by E. E. Holmes
The emotion nearly choked the words off, and I could feel the tears fighting their way to my eyes, despite my fierce efforts to resist them. It was this, perhaps that made Olivia sink quietly back into her chair. I was quite sure she’d never seen her big brother cry once in her entire life.
“They’ll never let you,” Olivia said at last. “Seamus would flay you alive if he caught the two of you together. You’d lose every privilege you have. You’d probably never see the outside of Skye Príosún again.”
“I know, but I’ve got to risk it, Liv. Please.”
“How? How would you possibly pull it off?” Olivia asked, her voice cracking now.
“I don’t know, that’s why I need your help. I’ve never been to this estate where they’re holding the wedding reception. Do you know anything about it? Have you ever seen it?”
Olivia nodded. “Yes, I’ve been there twice now, once for a tour with the other bridesmaids and once for a tasting.”
“Well, can you think of anywhere you might have seen on the property, some outbuilding or something that we could use to meet?”
Olivia thought for a moment, then shook her head. “There’s nothing close enough to the main house. They aren’t using the grounds for the reception, and Jess would have to cross half an acre of open gardens before she got to any groundskeeper’s sheds. She’d be spotted.”
“What about the garages?” I asked.
Again, Olivia shook her head. “They’re closer, but they’ll be crawling with valets. The kitchen entrance is right there as well, so staff will be coming in and out.”
I ran my hands through my hair, trying both to think and to stave off the feeling that this was all going to be impossible.
“Wait,” Olivia said. “There might be another way, inside the main house.”
“Inside? Liv, surely every inch of the place will be crawling with…”
“Not the top floor,” she replied. “There’s a whole floor that’s off-limits to the public during events, but they showed us on the tour—just as a point of interest. There’s a hidden staircase in the ladies’ powder room off the main entrance hall and it leads up to a whole hallway of old servants’ quarters.”
“And there’s no one up there? No staff or anything?” I asked, feeling the tiniest of sparks of excitement igniting in the pit of my stomach.
“None, as far I could tell. They don’t use it for anything now. It’s like an attic,” Olivia insisted, folding her arms across her chest, smiling smugly as though she’d just bested me in a round of chess.
“Do you think you could find a way to get Jess to meet me there during the reception?” I asked.
“Will you be able to get away? You’ll be on duty, won’t you?” Olivia asked, looking skeptical.
“We have a rotating break schedule. It’s standard protocol. All the men will need to eat at some point, so they’ll stagger our dinner breaks. I can slip away during mine, beg off to the loo or something,” I said.
“How will I know what your schedule will be?” Olivia asked.
“I’ll find a way to let you know, don’t worry,” I said. “Does that mean you’ll do it?”
Olivia bit her lip. “I’m still furious with you!” she hissed.
“I understand that. You can be furious with me for the rest of your life, if it suits you. I won’t complain. But please, Liv. Please do this for me.”
She jiggled her knee rapidly, arms still crossed, face still knotted up as her anger and her love warred with each other. Finally, she let out a sound that was half-sigh and half-groan. “All right! All right, I’ll do it. But Finn, know this, I will not take any unnecessary risks for you. If it looks like I might be caught, or if anything goes wrong, I’m going to walk away, and I’ll deny this ever happened, do you understand me? Clan Gonachd will not sustain any more damage on your account, not if I can help it.”
“I can’t ask for more than that,” I said. “Thank you, Liv. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”
“You can keep your thanks, I don’t want them,” she snapped, replacing her sunglasses and rising abruptly from her chair. She snatched her purse from the table and pointed to the undrunk cup of tea and the scone. “You’ll handle that, of course,” she said.
I smirked. “Of course.”
“What’s this then, Carey?” a voice called from behind me.
I turned to see Jensen and Knox loping up the pavement toward us, their faces alight with knowing smiles. I swore under my breath.
“All right, lads?” I asked, trying to smile back.
