Authors: Jennifer Fallon
‘Can’t say I ever asked,’ Logan said. ‘Why?’
‘Seems a bit over the top, doesn’t it? I mean … a Dublin modelling agency with a penthouse office in what was probably the most expensive piece of real estate in the whole of New York?’
‘For chrissakes, Peter,’ his grandmother growled. ‘Stop being a detective for five wee minutes and take a moment to grieve your poor dead mother.’
‘When did we decide she was dead?’ he asked, alarmed at how quickly everyone had jumped to that conclusion. ‘You don’t know that.’
‘They’re saying nobody on the floors above where the planes hit made it out,’ Kelly said, sniffing back her tears.
‘And you don’t know she was anywhere near the place on Tuesday. Have you tried the consulate in New York?’ Pete loosened his tie. The room was stifling.
‘First thing I did after Kelly called me,’ Xavier assured them, smiling down at his wife sympathetically.
‘Which one?’
‘The Irish Consulate, of course. Why?’
‘Because she’s French,’ Logan answered, slapping his forehead. ‘Of course! If she’s laying wounded or unconscious in a hospital somewhere and she’s been ID’d from her passport, they wouldn’t even think to contact the Irish authorities.’
Pete pulled out his cell phone and dialled his work number,
without saying anything further to his siblings. They watched and waited as he got through to Brendá Duggan after a moment or two, explained the situation to his boss, and asked if she could pull any strings to cut through the red tape and find out if the French Consulate in New York had any news of their mother.
Pete could have rung the consulate himself, but he knew from experience that the higher one went up the chain of command, the more likely they knew someone who knew someone in the right place. The flow of information at Brendá’s level would be more like water and less like treacle.
‘I’ll see what I can do, Pete,’ Brendá Duggan promised, when he’d finished telling her what he knew. ‘Do you need some time off until you find out what’s happening?’
Pete shook his head, even though she couldn’t see the gesture. ‘Thanks, boss. But right now, I think I’d rather be at work.’
‘I understand,’ she said. ‘But don’t come back before you’re ready. I’ll make a few calls for you. I did a course on cross-border internet crime with Interpol last year in Paris. I have some contacts over there who might be able to find out if there is any news of your mother. You’d better give me her full name and date of birth.’
Pete covered the phone with his hand for a moment and looked at Kelly. ‘Do you know Mum’s date of birth?’
‘March eight, nineteen fifty-one,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘Trust a boy not to know that.’
Pete poked his tongue out at his cousin and repeated the date to Brendá Duggan.
‘And what’s her full name?’ Brendá asked, after she’d obviously written it down.
‘Adeline Monique Delphinia Sybilla Marguerite Bouvier Doherty,’ Pete said, amazed he could remember his mother’s complicated full name but not something as simple as her birthday. ‘That’s the official name on her passport, at least,’ he added. ‘But she rarely uses it. Mostly she goes by Delphine.’
The massive wooden gates of the Ikushima compound opened slowly to reveal the source of the drums. The Empresses’ arrival was heralded by a platoon of drummers, dressed traditionally in
momohiki
pants, a wide red
haramaki
around the midsection, bare chests (despite the cold) and
hachimaki
headbands depicting a logo that was disturbingly similar to the traditional rising sun of Imperial Japan in Ren’s realm.
Inside the compound, the place had erupted into chaos, and for a moment, Ren was forgotten. There were people running back and forth, children being dragged from their beds and hastily dressed as they rubbed the sleep from their eyes. Namito was shouting orders, Masuyo shouting other orders that directly contradicted her grandson. Aoi and Kazusa had both emerged from the main house. Kazusa was still dressed in all her finery, Aoi was smoothing down the wrinkles in a kimono Ren had not seen before. It was a shimmering green and red floral design edged with gold which reeked of an outfit saved for a special occasion.
If he’d been planning to escape, now would have been the perfect time. Amid this chaos, he could wane out of here without being noticed and never be seen again.
It was a tempting thought. Now he knew the name of what
he could do, Ren was quite sure he could do it. But it meant Aoi would have to die.
