Troll Tunnels

by Erin M. Hartshorn

  She didn’t believe me, of course. “This is no reward.”

  I shrugged. “It’s a just reward for someone who was helping a murderer and persecuting the person trying to stop him. Or at least it must be in Hekate’s eyes. Because the only magic I worked against you was that wish, which you accepted — welcomed, even.”

  “Murderer,” she scoffed. “He told me you were persecuting him, and even now, you spew your lies. You have no shame.”

  “What I have is no patience for your repeated accusations,” I said. “I’ve told you the truth. You’re welcome to ask others, talk to witnesses — ask Maggie, for that matter. If you don’t want to believe me, that’s your choice. If you want to continue to act based on your preconceptions and ill intent, that’s your choice, too. But my choice is to not let you dictate my actions. I’ll be at Maggie’s tonight, and next Monday, too, and every Monday after that. If you don’t like it, that’s just too bad.”

  “You don’t want me for an enemy, Pepper.”

  “Little late for that, I’d say. I think I still have bruises on my back from your kidney punches.”

  “I should have hit you harder. Or maybe kicked you in the head. Might have knocked some sense into you. Maybe I will next time — and you won’t see me coming.”

  I wasn’t about to tell her that even if I didn’t see her, I would know that she was around, that her aura of evil — okay, sensation of magic — preceded her. Why give away one of my few advantages? I was pretty sure she could bench press me if she wanted to. I had to make sure she didn’t get the chance.

  She turned and stalked to the door. Just before she left, she paused and this time, she did spit, right on the threshold. Everyone in the room would see it as a deliberate act, and some of them would be disgusted by the act. Only I felt the tingle of magic as her spit landed, and the surge of my ward responding, as tendrils tore her spell to pieces. I didn’t know what she meant to do, but she was going to be disappointed.

  “Watch the front,” I told Ximena. “I’m going to get the mop.”

  When I came back, I was surprised to find Kari hanging out by the door, waiting for me. Her sketch pad and coat were still at the corner table, so I knew she had no intention of leaving just yet.

  I planted the mop on the floor. “Something I can help you with?”

  Kari frowned, glancing at the door, then back at me. “I don’t know. But — I’ve seen her before. She’s in a couple of Grant’s pictures, and … they don’t look nice. Not for the other person, and definitely not for her. I’m afraid she’s going to get hurt.”

  I sighed. I didn’t like Dorothy, but I didn’t want her to get hurt. Much. The truth was, though, that if Hekate revisited Dorothy’s own malice on her head, Dorothy was facing some serious trouble. Then, too, she’d been talking to Anneke — a little to Svetlana as well, but she definitely seemed to know Anneke.

  The last thing I needed was for Dorothy to help them bring Tiamat to Boston just because she was angry with me. That was pretty much the last thing that anyone needed, really.

  “How?” I asked Kari.

  “I don’t know. His picture was all — like bumpy snakes, big twisting things, covering the page, and her face the only clear spot, with this look of horror.” She licked her lips nervously. “You know you see that phrase — ‘rictus of horror’? I think I know what it means now.”

  “Dark, twisting coils.” My voice was flat. Every one of my worst fears, though it sounded like Tiamat was going to be hurting her, and I was going to have to stand in the way.

  “I’m only telling you because — look, I know Grant’s different. Sometimes his art is more about what someone is like inside than out. I don’t know how he does it, I don’t want to know. But I had to warn you.”

  Which probably meant she’d seen a picture of me at some point. I wondered what Grant saw when he looked at me, but I wasn’t going to ask. I was too afraid I knew.

  I paused in the Chinatown T stop on my way to Maggie’s. I really wanted to see Sverth, but he wasn’t around. In fact, I couldn’t sense any trolls at all, even when I went inside the station. Hsien was there, however, playing what sounded like a lullaby. I went to stand nearby, leaning against the tiled wall as people came and went, a few gathering to listen before going out to brave the colder air.

  One woman, one of the Lius’ neighbors — my neighbor, too, though she never acted like it, probably because she listened to Celeste — glared at me. “You always listen, but you never pay. You should give him what he is due.”

