The Web (Fianna Trilogy Book 2)

by Megan Chance

  The idea of it was tempting, and that was dangerous. But as long as there was nothing more than sleeping . . .

  “All right.” The ship pitched. I had trouble keeping my footing as I made my way toward where I thought he was.

  His hand brushed my arm. “Here,” he said, pulling me down onto rough burlap. He brought me close, one arm around me, so my head rested on his shoulder. His other hand was light at my waist. I felt his heart beating against my cheek. I’d been building walls around myself, and now they dissolved as if something in me knew I had no more need of them.

  I closed my eyes, and let the lullaby of his breathing rock me to sleep.

  I was awakened by a shaft of bright light coming from the open door. Two faces peered down at us, and I realized in that moment how entwined I was with him, my legs tangled with his, his hand twisted in my hair. He cursed beneath his breath—something Gaelic—and pulled his hand from my curls, sitting up.

  “Battle Annie wants to see the veleda,” said one of the boys.

  “Alone,” said another.

  “No,” Diarmid said. “She does nothing without me.”

  I touched his arm. “It’s all right. I’ll see her.”

  “Grace, no—”

  “I said I’ll see her.” I pushed my hair out of my eyes. It was a knotted mess, and my unwashed skin felt itchy and sticky with salt and sand. My corset pinched.

  He whispered urgently in my ear, “Don’t be a fool. You don’t know them as I do. Insist that I come too.”

  “I can get us out of here. I know I can.” I pulled away, walking to the square of light and squinting at the boys above. “How do I get up?”

  There was a clatter; I stepped back as a slatted ladder unrolled into the hold. It swayed as I caught it and set my foot upon it.

  “No bargains and no favors, Grace,” Diarmid said.

  “I know.”

  I went up the ladder. When I was at the top, the boys gathered it and me and let the door of the hold fall closed.

  Now that I was alone with the sidhe, I didn’t feel so confident. I would have to be clever. I would have to be alert.

  “This way,” one boy said, and I followed them to Battle Annie’s quarters.

  “The veleda, milady,” the other boy announced.

  Battle Annie sat at the desk. Behind her stood her courtiers. A bowl of apples and some fluffy white bread was before her, along with a steaming cup that smelled like chocolate. My stomach growled. The last thing I’d eaten had been the clams at Coney Island.

  She gestured to the chair opposite. “Please, sit. Join me.”

  I knew the stories. Never eat with the fairies, never drink with them. I sat down, but when she shoved the chocolate toward me, I shook my head.

  “’Tis human food.”

  “How do I know that? How do I know it isn’t glamoured?”

  “I’ve no wish to drain or enslave you, veleda. You’re more useful to me in other ways.”

  That only made me more nervous. “What ways are those?”

  Battle Annie took an apple from the bowl. She drew one of the daggers from her belt and sliced a piece, handing it to me. “Take it. I think when you do you will know the truth.”

  “The truth?”

  “Whether ’tis glamoured or no.”

  I laughed. “And how should I determine that?”

  “Use your power.”

  I didn’t want to tell her that I didn’t know how to do that, or even if I could. She was waiting, and she looked as if she would wait, apple suspended, forever, and so I took it. I wasn’t going to eat it. I didn’t trust her any more than I’d trusted Deirdre.

  Battle Annie said, “Close your eyes. Listen.”

  The apple slice felt like any other apple slice, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t fairy food. “Listen?”

  “Aye. Listen. Tell me what it says.”

  “It’s an apple—”

  “Listen!”

  Well, what could it harm? Obediently, I closed my eyes. Nothing. Or . . . wait . . . I heard the song of the sidhe. Let me touch you. Let me kiss you. Let me. The whole room pulsed the melody. My blood burned in response.

  “The apple,” Battle Annie urged.

  I tried to focus on it, the way it felt: a crisp sliver, its juices wetting the tips of my fingers, sticky and sweet, the way the flesh gave just a bit when I pressed it. But I heard nothing.

  And then there was something, a strange music that bade me Listen. Listen. The same music I’d heard before, hazy and faint, telling me to trust Deirdre. So far away, so hard to hold. I struggled to hear. The more I tried to grasp it, the more it fell to pieces. Then it was gone.

  But I’d heard its message. The apple was unglamoured. “You’re telling the truth,” I said.

  Battle Annie sat back in satisfaction. “Ah. As I thought. I believe we can do business.” She pushed the rolls toward me. “Now will you eat?”

  My doubts about whether or not I was the veleda disappeared. “I don’t understand. I’ve never been able to do any of this before a few days ago. Why is it happening now? What changed?”

  “I’ve no understanding of Druid ways. Eat, and you and I will talk, veleda. I have a proposition for you.”

  I was wary, but I ate the apple, which was juicy and sweet, snapping between my teeth. It may have been the best thing I’d ever tasted. Battle Annie carved another slice, handing it to me, and I ate that, too, and then broke one of the rolls into pieces. Soft, fresh bread—something I hadn’t had in what felt like forever.

  I said, “No bargains and no favors.”

  Battle Annie grinned that terrible grin. “You speak with Diarmid’s voice.”