He didn’t want her blood on his hands.
And in truth, he was curious to meet the Empresses.
Daichi, Namito’s commander who had joined them for dinner the first night Ren was a guest here, seemed to be trying to form his samurai into an honour guard along the wall, dragging those off-duty from their beds, haranguing them with shouts and insults about their poor family origins to get them moving.
Over by the main house, Namito was yelling at somebody else to bring fireworks. This was a fireworks factory, after all. What better way to greet the Empresses than with a fabulous display of Ikushima wares?
The theatricality of the Empresses’ entourage made Ren wonder if the long line of drummers and the noise preceding their arrival was designed specifically to allow this sort of panicked preparation. He guessed they wanted their subjects to have advance warning of their imminent arrival. Ren had lived with a drama queen all his life, and knew a theatrical production when he saw one. It was hard to make an ‘entrance’, after all, if nobody had been given time to roll out the red carpet. There really wasn’t a need for any of this nonsense, that Ren could see, other than providing their hosts plenty of notice of their approach, so nobody could be accidentally dishonoured — and perhaps required to commit
Seppuku
— by not having time to prepare.
The drummers — and there seemed to be scores of them marching through the gates, pounding away at their instruments — reminded Ren of the
taiko
performance he had had to sit through when he visited Japan with Kiva. The performance was preceded by a tour of the troupe’s community at
Kodo
and a lengthy discourse about the nature of
Taiko
and the wide range of percussion instruments common to classical Japanese and European musical traditions. Ren had zoned out a
few minutes into the tour, paying little attention to the lecture, something he regretted later that day when they actually got to hear the musicians, because it turned out they were quite amazing, given they were making music with sticks.
The only thing Ren remembered clearly from that day, other than the drummers, was the story their guide told them about the origins of
taiko
. Ren remembered the goddess’s name well, because Kiva had been so taken with the legend she tried to buy the rights to it, with the intention of playing the sun goddess, Amaterasu, herself. Her manager, Jon, had eventually dissuaded her from attempting to hijack a story so steeped in a culture she didn’t understand or have any claim on, pointing out that in a Japanese legend, it was unlikely audiences would accept a blue-eyed, blonde Caucasian playing the role of a Japanese sun goddess, even if she had an executive producer’s credit.
That hadn’t stopped Kiva insisting everybody refer to her as Amaterasu for a week or so, until she gave up on the idea. The thought made Ren wonder what Kiva was doing now. He hadn’t had time to spare his mother — his adopted mother — a thought. Was she upset? Thriving on the drama? Genuinely concerned about what might have happened to her son, or trying to word a press release that put all the blame on him? Had Kiva done another feature in
OK Magazine
, to let the world know how devastated — and not responsible — she was for her errant son’s criminal behaviour?
Thinking of Kiva sparked more than an uncomfortable wash of guilt. What about Kerry and Patrick Boyle, his pseudo-parents from his own reality? What had his impulsive but well-intentioned actions done to them? What about poor Neil? How did he respond to his sister’s disappearance? Had he even noticed it? Were the Boyles worried that Hayley was missing, or did they trust Ren, confident he would never bring any harm to their daughter?
Ren realised he hadn’t considered how Hayley’s parents might react to her disappearance, something he was regretting, now he had time to think. Perhaps he should have left them a note. Should he have called them before stepping through the rift? He probably could have done something to reassure them Hayley was safe and would not come to any harm.
Don’t worry, Kerry and Patrick
, he could have written in a note,
I’ve taken Hayley to another reality to have her sight healed by magic.
Yeah
, Ren thought.
That would have worked.
It was a testament to the impressive length of the Empresses’ entourage that he had this much time to think before the drummers leading the parade had taken up position in the courtyard, followed by an escort of heavily armed samurai surrounding four muscular Caucasian men carrying a wide litter decorated in gilt and coloured gemstones that reflected the torchfire across the courtyard in a spray of speckled rainbow light.
