“Kieran?” Bishop asked in shock. “Hel-lo, this is quite a surprise.” His anger ebbed away suddenly. “Your prospective clients?”
Davis looked between Kieran and Bishop suspiciously. “Yes, as if that’s your concern. Mr. McClure, please return to my office and let me attend to Lord Bishop’s problem on my own. This matter doesn’t concern you or your brothers.”
“On the contrary, Davis, this matter concerns them directly,” Bishop said smiling. “And their presence here makes this all the simpler. You want to claim that I am in breach of the Accords, fine. I call for immediate adjudication.”
“Of course, Lord Bishop,” Davis said, changing to a more amicable manner. “Arthur will be brought from Camelot immediately. He should be here by sometime tomorrow evening.”
“No, I don’t think so, not this time,” Bishop said, smiling evilly at Davis. “Recent events have caused me to re-read the Accords and I learned a thing or two in doing that. As the challenged party, the choice of adjudicator is mine and that ornamental sot of a lap dog of yours is unacceptable. Since there are two of sufficient authority under the Accords present now to judge, I ask for one of them to adjudicate.”
Kieran looked back at me in question as Davis said in confusion, “Who? Ah, so well hidden from view, I suppose there are many secrets you can hold. Who are you that you can judge the Unseelie Accords?”
“I believe you’re higher in the hierarchy, little brother,” Kieran said smiling at me mischievously.
“But you’re more senior,” I countered. “We’re merely men, Mr. Davis, and men too young to be Council-class wizards.”
Bishop barked out a laugh and said, “I suppose that’s true.”
“I don’t believe seniority is an issue in matters of the Accords,” Kieran said brightly. “And there is the added issue of being landed that adds weight to your side.”
“Oh, picky, picky,” I said petulantly. “All right, Thomas, let me see the contract.”
“I protest!” Davis said hotly and very squeaky. “What guarantees do I have that you’re even qualified to judge?”
“Well, brother, at least you made a good decision on that score,” I said, turning slightly as I passed to stand between Davis and Bishop.
“Have you ever dealt with a breach of the Accords, Mr. Davis?” Kieran asked.
Davis paused in mid word. “No, not personally,” he said, finally.
“The Accords will judge whether Seth is adequate to the task,” Kieran said mildly. “And as you didn’t know that, I would suggest that you re-acquaint yourself with that document if you’re going to use it for precedence. It’s damnably tricky in places.”
Bishop handed me his copy of his contract with Davis. I read it as fast as I could flip the pages. Thomas had indeed paid handsomely to have the conference here, both monetarily and in favors to the Hilliards. A breach would cost him triple what he’d already paid out. I could understand his anger.
“And what exactly is the contested issue here?” I asked Bishop while Davis huffed and tried to decide what was happening in his carefully controlled domain.
“Mr. Davis of the Hilliard Brothers is claiming that Lord Daybreak of Gilán and his family break their prohibition on faery within their realm,” Bishop said, the amusement in his eyes unmistakable.
“I see,” I said, chuckling. “That does present a problem.” The constant probing downstairs got irritating. Drawing in a slow breath, I tapped the floor with my foot in an arrhythmic pattern then pushed that disruptive sound into the stone and wood on the plane of the entire second floor. Bishop’s idea to muddle the antennae from attuning to him was sound. Mine blocked them completely. “I assume this has something to do with the druids’ infamous quarrel with the Fae?” Davis looked at me in shock.
“Druids, eh? I really should have seen that,” Bishop said, peering at Davis carefully.
“Guess you didn’t see the tree for the forest,” Peter said, dragging a chair ringside.
I groaned loudly. “Peter!” I groaned at his bad pun. He just snickered at me. “I’ll need the original contract. This is a copy and lacks the Oath.”
“The original is in a vault,” Davis said testily. “I will have to retrieve it.”
