by E. E. Holmes
“I rather thought, when I first heard you requested attendance at this meeting, that I should deny your request,” Finvarra said. “But I knew, given who I was dealing with, that denying your physical presence was a waste of time. I knew it would not, for even a moment, obstruct your agenda.”
Marion gave no outward sign of contempt save for a subtle tightening of her hands now clasped in front of her.
Finvarra went on, seeming to gain strength as she spoke, and each word twisted like a well-placed dagger. “You would no doubt have found a way, through a surrogate, to raise the same objections, and attempt to influence the same outcomes. Far better, I told myself, that you do so in the open, so that everyone could see exactly who was pulling the strings.”
“Hear, hear!” shouted Savvy from the back. “Oh, sod off,” she added as several people nearby tried to shush her.
“I told myself I wasn’t going to do this, but facing my own mortality has burned away any desire I once had to maintain such fallacies as dignity,” Finvarra said with a hoarse cackle, gesturing to the tragic theatre that was her wheelchair and IV. “And so, Marion, if you care not to maintain the façade of propriety, then neither do I. Consider your gauntlet thrown, and I have no intention of allowing you to pick it back up. It was just three years ago that you stood in this very room and presented a petition to have me removed from my office. Your stunt very nearly worked, but in the end, the leadership saw you for what you truly were; a power-hungry fearmonger.”
“Oh, shit,” Milo muttered, and I felt his mounting excitement through the connection. He lived for this kind of drama. Hannah, on the other hand, was flooding the connection with a steady gush of anxiety.
Finvarra looked almost fevered. Her eyes burned brightly, and I knew that she had little more than her own anger to keep her going through this impassioned speech. Carrick knew it, too. He kept throwing terrified glances over at Mrs. Mistlemoore, who sat perched on the very edge of her seat, as though she expected an imminent health crisis.
Finvarra went on, “Now, you attempt the very same stunt to strip me of what little authority is left me to shape the future of this Council. You wish to prove I am—what? Unhinged? Irrational? Senile? Devoid of my once impressive mental faculties? What proof do you have to support such accusations, or did you perhaps think that planting the seeds of doubt would be enough to leave me irrelevant in this, the last event of my priestesshood?”
Marion did not reply. She seemed too taken aback that Finvarra was responding in this manner. Finvarra made the same observation, for she let loose another laugh, stronger this time, and went on. “What’s wrong, Marion? Cat got your tongue? Didn’t think the old girl had this much fight left in her, did you?”
Several titters went up around the room. Even Hannah let out a squeak of laughter. Fiona was lounging back in her chair with an expression of unadulterated delight on her face, as though this were the first time in her life she’d ever enjoyed herself in this room. My own face had broken into a wide smile of its own. I had only ever seen Finvarra conduct herself with the utmost grace and decorum—there had always been a practically royal air to her, but now? Pretense was stripped away. Decorum be damned. She was staring down the barrel of her own mortality and had absolutely nothing left to lose.
And it was a beautiful thing to behold.
Finvarra drew another breath and plowed on. “I do not know how you found out about my intended nomination, and frankly, I don’t care. I only care that you not be allowed to get away with your devious meddling. So again, I ask, what was your endgame? A vote, perhaps, on whether I was well enough to make this kind of pivotal decision? Allow me, then.” She lifted her chin and addressed the entire assembly. “I move that a vote be taken now. If you believe that I, your ailing High Priestess, should be denied the opportunity, after years of service to this sisterhood, to put forth a single name into contention for the empty seat on this Council, please raise your hand and let your objection be known to the assembly.”
Siobhán leapt to her feet, her mouth opening and closing like a fish’s. Celeste too, looked thoroughly discombobulated, her gavel hovering in midair as she tried to decide if she needed to do something with it. Clearly, Finvarra had committed several breaches in meeting etiquette by rashly calling this vote, but it did not seem to matter. Not a single hand rose into the air. Not a single one, not even Marion’s.
“Very well,” Finvarra said. “Now, all those who agree that I should now be allowed to proceed with my nomination without further interruption?”
