Plague of the Shattered

by E. E. Holmes

  When did I become an enemy amongst my own sisterhood? What is to become of me?

  Eleanora

  15

  Accomplice

  FINN KEPT SEVERAL LONG STRIDES in front of me as we trudged back to the castle. Twice my feeling welled up into speech and I opened my mouth to shout at him, but both times the words died the instant they touched my lips. As we broke through the edge of the trees and onto the open lawn, Milo’s urgent, terrified voice battered itself against the inside of my head.

  “JESSICA! FOR FUCK’S SAKE, ANSWER ME!”

  I cried out and staggered back, clutching at my head. Finn spun around and jogged back to me, looking alarmed.

  “What is it? Jess? Is it a Shard?” he demanded.

  “No, it’s Milo!” I answered through gritted teeth. “Milo, stop shouting before my head explodes!”

  “I wouldn’t have to yell if you would just answer me!” Milo shot back, though much more quietly. “Where are you? Why couldn’t I connect? Were you blocking me?”

  “I’m fine, I’m fine. I just needed some air and some quiet. I closed up the connection for a few minutes, just so I could think,” I said, looking up at Finn and nodding, as though to say, “That’s the story and we’re sticking to it.” He nodded once, sharply.

  “Well, you picked a great moment to go rogue,” Milo said with mounting hysteria. “Come to the Grand Council Room right now. Something’s going on. They’ve called Hannah in for questioning. They won’t explain what’s happening.”

  “Questioning? About what?” I asked, starting to jog toward the castle, Finn on my heels.

  “They didn’t say!” Milo cried, and he sounded close to tears. “Two Caomhnóir just cornered her in the hallway and told her she was being summoned immediately for questioning and marched off with her. They actually held on to her arms, like she was a criminal or something!”

  “They did what?! Why the hell aren’t you with her?”

  Milo’s indignation broke over me like a tidal wave in my head. “I have been, but she asked me to blink out and contact you! I’m right where I’m supposed to be! You’re the one who vanished without letting us know where you were going!”

  “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I’m on my way. I’m almost to the front doors. Tell Hannah I’ll be right there.”

  Milo snapped out of the connection forcefully, twanging it like a rubber band and leaving me dizzy.

  “What is it? What’s happened?” Finn asked, catching up to me.

  “I’m not really sure yet,” I said breathlessly, breaking into a run now. “He said that the Council wants to question Hannah about something. They’re in the Grand Council Room.”

  “What the hell could they want to question her about?” Finn growled.

  “I have no idea, but if I know Hannah, she is freaking out right now,” I said. “Thank God she’s got Milo with her or she might Call half the dead residents of England out of sheer panic.”

  “Is the whole Airechtas present, or is it just the Council?” Finn asked.

  “I don’t know. He said the Council wanted to question her, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the clans might not be there.” I wrenched open the front door and barreled past the Caomhnóir guarding it.

  “Hey, what are you—” he began, starting after me.

  I spun to face him. “If you prevent me for one more second from going to my sister, I will fucking end you,” I spat at him. He was young, clearly a Novitiate, and probably a first year at that. Whatever he saw in my face made him take a hasty step back.

  “We… we have orders to monitor traffic through these doors,” he mumbled.

  “Well, keep monitoring them, then,” Finn said sharply. “To your post.”

  The boy—he really was just a boy—slunk back to his place by the door. Finn and I sprinted the length of the corridor and met a second set of Caomhnóir at the doors to the Grand Council Room.

  “My sister is in there,” I said, as calmly as I could. “I need to go in.”

  “Clan privilege,” Finn added on the heels of my words. “You cannot deny her entry. She has the right to witness any official questioning of her fellow clan member, per the Charter of Clan Rights.”

  I probably should have known what the Charter of Clan Rights was, but I didn’t, except for a vague memory of references to it in Celeste’s Durupinen History class. But to my utter surprise and relief, the Caomhnóir were obviously quite familiar with it, because they did not question me or demand further explanation. They simply nodded at Finn and then stood aside.