“What? You called a breach on an Accorded document and you’re unprepared to defend it?” I asked, shaking my head in disappointment. “That doesn’t bode well for you as an attorney, Mr. Davis.”
“I attest that the copy is a duplicate,” Davis snapped.
“Then you wish to proceed from the base of the Accords?” I asked slowly. “The only advice I can offer is to choose carefully, sir.”
“Yes,” Davis said. He didn’t trust me. It was high in his mind and easily seen, but that was his choice.
“Then I will need a copy of the Accords to continue. Do you have one available, or shall I call for mine?” I asked Davis, surprising him more that I had one of my own, but again, he didn’t trust me.
“I have one in my office,” he said, moving toward his door.
“Stop!” I called, pulling on my mantle. None of the faery magic detectors in the room so much as twitched. I stepped closer to him as I spoke to impress on him the importance of what I was saying. “Mr. Davis, I realize that you’ve never actually contested a breach before, and this is my first as well. If this should come to light with the signers of the Accords, my actions here will be closely analyzed and inspected with the utmost care. With that in mind, I must act with great concern to the protocols of the situation and enforce those on the contestants as well. Any further attempts to circumvent those protocols will result in a summary judgment against you, but you are permitted to ask questions regarding those protocols at any time. Am I clear?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. McClure,” Davis said, rolling the R of my name beautifully. “May I retrieve my copy from my office?”
“Mr. Bishop? Any objections?” I asked him, turning to look at the man in black.
“No, sir, as long as it’s quick,” Bishop said, still amused over my treatment of Davis and knowing what was still coming.
Looking over at my brothers, I picked Ethan since he was closer to the door anyway. “Ethan, would you accompany Mr. Davis? Make sure that he only retrieves the Accords and speaks with no one else between here and there, please. Mr. Davis, you have three minutes.”
Kieran took a step sideways as Davis darted past him and into his office with Ethan fast behind him. The six secretaries sat in their chairs, stock-still and petrified with fear, not understanding the battle happening before them. I considered offering to let them leave but decided it wasn’t my place.
“First, would you get me a glass of water, please?” I asked Jimmy as Davis rushed out of his office with a large tome, highly decorated and bound in leather. I stared at the book in horror. “What language is that in?”
“Ogham,” Davis said proudly. “This is the most complete translation known to man, done by Hamish Hilliard over eight hundred years ago.”
I glared at Kieran. “You knew this would happen, didn’t you?”
“No idea,” he said, smiling. “But it’s certainly amusing now.”
“Bastard,” I muttered, taking the huge and heavy text from Davis. “Back to your place, please.” I took the offered glass of water from Jimmy, muttering thanks, and went back to the center of the main aisle. Asking the Stone for a stool and a lectern, I settled in for a quick read of druid version of War and Peace.
The first order of business, though, was to stop the irritating druids in the basement. Unable to pinpoint their targets now, they’d opened their sinks more generally and were trying to drain larger areas of power. It was ineffective, even against Bishop, but it was itchy and bothersome. I flipped the polarity on every other sink that caused a very interesting feedback pattern. They’d have to cut them off to fix the problem and that would take them hours. They should have taken the hint.
Davis watched, unaware of the havoc I wrought on his fellows in the basement, as I
sat on my invisible stool and opened his book hanging in mid-air, sipping water and beginning to read. The Oath of Hospitality rose up to meet me, questing, so I answered it.
“I am Seth McClure and I have been called to adjudicate a claim of breach against the Unseelie Accords,” I said calmly as the magic of the Oath surrounded me. As before, the Oath danced on my skin but didn’t sink into me, didn’t affect me, but it stayed on me, judging me sufficiently powerful to serve as adjudicator, even in such a harsh claim. That halo of authority would remain until a decision was reached.
“What… is that?” Davis asked Kieran, who stood closest to him watching me with keen interest. He’d never seen this either, after all.
“Well, it should be proof of his authority to judge,” Kieran said quietly. “But that is just the Rules of Hospitality. There must be a problem with your copy of the Accords.”