  I dug in my pocket for some money and dropped a couple of bills in his open case without looking to see what they were. We had never talked about payment for the twins’ lessons. It was past time we did.

  She glared at me anyway and walked off, no doubt wanting to complain to somebody else about me.

  After a couple more songs, when the crowd had turned over and another train had come and gone, Hsien signaled that he was taking a break by setting down his instrument. The others who had gathered drifted off, although a few paused to add their own contributions to his case.

  “You seem serious today. Has something happened?”

  I shrugged. He and the trolls weren’t friends, so asking him about troll politics and what might be going on with Níal and Sverth would be pointless. “One more day in my weird life. What’s the story with the music shop? Are you friends with the owner? I mean, he recognized your name, but that doesn’t mean you’re friends.”

  “There are few I count in that circle, but I find that a comfortable place to visit. I would like to see the twins in a safe place.”

  “And you consider that one.” I paused to think that through. “I noticed while I was there that I didn’t … it was quiet in the apartment. No sirens.”

  His lips twitched. Anyone listening to our conversation would be certain that I was looking in a rough section, one where there were bars on all the windows, and knowing people was how you could be sure whether a place was safe or not. An area of town where an absence of sirens was something to be remarked on. I suppose it was amusing at that.

  “When are you moving?”

  I snorted. “That sure of your recommendation, huh?” Not that he was wrong. My check for a deposit had already cleared the bank. “I haven’t told Benjamin and Wei yet.”

  “No good can come of waiting.”

  “I suppose not, but I’m worried about Benjamin. The twins—”

  “Will find it difficult wherever they are, yes.” He sighed, and sorrow deepened the lines on his face. “Staying will not help.”

  My voice soft, I said, “Even if I keep studying?”

  He drew the bow across the strings, a wavering, wailing wobble. “I don’t know. You are always surprising, and you might help. But you can only delay the end. You know that, yes?”

  I knew from my conversation with Vanessa that it was more complicated than that, involving the children and Hsien as well, but this was not the place to have that conversation. “I know how many people wish they had one more day with a loved one. Even a delay is a blessing.”

  “I hope you are right.”

  I swallowed my words, my insistence that I was right and he couldn’t know because he hadn’t faced illness himself. He had seen many of those he cared for die over the centuries. I wondered how many of them he would have liked one more day with. More than I could readily count?

  After a moment, I said, “You told me that Jinhong wanted to recapture something of what her grandmother had told her. What … what was that like?”

  It wasn’t as much of a non sequitur as it might have seemed. Memories were all we had of the past, and I was inviting Hsien to relive time with others he had known, even if he couldn’t call them back. His head bowed, and I worried that I’d given him too much pain. But he said, “Her grandmother was strong, but she told Jinhong stories of her grandmother, who was extraordinary. Each generation has been weaker than the one before — surely you have noticed your children a
re the only ones with any talent in this generation, at least here in Boston.”

  “If they had not been born, would you have left Boston?”

  “Who’s to say? But they have given me much-needed hope.” He fixed his gaze on me once again, dark, dragon-black eyes with no hint of the mercy and pity I knew him capable of. “That is why I must know they are safe.”

  “They will be. I will be moving after the judge’s decision, whichever way it may go.”

  “That will do.” He nodded toward the train tracks. “I imagine your friends will even help.”

  I glanced over, though I felt no troll magic, and indeed there were still no trolls in sight. I wondered if even Sverth would count me as a friend. “We’ll see.”

  Chapter 27

  Hsien’s words stayed with me through the witches’ meeting, and I woke with them still in my head — “No good can come of waiting.” I didn’t have to be in until noon, so even after I spent the hour I’d promised Benjamin in the kitchen overseeing the early preparations for the day, I had time to go talk to Anil, firm up moving dates, and take measurements of the rooms. If I was going to have to buy new beds for the twins, I wanted to make sure their furniture would fit in their new room.

