Chapter 11
Sorcha studied the Fae sorcerer filling the doorway. Miach MacCecht was taller and more slender than Elada. His hair was just as short, but it was night black and lacked the hint of curl that distinguished Elada’s close crop. If Miach grew his hair long, it would resemble the Prince Consort’s. An unwelcome thought. His eyes were unlike any Fae’s she had seen, golden, with hazel flecks, and a tip-tilted almond shape that made him look even more exotic than others of his race.
Elada had said that this Fae was his friend, but Sorcha could feel her lover tense beside her. He took a step, putting his body between her and the sorcerer.
“Were you followed?” Elada asked Miach.
“No. I passed. No one knows I’m here. Not even Helene.”
“Liam and Nial must have been tailed to Sorcha’s. We were ambushed by two of Donal’s company when we left the house.”
“And was it Donal’s followers who iron poisoned you?” asked Miach. “Or the bard you’re protecting?”
“I did it,” said Sorcha. She stepped around Elada to confront the sorcerer. “I didn’t know that Elada could fight two of them at once. I was trying to help. So I used my harp.”
“And is that your only weapon, Sorcha Kavanaugh?” Miach’s voice was cold as ice.
“It’s the only one I can control,” she said. “Elada said you could help me learn to use . . . the other.”
“It’s called stone song,” said Miach. “It’s the power to resonate matter with your voice at what you would call the atomic level. And it is powerful enough to bring down the wall between worlds.”
“That’s why the Prince wanted to unleash it,” she said. “Isn’t it?”
Miach looked past her at Elada. “You haven’t told her, have you?”
“I couldn’t be certain,” said Elada.
“Tell me what?” she demanded.
“That your power has already been unleashed,” said Miach. “The final door to Druid wisdom is the taking of a life. You took Keiran’s. Hardly a great loss to the Fae race and likely a boon to yours, but a life all the same. You’ve been an operating Druid since the day you killed him. If your power doesn’t come when called, that’s because you lack focus. I can teach you that.”
“What’s the catch?” she asked.
“Until I say you are capable of defending yourself, you can’t leave this house. If the Prince gets hold of you again, he won’t dose you with Fae wine and attempt to win you to his cause. He’ll torture you until you comply.”
“And Tommy?”
“Your fiddler must remain here as well.”
“No,” said Elada.
“Yes,” replied Miach. “The Prince knows that Sorcha can be manipulated through Mr. Carrell. Until she can protect her friends and herself, she and the fiddler remain under Deirdre’s roof.”
“And Elada?” she asked.
“Will no doubt be welcomed by Deirdre.”
There was an edge to the way Miach said it that suggested a warning. Sorcha ignored it for now.
“Do you really think I can learn to fight him?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Then let’s get started.”
• • •
Elada didn’t like the idea of leaving Sorcha alone with Miach.
“You can’t watch,” said his oldest friend.
“Why not?”
“Because this isn’t going to be pleasant for her. If she’s to have any hope of fighting the Prince, I can’t pull my punches. Druid training is hard. And you’re obviously infatuated. You were supposed to recruit her last night, not the other way round.”
“That wasn’t what last night was about. She needed me.”
Miach smirked, and Elada wanted to hit him.
“And she came to your rescue—however unneeded—this morning. Job well done.”
Elada had known the sorcerer for two thousand years. During that time, their interests had never conflicted, because Elada always put Miach first. He had formed no attachments, fathered no family of his own that might compete for his attention. He had been the perfect right hand. And he had no regrets. He had been more than repaid for his loyalty in friendship and family.
That didn’t mean that he was unaware of Miach’s flaws. He knew them intimately. The sorcerer could be devious, even by the standards of the Fae.
“Liam and Nial weren’t careless, were they? You told Donal’s lackeys where to find us, didn’t you?”
The sorcerer didn’t blink. “You dealt with Donal’s lackeys handily.”
A dozen alternate scenarios played out in his mind. If he hadn’t gotten the window repaired, if he’d sent Sorcha to the car ahead of him . . . “Sorcha could have been killed.”
“But she wasn’t. And now Donal has no reason to doubt me.”
“Fuck Donal.”
“His followers are numerous and pure-blooded. He holds all of Manhattan. We have only half of Boston, and the other half, Finn’s half, has sided with him in the matter of your pretty bard’s necessary demise. We cannot go to war with them.”
Miach was right, but that didn’t make the truth any less bitter for Elada. “If we can’t fight them, what then?”
“We train your Druid, and fast. If she can learn to control her stone song, if she can master her voice and use it without massacring every living thing in hearing range, Donal and Finn will retreat. But she must learn quickly. Donal has never evinced any interest in Boston before, but he is eyeing our possessions now. Allowing our extended family to come under his sway would be almost as bad as having the Queen back.”
Elada knew that he was right. Donal believed in the old ways. He had learned nothing from the fall. He would treat the Irish in South Boston like slaves, skimming their wealth and only protecting them from other predators when it suited his interests. And he would make slaves of the half-breeds in the population, treat them like pretty toys the way the Queen always had.
