he move the female novelists and leave the males here?

“Ah, Master Liam. Have you returned to add to your own library?”

Liam turned at the sound of Nolan’s voice. The man hastily closed the door that led to the small office and storeroom, then stepped up to one side of the counter.

Liam studied Nolan for a moment before walking over to stand on the other side of the counter. The man’s smile was forced, brittle. His eyes were grief-weary.

He’s been drinking
, Liam thought.

“Perhaps I’ve come at a bad time,” Liam said.

Nolan waved a hand. “Not at all. What can I do for you, Master — I beg your pardon. It’s
Baron
Liam now, isn’t it?”

There was fear in Nolan’s eyes now as well as grief.

“I came to see if you had a copy of Moira Wythbrook’s new book.” Liam tried a smile. “My mother requested that I ask for it particularly.”

Nolan pulled himself up to his full height, which barely brought his head equal to Liam’s chin. Patrons of Nolan’s Book Salon good-naturedly teased the small man, saying the reason there were so many step stools for customers to sit on while they perused books was that Nolan wouldn’t be able to reach his beloved books without them.

“I am an upstanding citizen of our beautiful land,” Nolan said with chilled dignity. “As such, I obey the dictates of the baron in whose county I live.”

“What does that have to do with Moira Wythbrook’s books?” Liam asked.

“The barons have decreed that it is harmful to carry the work of female scribblers.”

“Female
what?”

“Females are of weak intellect, and it is harmful to indulge them by publishing or selling their work, which is inferior to the books written by men. It produces immodest feelings in ladies that make it difficult for them to fill their place in society. Therefore, their books are no longer sold, and no further books by female scribblers will be published.”

Liam took a step back from the counter. Maybe Nolan was drunker than he seemed. Why else would the man be spouting such horse muck?

“What happened to the books that were already published?” he asked. “You still have copies of those.”

Nolan shook his head. A sheen of tears filled his eyes. “They were collected by the magistrate’s guards …and burned.”

Burned.

As Master Liam, he could have staggered over to one of the step stools and collapsed to give himself time to absorb what Nolan had said.
Baron
Liam could not permit himself that kind of luxury.

“Just here in Durham?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

Nolan shook his head. “The barons who rule the eastern counties have all made the same decree. If it is accepted at the next council of barons, that decree will hold true for all of Sylvalan.”

Not in the county I rule
. Liam stepped up to the counter, put his hands on it, then leaned forward. “Forget I’ve become a baron,” he said with quiet urgency. “I’ve been buying books from you for years — for my mother and younger sister as well as for myself. You must have known the magistrate’s guards were coming. I’ve seen that warren you call a storeroom. If you wanted to hide some books in there,
no one
would be able to find them. You wouldn’t have let them burn all the copies. You wouldn’t.”

“Do you want me to lose everything?” Nolan cried, but he, too, kept his voice down.

“You would have kept at least one copy of each of those books so that the work wouldn’t be completely lost when the fools who made that decree came to their senses.”

“I have nothing. I swear to you —”

“Give the copies to me. I’ll make sure they get back to my estate safely. I’ll hide them until this … situation … is settled.”

Liam reined in impatience while Nolan studied him for too long.

“I have nothing,” Nolan finally said. “I — I already packed the copies and sent them away.”

“Where —?”

The bell above the shop door tinkled.

Liam looked over his shoulder at the blond-haired, blue-eyed man who stepped into the shop. A cold uneasiness settled over him as the man met his eyes for a moment before turning to scan the shelves.

He’s looking to make sure nothing is here that shouldn’t be
. Liam glanced at Nolan, noticed how pale the
man had become. How would someone else, someone suspicious, view this close conversation?

Pushing back from the counter, Liam said, “Since that book isn’t in stock, perhaps you could suggest another? Reading before I retire is a habit of long-standing.”

“Of course,” Nolan said, bustling over to one of the shelves.

Liam followed, aware that the blue-eyed stranger had turned to watch them.