  The Grand Council Room was abuzz with conversation as I entered, but the sound quickly died out as the Council members realized who had walked in. The rest of the seats were empty except for a small group of spectators near the front. Marion was among them, along with several of her usual entourage. Hannah sat in a chair in the center of the room, a Caomhnóir standing at attention on either side of her, as though she were under arrest. Milo hovered just to the side of them, his expression twisted up with concern. The sound of my hurried footsteps made both he and Hannah turn.

  “Jess!” Hannah cried, and her face was glazed with tears. She tried to stand up, but one of the Caomhnóir placed a restraining hand on her shoulder and she sank back down again, dropping her face into her shaking hands.

  All of my fear and trepidation evaporated at the sight of Hannah’s tiny, sobbing figure. “What the hell is going on here?” I shouted. “Get your hands off her!”

  “Jessica, please calm down,” said a sharp voice, and I looked up to see Celeste on her feet.

  “I will not calm down!” I shot back. I skidded to a stop at Hannah’s side, elbowing past the Caomhnóir in my haste to reach her.

  The Caomhnóir started toward me, but Finn leapt between us. “Touch either one of them again, and I will make you very sorry, indeed,” he growled.

  Celeste stepped out from behind the podium and raised her hands, signaling for attention. “Everyone, please, there is no reason to—”

  “Celeste, I swear to God, if you tell me to calm down one more time without an explanation as to what is happening here, I am going to lose my shit,” I said.

  “Jessica, please refrain from such language. I cannot answer you if you will not allow me to,” Celeste said sternly. “We have convened a meeting of the Council in order to question your sister about the Shattering.”

  “Is there a reason that they’re here,” I pointed over at Marion and her cronies, “but you neglected to notify me?”

  “They are here because Council meetings are open to any Durupinen who want to attend. We did attempt to notify you. We’ve been looking for you all over the castle for the last half an hour. I believe several of our Caomhnóir are still looking, in fact,” Celeste said.

  “I… wasn’t in the castle,” I said lamely, caught off guard by the response. I felt the color rising to my cheeks. Damn it Jess, if you blush now you could ruin everything.

  “I had trouble tracking her down myself,” Finn said brusquely, swooping in when it was clear that I wasn’t going to whip up a brilliant cover story. “Despite my repeated reminders to her that I am to keep guard at all times because of the Shards, she still felt the need to slip off into the grounds to ‘get some air.’” Finn put air quotes around the last three words, injecting them with liberal amounts of disdain. “Fresh air was more important than her safety, it would seem,” he added.

  Several Council members smiled indulgently, clearly appreciating Finn’s apparent frustration with me. I threw him a dirty look, both because he deserved one, and because it would bolster his story.

  “So, while I was committing the atrocity of daring to take a walk, what exactly has my sister been accused of?” I asked, looking to Celeste for my answer.

  “She’s not being accused of anything,” Celeste said. She seemed to be willing me into calmness with the slow, soothing tone of her voice. “She is being questioned. That is all.”

  “They’re saying she had som
ething to do with the Shattered spirit,” Milo said, “which sounds a hell of a lot like an accusation to me.”

  I nudged Hannah over on her seat and perched myself on the edge of it, wrapping my arms around her and glaring fiercely up at Celeste. “Explain. Now.”

  Several Council members were murmuring words like, “disrespect” and “insolent tone,” but I ignored them, keeping my eyes on Celeste, who said, “I would be very happy to explain, if you would give me the chance to do so. We’ve just had a report from Mrs. Mistlemoore. At your suggestion, the Hosts in the hospital ward have been provided with paper and writing utensils, in order to determine if their scribbling motions would produce any viable clues. It was an excellent suggestion, Jessica, and we thank you for it. Once provided with the necessary materials, every single one of the Hosts produced page after page of the same words.”

  She reached down and pulled a piece of paper from a stack in front of her and handed it to a Caomhnóir who was positioned beside the podium. He carried it down the steps and thrust it out toward me. I snatched the paper from his hand and looked down at it.