I read the first few pages of this translation very slowly and carefully. Having seen the character set for Ogham really doesn’t prepare you for translating the actual language into something understandable. Language is very conceptual. A foreigner walks up, hands you a cup of coffee, and says a word, you really have no idea to what that word refers. It could be the cup, the coffee, the temperature, or that a meteor was about to fall on your head. You need points of reference to make sense of things.
For this book, I had three: the fact that I’d already read the Accords several times, a familiarity with the characters, and my magical ability to translate languages. After the first five or six pages of the book, I’d decided to discard the first point of reference as being unnecessary. Nothing about it resembled the Unseelie Accords except an occasional word and its general form. After that, it was essentially a book of Brothers Grimm-like fairy tales having little or nothing to do with the Accords at all until the last fifty pages. There, hidden among some very odd language, which I attributed to the time period, sat the Rules of Hospitality along with its Oath.
Closing the book, I turned to Kieran and asked, “Brother, is there any reason that you can think of that seeing a man hanging upside down from an oak tree while kissing the left fin of a mackerel would cause a sidhe to flee in terror?”
At first, Kieran looked shocked by the question, then he chuckled and answered, “No, none that I can think of. Perhaps if the sidhe was afraid of dying of laughter?”
I grinned big at that. According to protocol, I wasn’t supposed to react but it was funny.
“Mr. Bishop, would you mind if I asked Mr. Davis a few questions regarding druid history that might fall outside of this investigation?”
“Not at all, Mr. McClure,” Bishop said smoothly. “I trust you.”
“What if I don’t want to answer such questions?” Davis asked, suspicious since Bishop actually called on me to judge and actually did trust me. That showed in his aura.
“You are under no obligations to answer questions that do not relate to the issues at hand, sir,” I advised him. “But be aware that I decide which do and do not relate, not you.”
“Very well,” muttered the unhappy druid.
“I am educated strictly from the mundane world,” I told him, “and know only what is taught to school children and in text books. My knowledge of druids is that they were persecuted by the Briton and Roman invasion forces. I’ve only recently been told that there was some disagreement between the elves and the druids that resulted in a war of some kind. Was this text in some way instrumental in stopping that war?”
“Historically, yes,” Davis answered, leery and curt.
“How?”
“Time and tides have hidden the exact deeds from us,” Davis said, proudly and authoritatively.
“And have you read this book?” I asked.
“Yes, though I don’t claim to understand it thoroughly,” Davis admitted. “The Faery are an alien mind and not easily understood.”
“Oh, I definitely agree with that,” I said, chuckling. “Do yourself a favor and read the other translations. Even the English version is closer to the truth than this one. This…” I picked the book up off the lectern and dropped it on the floor, “is gibberish. Even the Hospitality is flawed.”
“But… but… that’s not possible,” Davis stuttered, staring at the book on the floor. “It saved us from the elves.”
“Kissing a fish? I don’t think so,” I said, pushing a copy of the Original Document into the real world from my cavern. “We’ll have to use my copy instead. Would you care to examine it to determine its veracity?” I unfurled the scroll slightly to show the first few words of faery script as the old magic burned in the air around us. All six secretaries turned suddenly and fled into their bosses’ offices, slamming the doors behind them, and both Davis and Bishop blanched and looked down at the floor.
“No!” Davis barked hoarsely. I chuckled grimly, enjoying that feeling of strength over him. It was a little mean, but he was screwing Bishop over and being heavy-handed doing it, too.
“You need to watch this part, Mr. Davis, regardless of how uncomfortable you are,” I said, closing the scroll but waiting for him to look at me. Once I had his attention again, I touched the Oath with my power to draw it out and recited the same line so it wouldn’t disappear quickly. “I am Seth McClure and I have been called on to adjudicate a claim of breach of the Accords.” The Oath of the Accords rose up, mighty and strong, licking at me like the fires of the sun yet still not affecting me. The halo of authority stayed, far stronger than the first. It was a cyclone of energy around me, the full strength of the Oath, ready to strike on my command or strike against me should I fail in my duties as adjutant for the Accords.
