Honour Bound

by Helen Harper

  ‘Speck estimates your chances of winning the entire Games at around 0.5 percent,’ Brochan said quietly.

  I sank down into the nearest chair. ‘Shite.’

  From nowhere, Bob drew out a miniature violin and launched into an impressive rendition of Barber’s ‘Adagio for Strings’. I couldn’t tell if he was any good but Brochan seemed impressed. ‘It’s a shame the wee one’s not Sidhe.’

  Bob halted mid-note and glared. ‘Who are you calling wee?’

  ‘I’ve known taller leprechauns,’ I told him. I rubbed my eyes. ‘There has to be something I can do.’

  The genie snapped his fingers. ‘There is!’

  ‘I am not going to make a wish.’

  He nodded solemnly. ‘You can’t. But…’

  A kernel of suspicion formed in my belly. ‘But what?’

  Bob put his hands behind his back and acted bashful, his foot tracing a pattern on top of the table. ‘Leprechauns,’ he said.

  I was puzzled. ‘What about them? Because even if they are musical, we’ll never track one down in time.’

  ‘Leprechauns are Irish.’ He beamed at Brochan and me as if he’d just discovered the secret of alchemy.

  ‘Bob,’ I said, ‘you must be all of – what? A thousand years old?’

  He patted his cheeks. ‘I look young for my age. It’s closer to two.’

  ‘Fabulous,’ I replied drily. ‘You’re two thousand years old and you’ve only just discovered that leprechauns are Irish. Impressive.’

  ‘You can tease me all you like, Uh Integrity. It’s not going to change the fact that I can save your Sidhe bacon.’ He flew onto my shoulder and picked up a lock of my hair. ‘I told you you’d need me.’

  ‘Do you have short-term memory loss? I can’t make any wishes. It’ll nullify any chances I have of winning the Games.’

  He yanked so hard on the curl that I yelped in pain. I reached up to brush him off but he danced out of my grasp and settled on the top of my head. Two tiny feet began to stamp into my skull in a continuous, drumming beat. It didn’t hurt but it wasn’t improving my mood.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ I asked Brochan.

  The merman’s face had taken on the most peculiar expression. It wasn’t helped by his eyes starting to stream because of his proximity to Bob. Poor Brochan was allergic. ‘Riverdance, I think.’ He wiped his eyes.

  Bob swung over my forehead, hanging upside down and waving. ‘Ireland is the answer!’

  I growled and tried to grab him again. He disappeared in a puff of bright green smoke, reappearing on the tip of Brochan’s ear. The merman sneezed three times in quick succession but Bob didn’t react; he just crossed his legs and smiled. ‘I will do what I have never done.’

  Resigned to the situation, I blew air out through my pursed lips and glared. ‘What?’

  ‘I will accept an IOU.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘IOU. I realise you are not the most intelligent Sidhe, Uh Integrity.’ He leaned down, whispering loudly to Brochan, ‘Sharp as a sack of wet mice. An IOU is…’

  ‘I know what an IOU is.’

  ‘Then what’s the problem?’ He blinked innocently.

  ‘You’ll help Integrity out if she promises to make another wish,’ Brochan said.

  ‘A pot of leprechaun gold to the man with the runny nose!’ Bob applauded noisily. He lifted an eyebrow in my direction. ‘Well?’

  ‘I promise to ask for a wish in the future and you’ll help me become musical?’

  ‘I won’t make you musical but I’ll tell you where to get the equipment you need to pass the test.’ His brow furrowed. ‘Or win the challenge. Or whatever.’

  ‘Equipment?’

  ‘Magical equipment which even you could play.’

  I met Brochan’s eyes. ‘That doesn’t sound so bad.’ The ‘future’ could be an eternity.

  ‘Just one caveat,’ Bob chirped. ‘You have to make the wish within the next six months.’

  Bugger. ‘Can I think about it?’ Although it sounded like a brilliant idea, everyone knew that asking a genie for wishes would only end in disaster. I’d already made one and it had almost led to me having my head lopped off by the Bull when I’d been transported into his quarters on the back of a poorly conceived desire.

  Bob shrugged. ‘Okay.’ Ten seconds later, he pulled up his cuff and gazed at his watch. ‘Time’s up!’