“And if Sorcha cannot master her voice on your timetable, or at all?”
“I’m sorry.”
He meant he would kill her. “I’m not going to let her die.”
“You should prepare yourself for that eventuality.”
“I will not let you murder her, Miach.”
“You may be able to stop me. You may even be able to keep her out of the Prince’s hands. None of that will matter if she cannot learn to master her power, because she will be hunted by Donal and Finn and eventually they will catch up with her and she will die.”
A silver dagger appeared in Miach’s hand. It was his personal weapon, sharp as only an enchanted blade could be, the edge so fine that an opponent stabbed with it had no time to register pain before he died. Elada had never known Miach to part with it, but Miach tossed the dagger to him now.
“If the matter comes to it,” said Miach, “and you love her, then you’ll do the deed yourself, before Donal or Finn get hold of her.”
• • •
Elada had warned Sorcha not to trust Miach, but even if he hadn’t, she would have been on her guard around the sorcerer. He radiated power—and danger.
They were alone in Deirdre’s elegant living room. It wasn’t an ideal space for music. The carpets were thick, the upholstery heavy silk damasks, the cushions filled with down, and the drapes lush falls of velvet pooling on the floor. Sound absorbing. Even their voices felt muffled.
“How do we even do this?” she asked. “How can I train my voice around another person without hurting them?”
“You can’t. At least, you can’t train with anyone else except me. Your voice is a deadly instrument, not a harp or a fiddle you can master by playing scales in the attic. But I am relatively safe from its power, because I can do this.”
He turned his hand over, palm up, and lifted it, as though he were tossing a ball, but t
here was nothing there. Or nothing visible, at least. But Sorcha’s ears popped.
“What did you do?” she asked, but the words didn’t come out. Nothing came out. She couldn’t hear her own heartbeat, or the birds in the trees outside, or the hum of the appliances in the kitchen. The silence was absolute.
The sorcerer smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. It was ancient and cruel and the glamour he had been wearing—which she could have seen through, she realized, if she had looked—had made him appear fey, but still fundamentally human, fell away.
It was deliberate. Everything this man did, she realized, was deliberate. Elada had told her that Miach had a wife and loved his sprawling human family, but she couldn’t picture it now. All she could see was a Fae mage, ancient and remote, whose power bordered on the godlike.
Point taken, she mouthed.
He closed his hand. Her ears popped again. Sound returned. Louder, to her deprived senses. She could pick out the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen, the creak as Kevin walked across the floor above, the sound of Elada practicing sword thrusts in the courtyard outside.
Miach was watching her.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she said, which was a lie, but an important one.
“You should be,” he said. “I could kill you, silently, in this room right now, or at any time while we train, and Elada wouldn’t be able to save you.”
But if that had been his intention, it would already have happened. There would have been no demonstration of his power, no warning of his design. “I get the point. I’m vulnerable. The Prince can snatch me and I’ve got no way to fight him.”
“Not just the Prince. He wants to use you to bring down the wall. Donal lacks the patience to accomplish such an end and only wants you dead in revenge for Keiran’s killing. Finn wants to cancel his cable subscription and spend long winter nights torturing you.”
“You have charming friends.”
“I would not call Finn or Donal friends. Neither of them, fortunately, are sorcerers, and neither of them counts an advanced mage among their followers, so they cannot cast a silence over you. Their only weapons are physical. If you learn how to use your voice, you should have a fighting chance against them.”
“So show me how to hit back.”
Now he treated her to a wry smile that was closer to Elada’s human demeanor. “First, you must learn how to listen.”
He was ancient and immortal and powerful as hell, but she’d studied music her whole life, and she wasn’t going to be patronized by a Fae with a tin ear. “I’m a professional musician. I know how to listen.”
“Then tell me what you hear now.”
“You, talking.”
His expression was baleful. “That is human thinking, and human thinking is going to get you killed. My voice is all surface in this room. Start from the bottom up and tell me what you hear.”
“It’s all background. None of it is important.”
“It is if you’re being hunted. Tell me what you hear.”
“Fine. In order of boring: the refrigerator humming, the coffee pot perking, the clock over the range ticking, Kevin walking around the kitchen—”
“Where is he now?”
“In front of the coffee pot.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because the coffee pot just got quieter.”
“Do you think ordinary humans hear with that level of detail?”
“Don’t they?”
“No. Not ordinarily. And you aren’t even trying. You’ve never trained yourself to do what you are doing. If that was Donal walking around in the kitchen, and not Kevin, your ability to hear him might have saved your life. Tell me how you knew it was Kevin.”
“His footsteps. His weight, his height, the way his feet strike the ground, front first.”
“And Elada? How does he sound?”
“Heavier, but lighter on his feet, faster. He can be very quiet, but never totally silent.” She’d never realized she observed these kinds of things, never realized that she did these mental calculi, but now that she thought of it, she’d always done it. Even as a child.
