Stone Song (24 page)

She felt the cold metal bite into her wrists, and then the cold crept up her arms. When it reached her elbows, it seemed to burrow into her bones, and she cried out in pain and fell to her knees.

Patrick moved quickly to gag her and she was unprepared for the horror of it, of being silenced while in pain.

“What are you doing to her?” snarled Elada.

“The cuffs are ensorcelled,” said the half-blood. “You didn’t expect us to let a stone singer walk in and kill us all, did you?”

She heard the heated argument taking place as though from a long distance. The cuffs seemed to muffle all of her senses and the gag . . . it was her worst nightmare.

“The deal is off,” she heard Elada say.

“The bargain was struck with the Druid,” said Patrick, hauling her to her feet and pushing her ahead of him up the darkened path. “You cannot unmake it. Are you coming or not, Brightsword?”

They left Kevin and Deirdre behind at the gate with the unconscious half-blood, and Patrick began half-dragging, half-pushing her through the Navy Yard.

They’d barely gone a hundred feet when she collapsed. The pain from the cuffs was scrambling her senses, making her dizzy.

“Take the cuffs off her,” said Elada. “She’ll never make it up to the house like that.”

“Then carry her,” said Patrick.

She had a moment to orient herself before the blue night sky went dark with Elada’s bulk. Sorcha was familiar with the area, but the cuffs were scrambling her senses and she struggled to find landmarks. The masts of the
Constitution,
Old Ironsides, Boston’s prized antique frigate, stood black and silver in the moonlight overhead. They were quite close to the water and the gangplank, and then their destination, the old Commandant’s House, must lie behind them.

Elada picked her up in his strong arms and tucked her head against his shoulder. He’d carried her like this before, up the stairs in Gran’s house after he’d saved her from the Prince. She’d barely known him then. Things were different now. She knew how he liked his coffee and what his favorite songs were and that he had a weakness for old-fashioned cooking and heapings of mashed potatoes. Stupid, trivial things that made him human and endearing because he was also stalwart and loyal and believed so much in allowing her to make her own choices that he’d allowed her to come here and be shackled like this.

She was not going to cry. It would, for one thing, make it harder for Elada to do what he had to do, which was leave her with Donal and walk out of here with Tommy.

She felt the ground beneath them change, no longer paving but scrubby grass and weeds. They must be climbing the little hill in front of the federal mansion that had once housed the Navy Yard’s commanding officers and now played host mostly to weddings and show houses and corporate events.

Sorcha had played one a year ago, breaking her own rule against working in Charlestown, one of the Fae strongholds. The job had come through a booking agency and there had been no hint of Fae involvement in the Cambridge-based biotech company that was holding the party. They had wanted a harpist and a fiddler, and Tommy had been eager to take the gig, even though it was taxable money with no possibility of being paid in cash. Tommy had always had the fine instincts of a professional musician. He could smell a good meal a mile off and knew the food alone would make the gig worthwhile. If he flirted with the kitchen staff and convinced them to pack him leftovers, they might eat like kings for a week.

Or Indian princes, as it turned out. The gig had been catered lavishly with food from a well-known Back Bay Indian restaurant, and Tommy had haunted the kitchen in between sets. Sorcha had kept her eyes peeled for Fae, imagining them to be lurking behind every door and flower arrangement. She didn’t see a single one all night, until the event was done. They’d played late, first to entertain the stragglers and hoping for a tip, then to cheer the catering staff in the hopes of generous care packages. That’s when she saw him.

He turned up with the van, and now that she knew more about the rival families who ruled South Boston and Charlestown, she guessed it must have been one of the Charlestown Fae, one of Finn’s offspring, who’d loaded the truck and flirted with the waitresses and accepted, casually, a cash payment from the event planner and a meal with all the trimmings, cooked fresh, from the wait staff.