“This one is excellent,” Nolan said, pulling a book off the shelf.

His back to the stranger, Liam made a face. He recognized the author, had tried to get through one of the man’s books once before. Prosy old bore. Well, it wouldn’t keep him up late. He’d be asleep ten minutes after he opened the book.

“And this one,” Nolan said, going over to the far-too-empty shelves and selecting another book. “This one has been recently published. A book of instructional essays. Very popular. I’m told that it’s one of the few books most heads of families consider suitable material for the females in their families and have consented to permit the ladies to read.”

Consented to permit the ladies to read? Liam could imagine what Elinore — or even Brooke — would say if he tried to dictate what they could or couldn’t read.

Which made him wonder what happened to women in the eastern part of Sylvalan who
did
express such opinions.

Feeling numb, Liam paid for the books and waited while Nolan carefully wrapped them in brown paper and string.

As he turned to leave the store, he noticed the stranger was still watching him.

There was no reason for the animosity he felt toward a man he didn’t know and hadn’t even seen before. But the feeling was there, and he wasn’t going to dismiss it.

He spent the rest of the day wandering, feeling oddly off balance. The streets of Durham were familiar, and he
recognized the buildings. But it felt as if he kept turning down familiar streets and finding himself in a strange place. The women in the shopping district were all dressed in plain gowns with high necks and long sleeves. Drab clothing — grays, browns, dark greens and blues. Not the kind of garment worn to catch a man’s eye. They wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t even acknowledge his “good day” when he passed them.

He stopped at a shop where he’d often picked up a new shawl for his mother. The woman who owned the shop stood behind her counter. When he asked about shawls, she laid out a selection on the counter, offering none of the assistance she used to give him in order to make the right choice. Every move said plainly she no longer cared if anyone bought anything at her shop, which made him wonder how she expected to remain in business.

His last stop in the afternoon was an art gallery. By then, his mind was prepared for what he’d find. His heart wasn’t.

The empty places on the walls seemed like a terrible accusation. All the paintings by female artists were gone. When he asked the owner, he was told that women were capable of creating pleasing little sketches for the amusement of their families, but they weren’t capable of creating
art
. Never mind that the women whose work no longer hung on the walls had been hailed, just a few months ago, as some of the finest artists of their generation.

Feeling unsettled and a little sick, Liam passed a group of men his age standing before a painting, loudly proclaiming its brilliance. He stopped for a moment to look at the painting, then shook his head and left the gallery. If his stable hands had slung soiled straw at a white sheet and then framed the result, it wouldn’t have looked much different from the “brilliant” painting.

When he returned to the family town house, he ate the evening meal because his body needed food, and because
he couldn’t afford any physical weakness when he sat at his place in the barons’ council tomorrow.

Maybe there was an explanation for all of this. Maybe.

And maybe there was another explanation for the straight bruises on the shop owner’s cheeks. Faint bruises. Faint enough that, at first, he’d thought it was a trick of the light. But when he closed his eyes, he could see the straps of the scold’s bridle that Elinore had flung between them when she’d given him the ultimatum of accepting the witches as her kin or losing his family. Straight straps that could bruise tender skin if they were cinched too tight.

Alone in his room, too uneasy to even try to sleep, he unwrapped the books he’d bought. He set the prosy old bore aside, then opened the other book. Perhaps having some knowledge of what was now considered suitable reading material for females would prepare him for whatever he was going to face in the barons’ council in the morning.

A
iden’s hand hovered over the case that held his small harp. He shook his head, let his hand fall to his side. Under normal circumstances, he would have met with any bards who lived in the Clan or were there visiting. He would have listened to any new songs they had created and shared his own. But these weren’t normal circumstances, and he wasn’t in the mood to bring his harp to play idly in one of the common rooms.