“So, who’s this then, Carey? Surely, you couldn’t have charmed a complete stranger into a date in less than half an hour?” Knox jeered.
“Oh, I don’t know, she don’t look that charmed to me, to be honest,” Jensen said, grinning. “All right, darlin’?”
“You must be a right prat, Carey, meeting her here,” Knox added. “We all know how you landed on Skye. What’s to stop us from alerting the superiors that you’re still breaking the Code of Conduct right under their noses?”
I stood up, but it was Olivia who surged forward, Olivia who pulled off her sunglasses and gave them a vicious glare which, by all rights, ought to have melted them where they stood. “I’m his sister, you knuckle-dragging cretins,” she spat at them. “And unless you’d like me to lodge a formal complaint with your Commander about your behavior on leave, you’ll sod off and find another female to harass with your pathetic slavering.”
“This isn’t Fairhaven, love,” Knox replied, his face clouding over. “You won’t find the kind of bowing and scraping you’re accustomed to in your cozy little castle, not out here on this rock.”
Olivia gave him a look of pure disdain. “Well, then, that explains why you’ve been left here to rot on your precious ‘rock,’ now, doesn’t it?”
She turned to me. “Take care of yourself, Finn.” And with a curt nod at me and one last, withering look at Knox and Jensen, she stormed off, leaving, as she often did, a loaded silence in her wake.
§
Oddly enough, it was Olivia’s presence on Skye that first clued me in that something was amiss amongst the ranks at the príosún. It started that afternoon on leave, as we sat in the pub, trading rounds of pints and trying to forget where we were. Knox, Jenson, and Wells were griping back and forth, lamenting their lot in being stuck where they were. This I was used to; resentment was thick in the air at Skye, which was no surprise. But as I listened, the conversation took an odd turn.
“…where they get off talking to us like that. Like we don’t put our bloody lives on the line every day keeping them safe.” Knox was saying.
“They don’t know the half of it. What if we just stopped doing our jobs, eh? Just opened up the cells and let all those Necromancers out? They’d stop their sneering right quick, wouldn’t they?” Wells roared.
“Christ, keep it down, Wells,” West said, slapping Wells on the arm. “The Code of Secrecy, mate…”
“Hang the Code of Secrecy!” Wells replied, wiping his mouth and signaling the barkeep for another round. “Hang the Code of Conduct. Hang the whole bloody system.”
“Hang it all,” Jensen agreed in slurred tones.
“I reckon Carey knows what I’m talking about don’t you, mate?” Wells shouted, raising his glass to me from across the bar. “He’s been screwed good and proper by the Code of Conduct, haven’t you? I reckon you’d like to tell a few Durupinen where they can shove their bollocking rules and codes, wouldn’t ya?”
“Nah, not Carey,” Jensen said with a dismissive laugh. “He’s still half in love with one, isn’t he? I bet he’d lay right down and beg if she asked him to.”
I kept my head down and refused to engage, though I’d have loved nothing more than to properly introduce both of their faces to my right hook. I’d seen them in sparring practice and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I’d have them both out cold on the pub floor before they could remember how to make a fist, and that was when the
y were sober. To do it when they were pissed like this wouldn’t have been sportsmanlike, even if it would have been enjoyable.
“I reckon Booker’s got the right idea, after all,” Knox went on, bored with my lack of reply. “I reckon we ought to see what he’s on about, don’t you think?”
“What about Booker?” West asked. “What’s this load of tosh, then?”
“Booker don’t think we should take it lying down. He says we could band together… fight back,” Knox replied in a ridiculous stage whisper.
“Fight back against who?” West asked, chuckling.
“The system,” Knox replied, nodding his head seriously, but spoiling the effect by belching.
“Yeah, okay,” West said, rolling his eyes. “Good luck with that, mate.”
“Don’t get all high and mighty with me, Westingbrook,” Knox said, firing up and sneering his way through West’s full surname. “You think Booker’s full of shite? You ought to listen to what he’s got to say. He’s got ears to the ground, mate. He’s heard some things that would make you stop and think why you tolerate your lot the way you do.”