  I could feel Sverth nearby as soon as I left the music shop. Not toward the T, but in the alley. Without missing a beat, I walked around the building to see him.

  “I wasn’t sure I was going to see you again,” I said.

  He looked around, as if to be sure we were really alone before he replied. “I shouldn’t be here now. I can’t fight Iárn, you know that, but I wanted you to know that Canada is safe. No one knew we went there.”

  I’d thought so, but I hadn’t been sure. That was a load off my mind, as I didn’t really want to try to tackle that chasm again, especially with Níal, who seemed to fight me every step of the way.

  “What is going on? I get that you can’t go against your leader, but Níal — I don’t trust her, and I don’t see why Iárn does.”

  His sigh echoed off the walls, the mournful sound of a wind in a forgotten cave. “I can’t talk about it with you.”

  “Even if me managing to fix things with her sabotaging me makes her look good? It’s twice as hard — three times as hard — to do anything with her around because I have to do the work, I have to watch what she’s up to, and I have to neutralize what she’s doing.” My voice had risen, and I lowered it again. “I just wish I could figure out some way to prove she’s responsible so I could tell Iárn.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Why? At least tell me that.”

  His rumble contained no words — thinking about what to say?

  “Sverth?” I prompted. “I still haven’t forgotten that you said you might be in trouble.”

  His laugh was short and bitter, scaring off a couple of sparrows that had landed nearby. “Hard to forget that when you see the evidence before you.” He turned to stare at the wall, and I wondered what he was seeing, what he was thinking. When he turned back, he said, “You called me a friend. Did you mean it?”

  Now wasn’t the time to equivocate. “Yes.”

  “I cannot tell you how to work without Níal or how to talk to Iárn to tell him what you know or suspect. But if you want to help me, find what gaps you can without Níal and repair them. I fear her intentions for our clan do not stop with replacing me at Iárn’s side, but I do not know.”

  “Replacing you? As Iárn’s advisor?”

  He ducked his head and looked off to the side, an embarrassed smile on his lips. Not simply an advisor, then. I remembered the betrayed look on Iárn’s face, the way he’d been taken aback when I told him that Sverth would not fail him. So neither of them were happy about this division between them, but something in their customs made it happen. Some sort of challenge? I didn’t know, and I wasn’t sure the details mattered. Somehow, I needed to demonstrate that Níal had been underhanded if Sverth and Iárn were to get back together.

  “She won’t replace you permanently,” I promised. “I don’t know how, but I will make certain of that.”

  “That would be a gift beyond friendship,” he said. “I do not think I could ever repay it.”

  I shook my head. “There is no question of repayment with friends. I help because I can.”

  Even if I wanted to ask for more trollmiod, wanted to wander freely in their tunnels, wanted to ask if they knew where the shrine to Tiamat was and if they could help me destroy it so her witches could not use it. There was much I wanted, but it couldn’t be a tit-for-tat trade. I would help Sverth because it was the right thing to do, and then I would worry later about how to find the shrine.

  “I found one of the gaps the other day while strolling around town. I repaired it. I’ll watch for more — and I will see if I can find a way for Iárn to catch Níal in her treachery.”

  “She won’t do anything if she thinks he will see.”

  “Let me worry about this. You—” I didn’t know what to say. He had enough to do? I had no idea what his normal daily tasks might be, what he had to do when he was not speaking with me.

  “I will prepare. Even if Iárn believes you, there must be another challenge.” His head drooped. “This will be hard on him, whatever happens.”

  “But he will have you to lean on.” What else was there to say?

  “I hope you are right.” He glanced at the wall again, and again I wondered how solid the walls were to the trolls. “I must go before I am seen, but I will do what I can to aid you in your work. Stay safe, my friend.”

  He vanished through the wall without opening it. I wondered a little at what he would bring, but mostly, I felt a bubble of happiness that he also considered me a friend.

  As long as I had some time before I had to be at work, I might as well enjoy the morning here. The sweet oil kept the siren background muted, a soft and sad song in harmony. I could deal with that, even up close and personal with the sirens. Next stop, the Homeric Galley for a cup of coffee and some finikia.