The house looked different tonight, from what she could see of it through the haze the ensorcelled cuffs created and what she could see around Elada’s bulk as he carried her. Decorated with flowers, filled with gilded folding chairs and tables draped with pure linen cloth, the mansion had felt grand, a relic of a more gracious age. Tonight it seemed like a ruin. Since Sorcha could look almost nowhere but up, she saw all too clearly the flaking paint, the chipped cornices, the stains on the ceiling.

Even through the cuffs she could sense the Fae here. There were simply too many of them not to feel their influence. They filled the grand entrance hall with its echoing tile floor and clustered around the pillars in the ballroom.

“Bring her here,” said a voice that she recognized from the phone. Donal.

“Give us the fiddler,” said Elada.

“You are in no position to make demands,” said a Fae voice Sorcha had never heard before, which had to belong to the Fae leader of Charlestown, Finn.

She wondered if Finn could sense the violence building inside Elada. She could feel it in his arms as he held her and as he set her gently down on the floor. When her feet touched the parquet, she swayed, and Elada steadied her. Then she saw why he’d put her down.

Beneath the chandelier at the center of the room was a cluster of gilded and upholstered chairs with swan’s head arms. In them sat two Fae, Donal and Finn, no doubt, although the pain from the cuffs was making her vision swim and they were elegant blurs to her. Between them on the floor she could make out Tommy’s sillhouette. He was kneeling with his fiddle in his lap. They must have taken his cast off and removed the splints from his fingers because somehow he was playing, albeit softly.

Of course he was. She had played like that, too, in Keiran’s house. Her hand hadn’t been broken, but she’d been half-naked and starving and still she had played, because Keiran had told her to in that beautiful voice of his.

“I’m not leaving here without the fiddler,” said Elada.

“You are only alive and receiving this audience, Brightsword,” said Finn, “because I need to keep the peace with Miach if I wish to see my grandson.”

“Sorcha made a deal with you,” said Elada. “She was willing to turn herself over to save the musician. You’re bound to honor the bargain you made with her.”

“Donal made the bargain. I am not bound to it, nor obligated to see that he does so. Your Druid has killed a Fae. Her life is forfeit. Resign yourself to this and find other perversions to amuse you.”

“She is more than an amusement to me,” said Elada.

“Then offer me something to spare her life,” said Finn.

“What is it you want?”

“Your service for my son, as his right hand,” said Finn. “Bind yourself to Garrett and I will keep the Druid alive. You will even be able to use her on occasions.”

Sorcha’s vision was clearing slowly, but she still couldn’t make out expressions. She could guess at Elada’s, though.

“That was not our agreement,” said Donal, but Finn ignored him.

“Garrett and Nieve are bound,” said Elada. “He cannot take a right hand.”

“Nieve released him,” countered Finn.

“Because she thought she was dying,” corrected Elada. “There is nothing to stop them binding themselves together once more.”

“I have forbidden it,” said Finn.

“I won’t do that to Nieve.”

“Not even to save your little Druid?” asked Finn, obviously intrigued.

“She would not ask it of me.”

“Are you so sure?”

“Take the gag off her and ask her yourself,” said Elada.

Finn laughed. “I think not. We are done here, Elada Brightsword. Go home to Miach and tell him not to raise up any more Druids in Boston.”

“You promised the fiddler would not be harmed,” said Elada.

“He is unharmed,” said Finn, whose features were revealed—as Sorcha’s vision started to clear—to resemble those of Patrick and his unfortunate compatriot and little Garrett. Elada had described him as a great war leader, a charismatic force who drew warriors to his banner. “It was the Prince, we are told, who injured the fiddler, but he plays well enough, I think.”

Finn looked like a young Alexander, his sun-shot hair a dozen shades of golden brown and his eyes alive with passion. Most, but not all of the half-bloods who crowded the room resembled him, but there were true Fae here as well who appeared to have no blood ties to the Fianna. A charismatic leader indeed. He was dressed simply in black from head to toe, as though to eschew any ornament or detail that might detract from his powerful personal allure.