  “He’s warned me to be careful. He’s had dealings with the sidhe before.”

  “Aye. But he is just a warrior; he has no power of his own but strength and strategy. Useful to you, I think, but his only value to us is his beauty.”

  “He was right, though, wasn’t he? He told me you’d try to take my power. Your minions already tried.”

  “And I stopped them, did I not? ’Tis true we’re hungry for your power, but to drink it will only appease my hunger for a time, and then I would be hungry again. No, I don’t want your power. I want use of it. Do you know the story of Cormac’s Cup?”

  Cormac’s Cup. The High King of Ireland, Grainne’s father, received a cup from Manannan that told truth from lies. A lie told over the cup broke it into three pieces; a truth told over it welded it together again. When Cormac died, the cup disappeared.

  “I know the story,” I said.

  “What the cup once did—that task belongs to the veleda now. Your job is to discern truth from lies.”

  I thought of Diarmid. Of Patrick. Of the Fianna and the Fomori and my whole life hanging in the balance. “I think that particular power has been lost over the years.”

  Battle Annie gestured to a pretty girl courtier, who gave her the ogham stick. Annie set it on the table between us. “I will help you find this archdruid you speak of.”

  “Why?”

  “Because a veleda without training is of little use to me.”

  “How is a veleda with training of use?”

  “Every day, I am besieged with requests. Decide this, debate that. I could use a Cormac’s Cup for myself. In lieu of that, a veleda would do. You can already judge some truths. With training, you would be better. We could be allies. Battle Annie’s strength in return for your judgment.”

  “I may not have much to offer you. There is the prophecy to consider. On Samhain I must make a choice. There will be no power left after that.” I didn’t want to say the rest. I didn’t want to think it. “I may not even be left.”

  “’Tis a risk I’m willing to take.”

  I felt a piercing hope. “Then you think perhaps I don’t have to die?�
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  “All things are possible, veleda. And fate is ever-changing, is it not? You may yet influence it.”

  The same thing Diarmid had said to me about divination: what was foretold was only what would happen if nothing changed. But if something did . . .

  “I may influence it,” I repeated. “How?”

  “Arm yourself—not with weapons, but with training. How can you hope to change the world without knowing the forces that bind it?”

  “An archdruid could teach me those things?”

  Battle Annie nodded.

  “Then there is one here in the city?”

  “I have not heard of any archdruid here for many years. Then again, I have not looked for one.”

  “But my grandmother told me he was here. She said the sidhe could help me find him. Are you telling me her words were madness after all?”

  “Sometimes truth and madness are the same. But I warn you, veleda: Be careful of those who claim that truth is certain. It is anything but.”

  “You mean . . . what Diarmid tells me.”

  “That one struggles. He loves you and knows he should not. As you love him and know you should not.”

  My heart pounded in my ears. “What about Patrick? And the Fenian Brotherhood? The Fomori? The Fianna? Which of them is right?”

  “We have always found your mortal insistence on certainties strange. Nothing is as clear as you wish it to be. You have walked your path blindly until now. Time to open your eyes.”

  How perfectly, annoyingly unhelpful.

  She pushed the ogham stick toward me. “Now I will return this to the one ’twas meant for.”

  “I don’t know what to do with it,” I admitted. “I don’t know what it means. Without the key, it’s useless. I don’t suppose you have any idea where such a thing might be?”

  Battle Annie only looked at me thoughtfully and said, “Have we a deal? Your judgment for my friendship?”

  “Listen well,” Diarmid had said. I heard no threat here. Battle Annie and her gang could be powerful allies. I had more faith in the sidhe’s ability to sniff out the archdruid than in my own. Truthfully, who knew whether I would even be alive to live up to my part of the bargain?

  “We have a deal.”

  She held out her hand, and I shook it. Then she pushed back from the table and said to her boys, “Fetch Diarmid. Bring him here and let him eat. We’ll make for Governors Island.”

  “Why Governors Island?” I asked.

  “Something you will need is there.”

  “Something to do with the archdruid?”

  She cocked her head. The beads in her hair clicked as they fell against one another. “Would you prefer I return you to Manhattan?”

  Home. My old life. Go back. Be who you were.

  But Diarmid was right when he’d said no one could go back. There was only going forward. If I meant to change my future, I had to face the dangers before me, including the Fianna warrior who had made himself my partner in this.

  Time to open my eyes.

  I looked at Battle Annie and said, “Governors Island it is.”

  Later that morning

  Diarmid

  He sat there in darkness, listening to the rats and the slap of water against the hull and footsteps passing overhead, waiting for the steps to pause. He expected it so often that when they finally did, he didn’t believe it. Then there was a creak, and the hold door opened. The slatted ladder came tumbling down.

  “Battle Annie will see you now, Diarmid Ua Duibhne.”

  The moment he set foot above, the sidhe grabbed him, holding him fast. “Where’s Grace?”

  “She’s with milady,” one of them said. “You’ve nothing to fear.”

  “I don’t quite believe that.”

  “Believe what you want,” said another. “’Tis nothing to us.”

