Uncertain Allies

21

Briallen wasn’t home when I let myself into her town house the next morning. I was one of the few people she allowed open access to her home. I scared the hell out of the brownie caregiver she had hired to watch over Meryl. Once the poor woman’s claws and teeth retracted, she was quite nice—even apologetic, though the fault was mine. I should have knocked at least.

Meryl rested by the blue fire in the upstairs parlor. By a trick of positioning, she appeared to be staring into the flames when I entered, meditating like a druidess with something on her mind. Her lack of response killed that notion. I kissed her on the top of the head and sat in the armchair opposite, trying not to let melancholy overwhelm me.

“I miss you,” I said.

Our relationship was complicated, one part friends, one part lovers, and one part what-the-hell-is-going-on. I had thought a lot about it since she went into the trance. Meryl provoked and challenged me at every turn, daring me to call her my girlfriend so that she could dismiss the idea. She understood me on a level that only good friends did, but would have slapped me upside the head if I compared her to Joe or Briallen. She knew she was more than that. She had her own life, her own ideas, and her own way of doing things that mattered more than anything I said sometimes. While that frustrated me on occasion, I respected the hell out of her and wouldn’t have it any other way. When push came to shove, though, she dropped all pretense of indifference and became the strongest ally I had ever had. Maybe I didn’t know how to define what we had together because it wasn’t supposed to be defined. Or maybe what we had was a real relationship, and I had never had one before.

I read aloud to her while I waited for Briallen, an old tale about dreams and war. I thought Meryl would appreciate it. She was a Dreamer, and her dreams often had glimpses of the future. In recent months, I had had prescient dreams, too, and she had helped me understand how to interpret them. I wasn’t good at it, or at least didn’t like my dreams’ implications. Too often, my symbols and metaphors pointed to death and destruction around me. Reading about someone else’s dreams made me realize I hadn’t experienced my own in a while. Like so much else in my life, I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad one.

Briallen swept into the room an hour later, a high flush on her cheeks. “It’s a beautiful day. I walked back from the Guildhouse. Did you two go out at all?”

“We’ve been reading. I didn’t want to miss you,” I said.

Briallen put down some books she carried and ran her hand along Meryl’s arm, causing their body signatures to interact. She brushed back hair from my forehead and placed a gentle hand on my temple. Briallen had raised me and had earned a mother’s privilege of not asking permission to touch me. She checked my health whenever she had the opportunity. I closed my eyes as warmth spread from her hand into my head. The dark mass quivered from the touch of her essence. It never reacted to her probing, as if it understood that her touch meant concern.

“It’s shaped like a ball of spikes,” she said.

“It feels like one. All the essence in here makes it curious,” I said.

She glanced at Meryl. “Let’s go downstairs. I’ll make some coffee.”

I touched Meryl on the shoulder as I left. She didn’t react.

Down in the kitchen, Briallen pulled out an old percolator pot and rinsed it at the sink. “I’m glad you’re here. It saves me a phone call.”

I slid onto a stool. “Sounds serious. You never use the phone.”

Amused, she pouted her lips as she put the pot on to boil. “I’ve been talking with Nigel. He has an interesting idea about Meryl. Do you want to argue about it now or wait until the coffee is ready?”

I stared at her, uncertain what to say. She knew my opinion of Nigel. “I hope you have cream and sugar.”

“He wants to simulate her trance state on himself and guide her back. I’ve gone over the spells he’s talking about. I think he has a good idea,” she said.

“So why hasn’t Gillen Yor tried it?” I asked.

“He tried something similar. He can’t resonate the essence correctly,” she said.

I folded my arms, suspicious. “And Nigel can? Why?”

She sighed. “Connor, you are going to ask all the questions I did, and that’s fine. But we have to do something. She can’t stay like this.”

Frustrated, I rubbed my hands over my face. “I don’t understand his interest. It worries me.”

“They’re friends. Isn’t that enough?” she asked.

“Not with Nigel. I was friends with him once.”

She lowered the flame on the stove and set the pot to perk. “You have to remove your personal feelings from this. I’ve gone over the process and the spells. They make sense. I’ll be with them the entire time. We can do it in my sanctum.”

“I don’t trust him,” I said.

She leaned across the kitchen island and held my hand. “Don’t think I don’t know Nigel Martin, Connor. He has a reason for doing this that has nothing to do with friendship. Whatever that is, it’s a side issue for the moment. If his idea works, Meryl is more than capable of dealing with him. She’s told me so herself whenever I’ve expressed my own doubts about their friendship.”

Meryl never mentioned that to me. “You have?”

She poured out the coffee. “Of course. I’ve known Nigel a lot longer than you—either of you, I think. I don’t believe he’s malicious, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t capricious, and it doesn’t mean I’m not cautious around him. He serves the Wheel of the World in a different way than I do. I’m not so foolish to think mine is the only way.”

I smirked. “ ‘And you shouldn’t either,’ she pretended not to say.”

She play-slapped my hand. “Exactly.”

“When does he want to do this?”

“Tomorrow,” she said.

“I want to be here.”

She settled herself onto a stool. “Of course. I’m sure Meryl will be happy to see you.”

I sipped the coffee, its rich flavor hinting at one of Briallen’s secret additives. Everything Briallen made had a little something extra. “The reason I wanted to talk to you is because I ran into something last night. It looked a hell of a lot like the Wild Hunt.”

Briallen groaned and slumped against her hand. “Can we have one month when no one starts a new pissing contest? It’s bad enough Donor Elfenkonig’s in town.”

“You knew about that?” I asked.

“You did?” she asked.