A massive shifting sound as every hand, save Marion’s and a small knot of her clique, rose into the air in a sweeping show of solidarity.
Finvarra surveyed the room, satisfied, and turned back to Marion. “There we are. It seems the Durupinen here assembled are in agreement that I have earned the right to make this nomination. And so, with their mandate, I will proceed in doing so. But thank you for taking the time to express your feelings on the matter, Marion. It’s one of the true benefits of this process, to allow members to show each other who we truly are.”
Marion dropped her gaze to her feet for the first time since the confrontation had begun. Her face was twitching, as though she were swallowing something very bitter, and she lowered herself into her seat. Finvarra watched her for a long silent moment, relishing Marion’s defeat before she spoke again.
“Thank you to our Deputy Priestess and our secretary for managing the many details of today’s proceedings, and thank you to the entire assembly for your indulgence as I battle with my illness to fulfill my duties here,” Finvarra said with an almost defiant return to her accustomed regality. “I have long considered this moment and the decision I would make, were I to live long enough to see it. I am grateful that I have, for I feel that I have the chance to right a great injustice today.”
Mumbling broke out around the room, but no heads turned to look at us. It was clear that most of the Durupinen in the room had no clue what Finvarra was talking about. So we knew, at least, that Marion hadn’t spread the word of Finvarra’s choice indiscriminately. Keeping my eyes determinedly on Finvarra, I reached out to take Hannah’s hand. She fumbled for my fingers and then squeezed them tightly.
Finvarra cleared her throat. Now that the adrenaline of confronting Marion was wearing off, her voice was fainter, and a bit quavery again. “Sometimes, in our efforts to preserve and protect our sisterhood, our individual clans are hurt. I have always excused such damage as collateral—unavoidable, and justified for the greater good. It was an unfortunate but necessary part of my job, and one that I undertook with little regret and, I am ashamed to say, little empathy. We have always kept our eyes on the spirit world, making our decisions with our calling in our hearts, but there ought to have been room there for the women that we walk with, and that we call sisters. Our calling is not all we share; we must share each other’s pain and each other’s burdens as well, especially when we have a hand in causing it.”
No one moved. No one even whispered. The High Priestess had every soul in the room, living and dead, held in breathless anticipation. From somewhere deep inside her, Finvarra summoned the voice that put fear into the hearts of her adversaries and respect in the eyes of her supporters. She raised her chin and pointed with a firm, steady hand straight at Hannah and me.
“In light of their great history of service and contribution to the Northern Clans and, more importantly, in light of their recent bravery and commitment in the face of terrible prejudice and nearly insurmountable opposition, I choose to nominate Clan Sassanaigh for the open seat on the Council.”
6
Desperate Measures
LOOKING BACK ON THE MOMENT after Finvarra uttered those words, I found that I was oddly peaceful. All around us, the room erupted in shouts and cries, objections and demands for explanations. I honestly couldn’t tell you what exactly was said or who said it. It all sounded distant and unimportant. In fact, I found myself strangely insulated from the vitriol. M
y mind had created a little bubble for me, and I crawled into it.
Inside that bubble, though, everything was clear. The first thing I thought of was my mom. I thought about her not as I knew her—a troubled, self-medicated shell, but as I knew she had once been when she’d walked the halls of the castle. I saw the girl inside the tiny portrait Fiona had painted, the portrait I now held tucked inside a locket around my neck. Her eyes were bright and inquisitive, her tongue sharp and witty. She’d gazed around this very room, full of dreams of her future and plans to make her mark. She saw the injustices and absurdities of the system she was meant to accept without question, and she had the audacity to question them.
Something made me look up, and I found his eyes. Carrick was staring at me, and his expression was sagging with the same weight of memories. He pressed his lips together and nodded at me. I nodded back. He knew what I knew. She would have been proud. She would have taken that seat and moved mountains with it, carving her mark with the steady, crystal clear persistence of water through rock. My heart ached with the knowledge of what this moment could have meant if he and I had been more than strangers to each other.
