35. The Roving Raider
35
THE ROVING RAIDER
…for he could not understand, why nature should teach us to conceal what nature had given; that neither himself nor family were ashamed of any parts of their bodies; but, however, I might do as I pleased.
— JONATHAN SWIFT, GULLIVER’S TRAVELS
A fter a nap and a long bath, I left the hotel that evening with Jonathan as my escort. We needed food, and I wanted to walk around a bit before my solitary instincts got the best of me.
Clad in decidedly un-spring-like wool coats to ward off the fog, Twilight was setting in as we turned down a crooked alley off one of the main streets in the Old City. Between the flickering streetlamps and the growing shadows, I wondered if I wasn’t on a walk with Leo Bloom, straight out of Ulysses.
Jonathan stopped suddenly, nearly causing me to run into his back.
I looked around us. There was nothing here but a grimy brick wall, though farther down the alley were signs of the back entrances to restaurants and apartment buildings.
“Catching your breath?” I joked. “I think the restaurants are that way.”
I floated a gloved finger over the brick covered with decades of grime, feeling brave. The past thrummed everywhere in Dublin but was as firmly held at bay as ever with this sorcerer beside me. Part of me wanted to test that stability and touch the past as it so clearly wanted me to.
It was an odd feeling, compared to the way I had run from this ability most of my life.
Jonathan held a finger to his lips, then pointed toward the alley’s entrance, where pedestrians were passing by. Then he offered a Mona Lisa smile before placing a hand on one of the bricks. Immediately, the wall shimmered before morphing into a bright red door, over which emerged a crooked sign, squeaking nervously on rusty hinges. “The Roving Raider” was painted in cracked, curling letters that bespoke a far older time.
I gawked.
“Enchanted door,” Jonathan informed me. “The Raider only allows true fae within its premises. Plain folk would find the wall impenetrable, if they could find it at all.”
“Is that really a problem?” I asked. “Plain persecution?”
“It was when they came in droves with pitchforks,” he said darkly, then took my gloved hand and guided me inside.
The door swung shut, enclosing us in a pub full of raucous fae cheering pints of beer with glassy-eyed expressions and roaring salutations. Stout, spiced wine, and whiskey filled my nose, and the bittersweet wail of a lone fiddler serenaded everyone from a corner in the back.
Like the lobby of The Carson, everyone in the pub seemed to be shifters, sorcerers, or sirens—at least from what I could tell by the errant touch. They were also almost all men, with the exception of a few sirens lounging suggestively at the end of the bar while they twirled glossy ringlets and blew kisses at anyone who glanced their way, like characters straight out of Dubliners.
“‘And here was my nabs, as cool as you please ,’” I murmured, quoting Joyce’s famous pub crawl story.
Jonathan, whose grip on my hand had not broken since entering the bar, chuckled in agreement as he felt my thoughts. He didn’t respond, mentally or otherwise, as he was otherwise preoccupied with searching the pub for something—or someone.
At last, his expression lit on a hunched old man seated in the shadows at the far end of the room, face hidden by a driver’s cap. Cary . The name darted through my thoughts as if Jonathan had spoken aloud.
They won’t hurt you. And this is someone you’ll want to meet.
As Jonathan led me through the pub, I braced myself for an onslaught of thoughts and emotion, even with the shield he seemed to lend me through our touch. Unlike a typical human crowd, which would have bombarded me with Sights until I craved a pool or a straitjacket, every fae we passed blinked in concentration, their mental blocks evident only if I happened to bump an elbow or a toe. They weren’t impregnable, but it seemed Jonathan wasn’t the only non-seer learned in the art of basic shielding.
I was grateful for them all, though I didn’t think the feeling was mutual. More than one whisper of “ bean feasa ” filtered through the din in uneasy tones.
“Cass.”
Jonathan beckoned me to sit next to him. A waitress, whose thin neck, short, feathery hair, and pointed nose gave her more than a passing appearance to some sort of bird, materialized to take our orders. A crane? I wondered inwardly.
Heron , Jonathan replied. His attention, however, was elsewhere.
“Jesus, Jon, what are you thinking, bringing her here?”
