Chapter Sixteen #2
“Just the chance to talk more.” I duck my head and hope it comes across as embarrassment. “There’s… a lot I don’t understand about this place.”
She tilts her head. “That’s it?”
I nod. “That’s it.”
Old Ones, please believe me.
She trails one finger over the almost flawless blue steel of the blade. “Okay. I’m in.”
“Then get out here.” I arch a brow and glance to her new blade.
She holds the knife like it might bite at her fingertips. “Right now? It’s raining.”
“It’s not raining. It’s spitting.”
“Same thing.”
Hardly. “First lesson of learning to fight? You almost never get to pick the time or place.”
They’re the same words Finn said to me when she started my training in the driving sleet right after our mother’s execution. Her body hadn’t even begun to rot on the Black Quay when Finn pulled me into the alley and told me to throw a punch at her.
She caught it in her fist, then held a knife at my throat in a blur.
From then on, I had to be faster than her.
But I don’t tell Aoife that. I don’t tell her anything about myself.
Slowly, we start to form a routine.
She comes with me to the dinners I’m forced to attend, both of us trying to blend in at whatever awful table we’re placed at. With both her and Talon as my shadows, the noble daughters seem to hesitate from attacking again. I catch their calculating glares.
More than once, I catch the prince lingering close too, always with a look in his eyes that borders on a strange, sly kind of interest.
After dinner, I train with Aoife until even my own muscles ache.
She pushes herself with a desperate determination that mirrors my own. I can’t help but wonder if this is how I looked to Finn when she first trained me.
I show Aoife the most vulnerable spots to strike a larger opponent as she describes how Prince Cashel refuses any glass of wine offered to him and how the High Queen watches him. She tells me which of the noble daughters speak to the Cymreans, and which ones do not.
And slowly, my plan for my opponents begins to come together.
The second invitation from the High Queen’s secretary arrives with my dinner, announcing in a looping script that the Test of Wisdom—whatever that will be—is set for the day after tomorrow.
I push myself through drill after drill with Talon that night, punching and twisting and pushing my muscles to the point of exhaustion.
Each punch and duck and kick gives me back a tiny semblance of control, even as the hours tick by after they leave and sleep refuses to come for me.
Because I still haven’t figured out how to get into the High King’s rooms.
And as far as I know, no peasant has ever survived the second test of the Assay.
My mind runs through the risks and possibilities all night with no answers.
The staircase leading to the king’s chambers crawls with gardai and courtiers.
One look when I ventured out with Talon days ago under the pretense of exploring the castle was enough to make it clear I have zero chance at getting to his door without being blocked or questioned.
Either one could get me killed then and there.
Not to mention, the High King hasn’t been at any of the dinners since the First Look, when he murdered the musician with the green shawl.
Now, even the servants are whispering about his absence.
The next morning, I flip carefully through the pages of the book Wolf left for me, as if looking at it again can give me any hint about whatever comes next.
Anything is better than sitting here alone, just waiting for tomorrow.
I close my eyes and let the dangerous coals of hope simmer in my chest.
Old Ones, Eireann could be so much better than what we are right now.
With healer mages, we could be a place where a fever or a wound didn’t always need to be fatal.
With combat mages, we could be a place where Cymrea wouldn’t dare to invade.
Where, even in a famine, common mages could help stretch supplies of grain and fruits and meats.
Where suffering is a tragedy, instead of the norm.
For centuries, the High Kings tolerated the mages, and the mages kept to their scrolls and spells and out of court politics.
But the Martyr and this High King… neither, my mother always said, had any interest in the way things had been done before.
The High King wanted the mages to do his bidding.
The Martyr wanted mages to wield not just magic but influence at court.
And here we are.
Not even the Martyr herself could reverse the draining of the Seven Wells. It would be like trying to refill a lake that’s run dry.
But, fuck… if we could buy magic for ourselves—barter it from traders from the republics breaking free of Cymrea’s grip or even from the Málmar Islands—everything would be different. Even if the legends about remnants of magic lingering in the bones of dead mages were real, that would be something.
Anything is better than the way things are now.