There was a loud bang on his right where the first of the mortar-fired shells were set off. A moment later the sky lit up with a glorious burst of red light as a starmine exploded overhead. Ren glanced up at the sky. The drums were reaching a crescendo. There was no sign of Trása. She might have been scared off by the fireworks in avian form or be watching from the trees.
Another brilliant starmine exploded overhead.
Ren was relieved beyond words that Trása — for once — had listened to him when he warned her to get clear of the place. What he’d seen wasn’t a clear vision of the future. That sort of vision was quite rare, according to the knowledge his brother owned on the subject. And this vision wasn’t exactly clear. He’d seen a glimpse of the Empresses arriving in the compound and seen a glimpse of something else that might have been the future … or maybe the past.
Either way, it was disturbing.
It was the briefest of visions and it was of a herd of Faerie being pushed and prodded through a rift into a barren world beyond, while the Empresses looked on impassively, neither glorying in the
sídhes’
distress at leaving this realm nor repulsed by it. They were just standing there, watching, as if Faeries suffocating on the other side was so everyday, so pedestrian, it hardly rated their concern.
Another array of red, silver and green star shells lit the sky as the litter-bearers lowered the curtained litter to the ground. As it touched the raked sand, two identically dressed courtiers hurried from behind the litter, placing small, beautifully carved wooden steps on either side. The courtiers bowed, and then, still bowing low, their eyes downcast, they pulled back the gold curtains to allow their mistresses to alight.
As another series of fireworks decorated the night sky, turning the compound to day for a few seconds, the Empresses climbed out in unison, in a move so well synchronised Ren did not doubt they had practised it until they got it right. One small wooden-sandalled foot followed another, then they emerged, dressed in identical kimonos woven from white silk and bearing the rising sun in a large pattern that reached from the hem to the wide red silk
obi
at their waists.
Around him, everybody in the compound fell to their knees. Except Ren.
He wanted to see them. He wanted to see if he’d been imagining things. He wanted to know if his vision had been true or just a wild fancy.
Ren watched the Empresses emerge from the litter and walk to the front where they smiled at each other and then turned to face him.
They were exactly as Ren had seen them in his vision. Blonde. Blue-eyed.
And barely ten years old.
Darragh was not entirely unfamiliar with the judicial system. His brother had been arrested on more than one occasion in this realm — albeit for relatively minor infractions until Trása framed him for arson and murder. Since Darragh now shared his brother’s memories, he knew roughly what was going on. Still, there seemed an inordinate number of people involved in the process of deciding a person’s innocence or guilt in this realm. The process was complicated, confusing and, Darragh suspected, prone to substantial error.
It was much easier, he decided, when you had the magical ability to know if someone was telling the truth simply by looking into their mind. Justice was much more accurate in his reality and much swifter.
The court was full of people, surprisingly few of them reporters. Kiva Kavanaugh might not be directly involved in his case, now it had been established he was not the fugitive Chelan Aquarius Kavanaugh but that he was the unexpected identical twin of her missing son, up on charges relating to the missing daughter of her chauffeur. There was a story for any journalist wishing to follow it through, but Darragh realised there were other things happening in the world. The antics of an actress’s
wayward offspring didn’t rate a mention against the background of the attack on the World Trade Center.
Even now, as Darragh was led into the dock by the prison officer assigned to guard him, the discussion in the public gallery wasn’t about the next case, although a good many spectators, he gathered, were here for their own business and not to watch him being arraigned. The discussions were about whether or not there was a final death toll yet, what would happen next and if it was going to mean war, although exactly who was going to go to war with whom was something Darragh still couldn’t work out.
There were no familiar faces in the court besides the court-appointed solicitor he’d met earlier this morning in a small bare interview room set aside for prisoners to consult with their counsel. A frazzled, red-haired young man by the name of Mike O’Malley, he briefly explained the procedure to Darragh, asked how he wanted to plead and then hurried off to talk to his next client. His appearance would be necessarily brief, O’Malley assured Darragh. The charges would be read, bail would be set or refused, and then Darragh would be returned to the cells to either await his release once bail was posted or be remanded into custody. A trial would be arranged in the Criminal Courts at a later date.