It was strange and intimate, there in the eye of the storm, my father and I, sharing this unprecedented understanding. I tried to hold on to it, but the storm intruded at last, and violently.
Carrick’s expression shifted. His eyes narrowed, and then widened trained on something just to the right of me. Then he flew forward just as a scream and a toppling of chairs startled me. I felt something hard and metal strike my shin and gasped.
A form was lunging toward me, limbs flailing, screeching words I couldn’t comprehend. I wasn’t even frightened; there was no time. My reflexes, so attuned to Visitations, simply kicked in without conscious thought. I pushed Hannah down across her seat, throwing my own body over her like a shield just as Carrick materialized in front of us, like a solid wall of ghostly energy. With a single thrust of his arms, he created an invisible barrier of spirit energy that sent our attacker reeling backward, arms flailing, through the air.
“Jess!”
I still hadn’t even processed what was happening, and Finn was hoisting me out of my chair and dragging Hannah and me away from our row of seats as a pair of Caomhnóir wrestled with the struggling, writhing form of a woman I did not recognize. She had long silver hair braided back from her face, which was twisted into a leering snarl as she continued to lunge for us.
“Clan Sassanaigh will destroy us all! You are cursed! Cursed! Someone stop this! You cannot allow this curse to poison our sisterhood! It must be routed out! It must be destroyed!” she cried, tears streaming down her weathered face. I lost sight of her for a moment as Finn dragged us to a knot of Caomhnóir who had rushed forward to surround us, closing in like a slamming of human doors.
“They must be destroyed! We cannot allow this to happen! Someone, anyone stop them!” the woman squealed. Seamus yanked her arm sharply behind her back. She let out a cry and something clattered to the floor.
It was a knife.
Everything seemed to stop. I just stared at the thing blankly, as though I had never seen one before and couldn’t comprehend what it was for. Finn stepped out from behind us and bent down to pick it up. It had a carved wooden handle and a curved, deadly looking blade.
“What the actual hell?” Milo cried as Finn held it up. A general outcry met the sight of it.
“A knife! She had a knife!” The voices rose up around us like instruments in an orchestra of fear. One voice in particular called out over the others. It belonged to a woman with long, dark hair and a beautiful but stricken face.
“Please! Please don’t hurt her!” the woman cried between terrified sobs. She pushed closer to where the Caomhnóir held our attacker, reaching for her, but Braxton stepped in and held her back. “She’s not well! Please, don’t hurt her!” she pleaded with him.
“Order! I will have order immediately! Caomhnóir remove her from the hall at once,” Celeste was shouting over the chaos.
The attacker, whoever she was, was still shrieking about curses and something about “dooming us all” as Seamus and a second Caomhnóir dragged her up the aisle and out the back door. All around the hall, Caomhnóir were ordering people back into their seats. In the back corner, Savvy was standing on her chair, mouth hanging open and her popcorn spilled all over the floor. I nodded at her, as though to say, “I’m all right,” but she just continued to stare in shock. Then another figure drew my gaze, not because of its frantic motion, but instead for its utter stillness. Marion sat in her chair, looking almost bored. She saw me looking at her and lifted the corner of her mouth in a satisfied smirk before turning away to converse with the woman sitting beside her.
Hannah shook my arm. “Jess? Jess, are you okay? Did she hurt you?”
“What?” I asked, tearing my eyes from Marion and dazedly looking around. Hannah was pointing down at my leg, which was bleeding through my pant leg.
“I . . . no, I don’t think so,” I said, trying to think through the adrenaline. I reached down and pulled up the pant leg. I didn’t even realize that I was injured until I saw the blood, and suddenly aches rushed through my shin, like I had flicked some switch. “Oh, I guess I am hurt.”
“You mean . . . she actually . . .” Hannah couldn’t even finish the sentence, but she didn’t need to. I was already shaking my head.
“No, it was that chair in front of us. It got knocked over and caught me in the leg. It’s just a scrape, seriously,” I said, reconfirming the truth of this even as I said it, trying to replay the moment in my head to see if I even remembered it clearly. I thought I did.