  Over and over, line after line, the same five words:

  The Caller has betrayed me.

  I stared down at them, reading them again and again, as though by reading them I could will them to turn into other words—words that made sense.

  “What is this?” I asked blankly. “What is this supposed to mean?”

  “We do not know,” Celeste said. “That is why we invited your sister to meet with us.”

  “Oh, an invitation, huh? Is that what we’re calling it? Invitation implies a choice about whether or not to show up. That felt like an arrest to me,” Milo said sharply.

  Celeste furrowed her brow. “It was not meant to come across that way. I simply asked the Caomhnóir to find Hannah and escort her here to the Grand Council Room.”

  “Well then, maybe you should have a word with them about the meaning of the word ‘escort,’” Milo suggested. The Caomhnóir standing closest to him bristled but did not speak.

  I looked up at Celeste. “Celeste, you know what our experience with this Council has been. You know how our ‘invitations’ to this room have turned out.”

  Celeste grimaced. “Yes, I do, and I’m sorry. I would have come to fetch Hannah myself, but I was tied up in the hospital ward.”

  A Council member stood up, looking haughty. “It is not the duty of the Deputy Priestess to fetch people. This is a crisis. We need answers.”

  But Celeste put up a weary hand to silence the woman. “Thank you, Isla, but that is unnecessary and unproductive.”

  Isla, to whom I had never spoken in my life, but who I recognized as one of Marion’s inner circle, nodded but continued to glare at me.

  I glared right back at her before turning to Hannah. “Hannah, do you have any idea what this means?”

  Hannah shook her head, still trying to control her crying. “I h-have no idea. I haven’t C-Called anyone since I’ve been here. Oh wait, no, that’s not true. I Called those ghosts into Frankie’s room earlier today. But that can’t have anything to do with the Shattering, because it had already happened.”

  Celeste’s voice was kind and coaxing. “Think hard, Hannah. Is there any spirit at all that you’ve communicated with since you’ve arrived here?”

  Hannah furrowed her brow. “I… I mean, of course I’ve said hello to them, in passing. No one has contacted me for help, though.”

  “There was a full moon the night before your arrival. Did anything unusual happen at your lunar Crossing?” Celeste pressed.

  “I don’t think so,” Hannah said. “Jess, do you remember anything?”

  I shook my head. “No. It was normal. Shorter than normal, actually. No spirits even made contact beforehand. It was a pretty quiet week all around, until we came here and all hell broke loose.”

  “You can understand our confusion, Hannah,” Celeste said. “The Shattering happened here in the castle, and you are the only Caller at Fairhaven. There must be a connection somehow.”

  Hannah shrugged, looking bewildered. “I have no idea what it is. I’m sorry Celeste, but these words make no sense to me.”

  Keira leaned forward, clasping her hands in front of her. “No one blames you for mistrusting the Council, Hannah,” she said, and it was clear she was endeavoring to keep her tone sympathetic. “We all know that our decisions toward you have not been fair in the past. Many of those decisions were motivated by fear and misunderstanding. But is it possible that your mistrust is preventing you from telling us the truth right now?”

  Hannah’s eyes widened. “No. No, of course not.”

  Keira looked at Celeste, who sighed before turning to Hannah.

  “It is my duty at this point to remind you that lying to this Council is a crime under our by-laws,” Celeste said quietly.

  “I’m not lying!” Hannah cried, her eyes filling with tears again.

  I stood up; every inch of me seemed to be vibrating with suppressed rage. “My sister is not a liar.”

  “No one is calling her a liar, Jessica,” Celeste said, a warning in her voice. “But fear is a powerful motivator, and if Hannah is afraid to answer us truthfully—”

  “If Hannah is afraid to answer you truthfully, it is your own damn fault!” I shouted. “She should never have to answer to anyone in this room ever again after what happened to her. You want to talk about fear being a powerful motivator; you should all look in the mirror! Every one of you sat there three years ago and let your fear drive us to the brink of destruction! Don’t you dare talk to us about fear! Don’t you dare talk to us about honesty within these walls!”