  ‘Do you have a better idea?’ Brochan asked me. ‘Because however bad you sound to yourself, Tegs, you sound a million times worse to an audience.’

  I muttered a curse under my breath. ‘Fine.’

  Bob beamed. ‘Say the words.’

  ‘I’m probably going to regret this.’ I looked at him. ‘If I win the Artistry challenge, I promise to make my second wish. Alright?’

  Bob made a face. ‘No, this is not contingent on success. I’m not having my life’s goals disrupted because you’re an idiot. You either promise or you don’t. There’s nothing in between.’

  I gritted my teeth in defeat. ‘I promise.’

  There was a tiny clap of thunder. Bob jumped up in the air, hovering for a second with his arms stretched upwards. ‘Hurray!’ He executed a perfect somersault. ‘Best decision you’ve ever made.’

  Somehow I doubted that. ‘Go on. What information do you have?’

  ‘Dagda.’

  ‘What the hell? That doesn’t mean anything!’

  ‘Man.’ He shook his head. ‘You really are the poster child for contraception, aren’t you? Dagda? The ancient Irish hero?’

  I folded my arms. ‘Never heard of her.’

  ‘Him.’ Bob rolled his eyes. ‘Women aren’t heroes.’

  ‘That’s it! I’m going to melt down your damn letter opener at the nearest smithy.’

  ‘Women are heroines, Uh Integrity.’ He wagged his finger at me like a disapproving teacher. ‘Get your grammar right.’

  If the genie lived to the end of the day, it would be a miracle. ‘Who was Dagda?’

  ‘Ugly guy. Great long beard which used to get in his way all the time. There was food stuck in there for…’

  ‘Bob,’ I warned.

  He threw up his arms. ‘Fine, fine. Anyway, it’s not really Dagda you want ‒ he’s been dead for five hundred years. What you seek is his harp, Uaithne.’

  ‘If I can’t play the triangle, I’m hardly going to be able to play a harp.’

  Bob shook his head. ‘This is a special harp. Play Dagda’s harp – even just one note – and you’re almost guaranteed to win the challenge. I can’t account for the Sidhe, mind, but I know the harp.’

  ‘One note?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And this harp is in Ireland?’ I tried to calculate. We could take the nearest ferry and be there the next day. It was definitely doable. And surely even I would be able to play a single note.

  ‘Ah, well, to be sure, to be sure, it’s an Irish harp which belongs in Ireland,’ Bob said with an affected Irish lilt.

  ‘But?’

  He shrugged nonchalantly and flicked Brochan’s ear. The merman growled and tried to throw him off. ‘But the Fomori stole it a while back. They’re not interested in it these days though, so it’s shoved in a cellar in a back street in Glasgow.’

  My jaw dropped open. ‘In Glasgow. In the Lowlands? Beyond the Veil?’

  Bob nodded. ‘Yes!’

  ‘Where the Fomori demons are and no other living person has set foot for three hundred years because if they do they’ll be slaughtered into a bloody mess of bones and sinew and torn flesh?’

  ‘That’s not strictly true…’ Bob’s voice trailed away when he saw my expression. ‘Yeah, okay. Pretty much.’

  Well crapadoodle.

  Chapter Four

  ‘Isn’t this taking things a little too far?’ Taylor asked as we stood in front of the Veil, staring at its dark cloudy expanse. It stretched the entire length of the country, from the North Sea on one side to the Atlantic Ocean on the other, blocking off the Lowlands from
anyone who wasn’t a demon. It had been this way since the Fissure in 1745 so goodness only knew what was on the other side. Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t another soul in sight. Few people ventured this close to the Veil on purpose.

  My stomach was churning and I worried that I was going to heave up my guts right onto Taylor’s feet. Bolts of lightning lit up the darkness from time to time, just in case anyone wasn’t already fully aware of the dangers of the Veil.

  ‘Look on the bright side,’ I said. ‘The Fomori won’t be expecting me.’

  ‘That’s not very comforting. Whoever your father was, I doubt he’d be impressed at you dying to win back the Adair Lands.’