I have to believe that’s what the Whisperers are fighting for. A better, more equal world where even if the Seven Wells are empty, we’re allowed to buy magic, even if the mages have to get it from somewhere else and bring it here.
I choose to let myself believe.
I have to believe that, or else why am I fighting so hard to get back to Finn? I have to believe there is a life after all this. A life of peace, and health. Of happiness, whatever that feels like.
Faint sunlight crests the crenellated dark stone over the courtyard outside, and a tentative knock sounds at the hall door.
Instantly, my throat catches—but the knock and small voice on the other side are familiar.
It’s one of the servants Talon has had bringing up my meals. I’m not sure how they manage it, but the small sliver of predictability makes opening the door slightly less nerve-racking.
I hold the door open for her, and the girl steps in, carrying a heavy silver tray laid out with a small pot of what smells deliciously like coffee, and a plate heaped high with eggs, fried mushrooms, and currant-studded farls of soda bread.
The aroma twines through the room, and my stomach grumbles.
Loudly.
The servant smiles and lays the tray on the table without a word. As she slips back through the door to the hall, Finn’s voice curls around my mind.
Want to get stronger? Don’t skip meals.
There’s a napkin laid out beside the plate heaping with eggs. I don’t bother with it, diving right in and stifling a groan at the flavors of thyme and cracked black pepper while standing up. The coffee sends a desperately needed jolt through my blood.
Only when a trickle of butter from the warm farl of soda bread drips down my chin do I concede and reach for the napkin—and something falls out.
The rattle makes me jump. A faint clatter, like bird bones on stone.
Or of wood—exactly the size and shape as the carved staves left at the old altars to the Martyr.
This one is no different. Barely as long as my littlest finger.
There’s just enough room for six runic figures carved in faint lines along the wooden stave. Each of the short, brutal lines branches out from a central vertical shaft.
Just holding this is treason.
Fear vibrates through my bones, but I run one finger gently over each runic marking.
My mind recognizes them, pairing the lines that symbolize different trees growing across the isle since the days of the ancients with the sounds my mother taught us each one represents.
People in the days of the Old Ones didn’t speak the same tongue we do now.
Old Eireician was complex, full of cadences and words that don’t translate neatly to the simplified Eireician we speak today, or into the common alphabet most countries use now.
The Old Ones used an ancient alphabet that linked slashing symbols to specific sounds.
Ogham.
And in the years leading to the uprising, the mages realized that although those symbols were once used to convey the sounds to form Old Eireician words, they could also use the same symbols to convey the sounds that make Eireician words in a way the gardai can’t read.
A simple hidden language—easy enough to teach with a stick in the dirt or smear on a greasy window, then wipe away as soon as the gardai come too close.
A secret way to pass messages, even in modern Eireician—and to remember.
My finger shakes, tracing the edges of the markings.
The first has three horizontal lines in quick, tight succession on the left side of the central line—the symbol for holly and the sound we associate with T.
Four longer lines slash straight across the central shaft in the next figure above it, the one signifying the poplar tree that represents the sound closest to E.
I sound out each one, and the word comes together easily.
Temple.
I shove back from the table. Hairs rise up all down my arms and along the length of my spine, and I wrench the door back to find Talon—waiting outside in the hall, one eyebrow arched.
And not in surprise.
In what looks suspiciously like expectation.
“Good breakfast?” Their voice is entirely too light, and Talon taps a finger at the side of their chin, nodding toward me. “Think you might’ve missed something with the napkin.”
“No shit. What is this?” I hiss, shoving the stave into their hand. They watch me with a look like cautious hope. “I didn’t think it needed to be said, but I usually prefer breakfast without a side serving of treason. If anyone found this bound for my room…”
Quiet pride flickers in their eyes, as if I’ve passed some test. “You know ogham?”
I fight to keep my voice low. “There aren’t any temples left.”
A strange look eases the fine lines around Talon’s eyes. They’re barely older than Finn, by the look of it, but something’s put those marks of too much grief on their face.
“Throw that in the fire,” Talon says, glancing over their shoulder at the empty hall.
I chuck the stave into the flames.
“Good.” Talon nods. “Grab your cloak. We’re going out.”