  They led him to the captain’s quarters and shoved him inside. He saw Grace at the desk with Battle Annie, sliced apples and bread before her. Horrified, he said, “You didn’t eat it. Tell me you didn’t eat it.”

  Grace said, “It’s not fairy food.”

  “It’s glamoured, Grace—”

  “No.” She rose and brought him to the other chair. “Sit down and eat. It’s not glamoured.”

  He sat and shoved the plate away. “You’ve eaten it, and I’ll never get you off this ship now. What did I tell you?”

  Battle Annie smiled. Her pointed teeth gleamed. “Don’t be a fool, lad. I have more to gain by making her a friend. Glamours are for fairies like Deirdre, who want only to play. I’ve bigger plans.”

  Grace said, “I’ve made a deal with Battle Annie. She’s going to help us find the archdruid.”

  He should have known it. When had Grace ever done what he told her? She was as infuriating as Neasa had been. He asked, “And in return?”

  “Annie believes I have a power that can help her.”

  His dread became crushing. “What have you done, Grace?”

  “Made a good bargain,” she said. “They’re giving us safe passage to Governors Island.”

  “There are troops all over it.”

  “Not many, and they keep to Fort Jay. You can avoid them if you stay to the shore,” Battle Annie advised.

  “’Twould be better to go somewhere else. Somewhere—”

  “She said no to Manhattan. I would have taken her there if she’d wished it.”

  He looked at Grace in surprise. “You said no?”

  “I made you a promise, didn’t I?”

  “Aye, but . . .” There was something else here. Something he didn’t understand. He felt as if he’d turned a corner and the world had upended. He said to Battle Annie, “What did you do to her?”

  The river pirate queen only pushed the ogham stick toward him. “She cannot hold this without pain, but I return it to you. ’Tis useless to me.”

  He took it before she could change her mind, shoving it into his pocket.

  “Now will you please eat?” Grace asked. “I know you’re hungry.”

  “When we’re ashore. If I can really get you off this ship, I’ll eat.”

  “Always so cautious,” Battle Annie said. “Such arrogance, to assume that you know what is right all the time. Does it not get wearying? Do the Fianna never guess wrong?”

  “Rarely.”

  “Your veleda truly has a hard task then.” She rose, gesturing to her courtiers. “Pack this up for them to take ashore.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself,” Diarmid said.

  Grace said, “Thank you, Annie. We’ll be happy to take it.”

  He glared at her. She returned his gaze, and he saw her confidence, as if she’d come to some decision. But what? What had she traded, exactly? He felt at a disadvantage, slow and muzzy-headed.

  “Come then,” Annie said. “We’ll be there shortly.”

  She left the cabin, her necklaces and earrings and beads jangling, the feathers in her braids fluttering. They followed her to the stairs leading to the deck, and the light changed; instead of oil lamps, there was an almost-blinding fog, as if the sun were encased within it—a fairy glamour, he realized, and one that now and again pulsed with blue light. Battle Annie said, “We were pursued all night by Fomorians, but they won’t see where we leave you, and with any luck, they’ll continue to pursue us for another day or so.”

  Maybe. Or maybe not. The thought of the Fomorians just outside that scrim of fog made Diarmid nervous. The flashing blue must be Tethra’s lightning bouncing off the glamour, trying to break through it.

  It was time to get off this ship, and as quickly as possible. On land, Diarmid felt he could keep Grace out of their hands. On the ship, there was nowhere to escape if Tethra got through that fog—and he would, eventually.

  The sails luffed; a faint breeze ruffled his hair. O
ut of habit, he checked the heavy forelock covering the ball seirce. Grace said, “It would be nice to see your eyes. They’re such a pretty blue.” A compliment. And the way she looked at him . . .

  “What did she do to you?”

  “What?”

  “Battle Annie. What did she do? What glamour or . . . or spell did she cast on you?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Something’s different.”

  “It’s your imagination.”

  “No,” he said firmly. “It’s not my imagination that you chose to come here instead of Manhattan, when all you’ve been doing since we left is try to get back there.”

  “I decided it would be better to stay with you.”

  Now he was certain there was an enchantment. “I’ll make her take it off.” He turned from the rail. “I’ll—”

  She grabbed his hand. “Don’t be stupid. I’m not bespelled. Not by her.”

  “Then by who? Tell me and I’ll—”

  “Oh for God’s sake, Diarmid. Why can’t you believe that I know what I’m doing?”

  He paused. “’Tis just that they take you away to meet with a fairy, and I can’t do anything but go mad wondering what’s going on. Then when I see you again, you’re looking like you have all the answers, and you call my eyes pretty, and—”

  “I’m sorry I said it. Here, how’s this: I can’t stand the way your hair hangs in your face. Is that better?”

  “It’s only that . . . you’re suddenly . . . very confident.”

  “Which is not what you’re used to, I know. I forgot—only the Fianna are allowed to make decisions.”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “But it’s what you meant. You don’t trust that I can make a good one on my own.”

  He felt as if he’d stumbled into a trap and couldn’t get free. She’d gone from compliments to prickliness in a moment. He tried to placate her. “You haven’t had many dealings with fairies, that’s all.”