The voice was craggy and rough. Dressed in worn clothes and a threadbare denim jacket, he looked quite old until I realized it was more his slumped posture and crabby expression that made him look that way. His skin, though weathered, was curiously unlined.
“Glad to see you too, Cary,” Jonathan replied.
The waitress reappeared and dropped two pints of dark stout on the table. Jonathan handed her a bill, then slid one of the glasses to me and held his up in a silent salute. I smiled and took a sip.
“Now, then,” Jonathan said to Cary. “What’s the problem with my friend joining us tonight?”
His accent had shifted, I noticed, taking on more of the lilt of Dublin as opposed to the stiff Oxford-esque academic he generally affected.
Don’t mention your name, he told me through our clasped hands, now resting on his knee.
“Well, aside from the fact that she’s likely to be thought a whore?—”
“Again?” I sputtered through a mouthful of beer. I looked around for a napkin only to find Cary calmly handing me a handkerchief. “What century are we in?”
Discomfort flooded my fingers, along with something else—something Jonathan didn’t want to tell me.
I glanced sharply, but he shook his head. Later .
“Do you think showing off a keener to all the lowlifes in Dublin is the best way to protect your anonymity?” Cary finished as if nothing had been exchanged between us.
I froze. We were supposed to be hiding in plain sight, weren’t we?
Don’t worry. It’s fine.
Is it?
Yes. Jonathan waved Cary’s concerns away with his free hand. “She was spotted the minute we landed. If they think she’s a prostitute then, frankly, it’s all the better. No one ever asks a sex worker’s name anyway, and we’ll be gone tomorrow.”
“If they mistake her for a whore, Jonny, it won’t be for long.” Cary leaned forward and sniffed in my direction. “Sure, and she smells like power. No tricky little seer is this one—she’s a proper keening woman, all right, and I’d wager that everyone who’s seen her knows it.” He nodded toward the crowd around us, whom I suddenly felt watching as sure as if I were touching all of them.
I shivered.
Cary’s eyes were black, a deep, shining ebony the same color as the thick hair tied at his nape. His skin was fair, common among the Irish, but still dappled with an odd sort of sheen. A clear scent of salt water and kelp permeated through the bar’s general odor of stale beer and tobacco.
A murúch , Jonathan confirmed. One of the seal folk. A shifter.
Like any student of Irish folklore (or granddaughter of Penny Monroe), I knew the basic mythology. Selkies, merrows, or murúcha were faeries who played in the waves as seals and slipped off their skins to seduce lovers on land before returning to their true home in the sea. No fae child hadn’t heard stories of the charismatic tricksters. And been instructed to stay away from them.
Selkie , Jonathan had called me once at the beach, when I had been dripping with water after a long surf.
But this was different. Of all the reasons Gran had tried to keep me from the ocean, the merfolk, especially those who shifted to seals, topped her list. Cary was the first I’d ever met personally. In Jonathan’s mind, the head of a harbor seal popped through dark waters before vanishing beneath the waves, less seductive and more playful.
Something must have changed in my expression, for Cary’s gaze moved to the place under the table where Jonathan’s hand and mine were joined. He inhaled, long and slow.
“Like that, is it?” he said. “I’d not thought you the type, Jonny.”
Jonathan released my hand with a light brush on my knuckles, but not before alarm skipped through his touch. He clasped both his hands together on the tabletop, and I did the same.
“It’s like nothing,” he said. “No need to jump to conclusions.”
Cary snorted and took a long, leisurely drink of his ale.
“Since we’ve had the good fortune of finding you on dry land this evening, perhaps you might enlighten me with some of the news,” Jonathan said as he swirled his glass, making the deep amber liquid twinkle as it caught the light. “You know I’ve a fondness for local gossip.”
Cary grunted and raised a bristly black brow. “Well, a lot of people have been asking for news, Jon. And after seeing the two of you tonight, perhaps I’ll have a bit more to tell them.”
“Once a pirate, always a pirate, Cary.” Jonathan chuckled and dug into his pocket to pull out a wad of bills bound with a rubber band. His knee touched mine under the table, urging me to trust him as he tossed the cash across the table. “Talk and keep quiet after, won’t you?”
