Page 168

It’s plain from the look on Amelia’s face that she truly hadn’t known. She’d come here bearing one horror only to uncover another.

“How?” Róisín asks, and this time her voice breaks. “They gave him so much power.”

Mannie’s face has gone grim. “If Sirr holds a piece of the basalt tablet, and sits in a position such as that, it may explain more than power alone. A man with both could wield influence farther and faster than he ought. Protection too. Reach. Favour twisted to cruel purpose.”

One terrible shudder runs through Róisín as she fights for mastery and doesn’t quite win it.

Then she drags the heel of her hand hard across her face and lifts her head. The tears are still there, but what drives her now is anger. And if I know anything about Róisín, it’s that she wields it with purpose.

“He will pay for his crimes,” she says.

Her voice is raw, but it doesn’t shake.

“That slimy bastard murdered my parents and lived free while they were put in the ground. If this oath leads to him, if it helps bring him down, then I’m ready. I’m willin’. Gladly.”

I tighten my arm around her waist where she’s trembling against me.

“He’ll pay for his crimes,” I say, keeping my voice low and steady against the storm of hers. “And I’ll be beside you when he does.”

I feel her go still at that, and I realise how much promise I put into that. But I know it to be true.

Then I lift my head and look at the others.

“And if I die making a show of it, then this lot can finish the job, and I’ll give him hell from the other side.”

That wins the smallest, most reluctant smile from her. Barely there, but it’s enough to unfurl a reckless kind of hope in me.

Then she elbows me in the ribs.

“Eejit,” she mutters.

I rub at the spot with a quiet grunt, though there’s no real force in it, and then I pull her in tighter against me and press a kiss to the top of her head.

“I’m with you in this,” I say.

James and Ellen speak together then, their voices meeting as one.

“At all costs.”

Robert’s answer follows, low and iron-deep.

“To the bitter end, if bitter’s what it comes to.”

Amelia stands straight beside Mannie, pale but resolute.

“Until it’s done,” she says.

There’s a small shuffle from the table, and I glance over to find Mannie watching us with something dangerously like pride. Then, he comes to crouch down in front of me and Róisín, which feels so wildly out of character I’m half convinced the stone has addled him.

“I know I ask no small thing of you, but you will not take this on alone.” He reaches out to take her hand. “I will do for you all that I am permitted to. I will guide where I may guide, guard where I may guard, and place my hand to the scale where such a hand is allowed.”

The blue of his eyes blazes then. Ancient power banked behind them and straining close beneath the surface.

“I ask whether you will make good on a promise first sworn in another age: that Éire should not be abandoned to ruin while there were still those willing to stand for her; that her people should not suffer wrong unanswered while strength remained in those willing to answer her cry; and that what was broken might yet be guarded, and what was taken not surrendered forever to the hands that wounded it.”

The pale lines above the tablet waver, like breath upon winter air.

“I cannot promise you victory, safety, or that the cost will be light or fairly asked. Only this I know: there’s not one heart in this room untouched by what has been done to Éire and her people. The wound of it lives in all of you, and the tablet has answered it.”