We contemplated the countertop. “So . . . anyway . . .” I said.

Chuckling, she sipped at her coffee. Briallen knew more than anyone about what went on among the fey in Boston. She had connections everywhere. While Nigel saw the Teutonic fey as straight-up enemies, Briallen considered them the friendly opposition. “Yes, anyway, why do you think the Wild Hunt is here?”

I described what happened to Murdock and me in the Tangle. She played particular attention to the description of the rider. “That doesn’t sound like Arawn.”

In Celtic tradition, Arawn ruled over the Land of the Dead. “He’s for real?”

She nodded. “I’ve met him. I’m sure I would have heard if he was in Boston.”

“You’ve met Arawn, as in ‘King of the Dead’ Arawn,” I said.

“Why does that surprise you? I may not remember everything pre-Convergence, but Arawn is hard to forget. One of the most courteous kings I’ve ever met,” she said.

“Did you just out yourself to me as an Old One?” I asked.

She smirked and lifted her coffee. “I don’t know, did I? I don’t remember saying when I met him.”

“How did you meet him?” I asked.

“That’s a story for another time. If the rider you met were Arawn, he would have spoken to you, taken you with him, or killed you.”

“So it was an imposter?” I asked.

She pursed her lips and gazed into her mug. “ ‘Imposter’ is the wrong word. The Wild Hunt rises for many reasons, and Arawn doesn’t always lead it. How did you run into it?”

“I’ve been tracking missing persons in the Weird. Witnesses report a blaze of essence followed by disappearances. I thought it might be related to the solitary/Dead conflict because the surge seemed to be following old Dead essence, but last night Murdock and I encountered the surge, and it was all Dead essence.”

She squinted. “It’s a leap to call it the Wild Hunt, don’t you think? I mean, the original hunt was about weather superstitions and enforcing conformity. You’re talking about a few kidnappings,” she said.

“True—but right now the Weird is full of centuries-old Dead who believe that stuff.”

“Aren’t they calmer now that the Taint is gone?” she asked.

“ ‘Calm’ isn’t a word I would use to describe the Dead, Briallen. Maybe they’re more rational in their approach— and forming a unified band could be evidence of it. There’s a guy wearing an antlered helm and riding a dream mare,” I said.

“You said people are going missing. Is there a pattern, or is it random?” she asked.

“Mostly scryers and fortune-tellers,” I said.

She tapped her nails against the sides of her mug. “People seek the future when the present is unsettled.”

“That pretty much describes the Weird,” I said.

She arched an eyebrow at me. “That pretty much describes everything right now. I don’t have to remind you of the uncertainty around here. We have an acting police commissioner, an Acting Guildmaster, no one directing the Consortium consulate since Eorla left, and Eorla setting up her own court. People are worried.”

“But what would the Dead gain by forming a hunt? TirNaNog is gone. The Dead have no place to go.”

She made a slight swirl of her coffee. “The social structure is destabilized. While people in power struggle to get their acts together, one person has managed to bring order to the situation: Eorla. Maybe the Dead see what she’s done and want to duplicate it on their own terms.”

“Are you suggesting they’re setting up their own version of TirNaNog?”

“Maybe. Or maybe it’s another power play by another player,” she said.

“People join Eorla willingly. The Dead are kidnapping people. Eorla doesn’t do that,” I said.

Briallen gave a sly smile as she drank her coffee. “A little defensive about her, aren’t we?”

I frowned. “I know you’ve been talking to Nigel. I didn’t think he’d be able to poison you against her that easily.”

She poked me. “I’m teasing, but I should point out that Eorla is hard to say no to. People may join her, but there’s more fear involved than you’re willing to admit.”

“And I should point out she’s not the only person like that around here, Ms. Gwyll,” I said.

Briallen chuckled. “I do take that for granted, I guess. Anyway, it wouldn’t surprise me if someone is rallying the Dead. People down in the Weird might not trust the Guild or the Consortium, but that doesn’t mean they will automatically trust Eorla.”

“I told her pretty much the same thing,” I said.

“And, don’t forget, the old gang structure fell apart last fall. Whoever’s riding that dream mare might be making a power play.”

“Well, if the Weird falls any more apart, there won’t be much to play with,” I said.

“Something new will form, Connor, maybe not down in the Weird, but somewhere else. It always does. That’s the Way of the World. One thing ends, and another begins, but the World goes on,” she said.

Briallen and I had an old argument about whether places like the Weird had to exist. She believed they did, that society always had a class of people who didn’t succeed for one reason or another. Solving that problem always created a new one in her view. She had no hesitation helping to make people’s lives better, but she assumed the same issues would crop up elsewhere. Nigel, though, accepted the existence of places like the Weird as necessary evils. If improving the lot of most people meant sacrificing a few, he could ignore the Weird. A few desperate or dead didn’t bother him. Between those views, everybody else fought over turf and power.

“Donor might have a role in this. He’s actively campaigning against Eorla with the Guild. Aldred Core has shown up several times warning macGoren that Eorla is a threat.”

“She’s more a threat to Donor,” I said.

“True. But if he can isolate her politically because he says she’s dangerous, he forges alliances elsewhere,” she said.

“There’s a platoon of U.S. Marines at the airport,” I said.

“And a frightened human population in the city. Creating more trouble in the Weird would work in Donor’s favor,” she said.

I leaned my forehead against my hands. I didn’t care about Donor or macGoren. I didn’t care about their strategies and games. I cared about the woman upstairs and wanted her back. “Do you trust Nigel?” I asked.

She studied her cup. “No, but I trust the Wheel of the World. It’s given us a path to take, and I think we should take it. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t watch our step.”