The Fae beside him was different. Donal was no war leader, no warrior, no sorcerer. He was like Keiran. He flattered and mocked. Sorcha suspected in the presence of his betters, when the Prince was in attendance, he capered, because he believed in the hierarchy the Prince Consort had spoken of. His clothes were like Keiran’s, overly rich and ostentatious. A shearling coat over soft fawn trousers and no shirt, his red hair hanging loose over his chest.

She hated him on sight.

Finn gestured to indicate Tommy at his feet. “If your Druid plays as sweetly, we may take her voice and keep her for her skill with the harp, though not an iron-strung instrument, of course.”

The key was not to panic. That wouldn’t help anything. It wouldn’t help Elada. She would rather die than be caged once more as she had been in Keiran’s house, and she knew that if they had the magic to muffle her hearing with the cuffs, they no doubt had the magic to take her Druid will away from her before she could even take her own life.

She had an unlikely ally in Donal.

“There will be no keeping her,” he said. “She will come to New York, where she will be executed for the murder of Keiran, and any would-be Druids will learn what happens when they try to develop their unnatural gifts.”

“Perhaps,” said Finn, with a wave of his hand. “And perhaps not.”

“You may have the fiddler if you are so desirous of a musician. I care nothing for him.”

“You agreed to free him,” said Elada.

“I agreed,” said Donal. “Here, I release him. He is free to go.” He flicked Tommy’s shoulder, and Tommy appeared to wake up suddenly. “But you are in no position to collect him if Finn wishes to keep him.” He smiled smugly.

They weren’t going to let Tommy go.

“Give me the fiddler,” said Elada darkly, “or I will unleash hell.”

Finn cocked his head, looked at Tommy, then looked at Elada and said, “No. I have danced to Miach’s tune for too long. I am keeping the fiddler and the Druid. Leave while you still can, Brightsword. My grandson is fond of you and I would not have him look at me with censure just yet. There is time enough for that when he is grown.”

Sorcha reached for her music, but it didn’t come.

Chapter 15

S
orcha tried to hum, to find the power inside her and nurture it like a small flame, but there was nothing. Fear and sorcery had turned her mute. She couldn’t destroy the gag as she had the apple, and that left Elada surrounded and outnumbered.

Donal rose. “I am not leaving without the Druid.”

“Then stay here,” said Finn. “We’re going home.”

He snapped. Two Fae moved toward Elada.

She expected him to reach for his sword. She expected to watch him die. Instead, he snapped the gag that was stopping her mouth and muting her voice.

She cleared her throat and searched for the right note. She wanted to hurt the Fae who were closing in around Elada, without catching him in the blast. She didn’t know what tone to choose. The cuffs were making it difficult to think clearly.

Her hesitation was their undoing.

“Don’t kill him,” snarled Finn. And then he snapped and barked, “Garrett!”

Two things happened at once.

Something black and metallic flew out of the darkness and fell over Elada. An iron net, she realized. The rustle of tiny iron links forming tiny iron chains, woven into a lattice. She could hear it even through the sorcery of the cuffs, because it was cold iron and she was attuned to the metal’s resonance.

In the same instant a man stepped out of the shadows. He was built more lightly than Finn, but something in his bearing, in the way he held himself and moved with preternatural grace, indicated he was Fae. The resemblance, both to Finn and to Nieve’s little boy, was undeniable. This was Garrett, Miach’s former pupil, Nieve’s husband, Finn’s son.

He held out his hand, and a sense of déjà vu overtook Sorcha like a wave of sickness. She had seen the gesture before. He turned his hand and opened it palm up, then lifted it as though bouncing a ball in the air.

Her ears popped. Silence descended, utter and absolute. It was the quiet between stars, the void brought here to earth, and it crippled Sorcha utterly. She could neither hear nor speak nor sing. She was utterly defenseless, and she could not help Elada, who was pinned to the ground beside her by hundreds of links of iron chain.