“Booker’s a prat and so are you,” West said dismissively. “Keep your head down and that big mouth shut, Knox, before you find yourself in a cell instead of guarding them.”
“I might take me chances,” Knox muttered, taking a swig from his fresh pint. “You ought to listen the next time you make your rounds, West. Seems the best ideas are coming from inside the cells these days.”
“Ah, piss off,” West said, and slid off his stool, laughing and shaking his head.
“What’s Knox on about?” I asked as West came to sit down beside me.
“Ah, don’t listen to him, he’s pissed.”
“But what was he saying about Booker?” I pressed. “He’s one of the deputy Commanders, isn’t he?”
“That’s right,” West said. “You haven’t had to interact with him much, have you? He handles disciplinary action, mostly, and you’ve been a proper angel since you got here.” West chuckled good-naturedly. “Yeah, Booker’s a real bitter type. Rumor is he got sent here for abandoning his post with his pledged clan. Not sure what happened, or if it’s true. Anyway, he’s got a real sore spot when it comes to the Durupinen, especially the Council. I reckon he bad-mouths them a fair bit.”
“Bad-mouths the Council?” I asked, eyebrows raised. “And he’s in leadership? How does that work?”
“Out here, it don’t matter much,” West said, shrugging. “We don’t have much occasion to interact with the Council, or Durupinen at all, for that matter. Booker is good at what he does, which is whipping troops into shape, so if he’s a bit… well, hostile, what does it matter?”
“Whipping them into shape for what, though?” I asked. “If it’s not to reform themselves and better serve the clans, what’s it all for?”
West shrugged again, clearly undisturbed by the turn the conversation had taken. “Dunno. You want another?” he asked, nodding at my nearly empty pint.
“No, I’m all right. Cheers, mate,” I said, and he slumped off to the bar, leaving me with my own thoughts.
§
Knox had planted the seed in my mind, and I now began to view my environment through an entirely different lens. Certain patterns began to emerge, and I filed them away with increasing concern. The way the men talked about Durupinen, for example, began to leap out to me. More and more, I would pick up on comments and jokes, and the tone was far more troublesome than anything I’d ever heard in the barracks back at Fairhaven. I also noticed that, over the weeks, the most vocal of these men seemed to be assigned, more and more, to the highest security Necromancer wards. This struck me as odd. When I had first arrived, the rotation through the wards had been fairly regular, but increasingly, we seemed to have settled into smaller spheres of duty. Knox, Wells, and Jensen, I noticed, were regularly assigned together and to the same few wards. When I mentioned it to West, he shrugged it off as he did most things.
“What does it matter?” he said, barely taking his eyes off of his steak and kidney pie. “The less I have to deal with the Necromancer scum in those wards, the better, I say. Let them lot deal with it.”
But all I could think about was what Knox had said at the pub: “The best ideas are coming from inside the cells these days.” If any Caomhnóir could find common ground with a Necromancer, he wasn’t one I trusted to be in charge of them.
The next thing I noticed—and it raised my hackles at once—was an increase in transfers of Necromancer prisoners. All of a sudden, more and more, I was seeing them being led from their cell blocks to the interrogation rooms or the Commander’s wing. I’d have thought nothing of it six months ago—perhaps a recent breakthrough in Tracker investigations meant they were needed for more questioning. And yet, I saw no Trackers on the premises during these transfers. I wondered if my isolation at Skye was making me paranoid, and yet, I could not shake my increasing concerns. It felt like nearly every day, I saw or heard something that sent alarm bells jangling away inside my head.
One night in early May, I was finishing up my shift in one of the high-security spirit wards. Truth be told, I hated working the spirit wards. The prisoners didn’t need to sleep, and so their moans, pleas, and rants were nearly incessant. It was a brutal place to be assigned a double, and I had a pounding headache that night as I descended the staircase on my way back to the bunks, thinking only of taking two paracetamol and falling face-first into my pillow. The pain in my head was so bad that I almost didn’t notice the open door. I would have walked right past it, if Booker hadn’t appeared.