“When I lived with my parents, I could tell them apart, the way they sounded, even in another room. But it was more than that. I could tell what they were carrying, even distinguish between two similar objects, a fiddle or a harp, a pot or a pan. They all sounded different, even just moving through the air.”
And then there had been the years at Gran’s. She’d been able to keep her secret, her private practice on the fiddle, because she could hear Gran coming from a long way off. Her footsteps on the gravel drive had been as crisp to Sorcha’s hearing as though she’d had her ear to the ground only inches away. It hadn’t always been that way, of course. She’d taught herself to do that after the time Gran had caught her humming. She’d taught herself to send her hearing out to the drive, to keep a part of it there, an extension of herself, the whole time while she knelt in the attic with the fiddle tucked beneath her chin.
“I used to send my hearing outside the house when I was a child,” she said.
“We’re going to do that now,” said Miach. “We’re going to practice until you can tell me where everyone in this house is at any given moment, and then where the children in the town house across the street are. The best way to avoid assassination is to know which direction the blow is coming from.”
• • •
Elada did his best to keep himself occupied during the long day while Miach trained with Sorcha. He had always liked Deirdre’s house far better than Miach’s. The classical simplicity of the Georgian architecture was soothing, and the light and airy color scheme made the house feel like a country manor. When the drapes were closed, you could imagine that green fields rolled away from the windows and into long stands of trees.
On the other hand, there was no one to spar with at Deirdre’s. Deirdre herself didn’t practice at arms and Kevin refused to touch Fae blades, though he was a crack shot with a pistol and could hold his own in a fight. But Elada was used to daily sword training with Miach’s children, and his children’s children, and all the followers in South Boston who could claim Fae blood and a tie to the MacCechts. Even Nieve sparred with him sometimes, and Miach had been trying to convince Helene to acquaint herself with a blade.
It might have been easier to occupy himself at Deirdre’s if the tension between the Fae artist and her human lover hadn’t been so palpable. When he encountered Deirdre in the kitchen in the morning, where, thank Dana, there was fresh coffee brewing, he’d tried to thank her for her hospitality.
“Don’t,” she had said. “I wouldn’t accept your Druid under my roof if I had another choice. But my husband tells me that he will leave again if I don’t shelter the little bard.”
“She’s blameless, Deirdre,” said Elada. “Sorcha isn’t responsible for what her ancestors did to you—to us—two thousand years ago.”
Her eyes burned bright, but she looked straight through him and said, “For me, it was yesterday, and it always will be.”
He’d taken his coffee and his blade into the courtyard after that and practiced and honed the enchanted silver’s edge and considered their options. Deirdre’s house was undoubtedly the safest place to keep Sorcha while Miach worked with her, but that didn’t mean it was safe. Deirdre was damaged and dangerous, and the last time they had imposed on her hospitality, they’d driven a wedge between her and her lover—and Kevin was the chain that anchored her to reality and the present.
An hour later he was reminded that there were other perils in this unconventional household. He’d gone in search of Tommy Carrell, because Sorcha cared about the fiddler and the musician had gone from a night of torture at the hands of the Prince Consort to imprisonment in another Fae’s home. Elada didn’t like having Sorcha’s sometime lover under the same roof while he was trying to woo her
himself, but the poor bastard had tried to defend her from the Prince, and in Elada’s book that counted for something.
He’d last seen the fiddler in Deirdre’s studio, the light-filled space that occupied the second floor of the house’s service ell, the projecting wing at the back that had been built for kitchens and servants’ rooms. The door was ajar, which he considered an invitation to enter, but when he stepped inside, he realized the invitation had been meant for someone else.
Deirdre was reclining in the window seat on a heap of silk cushions with her legs spread and the fiddler’s head between her pale thighs. It was none of his business. He had never been attracted to Deirdre. But the scene was Fae and erotic and seeing her revel in her sensuality made him want that for Sorcha—and not just under the influence of Fae wine.
He wanted Sorcha to feel the heat of her own passion. His heart had ached for her when he’d seen that dreary iron-girded house in Jamaica Plain. There was too much coldness in her life. Her grandmother had deprived her of affection, her love affairs were tepid at best, and even the temperature of that house was chilly. But he was certain that Sorcha had a fire inside her that wanted out.
Not necessarily this publicly, however. . . . Deirdre clearly wanted an audience today, though Elada suspected he was not the one she desired. He lingered a moment anyway. Deirdre’s head was thrown back, her lips parted; her hair was loose, and the golden silk of it spilled like a waterfall over the embroidered cushions and cashmere throws. One perfectly made foot was perched atop the window seat, the other rested on the fiddler’s unhurt shoulder. She’d pulled her skirts up to pool around her waist and her shirt up to reveal one round full breast, which she was clutching in her hand and caressing, her thumb fretting the dusky nipple.
Her other hand held the fiddler’s head between her legs.
Stone Song Page 13