“That is evidence of his authority under the Unseelie Accords,” Kieran said proudly, smiling happily at Davis. “See the difference? It’s also proof of what he said about your book.”
“Mr. Davis has attested that this contract is a duplicate of the original document signed by both parties,” I said dully, my voice even more dull through the whirling energy. “Having read the contract, I see no breach. State your claim, Mr. Davis.”
Nervously, he cleared his throat and took one step forward. “Lord Bishop has added the High Lord Daybreak and his family to the guest list for his conference on these premises. This is clearly a violation of our prohibition of the Faery on Hilliard Land. He has steadfastly refused to remove them, therefore he is in violation of the contract.”
“And that is the whole of your claim?” I asked him.
“Yes, sir.”
“And Lord Bishop has assured you that this High Lord Daybreak and his family are all human?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yet you choose to disbelieve this based on your prejudices and not on evidence that you, yourself, have seen. Is that correct?”
“Yes, sir, but it is not possible for a human to hold a faery kingdom,” Davis said confidently. “They have to be Fae.”
“They do?” I asked quietly, knowing the cyclone would still carry the words out. Turning to Bishop, I asked, “Lord Bishop, you knew the person who is Daybreak before he took that title, I believe. Was he human then?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Showed no signs of being an elf?”
“No, sir, none whatsoever.”
“I believe you’ve even met his parents.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And they are human, too. Is there any chance that he might be a changeling, then? A cuckoo’s egg?”
“No, sir,” Bishop said, chuckling slightly. “Both his parents are quite certain of their son.”
“Thank you, Lord Bishop,” I said, turning back to Davis. “I am prepared to announce judgment on this issue, Mr. Davis, but you are a proxy on this matter and do not truly face the consequences of failing. Therefore, I call upon the Hilliard Brothers to come forth and face the Adjudicator of the Accords on their claim of breach.”
“That’s not possible,” Davis protested. “The Hilliards are miles away from here.”
Ignoring him,
I said, “Three minutes.” Not a terribly long time unless you have to stand around doing nothing but counting the seconds go by. Davis was stymied for the first minute. From the direction of my questioning, I was surely siding with Bishop and he was thoroughly confused as to why. In his mind, the reasoning was fundamentally sound. Into the second minute he started to plead to protect them.
“Mr. Davis,” Kieran said, “I would suggest that you be quiet now. If the judge so chooses, you personally could be charged with violations of Hospitality on three different points already.” I knew that already but if I said anything I’d have to charge him officially and he was already in enough hot water.
At two minutes and fifty seconds, the doors to the dark office began to slowly part. “I said three minutes and I meant it,” I snapped. The doors banged hard against the chairs sitting along the sides and what looked like three dogs ran out. They stopped in front of Davis, not dogs but very short, withered, and bent old men. Their dark and leathery skin marred from years of re-applied tattoos of druidic intent and power, barely functional against their age. They had to be centuries old. Davis looked at them, doleful and worried.
“Are you certain this is the aspect you wish to show?” I asked them harshly. “It borders on deception.” Exchanging looks, they stood slowly, stretching legs and arms until they reached a normal height and posture. Still short but now not stooped and bent, each man was about five-seven and hairless all over.
“You’ve been watching,” I said. “Do you have anything to add to your claim?”
“Who are you?” asked the left-most druid, his voice dry and crackling.
Canting my head slightly to the right as I turned to him, I said, “My identity was settled at the beginning of these proceedings by both parties and verified by the Accords. You are in breach of protocol. I ask only once more, do you have anything to add to your claim?”
“No,” said the center druid, defiant and angry. This was the eldest of them, then.
Sons (Book 2) Page 93