The door led, I knew, to a lecture hall used for occasional trainings. As I rounded the corner to the landing, Booker marched up from the lower half of the staircase and slipped into the room, giving me a curt nod and closing the door behind him. Before he had closed it, though, I caught a glimpse of what was happening inside: a darkened room, a group of perhaps a half-dozen Caomhnóir, candles, a Circle upon the floor. As the door shut, one of the men looked up, and I locked eyes with Knox. Then the door had closed, the handle had latched, and I was left alone on the landing with nothing but the lingering smell of burning sage in my nostrils and a litany of questions running through my mind. Not wanting to draw attention to myself, I continued down the staircase, my formerly exhausted brain now wide awake and reeling.
Caomhnóir were regularly drilled in the practicing of Castings, but not at two o’clock in the morning, and not by Booker, who was not in charge of training, and anyway, there were no trainings on the official schedule until Thursday next. I also knew that Knox was supposed to be in bed at the moment, having worked the previous shift, according to the schedule. What the bugger was going on?
All hope of sleep now gone, I proceeded not to my bed, but to the assignment board outside of the Commanders’ offices. Carefully, I read through the full schedule of shift assignments and activities for the day, noting the changes that had been made in red pen since I’d last looked at it, which indicated swaps or sick leave. As I had suspected, no trainings were being held anywhere in the príosún that night, and Knox was not currently on shift.
Next, I hurried back to the bunks, where an official sign-in was posted. Every time we finished a work shift and were signing in for a sleep shift, we had to sign the log, which was then verified by the shift Commanders at the time of shift change. There on the log, was Knox’s name, meaning he was supposed to be in bed. I scanned the list and slipped into the dormitory, making note of the empty beds. I reconfirmed them against the posted list and found seven beds were empty that were supposed to be occupied, Wells and Jensen among them. And the initials of the Commander who had accounted for them all? Booker.
I stood there for a moment, unsure of what to do. Every instinct I had was screaming at me that something wasn’t right, but how ought I to proceed? Surely the top of the command chain—people like Eamon Laird—would want to be alerted if shifts were being improperly regulated? Perhaps he even k
new about it, and could offer a rational explanation as to what I had seen? I decided to retreat to my bunk, see what time the missing Caomhnóir returned, and go see Eamon in the morning, when he was sure to be in his office.
I took the pain-killers for my headache, but sleep did not follow. I lay in my bed, my entire body tensed, my eyes staring up at the ceiling, waiting for the sounds of boots. About an hour later, the door opened and all seven of the missing Caomhnóir returned to their bunks together, whispering to each other. I could not make out a word of their conversation, but found it telling that they returned as a group. When I got up in the morning and checked the log, not a single trace appeared that any of them had been absent from the dormitory for any length of time. On paper, they’d all been in bed for the duration of the night. My mind made up, I stopped in the mess hall to force down my portion of breakfast, and then made straight for the Commander’s offices.
I found Eamon at his desk, head bent over a pile of papers, a pencil clamped tightly between his teeth. When I knocked on his open door, he looked up and let the pencil fall into his hand.
“Carey?”
“Yes, sir. I wonder if I might have a word?”
“If you must. Come in, then.”
I entered the office, but my nerves would not allow me to sit. “Sir, I noticed something a bit odd last night, and I felt it my duty to bring it up to you, in the interest of security.”
Eamon put down his pencil, scowling at me. “Is that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, go on then, Carey. Let’s have it.”
And I explained, in as much detail as I could, what I had seen on my way down from the spirit ward, and also the inconsistencies in the logs and shift reports. Eamon listened to me with a completely impassive face, betraying so little reaction that I might have been giving my report to a statue rather than a living, breathing Commander.