  I was silent for a moment. The truth was, none of us had any idea what would have impressed my father. Since the day I’d seen a vision of him in the grove at the Cruaich, however, the thought of him had been gnawing away at me. I set foot upon this course months ago; I wasn’t going to back down just because it was a little bit scary. Or a lot scary.

  ‘You know,’ I said softly, ‘those lands are very close to here. My father probably saw the Veil on a regular basis. He might even have stood on this very spot.’

  ‘Your father is dead,’ Taylor said.

  I turned to him. ‘He died because of the Sidhe, not the Fomori. I can do this.’

  ‘You don’t even know if the bloody genie is right about the harp.’

  Actually, I had the feeling that despite Bob’s posturing he really wanted me to succeed. I shrugged.

  ‘You should take him in there with you. At least then if you need to make a wish to save yourself…’

  I shook my head. ‘No. I’ve already committed myself to one wish. I’m not going to bring him along and be tempted to say the words while I’m under pressure. What if it went wrong and I wished myself out and the wish made the Veil disappear? I could be responsible for the Fomori taking over all of Scotland, not just the Lowlands.’

  ‘If they wanted to do that,’ Taylor said, ‘they probably would have done it already.’

  I sighed. ‘You know what I’m saying.’

  He squeezed my shoulder. ‘I do. And I see that you’re committed to this course.’ He heaved a breath. ‘To be honest, I almost did this when I was younger. Crossed the Veil, I mean. It wasn’t for a good reason like yours, though.’ He looked rueful. ‘I’m no honourable Sidhe.’

  ‘Really?’

  He nodded. ‘There are tales of a lot of riches on the other side. And I wanted to be a hero.’

  ‘What stopped you?’

  He gave a crooked smile. ‘In the end, I was too frightened.’

  I smiled back. ‘I’m pretty damn terrified myself.’

  ‘Yeah. But you’re Integrity Adair. You’ll be fine.’

  I pursed my lips. I’d been Integrity Taylor for so long that hearing him call me something else jarred. ‘I’ll always be a Taylor too,’ I told him.

  His expression grew serious. ‘I know.’

  I wrapped my arms tightly round his thickening waist. ‘I might be doing this for my biological father,’ I whispered, ‘but you’ve been my real father.’

  Taylor jerked back. ‘Don’t you dare.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This is not a suicide mission. You are not going to die and you are not saying goodbye. Don’t you dare talk as if you are.’

  ‘Okay.’

  He glared at me. ‘I mean it.’

  ‘Sure.’ I nodded. ‘I’m just going for a stroll and a bit of shopping and I’ll be back before you know it.’ I tried not to notice the way his eyes glistened.

  Taylor raised a hand. ‘Happy travels. I’ll be right here when you get back.’

  I filled my lungs, breathing in the fresh Scottish Highland air. The faint scent of heather clung to the back of my throat. This was my home and I’d be back soon.

  ‘See you,’ I said quietly. And I pivoted and plunged in.

  My skin prickled with a thousand shots of pain. Individually, each one felt like nothing more than a light pinch but, combined, they made my whole body judder. It felt as if my very bones were crackling. Holding my breath, and keeping my head down, I forced my way forward. I was already starting to regret trying this. I squeezed my eyes shut. Come on, Integrity. Come on. I pushed ahead, one foot after the other.

  The relief when I passed through the barrier of the Veil was overwhelming. I rubbed my hands up and down my arms, trying to rid myself of the last of the painful tingling, and looked around. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting but if I’d thought about it, it would have been pretty much like this. The sky was dark grey and the ground underfoot didn’t contain any evidence of plant life. In fact, there wasn’t evidence of life anywhere. The earth was hard and compacted and, while I could still see evidence of the Scotland I knew with its dark hills and mountains, this was a scarred and troubled landscape.

  The one good thing was that I knew exactly where I was going. I’d chosen my entry point carefully as the nearest point from the Veil to what had once been Glasgow. I had less than fifteen miles to cross before I reached the fringes of the city. If I kept up a good pace and didn’t have to hide to avoid any Fomori, I’d be there in less than three hours. I adjusted my watch and set the stopwatch to keep track of time – who knew how things worked in this part of the world – and set off.

  There wasn’t a trail as such but it didn’t matter. The ground was so hard that I could have been running on concrete. There weren’t any roots or holes to avoid and though the air was both clammier and staler than that which I’d left behind, it didn’t hamper my progress.

