“How do we know you’re not still?” Rowena demanded.
“I can walk,” I said dryly. “Pri-ya,” I told the women, “is a terrible thing to be. But not only did I recover from it, I’ve acquired some kind of immunity to sexual glamour. V’lane no longer has any death-by-sex Fae impact on me now.”
That got their attention.
“Look, you can face what’s out there and get stronger for it, or you can stay behind these walls and take orders until our planet is beyond saving. You want to talk about damned? Our entire race is, if we don’t do something about it!”
The women exploded again and turned to one another, talking frantically. I’d definitely stirred them up. I’d given them more information in a few short minutes than their Grand Mistress had in years. I’d made them feel more empowered than she’d ever let them feel.
Rowena gave me an icy look and turned to study her protégées.
She made no move to silence them, nor did I. I preferred they work themselves up even more. Then I would cut in and tell them my plans. Form troops and assign tasks.
Rowena was looking at me again.
I suspected she wanted to address the crowd, but I wasn’t about to help her silence them. I would blow the horn in a few minutes and give my closing, rousing mutiny speech.
What happened next happened so quickly that I couldn’t stop it.
Rowena slipped a whistle from the pocket of her robes and blew on it sharply, three shrill bursts. The crowd instantly fell silent, obviously trained to the sound. Then she was speaking, and it was too late for me to stop her without seeming argumentative and petty. I would have to let her have her say, then turn it against her when she was done.
“I’ve known most of you since birth,” she said. “I’ve visited your homes, watched you grow, and brought you here when it was time. I know your families. I have been a part of your everyday struggles and triumphs. Each of you is as my own child.”
She favored them with a gentle smile, the very portrait of a loving parent. I didn’t trust it one bit. I wondered if I was the only one who saw the disturbing image of a cobra, smiling with human teeth.
“If I have erred, it is not that I have not loved you enough but that I have loved you too much. I have wanted, as any mother would, to keep her children safe. But my love has prevented my daughters from becoming the women they could and should be. It has prevented me from leading you as I must. I have erred but will no longer. We are sidhe-seers. We are humanity’s defenders. We were born and bred to battle the Fae, and from this day forward, that is what we will do.” All softness in her demeanor abruptly melted away. She snapped straight, suddenly seemed a foot taller, and began firing orders.
“Kat,” she barked, “I want you to handpick a group and put them to work determining how we can use iron as a weapon. Catch a few Unseelie. Test it on them. Devote a second group to locating the most common sources of it and collect it, with all haste.” She waved a hand at the bus behind her. “We have guns enough for all of us!” she shouted triumphantly, making it sound as if the triumph were hers. “I want iron bullets to go around!”
I gritted my teeth.
“Learn how to make them,” she ordered. “Set up a smithy in the old ways if we must. Select a third group to scout Dublin, and, Katrina—you have proved yourself again and again a worthy and valuable leader—I want you in charge of this group yourself.”
Kat glowed.
I seethed.
At this point, I knew the wisest thing for me to do was stay silent. But it wasn’t easy. There were a dozen biting comments I wanted to make. Reminders that I’d brought the guns, I’d found out about iron, I’d been the one advocating battle when their precious GM had been blindly and insistently against it. But I could read the mood of this crowd, and at the very root of it was an adage as old as time: Better the devil you know than the one you don’t know. Especially if the devil you do know is about to give you what you wanted anyway.
I couldn’t compete with that. I was the devil they’d known for only a few short months. And my press hadn’t exactly been good. Not with Rowena in charge of the media.
The Grand Mistress’s voice soared in volume. “I want to know the numbers of Fae in the city, so we can begin planning how and when to attack.” She raised her small hand into the air and made a fist. “Today is the dawn of a new order! No longer will I allow my love for you to blind me as it has in the past. I will lead my daughters proudly into battle, and we will do what we were born to do. We will remind the Fae that we drove them from our world and forced them to hide for six thousand years. We will remind them why they feared us, and we will drive them from it again! Sidhe-seers, to war!”
The crowd exploded into cheers.
Beside me, Dani said, “What the feck? How’d she do that, Mac?”
I looked at Rowena and she looked at me and we had an entire conversation in a glance.
Child, did you really believe you could take them from me? her fierce blue glare mocked.
Touché. Watch your back, old woman.
She’d won, for now.
But it wasn’t a complete loss. Although Rowena was taking the credit for it, at least the sidhe-seers were getting to do everything I’d wanted them to do, short of exploring IFPs, and that could wait. I might have lost the war, but I’d won a few of the battles. My first attempted coup had failed. My next one wouldn’t.
“Politics, Dani,” I muttered. “We’ve got a lot to learn.” Nothing had been easy for me in Dublin. I no longer expected it to be, nor would I waste time complaining when it could be put to better use moving forward.