For an instant, I was tempted to lean into that, considering what the Harvesters represented to the Syr, but a little voice in the back of my head immediately began listing all the ways shit could blow up in my face if I did. Instead, I handed him his shirt back while commenting, “Nah, not a Harvester. Training to be one? Sure, but not actually one. Not yet.”

  The elf eyed his shirt and then me. “If you’re not, why would Aoibheann heed your prayer?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t pretend to know the mind of any god, much less hers. We were on friendly terms the last time we spoke, and I kinda owe her. What’s your name?”

  “Cathal.” The elf answered as he started to sit up.

  I offered him a hand and pulled him up. “Samuel. As much as I’d enjoy the conversation, I’m thinking we might want to reconvene somewhere less out in the open.”

  Cathal nodded, turned his head, and immediately grunted. “Bastards took my pack, too. And my dagger. Damnit, I don’t remember that. I had some good loot.”

  I shrugged and glanced around. “Well, you were bit busy with the whole getting stabbed bit. It happens. The missing things part, that is. Hopefully stabbings aren’t terribly common out here.”

  The elf smirked. “They’re evidently bit more common than either of us find comfortable. Follow me, we’re not far from my safehouse.”

  I blinked at the word but said nothing while packing everything back up. The moment I had everything put back, Cathal jerked his head toward the other side of the street and started across. Both of us stayed low until he took a knee next to what I thought was a pile of debris with some sort of shrub growing up through it.

  “Hold one,” Cathal muttered as he glanced up and down the street before digging his hands into the side of the rubble. I heard him whisper something not quite intelligible and a chill shot across my skin right before he hefted up and the entire pile rose up at an angle. “Right, in you go, but don’t touch anything. There are enough traps down there to dent Selyn’s juggernaut. Try not to set them off.”

  I leaned over, noting the debris was mounted on a sizeable wooden frame of some sort, hinged up against the actual wall of the building. The space below might’ve been a simple basement stairwell at one point, but the stairs were long gone and only wood crate filled the side nearest to me. Not about to waste more time, I sank to my haunches, threw a leg over the side, and lowered myself down using the crate as an intermediate step.

  Looking about while Cathal entered the same way, the lack of grime along the walls in one corner suggested where the steps had been before. As the elf closed the hatch and everything sunk into absolute darkness, I twisted the control knob on the IR illuminator on my rifle, switching it from pad-triggered to on. The elf’s wince answered the question I’d had earlier; elves could see IR lamps. Good to know.

  Something overhead clicked and Cathal turned to what looked like solid wall across from the crate. “You carry strange magic, friend.”

  “Oh?” I asked while he traced patterns with nimble fingertips against the stone.

  “A torch that can only be seen in the dark, one that also doesn’t disturb the weave? Can’t say I’ve seen the like in human hands,” he noted and then poked the middle of the brick at the center of pattern. A three-foot section of wall silently slid back and then to the side. Cathal gestured into the dark space ahead. “Same as before, try not to touch anything.”

  I shrugged and stepped through into a long hallway. In the monochrome green of night vision, it wasn’t easy to tell what colors anything might be, but the walls and floor were clearly tile of some sort with the floors darker than the walls. At any rate, the hallway extended maybe another sixty feet before ending in another door. Three doors lined the wall on the left while the two on the right were split in the middle by what looked like a T-intersection another thirty feet or so down the hall.

  Sparing a glance to the elf while he secured the hidden door, I asked, “Are we good for visible light now?”

  When Cathal nodded, I mentally reached out to the wall sconces to either side of the doors ahead and focused a single thought in their direction, just as I had back in the Glade. The elf made a startled noise as the lights flickered on while I pushed my monocle up. The tiles lining the floor were a shade or three darker than battleship grey, while tile on the walls an off-white that made me think of hospitals.

  “Something wrong?” I asked. The elf had already been already pale from blood loss but he looked a few shades lighter now.

  Wide-eyed, Cathal knuckled his forehead. “No, my Lord.”

  “Excuse me?” I asked, my palm now resting on my pistol.

  “I thought I misheard you earlier, but the lights answered your call. There’s no question, you carry Lady Badb’s blessing.”

  I did my level best not to wince. Once again, I’d stumbled into something inadvertently that gave away information best kept secret. “Suppose I do, then what?”

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  “Then it explains much. This way, Sir,” the elf replied and started ahead.

  “You can ditch the ‘sir’ routine, I’m not one for titles or unnecessary deference,” I noted, letting him get a lead before following.

  “Yes, s—ah, pardon. The former masters of this safehouse could be—uhm, a bit prickly when dealing with associates such as myself.”

  As we turned the corner at the intersection, my hand slipped from pistol to sword hilt as I asked, “Former masters? What happened to them? And what sort of associate might you be?”

  Cathal’s pace hitched as he cleared his throat. I pushed with my thumb and silence exploded outward. The elf simply raised his hands above his head as the Badb’s influence enveloped him. Instead of simply sensing the elf’s presence as I had others inside the blade’s area of effect, I felt a faint reverberation in the presence that echoed back. Cailleach’s voice whispered through my mind. The Lady’s servants recognize each other.

  Worried I’d offered some degree of offense, I slid the blade back into the sheath and apologized.