  I kept going in a straight line, looking for anything which suggested life ‒ or danger. There were no lights, no creatures and no demons. Perhaps all the Fomori eschewed a rural life and were city dwellers; if so, they were city dwellers who enjoyed the dark. Before too long I could make out the shapes of the buildings in Glasgow but there wasn’t a single light to illuminate them.

  Unlike Aberdeen – or even Oban – the structures were low-lying. The Fomori hadn’t spent the last three hundred years matching the rest of the world’s bid to create cloud-reaching skyscrapers. When I reached the edges of the city, it was even clearer that this was a place caught in a time warp. I half expected William Wallace himself to come charging out from the ramshackle stone houses, kilt flying up around him and swinging a vast broadsword in my direction. There was nothing. The city was as silent as the countryside had been.

  Warier now, I slowed to a walk. I’d memorised Bob’s directions so I knew exactly where to go. He’d assured me that his information was accurate as of 1923. Considering that was close to a century ago, it wasn’t the most comforting thing to hear. Bob had been with an English lord who wanted to woo his new bride and whose wish had thrown up Dagda’s harp to help him. Needless to say, things hadn’t turned out very happily for the lord and the harp ended up staying exactly where it was. When I’d pressed Bob for more details, he’d given an enigmatic shrug and suggested I could wish for the information if I really wanted to know. Genies. Honestly.

  My slower pace meant that I noticed more of what was around me. The buildings, which were growing in number and density, might have been simple and covered in a sticky dark mould which I was far too sensible to touch, but their craftsmanship was obvious. Abandoned or not, they were built to last. It was difficult to avoid the sense of history which imbued the atmosphere; the tragic fate of all those who’d lived here prior to the Fissure left me feeling empty.

  It felt as if I’d been walking for hours. I was starting to wonder whether the entire race of Fomori demons had died out and no one had noticed because no one ever came here, when something from the interior of one of the buildings caught my eye. I didn’t want to make a detour – I didn’t want to spend more time here than was absolutely necessary – but my curiosity was too strong. For all I knew, I was the only non-horned being to have been here in centuries. The least I could do was to get a proper idea of what the Lowlands were really like. I owed al
l those lost souls that much.

  Stepping over a broken oak door which had fallen off its hinges and was lying across the threshold, I tiptoed carefully inside. I didn’t have to go far to see what had attracted my attention. Etched into the wall was a name. I squinted at it through the half-light: Matthew MacBain.

  I hadn’t felt cold before but I certainly did now. I had no idea who Matthew MacBain was but the MacBains were one of the remaining twenty-four Clans. Did the graffiti mean that he had wandered through here from the Highlands like I had? And if he had, what had happened to him?

  The letters were crude, as if carved out of the stone with a blunt instrument. I reached out with my finger and traced them. ‘Who were you?’ I whispered.

  I turned my head and looked further into the gloom of the house. If I went much further from the door, the dim light would vanish. Outside remained as silent as before. I was completely alone and, because I was inside, completely concealed from any dark demon eyes. I pulled out my phone and turned it on so I could use its light to look around properly. Not surprisingly, there was no signal. No matter: I wasn’t about to chat to anyone or update my Facebook page with my current location.

  Now that I could see better, I noticed a dark patch trailing down from Matthew MacBain’s name. Frowning, I leaned forward and sniffed. All I could smell was damp but the patch looked suspiciously like old, dried blood. I sidestepped to examine it from a different angle – and tripped over something on the floor. My feet flew out from underneath me and I landed with a heavy thud, expelling the air from my lungs.

  When I looked at what I’d stumbled on, I threw myself backwards, my heart racing.

  It was a skeleton. Scraps of flesh and a few rags still clung to the bones but it had obviously been here for a long time. I reminded myself to breathe, my hand rising to my chest until my pulse began to calm. Then I went back to look more closely.

  Physiologically, humans and Sidhe were almost the same and my knowledge of biology wasn’t extensive enough to tell the difference between them. Even so, I bet that this was poor Matthew. When I spotted the signet ring on his third finger, I knew for sure: it was engraved with the MacBain crest.