Cary quickly flipped through the stack before pocketing it, and then grinned, showing off a bright gold incisor that glinted in the dim light. “Always a pleasure, Jon. Sure, and there’s been more and more talk of coming out.”
“Coming out?” I asked.
Cary jerked his head at me. “She’s a bit young for this, isn’t she?”
I frowned. I couldn’t have been more than a few years younger than him. Some slight lines over his brow made him look somewhere in his late thirties, but that could also be from the harsh conditions of making a living from the sea.
He was a fisherman , Jonathan confirmed. A few years back, he purchased the raider, but he still owns a small fleet moored to the south .
Enterprising fellow , I replied.
Not much happened in the fae world of Dublin without him sanctioning it, Cass. Best to be friends with this one.
“It’s impolite to have secret conversations in front of ones who can’t hear them,” Cary cut in. He tapped his nose. “They smell, you know.”
I flushed. I didn’t know, actually.
“Cassandra can be trusted,” Jonathan told him. “After all, it pertains to her too.” He turned to me. “The debate to which Cary refers is the ongoing discussion of whether or not the fae should come out of the cauldron, so to speak. To humans.”
Cary’s brows crinkled together in disapproval.
“And what do you think?” I asked him.
Finally, his gaze rose over the edge of his pint glass to meet mine. His eyes were disturbingly dark, matching the coal-black hues of his hair and the weathered white of his skin. A black Celt, like me, but all the way through.
“Did you know,” he said slowly, grinding the words over the gold-capped tooth, “that those in Ireland who look like us—with the hair like night and the skin like snow—are said to be the descendants of the Spanish Armada, pirates washed up on the shores and enslaved by Irish kings?”
I just raised a skeptical brow. His tone told me he knew the legend was as preposterous as it sounded.
“You know that it’s false, then,” he said.
“Of course,” I replied. “There are too many black-haired Irish for that particular genetic code to have disseminated within only five hundred years. And didn’t the Irish kings kill their Spanish captives?”
“She’s a scholar,” Jonathan clarified proudly, patting my hand again, almost as if he couldn’t help but touch it. “Of Celtic literature and history, as it happens.”
I blushed at his obvious regard. Or maybe it was at the warmth of his skin.
“Then you’ll perhaps also know the real story,” Cary said.
I frowned. “You mean of the Celtiberian colonization? It started around 500 BC, we think. Maybe a few centuries earlier, depending on which theory you believe.”
“Sure, and across the waters.” Cary smarted and continued. “Some of us are descendants of pirates, you see. Seal shifters, merrows caught by ancient fishermen. Gauls. Before they were killed, the merrows changed into their human form and speared their captors straight through the hearts before they mounted their skulls on the hull. They sailed to Erin, where they found the fair-haired maidens ripe for the taking as they walked the beaches alone.” He bared his gold tooth and sneered. “We come from the blood of pirates—the first of these waters. But what might have happened had the murúcha not been attacked? Had the sailors known them for what they were and respected them for it?”
I gulped. “I—I don’t know.”
Cary drew his gaze slowly up and down my face as if he were memorizing each feature. “There’s a prophecy, you know. That the last kin of the original pirates—the last murúch , as it were—will sail across the sea and free us all from our captors. From tyranny.”
His comment earned a loud throat-clearing beside me, startling me out of the trance.
“Come, Cary,” Jonathan said, rapping the table with his knuckles. “Let’s dispense with the theatrics, shall we?”
The sailor grunted and tossed back the remainder of his ale.
“That’s quite a bedtime story,” I told him. “Even if it is riddled with inaccuracies.”
“Oh? And what are those?” Cary wanted to know.
“Well, for one, those innocent maidens likely wouldn’t have been fair-haired. Recent DNA analysis suggested that the pre-Celtic Irish were probably dark-skinned with blue eyes.” I tipped my head. “And probably dark-haired too.”