  That was the line, and I’d crossed it. A general outcry rose from the Council benches as well as the knot of spectators. All around us, angry voices rose in response to my words. The Caomhnóir on either side of us shifted their postures as though awaiting an order to seize us. Finn, in turn, took a decisive step closer to Hannah and me, so that I could feel his physical presence directly behind me. The only person who appeared unconcerned was Fiona, who was shaking her head and laughing as she picked dried paint from underneath her fingernails.

  “I request a call for order,” Celeste shouted over the noise. She was looking all around for the gavel Siobhán had used in the first session of the Airechtas, but couldn’t seem to locate it. “This behavior is out of keeping with Council guidelines.”

  The words, “Fuck your guidelines!” were halfway out of my mouth when Hannah laid her small, cool hand on top of mine and silenced them. I looked over at her. She had stopped crying. Her expression was determined.

  “Permission to speak,” Hannah called over the commotion, and I heard her master the tremor in her voice.

  At that moment, Celeste found the gavel inside the podium and hammered it upon the wood several times, silencing everyone in the room. “Permission granted, Hannah, although this is not a formal session. It will quickly turn into a formal session, however,” she called warningly over her shoulder to the benches, “if we cannot maintain order and civility.” She turned back to us and let her eyes linger on me for a moment, a silent warning. I bit my tongue.

  “I understand why you have all called me here. I am happy to help in any way that I can. I already offered my abilities to search for Shards within the castle, and I will continue to cooperate in whatever capacity you can use me. That said, I am telling you the truth. I do not know who the Shattered spirit is. I don’t know what these words mean. I cannot force you to believe me. I can only promise you that I am not misleading you out of fear or mistrust—or any other motivation, for that matter.”

  “Not that I’m any kind of expert, but it’s my understanding,” Fiona said from the back row, “that these Shards are in a state of profound confusion. Is that correct, Mrs. Mistlemoore?”

  “Yes, it is,” replied Mrs. Mistlemoore, who had thus far been silent. She had deep purple rings under her eyes.

  “And so, it would be reasona
ble to suppose,” Fiona went on, still picking away at her fingers, “that the information and clues we gather from these Shards may be a load of tosh?”

  Mrs. Mistlemoore cleared her throat. “The things they say will arise from their state of confusion, if that’s what you mean.”

  “What I mean,” Fiona said, looking up at last, “is that we have no idea what this spirit is referencing. Certainly, it could be talking about Hannah. But why do we assume this? True, she is the only Caller in this castle at the moment. But what spirit lives in the present? Most of them live in the past. This spirit could have lived a hundred, even a thousand years ago. Why do we assume then that this spirit is speaking of a Caller who is alive and in the castle right now?”

  People were shifting in their seats and trading looks.

  Fiona continued. “It’s been my experience that spirits fixate on the circumstances surrounding their deaths. Maybe this spirit died at the hands of a Caller, or perhaps as the result of a Caller’s actions. Hannah, have you murdered anyone since arriving here three days ago?”

  Hannah looked startled, then cleared her throat. “Uh, no. No, I haven’t.”

  Keira rolled her eyes. “Fiona, no one is suggesting that Hannah killed anyone.”

  “But you are accusing this poor girl of something devious, even though you’ve no clear reason for doing so!” Fiona shot back.

  “We’re not accusing—”

  “Then what the bloody hell is she doing here? Why not just sit her down with Mrs. Mistlemoore in the hospital ward and hash it all out? Why do we have to make a show of power just to let the poor girl answer a few questions?” she asked. “Why are you dragging me down from my work to victimize her? And why the bloody hell did we let them in here, circling like vultures hoping for a fresh carcass?” She cocked her thumb over at Marion and her group of spectators, all of whom had gone stonily silent.

  “It’s how things are done,” Isla said with dignity.

  “Well, how things are done is rubbish,” Fiona replied.