“That is a question better answered by Radomila.”
“So put her on. Is she there?”
“Radomila is indisposed.” For normal people, that would mean she was taking a shower or something. In Radomila’s case, it probably meant she was in the middle of a complicated spell involving tongue of frog, eye of newt, and maybe a packet of Splenda.
“I see.” A customer with greasy black hair hanging over his face came up to the counter with a bulk bag of incense sticks. “Look, I have to go. You’re welcome to come with Emily tomorrow, but it would be best to counsel her to keep silent around me. I can make her tea in silence, and she can drink it in silence; that way no one will get offended or injured. If you’d like to stay behind afterward, perhaps we can talk without coming to blows.”
Malina agreed, said she looked forward to it, and we rang off. The greasy man asked me if I had access to medical marijuana as an apothecary, and I pasted a sorrowful expression on my face and told him no as I rang up the incense he needed to mask the stink of his habit.
Drug addicts perplex me. They’re a relatively recent development, historically speaking. Everyone has their theories-monotheists like to blame it on Godlessness-but I think it was a plague that developed in the sooty petticoats of the Industrial Revolution and its concomitant division of labor. Once people specialized their labors and separated themselves from food production and the daily needs of basic survival, there was a hollow place in their lives that they did not know how to fill. Most people found healthy ways to fill it, with hobbies or social clubs or pseudo-sports like shuffleboard and tiddlywinks. Others didn’t.
Perry finally found some time to mess around with the Tarot decks and had a serviceable display up by closing time. I rode quickly to the widow’s house after locking up the store and retrieved the push mower from her shed in the backyard.
“Ah, yer a fine boy, Atticus, and that’s no lie,” she said, saluting me with her whiskey glass as she came out to the front porch to watch me work. She liked to sit in her rocking chair and sing old Irish songs to me-old for her, anyway-over the whirl of the lawnmower blades. Sometimes she would forget the words and simply hum the tune, and I enjoyed that just as much. When I was finished, I always spent a pleasant time with her, hearing stories of her younger days in the old country. That day, as the sun was setting and the shadows were lengthening, she was telling me something about running around the streets of Dublin with a bunch of ne’er-do-wells. “This was all before I met me husband, o’course,” she made sure to add.
I had Oberon stationed as sentinel on the edge of the lawn, close to the street. As the widow regaled me with tales of her Golden Age debauchery, I was depending on him to tell me of approaching danger.
‹Atticus,› he said, as the widow was winding up her tale with a sigh over better days in a better land, ‹someone comes on foot from the north.›
Is he a stranger? I had put Fragarach aside while I talked with the widow, but now I stood and slung the scabbard back over my head, causing the widow to frown.
‹Yes. He is very strange. I can smell the ocean on him from here.›
Uh-oh. That’s not good. Stay still and try not to make any noise.
“Excuse me, Mrs. MacDonagh,” I said, “someone’s coming and he might not be friendly.”
“What? Who is it? Atticus?”
I couldn’t answer yet, so I didn’t. I kicked off my sandals and drew power from the widow’s lawn even as I walked toward the street and peered northward. One of the charms on my necklace has the shape of a bear on it, and its function is to store a bit of magical power for me that I can tap when I’m walking on concrete or asphalt. I topped off the magical tank as a possible antagonist approached.
A tall, armored figure clanked noisily on the asphalt a couple of houses away, and it raised a hand to hail me when I came into view. I activated a different charm that I call “faerie specs,” a sort of filter for my eyes that lets me see through Fae glamours and detect all sorts of magic juju. It showed me the normal spectrum, but then there was also a green overlay that revealed what was going on magically, and right now the two layers showed me the same thing. So whoever he was, I was looking at his true form. If he had something similar to my faerie specs, he might be able to see through Oberon’s camouflage, but then again, he might not.
He was wearing rather gaudy bronze armor that no one would have worn in the old days. The cuirass, faced in hardened leather dyed with woad, covered too much and restricted movement. He had leaf-shaped tassets hanging down over a bronze mail skirt. He also had five-piece pauldrons and matching vambraces and greaves. It would have been hot enough to wear such armor in Ireland, but here the temperature was still in the low nineties, and he must have been broiling in it. His helmet was beyond ridiculous: It was one of those medieval barbutes that didn’t become popular until a thousand years after his halcyon days of slaughter, and he must have been wearing it as a joke, though I did not find it especially funny. A sword hung in a scabbard at his side, but thankfully he did not carry a shield.
“I greet you, Siodhachan O Suileabhain,” he said. “Well met.” He flashed a smug grin at me through his helmet, and I wanted to slay him on the spot. I kept my faerie specs on, because I simply didn’t trust him. Without some way to pierce his glamour, he could make my eyes think he was standing three feet away with his hands on his head while he was really plunging a dagger into my belly.
“Call me Atticus. I greet you, Bres.”
“Not well met?” He tilted his head a bit to the right, as much as the barbute would let him.
“Let’s see how the meeting goes. It’s been a long time since we have seen each other, and I wouldn’t have minded if it were longer. And by the way, the Renaissance Festival doesn’t arrive here until next February.”
“That’s not very hospitable,” Bres said, frowning. Oberon was right: He smelled of salt and fish. As a god of agriculture, he should smell of earth and flowers, but instead he retained the stink of the dockside, owing perhaps to his Fomorian ancestors, who lived by the sea. “I could take offense if I wished.”
“So take it already and be done. I can’t imagine why else you would be here now.”
“I am here at the request of an old friend,” he said.
“Did he request that you dress like that? Because if he did, he’s not your friend.”
“Atticus, who is that?” the widow MacDonagh called from her porch. I didn’t take my eyes off Bres as I called back to her.
“Someone I know. He won’t be staying long.” Time to set up my flanking maneuver. Speaking mind to mind, I said to Oberon, Remain still. But when I say, get behind him, grab a leg, and just yank him off his feet. Once he’s down, jump clear.
‹Got it,› Oberon said.
Bres continued as if the widow had never spoken. “Aenghus Og wants the sword. Give it to me and you’ll be left alone. It’s that simple.”
“Why isn’t he here himself?”
“He’s nearby,” Bres said. That was calculated to ratchet my paranoia up a few levels. It worked, but I was determined it would not work in his favor.
“What’s your stake in this, Bres? And what’s with the armor?”
“That does not concern you, Druid. Your only concern is whether you will agree to give us the sword and live, or refuse and die.” The last fingers of the sun were waving good-bye over the horizon, and twilight was upon us. Faerie time.
“Tell me why he wants it,” I said. “It’s not like Ireland has a High King who needs the Tuatha De Danann to help him out uniting all the various tribes.”
“It is not for you to question.”
“Sure it is,” I said, “but I guess it’s not for you to answer. Fragarach is right here.” I gestured to the hilt peeking over my shoulder. “So if I give it to you now, you walk away, and I never hear from you or Aenghus again?”
Bres peered intently at the hilt for a few moments, then chuckled. “That is not Fragarach. I have seen it, Druid, and I have felt its magic. You have nothing in that scabbard but an ordinary sword.”
Wow. Radomila’s magical cloak just rocked.
And then the green overlay in my vision started to differ from the normal spectrum. Bres was pulling his sword out of his scabbard in a leisurely fashion and watching my face to see if I reacted, so I tried to stay relaxed and let him think I was clueless. Either he knew that I really had Fragarach on my back and he wanted to double- cross me, or he simply wanted to kill me to burnish his reputation. He’d make a fine tale of the battle, no doubt, in spite of the fact that he was planning the equivalent of a stab in the back.