Cary examined me for a long moment, then gave a great barking laugh that wasn’t unlike the seals I’d surfed with in Oregon. “Have it your way. But to answer your question, I’m for coming out, through and through. Once it was easy to be ourselves, whether on sea or land. Folks was more welcoming toward our kind. But then we had to go into hiding, didn’t we? And now no one can use his true abilities in the open. Not unless you’ve got the gift of Midas, like some do.” He shot a pointed look at Jonathan. “What’s the point of being what we are when we’ve got to hide it? Once being fae was a blessing. Now it’s a curse. Well, no more.”
A fiddler’s song called across the pub, forlorn and brooding. Undoubtedly a siren, the musician exhibited an uncanny knack for tapping directly into the emotions and feelings of his audience. It seemed he was playing to Cary’s right then.
Jonathan shook his head, and the music jumped into a sprightlier jig.
“Who’s been talking, Cary?” he asked. “I love a good ghost story, but I didn’t pay you for a pirate tale I’ve heard before.”
Cary blew a long stream of air between pursed lips. “Caomhán’s been to town. You know how he likes to stir things up. Stopped in to see some mutts in Belfast, to gain their support against the Council. The shifters are all for it. Wouldn’t have to spend so much time explaining away our tempers, would we, Jonny?”
“Mmph.” Jonathan accepted another pint from the barmaid, who looked knowingly at Cary before disappearing into the crowd. “Caomhán’s been talking to the shifters up north for years. What else is new?”
“Well, you might be interested to know that he passed through just last week.”
Jonathan’s back straightened just a bit more at that news, although he did his best to appear unaffected. “Through Dublin?”
Cary nodded. “Sat at this very table with McQuade, Moran, McGaughey, and Crane.”
“The wolf pack? And they were willing to see him?”
Another nod. “Wouldn’t let me get within earshot, but you know they were planning something. Moran’s about as secretive as you, Jonny, but a few extra pints, and he mentioned Caomhán was talking about the Order, and if—” Cary cut himself off with another suspicious glance my way.
Jonathan rapped the table again impatiently. “I told you, she’s fine. What did Moran say about the Order?”
Cary sighed. “Only that they’re watching Caomhán. A bit more carefully these days, if you know what I mean.”
Jonathan looked queasy. “Anyone else, then?”
Cary cast an eye upward as if searching his memory, but it was clear by his stifled smirk that he had something much larger to share. This one liked to play games. “I know who it is you’re looking for, Jon, and he’ s not been seen for months. Although rumor has it he’s asking for you and moving in the opposite direction. But I suppose you might care to know that Beatty’s dead.”
At that news, Jonathan straightened. A quick touch of his knee again rendered me instantly aware that Ian Beatty was another shifter—an alley cat who made a living prowling the docks and airport for fae tourists whose pockets were easy to pick. Like Cary, he was often a purveyor of information, but highly corruptible, and had had no qualms selling himself as a spy to the highest bidder. Beatty’s services often included making his subjects disappear after the information was procured. He was a popular resource for the dark underbelly of the Dublin fae and extremely good at eluding the Council and others not so pleased with his activities.
Someone must have caught up with him.
“It’s not clear what killed him. Coroner came up with shite. But a girl next door said she heard a man threatening him, asking for a box, wondering why he hadn’t found it yet. Then nothing but a struggle through the walls. Says she watched the biggest raven she’d ever seen fly off against the moon.” Cary looked knowingly at Jonathan. “That doesn’t mean anything to you, Jon, does it?”
It certainly meant something to me, but Jonathan’s touch warned me to keep that to myself. He assumed an unfazed expression and muttered something of the “perhaps, I’ll have to think on it” variety. But the rising hair on his forearm mimicked my own, prompting a cackle from Cary and a sideways glance from me.
The two men launched into more gossip about the fae community that I couldn’t follow, and eventually, I moved out of range of Jonathan’s touch and allowed myself to sink into the haze of another beer, and then another, along with shepherd’s pie and a basket of chips shared by the table.
Had Gran come here? I wondered as the fiddler started playing one of her favorites, “Wild Mountain Thyme.” Or would she have been too afraid of the gossip?
My mind drifted back to Cary’s story about the selkies—the ones who supposedly looked like me. And as the bittersweet melody played directly to my thoughts, I wondered if it really was a pirate’s blood running through my veins and whether it wasn’t that I was escaping my thoughts when I dove into the sea, but rather returning home again.