Chapter 49 #2
“Many times. We can locate the column and hold above it. Opening the rift is where it has always ended.” Algernon gave him a pointed look.
“Avis perceives the column more clearly than anyone I have worked with, but perception is not mechanics. The gate requires someone who understands the Void from within. Someone who has opened rifts through suppressed Void-lanes, through Osin’s own wards, in places where rifts should not have held at all. ”
Ivan set the dead crystal on the rock and looked to the three stars.
“When does the rebellion mean to move?”
“The next full alignment is in seventeen days,” Algernon said, lifting the leather case. “That is when the frequency will be strongest. Though, given tonight, I suspect we need not wait for ideal conditions.”
Ivan looked at him. “We’ll need a substantial boat.”
“Funny you should say that.” Algernon folded the sighting tube and set it in its slot. “Some weeks ago, I found myself having the very same thought. So I sent my Druids to inspect Osin’s fleet.”
Ivan raised a brow.
“They returned with a few fine ships,” Algernon said, closing the case, “which have been waiting in a cove two miles east ever since.”
“You stole warships from Osin.”
“I prefer liberated,” Algernon said pleasantly. “For this very moment, as it happens.” Starlight caught in his pale eyes. “It pays to prepare for the inevitable.”
Below them, the sea moved against itself. Somewhere in the dark, a gull settled and resettled. Ivan watched the column of stars and thought, briefly, of the distance between where he stood and where the rest of his life waited.
“A question,” he said. “If you’ll indulge me.”
Algernon inclined his head. “At my age, indulgence is one of the few vices left to me. Ask.”
Ivan did not smile. “Have there been whispers within the Druid sect of Sídhe involvement in the taking of their own? In Osin’s private work.”
“Why do you ask?”
“Curiosity.”
“A famously harmless thing.”
“I am told it improves the mind.”
“It also opens doors one later discovers were locked for excellent reasons.” Algernon studied him over the rim of his spectacles. “You are not given to idle speculation, Hunter.”
“No.”
Algernon was quiet for a moment. Only the sea answered at first, black water folding over black rock.
Then the old man tapped his cane once against the stone, a soft, thoughtful sound.
“Human cruelty is a broad and industrious thing, but it has its limits. Osin knew how to take. He knew how to bind. But he did not know the old blood well enough to hunt it so precisely. Not at first.”
The old Druid held his gaze with that infuriating calm peculiar to men who had survived courtrooms, councils, and tyrants by convincing all three they were harmless. The wind worried at the hem of his robe. He looked, for a moment, almost fragile against the breadth of the sea.
Then he said, “Years ago, before the Pit became what it was, before Osin’s appetites acquired architecture, there were whispers of a Sídhe patron.”
Ivan’s gaze sharpened. “Patron?”
“A generous word, perhaps. But old councils do love generous words for ugly arrangements.” Algernon’s hand rested lightly on the head of his cane. “A Sídhe lord who believed the age of the Tuatha was ending—and meant to have his hand on the door when it closed.”
Ivan went still.
“It is whispered among the Druids that some within the old Sídhe houses have long believed the Tuatha should have passed from the world generations ago,” Algernon continued.
“That the old powers have lingered too long, leaving the realms fractured by inheritance, prophecy, and blood-right. The patron was said to believe those lines had to be broken completely before anything new could rise in their place.” Algernon’s mouth tightened faintly.
“Men like that rarely think of themselves as traitors. They call themselves realists. Visionaries. Survivors. They look at a dying age and decide the clever thing is not to mourn it, but to sell the bones before anyone else reaches the grave.”
Ivan looked out at the black water. “And Osin offered him what?”
“Proof that the Tuatha could be broken,” Algernon said softly.
Ivan’s jaw flexed once, and Algernon watched him with a terrible sort of patience.
“There are men,” the old Druid said, “who will not sell their souls for greed. They would find the transaction vulgar. But give them a noble enough reason, a banner large enough to hide the bodies beneath…” He sighed, the sound nearly lost to the wind.
“Sídhe and human are not so different in such matters, unfortunately. Powerful men are rarely innocent of the systems from which they benefit.”
“Do you have a name?”
Algernon’s mouth curved faintly, without humor. “It was never spoken where I could hear it. But a story once came to me from a Druid clerk who later drowned in two inches of bathwater, which I found…educational.”
Ivan waited.
Algernon’s eyes moved to the three stars above the water. “Lugh. And…whispers of a relic.”
The wind moved over the black water, and Ivan’s stomach dropped clean out of him.
“What relic?”
“A spear,” Algernon said. “Or the promise of one. The old stories were never consistent. Some called it a weapon. Some called it a key.” His fingers tightened over the cane.
“Some said it was the spear of the Triad itself, hidden away when the old world broke—one of the four treasures, a thing that had once made kings tremble and armies kneel.”
Ivan’s gaze sharpened. “Are there others?”
For the first time, the old man did not answer at once. The sea moved below them, black and silver where the starlight touched it. Algernon’s fingers rested over the head of his cane, loose enough to seem idle, though Ivan had begun to suspect very little about him ever was.
“The Spear. The Sword. The Cauldron. The Stone. Each belonged to one of the first powers. Each carried more than Draoth. They carried claim. Patronage. Sovereignty.”
Ivan’s eyes narrowed. “Patronage.”