Crossing to the window, he looked out at the garden that made up part of this courtyard. Beautiful. Perfect. No tangles of weeds, no blighted flowers. Nothing out of place. That was Tir Alainn. The rain was always soft, gently soaking into the ground. No storms here to turn roads into mud. No lack of food, so the belly never tightened with hunger. Beautiful rooms, beautiful clothes, sprawling Clan houses that could rival the finest estates in the human world. And all of it required so little labor from the people who lived here.

A sanctuary. A place to rest from the toil of the human world. But the Fae weren’t the ones who toiled in the human world. What had they
ever
done to earn the right to be here?

Sighing, Aiden left the room that had been granted him and Lyrra for their stay, although he doubted either of them wanted to stay very long. A cold welcome didn’t encourage a person to linger in a place.

No matter. There was work to do here. Witches were still dying. Pieces of Tir Alainn, and the Clans who lived there, were still being lost. But here …If the Clan ignored
the warnings
here
, it would be Breanna and Nuala and Keely who would die.

He entered one of the common rooms in the Clan house. Lyrra stood at the other end of the room, her lips set in a tight, grim line as she listened to several older women.

No doubt haranguing her for turning her back on the Lady of the Moon and leaving Dianna to shoulder the burden of keeping the shining road open so that her Clan’s territory in Tir Alainn remained in existence.

If they knew we weren’t just lovers but had made a vow of loyalty in the human fashion, they’d probably exile us on the spot
, Aiden thought sourly. He started to scan the room — and was surprised to see a familiar face this far north. Smiling, he walked over to the brown-haired man whose attention was fixed on the group of women with Lyrra.

“Falco! Well met,” Aiden said.

“Aiden.”

There was just enough tension, just enough hesitation in Falco’s voice to stop Aiden from taking another step forward.

“What brings you here?” Falco asked, his brown eyes now scanning the room.

Aiden studied the Lord of the Hawks. There was too much anxiety in Falco’s eyes. “We’re here to rest — and catch up on any news that has been passed along through the Clans.”

“Aiden … maybe this isn’t a good time for you —”

“So,” a male voice said loudly from another part of the room. “The Bard has decided to grace us with his presence. Where’s your harp, Aiden? Aren’t you going to subject us to another mewling song about witches?”

Recognizing the voice, and seeing the way Falco’s face paled, Aiden turned slowly to face the man who now stood in the center of the room.

“Lucian,” Aiden said politely. “Well met.”

Lucian, the Lord of the Sun, the Lord of Fire, said coldly, “We aren’t ‘well met,’ Bard.
You
saw to that. No, we are not ‘well met.’ I doubt we ever will be.”

“I regret the loss of your esteem, but I don’t regret the reason for it. I can’t. Not after the things I’ve seen. And, yes, Lucian,” Aiden said, his voice rising, “I
will
sing my mewling songs about witches, and I
will
say the words that need to be said, and I will keep saying those words until the Fae start
listening
, start heeding, start doing instead of standing back and watching witches die and then wailing because there’s a cost to not listening, not heeding, not doing.
How many of them have to be tortured to death before you’ll listen?”

“We are doing what is necessary to make sure the witches don’t leave the Old Places,” Lucian said.

“What?” Aiden demanded. “Hemming them in? Taking away whatever means they might have to flee before the Black Coats kill them? If the Fae are doing what is necessary, where were they when the Inquisitors destroyed the witches in the villages south of here? Where were they, Lucian? Where were they when the Mother’s Daughters were dying in agony?”

“The witches are
not
the Mother’s Daughters,” Lucian said, his voice rising to meet Aiden’s. “They are
witches
. They’ve somehow bound their small earth magic to the Old Places, making their presence there necessary for the Fae to have what is rightfully ours.”

Aiden stared at the man who had been a friend as well as kin through their fathers. “Rightfully ours?” he asked, his voice becoming quieter as pain lanced through him. “Rightfully ours. What have we ever done to deserve Tir Alainn? The witches created the Fair Land. It’s been their power that has kept it in existence. What have we ever done to earn the right to be here?”

“We don’t have to do anything,” Lucian said fiercely. “We. Are. The. Fae.”