Finn jogged back to where we were standing behind our wall of Caomhnóir, having handed the knife over to a younger guardian I didn’t recognize. This younger Caomhnóir produced a plastic bag from nowhere, suggesting he regularly carried evidence collection equipment around with him as a hobby. I opened my mouth to ask Finn if he carried such items on his person as well, but he cut me off in a panicked staccato, words firing off like a machine gun.
“Are you two all right? Jess, why are you bleeding?” Finn asked, zoning in on the wound like a shark scenting blood in the water.
“Calm down, Finn. It was just a chair, not the knife,” I said, as calmly as I could, though the shock was starting to wear off and my voice now had an audible tremor in it.
“JESSICA! HANNAH!” Karen cried hysterically, stumbling over chairs and shoving Durupinen aside right and left to reach us. “Out of my way! Let me through! Those are my sister’s girls!”
At a nod from Finn, two of the Caomhnóir parted, letting her through. She grabbed us to her in a smothering hug, her body shaking with fear and barely contained sobs.
“It’s okay, Karen, everything’s okay,” I said, my face muffled against her shoulder. “We’re fine. Just try to get a grip, all right?”
Carrick materialized beside Finn, though his form was flickering feebly after the massive drain on his energy he had made by throwing the woman back.
“We’re fine, we’re fine,” I said to him before he could properly open his mouth.
“Carrick, thank God you saw her coming,” Karen gasped, releasing her grip on us and looking anxiously into our faces as though expecting to see someone irreparably damaged staring back at her.
“Thank you so much, Carrick,” Hannah said breathlessly, pulling her face out of Karen’s grip and turning to Carrick. “I . . . I don’t even want to think of what might have happened if you hadn’t . . .”
“Let’s not consider it,” Carrick said gravely. “And there is no need to thank me. I’m your . . . I would do anything in my power to protect you, always, and without hesitation.”
Hannah nodded at him, and I did as well, all of us choosing to skate over the awkward omission of the word, “father.” There was no time to dwell on it, anyhow. Celeste was desperately attempting to restore order and call our attention to her.
“Please! Please, everyone t
ake your seats and calm down,” Celeste was shouting. Her Caomhnóir broke away from the knot surrounding us and ascended the podium to whisper in her ear. She listened intently for a moment, nodded her head curtly, and turned back to the room at large, which was slowly starting to settle again, due in large part to the Caomhnóir circulating amongst them, silencing their anxious questions and guiding them back into chairs.
“Come on, let’s go sit,” I said to Hannah, who nodded and made to follow me. We were met with a solid wall of scowling testosterone.
“Excuse us,” I said, with as much authority as I could muster. “We would like to rejoin the group.”
“We have not been authorized to break ranks,” the nearest Caomhnóir growled at me.
“I just authorized you,” I replied through gritted teeth. “You may not have noticed, but both the weapon and the woman holding it have been removed from the room.”
I looked at Karen for support, but she was still a mess, wiping at her streaming eyes and stroking Hannah’s hair like a missing child she’d just been reunited with.
The Caomhnóir opened his mouth, presumably to argue with me some more, but Finn stepped in. “The threat has been contained. As Caomhnóir for this clan, I am authorizing you to break ranks and allow these ladies to return to their seats.”
They didn’t look happy about it—hell, when did they ever look happy about anything?—but they parted, and Hannah, Karen, Milo, and I made our way back to our seats. Carrick, after satisfying himself that there would be no further need for him, vanished and rematerialized almost immediately beside Finvarra, who was being assessed by Mrs. Mistlemoore in the wake of the excitement. Karen did not return to the place she’d been sitting before, but followed us up to our row, where the neighboring Durupinen hastened to make room for her and offer her a chair.
Our reemergence from our security detail was evidently exciting enough that everyone finally stopped talking and chose instead to watch us take our seats. I tried to ignore all the pairs of eyes on us, and instead looked expectantly up at Celeste, waiting for her to say something—anything—that would turn the general attention her way again.