  “No need, you’re just being thorough, as expected of one of the Lady’s own,” Cathal answered. “To be blunt, I’m a rather poor associate. I was to be sworn in, and when everything went to hell, I was left behind. As for my service itself, I suppose you could say I was a mercenary. Off the books, naturally.”

  We’d passed a number of closed doors, all solid, black wood stoutly banded with darkened metal, and it occurred to me as we walked this stretch devoid of doors that we had certainly walked farther than the building above us extended. “Naturally. And what services did the House pay you for?”

  No sigils, no artistry. Just tile and wood.

  Cathal chuckled. “Information, mostly. Before Longreach fell, I found people, found things. Sometimes I was paid to make sure no one else could find them. Sometimes I was paid to move them about.”

  “Do much business in Annesport?” I asked.

  “Aye. I used to live there, you know. Ran a little trading company for a while. Useful cover, that.”

  Okay, so he’s a spook of some flavor. We came to a halt at the end of the hallway before a set of thickly banded double doors that looked like it’d take Kiki a hot minute to claw through. When Cathal stepped forward and began tracing a pattern on the door, I decided to take a gamble. If I could activate the lights with a thought, maybe that wasn’t the only thing I could do, seeing as I had Lady Badb’s blessing.

  Cathal jerked when the locks clacked and the doors swung inward on their own. The lighting on the far side flickered on before the doors finished swinging open, revealing a large hall. Well, hall in terms of square footage, anyway. I’m not sure a single-story room in a basement qualifies as a hall.

  The place had a very lived in-feel, with a sheet draped couch in the middle of the room, sacks and packs of various sizes arrayed next to it, and a short table with a single plate and some bread. Shelves full of wrapped parcels and crates lined the walls and filled out most of the rest of the space.

  The elf gestured me inside with a smile. “Welcome to my home away from home. I hope the House doesn’t mind I did a bit of redecorating.”

  I stepped inside, looking about. Unlike the previous hall which had been all tile that reeked in my head of antiseptic simply because of the way it looked, this space was much warmer. The flooring was all dark wood, as were the supports. At least a half dozen squat crystal chandeliers hung from the overhead beams. I spotted a few black doors similar to the ones we’d passed by earlier as I turned to Cathal. “What was this space before?”

  The elf gestured to the doors along the walls. “Offices and private quarters for senior House members. The central area served as a work space. Most of the rooms we passed were either storage or bunk space for junior members.” He suddenly perked up and pointed at the nearest door that had been off to the right when we entered. “That one, I’m not sure of. Only senior members were allowed entry and I am not nearly brave enough to try the lock.”

  Eyeing the door, I merely nodded. “Considering how closely the House guards its secrets, I suspect your caution is well warranted.”

  “Aye,” Cathal responded as he walked deeper into the room, over toward the couch. “Might I ask what cell you are associated with, Samuel?”

  Thinking quickly, I slapped together a few nuggets of truth. “I was recently inducted into the service of the House at the Lonely Glade.”

  Cathal blinked. “Oh. Well then, might I interest you in some tea? I’d hoped the homewood would’ve sent agents, but if you come from the Glade, I believe this won’t be a short conversation.”

  Steeling myself against the growing feeling I was about to stumble across the fuckening once again, I joined the elf at the table where he dug through the surrounding packs to produce a glass container of tea leaves, a metal ring lined with reddish crystals, an elegant silver teapot, and a wrapped container of what looked like crackers.

  He eyed me and gestured to the couch. “Sit, it’ll take me only a minute.”

  I did as asked, leaning my pack up against the armrest, while he set out the ring, placed the teapot atop it, and ransacked a few shelves to find a canteen whose water he poured into the pot. The crystals began glowing faintly a few moments later while he set about removing a metal strainer from the pot and filling it with leaves.

  “Quite a bit of stuff you have here,” I noted.

  “Accumulated since the fall. Some of it bought, some of it diverted, most of it salvaged from the rift.”

  There it is. The fuckening. “The rift?”

  Shaking his head, Cathal held up a finger before turning to ransack the surrounding packs. “Sorry, I don’t get guests here. Haven’t touched most of this since I moved it decades ago, which considering you’re human, might have been before you were born.”

  I sighed and let the man do his thing. Having sat through the “chai and chat” routine in Afghanistan a few times, I figured things would just go easier if I waited. Sooner than I figured, the elf placed a saucer with a filled teacup and a small plate of what I’d dismissed as crackers in front of me.

  “So, where to start?” Cathal muttered as I lifted the teacup and sat back. Not quite the most comfortable couch I’ve sat in, but it beats government issue. Not that that’s a terribly high bar.

  I inhaled the vapor, making much the same show of enjoying the smell as was expected overseas, and was actually surprised to find I liked the vaguely floral, somewhat musky, mildly citrusy scent. “Hm. I don’t remember the last time I had white tea.”

  The elf beamed a smile while retrieving his own teacup. “I reappropriated it from the guard captain’s supply shipment from Selyn a few months back. Was saving it for a special occasion.”

  I nodded, took a sip, and savored the flavor before commenting, “Well, I’d say narrowly avoiding death makes for a special occasion.”

  Cathal nodded. “That it does. So, I’m going to assume if you’ve recently been sworn in, in the Glade no less, you probably have no idea what happened here.”

  “Not the slightest. Figuring that out was why they sent me.”

  Cathal’s smile wavered as his eyes wandered away. “Well, I’m sure you can tell from the state of the city that it’s not a happy story.”