  The redbrick sidewalks here were wide, with lots of room for pedestrians — except where space had been cut out and trees planted for summer shade. Now, ice glistened on the bare branches, light gleaming through the sheaths that had formed overnight. Beautiful, but it reminded me to watch my step, even more necessary where roots had heaved the bricks askew.

  The Galley was as simple and classic as I remembered — white and Aegean blue with a Greek key motif stenciled around the room — but busier than I’d seen it before, with several people in line and a couple of Raidne’s sisters bustling between the kitchen and the slab counter to deliver orders and restock bowls for ladling soup into. Although I could feel Raidne’s presence, a light cello counterpoint to the theremins of her sisters, I didn’t see her. Grant sat at a corner table, sketching. He saw me when I came in, and his eyes widened, as if he was afraid of me seeing him there. I nodded in recognition, then turned my attention back to the line in front of me, which was moving quickly.

  “You!” One of Raidne’s sisters was not happy to see me. “I didn’t think you would ever be so brazen as to return here! We’re not going to serve you.” She jabbed a finger at the door behind me. “Go.”

  I had assumed Raidne and Teles had told everyone about my help. I would be surprised if this siren hadn’t participated in the trap for the dark muse. If so, however, that didn’t redeem me in her eyes. Given how rude I’d been on my first visit, I didn’t blame her. I turned to go.

  Just then, “Pepper!” Raidne exclaimed. “You didn’t tell me you were coming.”

  I looked back to see her emerging from the kitchen, lugging a vacuum coffee server. “Evidently, I’m not. Another time, perhaps.”

  “Don’t be silly!” She wrestled the server into place, wiped down the area around the servers and swept used stirrers and empty sugar packets into the small trash bin, and gracefully slid out of the way of the customer waiting to refill his cup. “You’re always welcome here. Are you moving in alrea
dy?”

  I shook my head, then shrugged. “I put a few items in the apartment, and I have the keys, but I’m not really moving until next month.” I still hadn’t told Wei and Benjamin that I’d found somewhere, and I cringed inwardly at my cowardice.

  “You promised to let me know. I want to help.”

  “Of course. And then you’ll stay for dinner, although I’ll likely cheat and ask my mom to make the dolmades.”

  She laughed. “I thought pizza was the traditional moving-day food.”

  “It is, but my mom won’t want to move furniture, so this will help her feel useful.”

  “How about instead you send her down here to get coffee? I’ll order the pizza for you. There is this parlor around the corner that you’re going to love.”

  I smiled at her enthusiasm. “What makes you so sure?”

  “They serve honey to dip your crust in when you’re done.”

  “Okay, I’m sold.”

  “I thought you would be. Now let me get you a cup of coffee really quickly before I get back to work. You would not believe what a disaster the kitchen is!”

  On the contrary, I was fairly certain I would. I didn’t bother pointing that out, however. Encounters with two friends, one after the other, made this a good day. Why spoil it with an unnecessary disagreement?

  “All right. And maybe introduce me to your sister? She didn’t seem too happy to see me.”

  “Ligeia.” She said the name as though it explained everything. “I’ll have a word with her later.” Raidne flashed a mischievous grin at me. “Might shock some of the customers if they heard what I have to say to her.”

  I returned the grin. “Can’t have that.” I accepted the coffee, paid her, and left, taking the coffee to sip as I wandered the streets of the neighborhood. It wasn’t home yet. How long would it before I felt it was?

  A familiar emptiness assailed me as I exited the T at the Chinatown stop, and I altered my steps to head toward the garage that had started me down this path — my first ghost, the first change to my sight, my realization of how very much I needed to learn about magic. The garage had none of the frissons of pain and hate that had emanated from it this summer, but there was definitely a gap here in this place where a woman had been killed to help Tiamat come through. Although a garage worker had been killed as well, there had been no feel of magic about his corpse, so his death was unlikely to have contributed to this gap — a smaller gap that I hadn’t noticed before despite frequent trips past.